Management and the Liberal Arts

Part I John Milton

The Bible says that “there’s nothing new under the sun” and that is very true. Any student of history can discover universal lessons in leadership, management, business strategies, and corporate politics. Indeed Nicolo Machiavelli’s book “The Prince” is nothing short of a management handbook for the discerning reader. Actually in practice the modern corporation is really no different than any ancient kingdom. It has its kings, princes, barons, and yeomen. It is filled with courtiers, dissidents, loyalists, allies, and enemies. What is important to the modern manager is to be able to use the histories of these kingdoms as examples of how to deal with the challenges both internally as well as from competition. Admittedly sometimes it requires some thought and analysis to see these examples and a good example is found in Paradise Lost as Satan and his lieutenants discuss their recent fall from grace. With a little imagination you can see the lieutenants Moloch, Belial, Mammon, and Beelzebub as corporate board members discussing with the CEO how to recover their competitive position.

The language – even in the seventeenth century – is high poetry but the arguments and the personalities can be found in virtually every corporate board room today. The first speaker is Satan who offers some motivational remarks before they get down to the business of deciding what to do. It is Moloch who speaks first:

My sentence is for open war:of wiles
More unexpert , I boast not, let us rather choose,
Armed with Hell’s flames and fury, all at once
O’er heavens high towers to force resistless way
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the torturer
Which if not victory, is yet revenge

This is a classic response from a classic personality. This is the response from the “shoot first aim later” manager. He does not recommend analyzing what went wrong and what must be done to correct it. Instead he is the manager whose response is to raise more capital, retool the factories, increase the advertising, retrain the sales team, and attack the market one more time with more energy. Every organization has its Moloch, he’s the one who gets the job done and overcomes all obstacles – as long as he is told what he is expected to do. He is enthusiastic, emotional, and substitutes action for thought and analysis. This attitude is reflected in his last line where even if he fails, he at least will get some emotional satisfaction in revenge. The next person to speak is Belial, the pragmatist. Every organization has its Belial, he is the intelligent one, the realist, the one who acknowledges the defeat and offers another alternative:

First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven are filled
With armed watch that renders all access
Impregnable, this is now
Our doom, which if we can sustain and bear
Our supreme foe in time may remit his anger

Of course this is really not a plan at all, but a recommendation to simply accept defeat. This is your classic risk adverse executive. The company has suffered a major defeat at the hands of a competitor and rather fighting back as the risk taker Moloch advises, Belial wants the opposite. He wants to protect what remains rather than fighting back and possibly losing even more. Risk adverse executives are not effective in highly competitive environments. The next to speak is Mammon, who at least seems to have thought about the situation and offers a valid option:

…with what eyes could we
Stand in his presence humble, and receive
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne
With warbled hymns, and to his God head sing
Forced hallelujahs, while he lordly sits
Our envied soverign?
To found this nether empire, which might rise,
By policy, and long process of time,
In emulation opposite to Heaven

This desert soil wants not her hidden luster, gems and gold
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise
Magnificence: and what can Heaven show more
To found this nether empire which might rise
By policy, and long process of time
In emulation opposite to Heaven


So Mammon rejects the frontal assault recommended by Moloch, the risk adverse acceptance offered by Belial and offers a realistic appraisal and solution. He recognizes the defeat but believes they can be great again and need to regroup. His option is to revamp, restructure, offer new products so they would emerge as a new and stronger enterprise equal to the competition. Although Mammon captured the feeling of the meeting and offered a strategy, it remained for Beelzebub to offer an alternate approach altogether.

There is a place
If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven err not
Another world, the happy seat of some new race called man
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn
What creatures there inhabit, of what mould
Our substance, how endured, and what their power
And where their weakness, how attempted best
By force or subtlety

In effect Beelzebub suggests a market survey with the idea of opening another market where they would be stronger. This type of manager is one capable of recognizing the setback, analyzing the situation and formulating a new strategy. And it is this approach that is accepted by Satan.

Admittedly Milton’s prose is compressed and requires some reflection and thought to apply it to modern management, but the lesson is there. What Milton describes are the four possible approaches to a severe shift in the market and competitive position of a company. These are the classic alternatives faced by managers today. Now we turn to management as seen through Shakespeare where the lessons are more visible.

Characteristics of a Good Manager

Although the title Manager continues to exist in contemporary organizations, the number of people with this title or position is declining and is rapidly being replaced by the term leader. But is the title leader merely a euphemism for manager or is there is a difference between a leader and a manager? If there are differences between these two titles then what are those differences?

If we start at the most basic point, we can state that a manager is process oriented and focused on doing things “right” or at least doing them according to the approved process. In short, the manager “goes by the book”. On the other hand, a leader can be viewed as a people person who is focused on doing what they perceive to be “the right thing”. Therefore, a leader may or may not follow the book. Managers are appointed and leaders emerge is another way of viewing this dichotomy but as we all know leadership is like sex appeal, hard to describe but easy to recognize. Managers tend to do the tasks assigned and rely on doing them by the book rather than looking at the larger picture and adjusting their actions accordingly. It isn’t that managers are uncreative or unimaginative but rather they tend to be cautious. Leaders on the other hand tend to see things from a different perspective and do what they feel needs to be done regardless of whether it was assigned or not. Therefore, leaders tend to be risk takers. The following chart provides some contrasting views of the characteristics that distinguish managers and leaders.

MANAGER CHARACTERISTICS
Process and Control Oriented
Asks How and When
Accepts Things as They Are
Conformist
Focuses on Structure and System
Short Range Orientation


LEADER CHARACTRISTICS
Relies on Trust
Asks What and Why
Challenges the Situation
Non-Conformist
Focuses on People
Long Range Perspective

Although the above table lists the characteristics of leaders and managers it more accurately describes the actions of managers and leaders. Therefore, these are a broad generalization of the differences between managers and leaders. But when these characteristics are combined with various character traits, then the differences become more distinct .

MANAGEMEMENT TRAITS
knowledgeable
Dedicated
Dependable
Tactful
Just
Predictable
Loyal
Controlling

LEADERSHIP TRAITS
Presence
Dedicated
Vision
Enthusiastic
Initiator
Inspirational
Unselfish
Resourceful

However, in the final analysis it is not the presence or absence of these traits that distinguishes the leader from the manager; rather it is how they are applied by the individual that distinguishes them because both the manager and the leader will display some of these at some time. But for the moment let’s focus on the manager and what constitutes “good” management.

Not everyone will agree on what a good manager is but there are some basic practices that distinguish good management from ordinary or poor. The first of these skills is perhaps the hardest for a manager to master and that is delegation. Most managers can perform a task better than those they supervise so the tendency is to micro-manage. The challenge is to assign the task with specific parameters and objectives and then to go do something else. This is much more difficult than it sounds because the accountability is with the manager not the individual. What distinguishes a good manager is his ability to clearly define the task and monitor progress without supervising. It is the clarity of the assignment that is crucial.

For the newly minted manager it is important to understand that the performance of the organization will not exceed that of the leader. That means that if the leader is tardy in arriving at work then so will the staff and attendance could rapidly become a problem. If the leader dresses inappropriately so will the staff and the leader’s attitude and conduct will permeate the entire organization, but this is also true for positive things as well. The most important thing for the manager to understand is that how he/she acts will dramatically influence the performance of the organization.

Periodically I run into something from my childhood that is long forgotten and placed on some dusty mental shelf. Something that suddenly brings into sharp focus the things that shaped me as a child and I recently encountered one of these artifacts -- this poem written my Rudyard Kipling. I first read this poem either in the eighth grade or freshman year and have long since forgotten it but in re-reading it as a retrospective on my life I am amazed by its accuracy and how it describes so much of my life.

Everyone is faced with challenges throughout their life and they never get easier, especially if you elect to lead others. Leadership is not for the weak or faint of heart because to stand out you must stand up and in standing up you present a target for those who lack the courage or temperament to lead. This short poem captures what leadership is all about.

Cal

Rudyard Kipling
If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;

If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

The New Management Paradigm

Managing is an experience, but then so is a root canal and the two experiences seem to have much in common. That is both are some times painful but both have certain rewards once the pain is over. Still there are many people who desire to lead the band. To members of the band this seems like a great and enviable position but anyone who has stepped up front knows that if you want to lead the band you have to face the music. The reality is that the manager – or in the more contemporary term leader – is the focal point for dissatisfied customers, team members and superiors and that the actual ability to control or influence events is much less than what may be perceived and the larger the band the more this is so. Consequently some days the manager might prefer to set his hair on fire rather than go to the office, but then there are those other days when things actually go as planned. True the number of days when this happens is woefully few, but they do occur and in the long term that usually makes everything worthwhile. Leading may be a lonely business but it is also fun in the long run and can be rewarding even though it frequently means hours of wading through tedious details and listening to complaints and problems that would tax a saint.

And this brings us to one of the great unanswered questions, which is – why does anyone want to take on the task of managing much less leading. Of course no one really knows why anyone wants to subject themselves to the stresses of leading an organization but there is a huge gamut of reasons ranging from power to “some one has to do it” or to inheritance. But there really is a larger question and that is what the difference is between management and leadership. Even though it is generally acknowledged that there are differences between managers and leaders these differences are generally ignored as organizations strive to keep up with the current trends in management style. The old management style – that is planning and directing-- is now considered old fashioned and companies are moving to the new leadership style of inspiring and governing. This trend can be observed everywhere as organizations morph into teams and leaders replace managers and management is replaced by governance. The result is that the concept of managing an organization is disappearing as organizations melt into teams staffed by team members both real and virtual and management is transformed into governance. Of course when challenged very few executives can make a clear distinction between these terms. The terms manager and leader are used interchangeably just as management and governance are used interchangeably. It appears that our corporate executives have come to believe that with the stroke of their administrative pen they can update their organizations and transform their unwanted and outdated managers into leaders who govern the organization. It all seems so simple but alas contrary to what Shakespeare might believe there is more to it than just a name.

But those of us who must live with these changes know how it actually works. One day you are the Department Manager happy as a clam in your little bureaucratic heaven and the next day you are the "Leader" of a new downsized, reengineered, and streamlined team, ready for action and poised to meet the future. As if by magic your department has disappeared and in its place is this newly constituted team armed with processes and acronyms prepared to battle the reactionary elements who thought things were working fine and no change was necessary. Of course that’s because down in the trenches the new team looks suspiciously like the old department--except smaller. You find that at the stroke of the pen you have been transformed from a manager of resources into a leader of men (in the generic sense of course). But most of us have found that following this metamorphosis very little has changed in reality. The downsizing has left you with a smaller staff and a new title but with the same responsibilities. Well -- almost the same responsibilities because as the leader you are not only expected to manage this team but also be a part of the team (translation: do the work). You and the smaller staff must now do everything you did before plus work more hours to compensate for the reduced staff. Furthermore, as the leader you are expected to lead by example, which means that you have retained all of your old duties, taken on direct responsibilities for certain tasks formerly done by the staff, and added more hours to your work schedule. You find that you not only are doing everything you did before but you are also an active contributor with tasks of your own. Essentially as a leader in this new paradigm, management has become "an extra duty", something to be done in your spare time as a "background" activity.

This magical transformation of managers into leaders and the associated trimming of "excess" employees is then touted to the (those that are awake) board-of-directors and stockholders as an example of how the company executives are up-to-date and have the vision necessary to lead the company into the next century. They have eliminated all of those high priced middle managers and over priced workers and replaced them with highly trained professionals in low labor cost countries. They have created a virtual organization staffed by motivated leaders and enthusiastic "A" players. The company is now poised to meet the future head-on, but is it really?

The problem is that changing titles and reducing staff is an age old management strategy that may have an immediate impact on the bottom line, but without a change in operational methods it is at best an organizational band-aide. What is required is fundamental structural, cultural, and philosophical change, plus an understanding of the purpose/ reason for the changes and a clear vision of the future. The new managers (leaders) must have a clear understanding of how their position has changed and what is expected of them. Without these real changes and an understanding of the impact of the changes reducing staff and changing titles are merely euphemisms and administrative exercises that may actually hurt the performance of the enterprise more than they help. Therefore, magical transformations of managers to leaders won't work. Unfortunately, this hasn’t seemed to stop many executives as they struggle to meet cost reduction mandates. What is needed are new approaches to management and organization complete with new processes, uniformity, and standards, but most of all a clear mission. Perhaps the lack of a mission statement is really the problem but one rarely recognized in the race to reduce costs. In any event, reducing heads and moving work offshore is rarely the only answer and certainly not the first one to choose.

Management characteristics and Leadership – The Basics

The most basic ingredient of successful management is leadership, but precisely what leadership is, is very difficult to describe. Leadership is like panache, sophistication, or charisma, easy to say and generally understood in context but almost impossible to describe. Everyone seems to have their own understanding and description of leadership but an excellent and succinct summary of leadership can be found in the Walt Disney movie, “A Bugs Life”. Here the arch villain Hopper, explains to the Ant Princess that the “first rule of leadership is you (the leader) are always at fault”. True, this is a somewhat negative view of leadership but nevertheless, it does summarize the absolute fundamental of leadership in one simple sentence. The leader is always responsible for the result, good or bad. But as any leader can tell you, if the results are good it is due to the efforts of those being led but if the results are bad, it is the leader’s fault alone. Consequently, leadership is really a test of courage, the courage to make a decision and to accept the responsibility of that decision regardless of the outcome. And as simple as it may sound this courage to make a decision and to accept sole responsibility is what distinguishes a leader from the pack.

The words, courage and bravery are not words that one ordinarily associates with business leaders. Usually these are reserved for individuals engaged in activities that involve physical danger, but any manager who has been confronted with decisions that jeopardize their career or their company, knows the heart stopping fear associated with them. However, not all business decisions involve grave risk any more than decisions made by police officers or firemen involve personal danger. But there is always the possibility that something unexpected may happen and it is this uncertainty of the outcome that requires the courage to act.

Once we reflect on the qualities of leadership, we recognize that the term leadership is bandied about rather carelessly. We find that the media has designated various people as religious leaders, political leaders, school leaders, and even business leaders. Unfortunately, when we are asked to describe precisely what makes these people leaders, most of us are rather unsure. In fact, in most cases if these people were stripped of their position and title, they would not immediately jump to mind as leaders. This does not mean that they are not leaders or have no leadership skills, in fact many do, but it underscores the problem many of us have in distinguishing leadership from position and title. The basic assumption seems to be that if a person holds a position of authority they are ipso facto a leader! Yet the history books are filled with individuals who were kings, presidents, prime ministers, and even generals who are mainly remembered for their ineptitude and lack of leadership skill. Therefore, personal wealth, titles, or hierarchical position is not, in its self, a determinant of a person’s leadership. And this brings us to the very fundamental question of “what distinguishes a leader from everyone else?”

According to the military, a group which has studied leadership for a very long time, leaders are distinguished by certain character traits that seem to have disappeared or have fallen into disuse. Words like integrity, loyalty, courage, and just are used to describe leaders but somehow the very meanings of these words seem to have been diminished as we view what passes for leaders today. Much of this decline can be traced to the routine application of the term leader to anyone who occupies a position with a title. This can be seen everywhere, from popularly elected politicians (popularity is not indicative of leadership), to senior executives, to team leaders at the threshold of the management chain. Admittedly all of these people should be leaders but as we all know many are not and few seem to display those character traits listed above, that distinguish a leader.

In fact the leaders today, especially those who hold elective office, are pale shadows of pale shadows of the leaders of old. A good example of this was the sign on Harry Truman’s desk in the Oval Office, “The Buck Stops Here”. How many politicians or CEO’s today are willing to step up and accept total responsibility? Remember it was President Truman who rebutted a critic by pointing out that “if you don’t like what I am doing don’t vote for me!” This kind of response coming from any politician today would be unthinkable.

The very essence of leadership is the willingness to make the tough, unambiguous choices that will have an impact on the fate of the organization and to assume responsibility for the result, without excuses or attempts to off load the blame on to some else or an external event. It is the courage to make these “you bet your job” decisions that sets the leader apart from those who want to be leaders but flinch from this responsibility. As we examine out current political landscape it would be useful to compare these political leaders in terms of their commitment, candor, moral courage, truthfulness, and integrity. When this measure is applied the decline of leadership in those who term themselves, leaders become very apparent.

Magic and Management

Managing is an experience, but then so is a root canal and the two experiences seem to have much in common. That is both are some times painful but both have certain rewards once the pain is over. Nevertheless there are many people who actually desire to lead the band. To members of the band being the Maestro seems like a great and enviable position but anyone who has stepped up front knows that if you want to lead the band you have to face the music. The reality is that the manager – or in the more contemporary term leader – is the focal point for dissatisfied customers, unhappy team members, clueless superiors and that their actual ability to control or influence events is almost nil and the larger the band the more this is so. Consequently some days the manager might prefer to set his hair on fire rather than go to the office, but then there are those other days when things actually go as planned. True the number of days when this happens is woefully few, but they do occur and in the long term that usually makes everything worthwhile. Leading may be a lonely business but it is also fun and in the long run it can be rewarding even though it frequently means hours of wading through tedious details and listening to complaints and problems that would tax a saint.

And this brings us to one of those great unanswered questions, which is – why does anyone want to take on the task of managing much less leading anything? Of course masochism comes to mind but no one really knows why anyone wants to subject themselves to the stresses of leading an organization or indulging in self-flagellation either but actually there is a huge gamut of reasons ranging from power to “some one has to do it”. But this brings us to another and perhaps larger question and that is what are the differences between management and leadership. Even though it is generally acknowledged that there are differences between managers and leaders these differences largely remain at the intellectual level and are generally ignored as organizations strive to keep up with the current trends in management style. The old management style – that is planning and directing-- is now considered old fashioned and companies are moving to the new leadership style of inspiring and governing. This trend can be observed everywhere as organizations morph into teams and leaders replace managers and management is replaced by governance. The result is that the old and now out of style understanding of what constitutes managing an organization is disappearing as organizations meld into teams staffed by associates, team members both real and virtual and management is transformed into governance. Of course when challenged very few executives can make a clear distinction between these terms. The terms manager and leader are used interchangeably just as management and governance are used interchangeably. It appears that our corporate executives have come to believe that with the stroke of their magic administrative pen and a new magical organization chart they can transform their unwanted and outdated managers into leaders who govern the organization. It all seems so simple but alas contrary to what Shakespeare might believe there is more to it than just a name.

Those of us who must live with these changes know how it actually works. One day you are the Department Manager happy as a clam in your little bureaucratic heaven and the next day you are TRANSFORMED into the "Leader" of a new downsized, reengineered, and streamlined team, ready for action and poised to meet the future. As if by magic your department has disappeared and in its place is this newly constituted team armed with processes and acronyms prepared to battle the reactionary elements who thought things were working just fine and no change was necessary. Of course that’s because down at the worker bee level the new team looks suspiciously like the old one--except – SURPRISE -- smaller. You find that at the stroke of the pen you have been transformed from a manager of resources into a leader of men (in the generic sense of course) charged with “governance” and no longer burdened with managing people.

But as most of us have found that unlike the caterpillar who morphs into a butterfly we find that following our organizational metamorphosis very little has changed and we –alas--remain a caterpillar. True we are a smaller caterpillar but a caterpillar nonetheless. The downsizing has left us with a smaller staff, the same responsibilities but with a wonderful new title. Well -- almost the same responsibilities because as the leader you are not only expected to manage – oops – govern this team but also to be a part of the team (translation: do the work). You and the smaller staff must now do everything you did before plus work more hours to compensate for the reduced staff. Furthermore, as the new leader you are expected to lead by example, which means that you have retained all of your old duties plus taken on direct responsibilities for certain tasks formerly done by the staff, and added more hours to your work schedule. You find that you not only are doing everything you did before but you are also an active contributor with tasks of your own. Essentially as a leader in this new paradigm, management has become "an extra duty", something to be done in your spare time as a "background" activity.

This magical transformation of managers into leaders and the associated trimming of "excess" employees is then touted to the (those that are awake) board-of-directors and stockholders as an example of how the company executives are up-to-date and have the vision necessary to lead the company into the new century. They have eliminated all of those high priced middle managers and over priced workers. They have created a virtual organization staffed with enthusiastic "A" players now governed by motivated leaders. The company is now poised to meet the future head-on -- but is it really?

The problem is that changing titles and reducing staff is an age old management strategy that may have an immediate impact on the bottom line, but without a change in operational methods it is at best an organizational band-aide. What is required is fundamental structural, cultural, and philosophical change, plus an understanding of the purpose/ reason for the changes and a clear vision of the future. The new managers (leaders) must have a clear understanding of how their position has changed and what is expected of them. Without these real changes and an understanding of the impact of the changes reducing staff and changing titles are merely euphemisms and administrative exercises that may actually hurt the performance of the enterprise more than they help. Therefore, magical transformations of managers to leaders won't work and remaking an organization requires more than a changing a few names on the org-chart and some new titles.

A Lesson In Corporate Knife Fighting

Periodically we see in the news papers or a trade journal that some executive has elected to retire or is leaving his cushy job to “pursue other interests” or to “spend more time with his family”. Of course most other executives know these are simply code words for identifying the loser in some sort of corporate power struggle and the other interests and time spent with the family are simply euphemisms for “seeking other employment”. What people outside of the executive ranks rarely see or understand is that life in the executive suite is frequently brutal and everyday is like a fight in an alley way. The following is a sample of how these things go and is based on an actual situation.

The Executive Vice President had five Industry Groups reporting to him, each headed by a Divisional Vice President. Of these five one was ready for retirement, two were asleep at the switch, and the remaining two were predators, and each was intent on becoming President of the company some day. The Predators realized that the only competition they had came from each other so they were very competitive with each other and largely ignored the others. Without any warning the Executive Vice President left the company and the President appointed the near-to-retirement (NTR),Vice President to replace him. This was a stunning turn of events to the Predators since neither of them was chosen. However, it was clear the appointment of the NTR Vice President was simply a place holder, pending the selection of permanent replacement, so all was not yet lost.

The Predators formed a peace pact and began to work together to divide the spoils and the power. The plan was to convince the new VP to divide his Industry Group between the two Predators and thus not replace himself. The plan worked like a charm. The spoils were divided, their power base expanded, and then the bomb dropped. The NTR VP announced that he was planning on completely reorganizing the divisions and would be bringing in a new executive to help in the organization. The Predators immediately closed ranks and launched an attack on this totally dumb idea. It was a dumb idea because it immediately provided them with a logical competitor for the EVP slot when the NTR VP retired. They used every argument and rationale they could to prevent bringing in an outsider. However, they were caught off-guard and so were unable to mount an effective opposition before the new executive was hired.

Of course the new executive had no idea regarding who any of the players were. The President and the NTR VP had recruited him from the outside to assist in a reorganization effort. Beyond that he knew nothing and certainly was not warned about the competitive nature of his colleagues.

The Predators welcomed him with open arms, each vying with the other to be the most cooperative. They provided him with documentation (by the box), had key individuals brief him (by the hour), submitted recommendations and suggestions almost daily. Of course the documentation was randomly boxed, the briefings tangential to the objective, and the suggestions and recommendations conflicting. Meanwhile the Predators were complaining to the President that the reorganization plan was dragging them down, the new executive was working too slowly, and things were really better like they were and the reorganization was unnecessary. The new executive was unaware of this background action and continued to try to sort out the current situation while trying to put together a new organizational plan.

To some extent the rearguard action was successful because the NTR VP announced that the reorganization plan was going slower than expected so in the interim he was going to re-establish the old organization. This meant pulling the units that formerly reported to him out of the Predators Divisions and re-creating the Industry Group that he formerly led. The new executive would be the Divisional Vice President responsible for the reconstituted Industry Group. This was an unexpected turn of events, but the Predators knew how to handle a situation like this. They simply sorted the employees by contribution, established the bottom performers, and transferred them to the new executive, swearing of course that he was taking their very best people. The new Industry Group floundered about while the new executive attempted to get it organized. The Predators continued their attack except it was now on two fronts. The reorganization plan was dragging on forever, and the new Industry Group was dragging all of the other Divisions down.

The new executive was the new kid on the block but he came from a tough neighborhood. He realized what was going on and launched a counterattack. First he hired some managers from outside, people whom he knew and trusted. These replaced the deadwood that the Predators so generously gave him. He then went to the two Divisional Vice Presidents who were asleep at the switch. As the new executive suspected they were really not asleep, just lacking a leader. He enlisted their support, got them to agree to give him some experienced people and to quietly help him with the reorganization. Within a very short time, the new Industry Group was showing real progress and the reorganization was secretly submitted to the President, which he accepted.

The NTR VP retired and was replaced by the new executive who was promoted to Executive Vice President on the basis of his demonstrated leadership and performance. He had rebuilt the Industry Group, reorganized the Industry Divisions, and established himself as a leader. The new organization called for the two Divisional Vice Presidents who had been asleep at the switch to absorb the Industry Groups formerly led by the Predators. The Predators were fired.

Obviously this scenario was fraught with risks for all of the players as well as the company, but it was the arrogance of the Predators that brought them down. They were blinded by their own belief that they were the only ones qualified to succeed to the position of Executive Vice President. When the NTR VP was initially appointed they failed to see that they had been evaluated and found wanting. Instead they chose to believe the appointment of the NTR VP was ceremonial pending his retirement and that one of them would takeover when that happened. This smugness led to a series of risk decisions that ultimately led to their downfall. First they assumed their two colleagues were either unaware of their competitive games or were not competitors themselves. This was a risk decision that they made and chose incorrectly. Next they made a risk decision in badgering the NTR VP to consolidate his division into theirs. There was a reason that Division existed to begin with and its consolidation would certainly raise questions.

The fatal turn of events for the Predators occurred when they failed to correctly assess the sudden decision to hire an outside executive to reorganize the Industry Groups. If this decision had solely been the NTR VP's, then why would he have consolidated the divisions in the first place? Why wouldn't he have reorganized at that point? The next risk assessment failure was not questioning the decision to bring in an outside executive to conduct the reorganization. At that point the Predators should have understood that there was a force behind these events beyond the NTR VP, instead of accepting the fact that their stars had set, they took their attack to the President. Obviously they assumed he either did not know what was going on or would accept their assessment that he had hired a turkey. That is a message very few Presidents want to receive. And finally, they underestimated the quality and skill of the new executive. They risked everything on their ability to bring him down. They did not even consider that the President might have hired him, as their new boss. Rather than attempt to ingratiate themselves they attacked him thinking that he had little support. So there you have it, a whole series of conscious and unconscious risk decisions that ultimately brought two high flyers to the ground. Candid self-appraisal is as important as a candid assessment to the risks surrounding a decision.