Page 101 - Executive Warfare

Peers

off-loaded by the corporation like Castro emptying out the jails in Cuba
and sending five boats an hour to Miami. And, of course, no such folly
would be complete without a handful of corporate spies.
Adding interest to this already interesting mix were the higher-ups from
the existing consumer finance business in Baltimore, many of whom got
their start going door-to-door collecting deadbeat loan payments for cars
and refrigerators. Now they were executives, but some of them never did
rid themselves of the habit of carrying a gun from their days as debt col-
lectors. Trust me, there is nothing like sitting in a meeting with a dinosaur
of an executive and noticing the handle of a .38 caliber peeking out from
under his belt. Alarming does not begin to describe the experience.
And just to complicate things even more, in the middle of this race, we
acquired ERA, the big real estate company. What did we know about real
estate? Nothing, except that we had an
Ark, and therefore it belonged on the
IT’S EASIER TO GET
Ark.
EVERYBODY IN
Add it all up, and Commercial Credit
SYNC AT A
was a very strange and dangerous place.
BUSINESS THAN IT
What had been a contest between one or
IS AT A NONPROFIT
two Commercial Credit executives for the
OR A UNIVERSITY
president’s office was now a race among
BECAUSE
six people who barely knew each other.
EVERYBODY IS AT
Everybody was divided into warring
LEAST WORKING
camps, complete with all the territorial
FOR A COMMON
jealousies, deceit, corporate politics, and
CURRENCY. IT’S
naked aggression one might expect.
CALLED “MONEY.”
But we were supposed to play nice.
We were creating one-stop-shopping
centers that would pluck products from all our different businesses, so all
the staffers had to at least appear to work together. Not a chance!
Ideally, in any organization, you’re all sitting in the same boat, and
you’re all rowing together. And the truth is that it’s easier to get everybody

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