Page 110 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

Third, think about what you’re best at. Anticipate cross-cut attacks that
will make you seem sanctimonious or false. Anticipate also your strengths
being recast as limitations. If you are an engineer, it is a good bet that at
some point, some of your peers will say,“Did you actually expect creativ-
ity out of that guy? After all, he’s an engineer. He’s just as creative as a
rock.” And if you came up, as I did, from the marketing and advertising
side of the business world, the criticism will always be,“He wouldn’t rec-
ognize a number if it hit him over the head.”
Clearly, you can’t blunt criticism like this by making yourself into some-
thing you are not. But what you can do is find the very, very best people
to fill in the holes. Hire a well-rounded team whose strengths are differ-
ent from yours.
Fourth, accept that sometimes you just have to take the hit, the way I
did on United Way, simply because you believe what you’re doing is right.
Fifth, if the rumor is a lie, calmly make the facts known. If there is a
crumb of truth in it, though, be humble enough to admit it and see if you
can’t improve yourself.
When I was accused of being rude, I used a marketing technique to
address the issue. I went out and commissioned a survey of my direct
reports about my managerial style, a
blind third-party survey with anony-
ANTICIPATE
mous results, which I then shared with
CROSS-CUT
my boss and my boss’s boss. I showed
ATTACKS THAT WILL
them that two or three people did think
MAKE YOU SEEM
that I was too direct sometimes. I said,
SANCTIMONIOUS
“I’m going to work on that.” But they
OR FALSE.
also saw that the vast majority of people
who worked for me found my style
refreshing and that there was no serious problem.And I won credit in their
eyes just by being willing to do better.
Of course, you don’t want to let a rumor throw you off your game or
turn you into a transparent phony. I’ve watched executives who’ve been

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