Page 126 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

for a job running one of the organization’s businesses because I thought
he would be good for it and it would be good for him.
Unfortunately, Harry ended up building an impossibly cliquish team.
They had their own logo, and they came to work every day wearing these
logo pins on their suit jackets. Their disregard for the larger organization
carried over into their work style, too. They were difficult to deal with,
since they thought they were better than
the rest of us. If this weren’t grating
IF YOU MUST enough, I also learned that Harry had
SHOOT, DO NOT taken a lot of shots at me, privately, with
SHOOT TO WOUND. the powers that be.
FINISH THE Then I went to a three-day meeting
PERSON OFF AS A with the company’s management team
RIVAL. of 150 people at some off-site casual-
dress resort. Harry and his group all
appeared at the “get acquainted” bar-
beque on the first night wearing matching navy blue jackets with a logo
patch. They’d also given these jackets to three or four of the big bosses,
who all wore them.
So there we were, 130 of us in street clothes and 20 in uniform. It was
completely antithetical to the goal of the meeting, which was to make the
company more, not less, cohesive. It was also vaguely insulting to anybody
who didn’t rate a blue jacket.
The barbeque was on a Wednesday night. I knew that Harry was sched-
uled to present on Thursday, and I was scheduled to present on Friday
morning. So here is what I did.
I borrowed one of the jackets from somebody Thursday morning,
promising to have it back in time for the dinner that night so that no one
would know who the traitor was. Then I had it hustled 90 miles back to
New York, where I had our audiovisual team put together a 60 Minutes
parody, complete with ticking clock, concerned correspondent, and
whistle-blowing scientist. The piece was an exposé on a manufacturing

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