Page 132 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

WITH FORMER RIVALS, IT’S KISS OR KILL
If you win the race, it’s either embrace your rivals or kill them. There’s
nothing in between, because nothing is more dangerous than allowing the
defeated to remain rivals.
The way Nicholas J. Nicholas handled his long-time rival Gerald Levin
at Time, Inc., offers a great example of what not to do.When Nicholas was
in ascendance in the mid-1980s, he took over Levin’s role as head of the
video group, and Levin was moved aside into a rather empty position in
“strategy.”Then a few months after Nicholas was named to the presidency
in 1986, Levin was further diminished by being kicked off the board. In
Richard M. Clurman’s book, To the End of Time: The Seduction and Con-
quest of a Media Empire, Nicholas
explains,“Did I agree with the decision?
NOTHING IS MORE Absolutely....My betting was that Jerry
DANGEROUS THAN was not going to stay.”
ALLOWING THE But Nicholas didn’t get rid of him
DEFEATED TO once and for all, and Levin did stay and
REMAIN RIVALS. made his way back into power. In 1992,
after the merger between Time and
Warner, Levin engineered the ouster of
Nicholas and took the CEO’s job away from him. Surprise, surprise.
Again, don’t shoot to wound. If you want to take out a former rival, in
most cases, it’s safest to just take him out. That’s why so few organizations
choose a ranch house for their headquarters. The headquarters are all in
tall buildings so that former rivals can be thrown off the roof.
That said, once you have killed somebody off, put your six-shooter
away. It’s unseemly to keep plugging away at the body. Don’t denigrate the
person; let him leave with dignity. Take a lesson from the career of Eliot
Spitzer, the crusading attorney general who was elected governor of New
York State in 2006. While he did a lot of good in fighting the excesses of
Wall Street, it seemed never to be enough for him to simply win his point.
He continued humiliating his targets even after extracting his pound of

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