Page 171 - Executive Warfare

The People You Have to Motivate

Reaching down like this is a good way to let the leader of a sluggish
department know that she now has a red laser dot on her forehead because
you are no longer buying the official story.A potential blood clot may well
dissolve under such pressure.
But even this may not always work.
I once had a direct report I’d brought IF YOU ASK WHY
in from outside the organization to run WORK IS
a large division with billions of dollars PROGRESSING SO
in revenue. We’ll call him Sam. I was SLOWLY IN A BIG
quite enamored of Sam’s overall talent. STAFF MEETING,
He was well organized and so articu- SOMEBODY
late, a fantastic presenter. His division WILL INEVITABLY
was generally doing well, in part MAKE YOU A CHART
because the prior management of that WITH LOTS OF
division had done such a good job, and DOTS AND BARS ON
he was taking credit for these residual IT AND TRY TO
results. MESS WITH YOUR
But I was beginning to get the sense HEAD.
that some of Sam’s businesses were
going soft. When I’d ask questions in
review meetings, I’d get vague excuses, such as, “There was a one-time
aberration in pricing, but things are picking up.”
Now, when you rise into the highest echelon in an organization, you
usually have your own staff people—finance people and technical
experts—who mirror the staff people in the divisions. At that level,
your people tend to be pretty sharp, like barracudas. Organizational
courtesies demand that you keep the barracudas in the tank and off
their divisional counterparts unless you think a division may be in
trouble.
I suspected that Sam was shading the truth. So I let the barracudas out
in advance of the next staff meeting to collect some hard data from Sam’s
people.

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