Page 172 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

They came back empty-handed, but Sam then really prepared for the
meeting. A lot of his people showed up, they were crisply choreographed,
and the colored charts were beautiful.
And I still did not have answers to my questions.
Since I’d hired Sam and respected his talents, I continued to send warn-
ing signals over a number of months that everybody needed to know the
truth and that smiley faces would not suffice.
Meanwhile, the barracudas were banging on the glass because they
knew that I was being “handled.” Your staff people are always smarter
about this kind of thing than you are.
It turned out that Sam had decided that he would build an empire with
no interference from me, and he thought the best way to do it was to keep
me in the dark. So he’d ordered his people not to answer my questions
or those from the barracudas. My
warnings only made him tighten the
YOU MUST GET RID
lid. He and he alone would answer my
OF BLOOD CLOTS
questions ...which really meant deflect
WHEN YOU FIND
them.
THEM BECAUSE
In the last chapter, I said that even
THEY WILL ROB
some really nasty behavior is not always
YOU OF YOUR OWN
a firing offense. But being a blood clot
ABILITY TO
does not fall into this category. You
SUCCEED.
must get rid of blood clots when you
find them because they will rob you of
your own ability to succeed. They will paint a false picture that will make
it impossible for you to make balanced decisions, and balanced decisions
are what you are being paid for.
Blood clots are the very reason that they invented moving companies
with vans and boxes. If you find a blood clot, remember, it’s possible to
pack up an office in under an hour.
I not only fired Sam, but I also fired the six or seven people underneath
him who’d failed to give my people the data they’d asked for. If one of my

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