Page 212 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

their spears and then bring home the meat that feeds the entire tribe.
These are the great fund-raisers and salespeople, the ones who know how
to drive money into the organization’s coffers.
The skinners, on the other hand, are
the ones who take the meat, weigh it,
THE MODERN dole it out, store it, and trade it—in
ORGANIZATIONAL other words, the financial types. The
CASTE SYSTEM smartest of them will figure out how to
HASN’T increase the tribe’s wealth, too, by clev-
PROGRESSED VERY erly managing expenses and making
FAR FROM THE deals.
CASTE SYSTEM IN Then there are the diners, the ones
YOUR AVERAGE who get to eat the hunters’meat because
NEANDERTHAL they perform some other useful func-
CAVE. tion for the tribe, such as public rela-
tions, or lawyering, or human resources.
Of the three groups, the hunters are
always given the greatest respect and the widest possible berth. After all,
they are the ones with the sharp, pointed spears. They are always first in
line for the top jobs, and they are listened to even when what they have to
say is not worth hearing. In fact, the tolerance for hunters in most organ-
izations is absolutely remarkable to me, exceeding even our tolerance as a
culture for celebrities like Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, and Lindsay Lohan.
Like starlets, hunters don’t have to be smart or politically astute or gen-
uine or sober or graceful as long as they generate a lot of cash.
For example, I remember being in Paris at the Ritz Hotel with a senior
salesperson in my organization. Not a particularly sophisticated guy, and
you could not be in a more sophisticated hotel. We were having cocktails
in the lobby before dinner when he looked around thoughtfully. “Sitting
here reminds me of being in Europe,” he said.
Paris, of course, would be in Europe. And the evening went downhill
from there.

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