Page 232 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

insist on talking a lot, you’ll be seen as somebody who still belongs in mid-
dle management.
When I first moved up to the top floor at John Hancock, I didn’t real-
ize that you didn’t just pop in on peo-
ple, although there were only seven or
WHEN YOU RISE TO
eight offices there.You called each other
THE SENIOR LEVEL,
or wrote to make appointments. In
THERE IS EVEN
middle management, on the other
MORE OF AN
hand, a guy’s down the hall, the door’s
EXPECTATION THAT
open, you knock on the door and say,
YOU WILL
“Are you busy, Charlie?”
DEMONSTRATE
There was a certain formality in John
WHATEVER THE
Hancock’s culture at the top, only I did-
CULTURE IS AND
n’t entirely grasp it. Somebody finally
THAT IT WILL
told me, “Don’t just drop down here.
CASCADE DOWN
That’s not how we do things on this
FROM YOU.
floor.” And it was okay. I got it—before
I’d embarrassed myself for too long.
I’m not saying never violate an organizational taboo. Some of them
need violating. Just make sure you do it deliberately and with forethought.

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF THE CULTURE
VALUING YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS?
There are a lot of very bad organizational cultures out there.While they go
bad for many reasons, the underlying cause is always the cultural myopia
that develops when the people on the inside become so focused on them-
selves that they forget that the outside world judges things differently.
Even the great culture of IBM, which worked brilliantly when IBM had
a near-monopoly on the computer business, became so arrogant and self-
absorbed by the early 1990s that, in a much more democratic computer
marketplace, it nearly brought the company to its knees.

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