Page 235 - Executive Warfare

Culture

On just such a miserable morning, the new mucky-muck was finally
introduced. And out onto the stage steps Fritz—a pudgy 50-year-old guy
in Tyrolean lederhosen and a funny little hat with a feather on it.
We laughed.We literally thought it was a joke. Sometimes they do these
little jokes to wake you up. The guy looked like Benny Hill. How could this
possibly be the guy? But no, Fritz offered some lame explanation for his
attire—he was very proud of his European heritage—and then launched
into a serious speech.
No one heard a word that he said, they were so fixated on his hat and
his knees. And he continued to make the same entrance four or five times
as different groups moved through. What did Fritz’s European heritage
have to do with the challenges of our business? Nothing, but that’s what
he was focused on.
Through that single act of symbolism, he probably made hundreds of
people question what kind of company they were with. And this eccentric
continued to have enormous influence over the company for a very long
time as it concentrated on everything
but its core business and frittered away
its market share.
I’VE HAD SO MANY
There used to be a group within John
FRIENDS WHO’VE
Hancock that was just as odd. They
BEEN BAMBOOZLED
were notoriously cheap, personally
IN FAMILY
cheap, and cheap with the company’s
BUSINESSES INTO
money, too. They were the kind of peo-
THINKING THEY
ple who wore monogrammed shirts,
WERE THE THIRD
only with someone else’s monogram,
SON. THEY
because they’d bought them second-
WEREN’T.
hand. One time I went to a meeting
with the people in this group. The meet-
ing was scheduled to end at noon, so a lunch wasn’t planned. But it was
getting to be around 1 p.m., and we’d been working since 8 a.m. without
a crumb.

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