Page 236 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

So the most senior person in the
KEEP YOUR EYES room reached into his pocket and
OPEN TO THE pulled out a tunafish sandwich.
CULTURE IN WHICH He looked innocently around at the
YOU ARE WORKING, rest of us. “You guys didn’t bring your
AND MAKE SURE lunch?” he asked.
THAT IT WON’T It made me think he had actually
REJECT YOU planned the meeting to go longer than
UNJUSTLY. he’d said and just didn’t want to pay for
lunch for everybody. That bothered me.
But what really bothered me was the
fact that the sandwich had been in his pocket—unwrapped!
These people were loathe to spend money even to make money. Now,
when it came to their own compensation, this group was remarkably tena-
cious. Their defense was, we’re such a cost-conscious crowd that even in
those years when we are not making a lot of money for the company, we
deserve to get bonuses.
To me, the fact that they were unwilling to spend company money on
anything, even the smartest investment, did not mean they were wise. It
meant they were cheap. If you are a risk taker, run the other way rather
than take a job in a culture like this.
Family-owned businesses are particularly prone to cultural myopia
because all the power is generally in one person’s hands. The culture is
whatever the pater familias says it is. He doesn’t have to worry about
boards of directors and shareholders. He doesn’t have to think about how
he is going to be viewed by outsiders. So he can be despotic.
I’ve had so many friends who’ve been bamboozled in family businesses
into thinking they were the third son. They weren’t. The fact is, unless you
are the son or daughter, you are nothing more than hired help, and you
will probably never get to fulfill your ambitions in that company.
Consider the privately held Fidelity Investments. Even though Chair-
man Ned Johnson is in his late seventies, the people in the top jobs there

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