Page 27 - Executive Warfare

Introduction

In my new position, I was assigned a whole series of people, and I was
on my best behavior meeting my new employees, including one woman
who came from Thailand. Let’s call her Mali.
I’d just been to Thailand for the first time and had really enjoyed the
trip. “Bangkok is a beautiful and fascinating city,” I said to her. “Incredi-
bly industrious, wonderful food, intriguing history....
“I took a tour along the river,” I went on in an outpouring of friendli-
ness,“which I really loved, except for the polluted river itself.You must be
proud to be from a country with such a
unique culture....”
Mali smiled at me and was very ani- YOU HAVE TO
mated, and we had a great conversation. MANAGE AN
The next thing I knew, I was having INCREDIBLY TRICKY
the opposite kind of conversation with NETWORK OF
my new boss—a very unhappy one. RELATIONSHIPS,
“Mali says she can’t work for you,”he SIMULTANEOUSLY,
informed me, “because you have no IN PRIVATE AND IN
empathy for her ethnic origins.” PUBLIC, AND IN A
“But I told her I loved her country,” I WAY THAT
protested. ANNOUNCES YOUR
“Look, it doesn’t really matter what ABILITY TO LEAD.
you said. What matters is, she thinks
you said she comes from a dirty coun-
try, and we don’t want this to escalate up to the president. So I’m taking
her department away, I’m taking it away now.”
I was dumbfounded. I hadn’t even had my company physical yet, and
I’d already lost a whole department. If the Guinness Book of World Records
had a contest for “fastest loser of a department,”I would have won—hands
down.
What had happened was this: There was somebody else at John Han-
cock who wanted Mali’s department, and he resented a newcomer taking
it over. So when Mali told him that I’d called a polluted river “polluted,”

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