Page 92 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

more and more likely to send you to an off-site to learn something. Some
of these are worthwhile, namely, the highly technical courses that teach you
a particular skill. On the other hand, few things are worse in a career than
being sent to one of those Outward Bound off-sites to learn “leadership”
while wearing damp hiking boots and swatting off mosquitoes.
There is an entire multi-billion-dollar industry designed to teach peo-
ple skills such as team-building, and you will never meet more arrogant
men and women in your life than these people experts because they
unfailingly treat everybody like third graders.
On this particular retreat, Citibank
brought in some instructors with Har-
FEW THINGS ARE vard credentials and put us all up in a
WORSE IN A series of log cabins for a course about
CAREER THAN managing people. A harmless enough
BEING SENT TO venture on the surface, but Citibank at
ONE OF THOSE that time was a very, very competitive
OUTWARD BOUND place. Truly a place of the best and
OFF-SITES TO brightest, lots of stars. People who, for
LEARN the most part, behaved like piranhas
“LEADERSHIP” because they were hunting all the
WHILE WEARING time—hunting for funding, hunting for
DAMP HIKING projects, hunting for ways to beat up the
BOOTS AND other divisions and make more money
SWATTING OFF than they did.
MOSQUITOES. Nonetheless, the theory was that after
two weeks of dirt roads and pine nee-
dles and no alcohol, we’d all come out
as “people”people. There were about 20 of us in the class, mostly midlevel
managers who were relatively new to the company and strangers to each
other, plus a few more powerful types who were in the dog house. If you
go to one of these things and there is a senior vice president among you,
you know that he or she has committed some political blunder and is there

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