Page 99 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows
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THE LESSONS

             Tom Watson, Jr. Pfeiffer pressed on, fueled by the knowledge that she was
             doing the right thing. “I had total undermining from the top,” said Pfeiffer.
             “But I also had help along the way, and I received many signed and
             unsigned notes from people saying they were glad I was there because NBC
             was a good place with many good people, and they hoped I could fix it
             once and for all. And we did fix it.”
                 Even though she’d eliminated one of the biggest threats to its reputa-
             tion that NBC had ever faced, Pfeiffer’s chairmanship was to be short-lived.
             Only two years after assuming her role as the network’s chairman, she
             learned one morning while reading the newspaper that she was about to
             be ousted. She was fired later that day by the longtime friend she person-
             ally had recruited to the network, NBC president Fred Silverman, who
             yielded to intense pressure from RCA to fire her. According to a source
             cited by the New Your Times, “(Pfeiffer) felt that the people at the top in
             RCA didn’t want the scandal aired and didn’t want it to be more than nom-
             inally solved, on the ground that it could be embarrassing to key people.”
             The unnamed person also told the New York Times reporter that Pfeiffer’s
             prior experience at IBM, where affairs were run “tidily and neatly,” did not
             adequately prepare her for the situation at NBC, where she made “some
             very powerful enemies (including the head of RCA), very early.” Bill
                                                                      29
             Moyers concurred, saying, “Jane wasn’t sufficiently coldblooded or
             unscrupulous enough to make it as a network executive. Had she stayed in
             television, she would have been one of the industry’s few remaining cham-
             pions of civility and accountability.” Time magazine called her dismissal
             an “executive decapitation” 30  and suggested that her chairmanship
             “produced a predictable mix of envy, admiration, fear and resentment,
             laced with a dollop of old-fashioned male chauvinism.” Reporter N.R.
                                                             31
             Kleinfield of the New York Times wrote that the “stormy affair must have
             caused beet-red faces at both NBC and the parent RCA Corporation
             because of the messy way it was handled.” 32
                 The termination was a blow to Pfeiffer initially, but she now believes
             the experience was a blessing in disguise. “I walked away from NBC with

             29  “Mrs. Pfeiffer Officially Quits NBC Position,” New York Times, 11 July 1980.
             30  “Hell No, I Won’t Go!,” Time, July 21, 1980.
             31  “NBC’s Mrs. Clean,” Time, May 14, 1979.
             32  “Fred Silverman’s NBC: It’s Still Out of Focus,” New York Times, 13 July 1980.

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