The answer is that both have had books written about their “leadership secrets.”
When Jeff Pfeffer and I were writing Hard Facts, Jeff put “leadership secrets
of” into the Amazon search engine, and these were the first two to books to
pop-up. I just did it again, a few months ago, and Leadership
Secrets of Attila the Hun came up #1 and The
Leadership Secrets of Santa Claus came up #2. The idea of getting leadership advice from
either an infamous tyrant or a fictional character is strange enough as it is, but
(I haven’t read the books, I confess) but the contrast between the two is
pretty funny. Jeff and I took to
collecting other contrasting titles, with my one of my favorites being
Love is the Killer App versus Business
is Combat. And don’t forget Tony
Soprano on Management: Leadership Lessons Inspired By America’s Favorite Mobster.
How on earth is a manager supposed
to know who to believe?
All
this would be pretty funny if it wasn’t for the fact that badly managed organizations
do so much harm. Badly managed hospitals have higher mortality rates. Badly
managed military operations waste soldier’s and civilian’s lives. Badly managed organizations put people out of
work and lose money for shareholders. And
a growing literature on bullying shows that leaders who act like Attila the Hun
damage the physical and mental health of their people, reduce their motivation,
and drive them to find other jobs.
AsJeff
and I argue, there actually is decent evidence out there about how to make many
managerial decisions; the problem is that is routinely ignored and managers,
boards, and consultants are almost never held accountable for ignoring it. For
example, research
by Columbia’s Joel Brockner and others documents that displaying lack of sensitivity
during layoffs not only has negative effect on those who lose jobs, it also
damages survivors who witness the unfair treatment: These studies suggest that
Radio Shack’s to decision to notify
400 employees VIA EMAIL that they were being laid-off will undermine the
motivation and productivity of those who survive the cuts and their mental
health too. Or as I discussed in an earlier
post on mergers, rather than listening to investment bankers who want
mergers to happen because they make money no matter how things turn out,
perhaps the time has come for executives and boards to document – – based on
the large literature on mergers –- why (other than their irrational
overconfidence) a proposed merger is likely to succeed even though most do not.
If
you go to a doctor and he or she recommends a procedure that existing studies
show will make you sicker or increase your chance of dying, they call it malpractice.
Isn’t it time to start holding managers and their advisors to the same
standards?
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