Two great articles on leadership
The New York Times came out swinging this morning with two Business-section articles about Chuck Prince, CEO of Citigroup, and Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment.
If you love leadership studies, these two are must read.
Chuck Prince presides over a stagnant (some would say stumbling) Citigroup, the behemoth financial services company. Prince was the top lieutenant of former Citigroup CEO Sandy Weill but with a background in law, Prince lacks the operational experience needed to run such a large company.
Unfortunately, he's surrounded himself with a group of people also regarded as weak executives. So you have a CEO who is afraid to make bold decisions leading a team that is looking out for their own interests. For example, Robert Rubin, the Director and chairman of the executive committee, who "is a constant and close adviser but has refrained from closely overseeing lines of business at Citigroup." What good is advice if the person receiving it is either a) afraid to act on it, b) may not know what to do with it, or c) doesn't have a team in place capable of acting effectively on his directives?
Contrast that with McPherson. The article begins with this description:
The brand-conscious Disney, in particular, expects its division chiefs to keep a modest profile, stay on message and play nice with corporate siblings.Mr. McPherson does few of those things. He exhibits a blunt, temperamental style that at times creates a frosty relationship with his superiors and leaves subordinates ducking for cover, say current and former Disney executives. He fires off nuclear e-mail messages, fumes over downbeat ratings and once yanked a $10 million comedy after a single broadcast because he didn’t like its creative direction.
“He’s confident in his opinions. He doesn’t sugarcoat. His position doesn’t sway in the wind,” said Rich Frank, former president of Walt Disney Studios. “That can leave people raw.
Why then is McPherson the right man for his job?
1) He came up through the ranks, gaining experience, and, most importantly, credibility among his peers as both a programming genius and a decisive decision maker. Contrast that with Prince who is widely seen as someone who plugged into his current role without the necessary managerial experience needed to run a huge company.
2) He's made ABC a place where top talent wants to work -- and he's done it not by tasking his managers with a mandate but by personally doing things to please both actors and rank-and-file.
Here are three examples:
In recent months, he has worked to dispel tension between himself and other executives, particularly his successor at ABC Studios, Mark Pedowitz. At a company team-building retreat in July, he matched up with Mr. Pedowitz on stage to kick off a night of corporate karaoke. Their song was “What the World Needs Now Is Love.”
and:
In April, Mr. McPherson doled out dollops of thanks to his staff — literally. To recognize their work on the network’s spring pilots, he flew in 12 tubs of ice cream from a New Jersey parlor and pushed a cart up and down the aisles of ABC’s corporate headquarters, scooper in hand.
and:
[Sally] Field says Mr. McPherson changed her mind about returning to ABC. “He sent me the loveliest notes about how the network has changed and about his support for me and the show,” she says. “It felt like if ABC ended up canceling us overnight, at least someone would call me this time.” Ms. Field, who won an Emmy Award last month for the role, keeps the e-mail messages on her bulletin board.
3) He is not afraid of change even if it means doing away with "this is how things have always been done":
When Mr. McPherson took over ABC three years ago, he made some important operational changes, too. He stopped marketing new shows equally, a vestige of the pre-cable era intended to keep producers happy. And he was the first Big Four network executive to aggressively court the country’s growing Hispanic audience (including dubbing shows into Spanish and pushing his staff to cast more Hispanic actors).
4) He is hyper-competitive.
He also does not dispute that he has left a long trail of hurt feelings and bruised egos in his wake, but he says disagreements are to be expected in any creative business. He also says that he is misunderstood. “I don’t see myself as a bully,” he says. “I know I’m demanding. My biggest gift and curse is that I want to win.”
It was almost as if the Times put the two stories on the front page of today's Business section on purpose. I couldn't think of a better example of how not to run a company in distress (passively, relying on others to make tough decisions, surrounding yourself with inexperienced leadership) being shown so obviously next to an example of how to take a company to the top (decisively, personally involving yourself in employee satisfaction, making difficult decisions while putting yourself on the line, using your experience to help those around you).