One
of my motivations for writing The No
Asshole Rule was that I am disgusted with the norm in business and sports
that, as one of my friends put it, “if you are a really big winner, you can get
away with – even be celebrated – for being a demeaning creep.” One of my little dreams is that all leaders
and their organizations will eventually treat acting like an asshole as a sign
of bad performance rather than an excuse for good performance. If you want to see a detailed and eloquent
argument along these lines, check out Pamela Slim’s post Bob
Knight: The Perfect Mascot for the No Asshole Rule.
Bob
Knight still has his job and is still bragging that “I did it my way” and Steve
Jobs (who I confess is brilliant) is so widely revered now that – short of a
jail sentence – I don’t thank that the backdating scandal will get him fired no
matter how bad it turns it to be.
The article suggests that her
downfall at Murdoch happened when she pushed to publish O.J. Simpson’s never
published semi-confessional book “If I
Did It,” with apparently the final straw being some anti-Semitic comments
that she allegedly made. You can see her
in the attached picture, in an interview with O.J. about the book that was
never aired.
This
article is written by a former friend Michael Wolff, an author who had known
Judith since college. Perhaps Wolff has
an ax to grind, but if his reports are accurate, this is a rather frightening
illustration of how much abuse successful people are permitted to heap on
others. Wolff starts out:
Somehow Judith
Regan—the most famous book publisher of her generation, and the would-be Nancy
Drew ready to finally close the O. J. Simpson case—has always gotten away with
her obscene, grotesque, often funny, Jewish-obsessed, not just politically
incorrect but reprehensible, probably slanderous, not necessarily truthful
monologues (definitely monologues—she doesn't really engage in conventional
conversation). Neither corporate America nor upwardly mobile society
objected, or, even, seemed to blanch. Her diatribes were part of her charm—or
at least part of the forcefulness of her nature (if you didn't find her
charming, you certainly found her forceful).
A
few paragraphs later, he adds:
Anybody who's ever come in contact with her has been exposed to
the bilious, vitriolic, manic, gynecological,
anti-everybody-and-every-propriety conversation—if not awed by it.
But
what really struck me was this line:
She's got an 800-pound chip on her shoulder. And the chip is part of how she's made money—she's tapped into a vein of American resentment and victimhood, plus she's been able to bully her way into the market—and making money gives a pass to even the worst manners.
My
view is that letting people like this do their dirty work not only leaves them
free to damage a host of victims, it demeans all of us as our silence lends
support to a system that allows asshole poisoning to flourish and spread. That is a nice sentiment, of course, but it
means nothing unless it is backed by effective action. So, here is my question:
HOW
DO WE CHANGE THINGS SO THAT ASSHOLES ARE TREATED AS FAILURES EVEN WHEN THEY
BRING IN BIG BUCKS?
This
isn’t an easy question, but it is one worth fretting over and trying to solve.
Good luck trying to get companies to get rid of "peak performers" or "movers and shakers." (AKA A%^holes)
I worked in trading for several years and the more money the trader brought in, the bigger the a#$hole s/he was...and it was more than tolerated. The behavior was something the others aspired to. Very sad but true, there was a positive correlation with how much of an a^&hole you were and how much money you made.
Posted by: DW | February 22, 2007 at 08:13 PM
Part of the problem is this corollary to the Measurement Rule: "That which can be measured gets paid attention to." We can measure bucks. We have no readily available measures for people who leave, taking their talent with them, or for productivity lost to distress.
Another piece of the puzzle is the economic doctrine that the "purpose of business is to make money." If you see that as the purpose, rather than a necessity of life, then you sacrifice things to it.
I tell managers in my training that they have two jobs: to accomplish the mission and to care for their people. I learned that in the Marines, but many corporations I've been in and dealt with in the last 40 years only see "accomplish the mission." That's the kind of environment where assholes breed.
Posted by: Wally Bock | February 21, 2007 at 04:22 AM
Bob, I think companies need a No Asshole Policy, like they have Ethics Policies (and not like having vision, mission, and values statements, which are platitudes). It'd be cool if companies used a statement like this: We won't employ assholes. And we'll fire people who defend them, too, if they say, "Yes, he's an asshole, but he sells a lot." Assholes, Asshole Enablers, and Asshole Co-Dependents gotta go.
I wrote about a former colleague who fits the Judith Regan bill when I wrote about The No Asshole Book yesterday (glad to have gotten the copy early...great read!)
Article here: http://www.knowhr.com/blog/2007/02/18/the-no-asshole-rule-and-hr/
Posted by: Frank Roche | February 19, 2007 at 02:43 PM