My 37-year gig in corporate America went down in flames earlier this summer when I was laid off from a large dysfunctional company we'll call "DysCo". For background, check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5, and Part 6.
In Part 7 of our series, "Corporate Life In The Rearview Mirror", we examine the concurrent rise of "management" and the death of "leadership" in corporate America. Although these terms are often used interchangeably, leadership and management are quite different. Here are a few thoughts that help clarify the difference:
"Leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible." -- Colin Powell
"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." -- John Quincy Adams
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." --
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work." -- Peter Drucker
Looking back on my career, I had over two dozen bosses in 37 years. I'd only consider two of them real leaders, the sort of people that I'd follow off a cliff. Both of these excellent gentlemen were engineers and paragons of personal and professional integrity. One of them was fond of saying, when asked how things were going in operations, "We're excellent and getting better." They both set the bar high and we exceeded our expectations on what we could achieve.
The other bosses were managers. People who obediently tracked and reported retrospective results, and if pressed, would cough up some projections of future results. People who bought into the company's preference for consistency over quality, profit over people, and conformity over vision.
They weren't necessarily bad people. They might have started with the best of intentions, but then they allowed themselves to be coopted into the corporate Borg Collective, dragging us along with them. They surrendered their individuality and integrity at the door, and picked up their voucher for that all-important bonus. Now, all they had to do was "make the numbers".
These sorts of managers were always visible, always wandering the halls, spreadsheets in hand, asking you for the third time this week whether you were going to meet your numbers for production or revenue. You might be feel like just a cell on their spreadsheet, but you were standing between them and their bonus. This was the only real "power" you had to affect outcomes.
Leaders, on the other hand, were often invisible. They trusted and empowered and inspired their people, then let them do their jobs. While the achievements piled up, the leader was already working on the next challenges. Somehow, seamlessly, things hummed along, people worked together effectively, customers were delighted with the quality of our services and - mirabile dictu - the operations turned a profit.
Follow along below the corporate death spiral for more...
Those two great leader bosses I told you about? They didn't follow along to DysCo as a result of acquisitions. The first one, after providing years of stellar service, was assigned to straighten out some truly botched merger results. After a year or two on that "special assignment", he left to accept an equity stake in a smaller firm that valued his intelligence, integrity, client relationships, and leadership skills.
The second one led our company to phenomenal performance in the years that we were being "fattened up" for eventual sale to DysCo. At the time that DysCo absorbed us into their world of pain, our profit margin was about three times DysCos. Yet we had all sorts of fantastic programs for knowledge sharing, risk management, client service, employee training, and participation in outside organizations. The man who led the charge on our fantastic performance was my supervisor. Naturally, DsyCo wanted him to come over as part of the acquisition, but he saw the handwriting on the wall and said no.
He could see, as could the rest of us, that at DysCo, no leaders need apply. Managers only, please. Even the top level executives were no more than financial managers. Their idea of an inspiring vision was to tell the employees that they planned to double again in size to become an even bigger Borg Collective.
As DysCo grew, they retained Bain & Company to help them build a gigantic, labyrinthine management structure. Viewed from outer space, this might have been a lovely artform, but on Earth, it was a living hell. When employees are entirely distrusted, it takes lots and lots of managers to ride herd on them. Managers were plugged into every available spot in the structure, distancing us further and further from the executives.
It should come as no surprise that this witless scheme was financially unsustainable. We couldn't possibly generate enough revenue from the actual working people to support this bloated colony of managers. But fear not! The Bain & Company MBA whiz kids were retained (for a few more million dollars and no I am not kidding) to "flatten" the management structure and make it more "lean".
The remaining managers, saddled with more accountability and fewer places to "hide", reacted as expected: by whining. Unlike the leaders of the past, who kept their problems - and the company's problems - to themselves so that we could do focus on our work, these hapless folks loved to "share" their problems with us. Perhaps they did this from some misguided desire to be our "buddies". Who knows.
They loved to confide in us that they were under so much pressure to make the numbers. That it wasn't easy having to make all those tough decisions about who should be thrown into the volcano. That their jobs were always on the line. How any of this was "our" problem, I'll never know.
The final straw came when my last boss called us a hasty "all hands" meeting to tell us that, in that week's round of layoffs, dozens of vice presidents had been let go. It was all we could do to suppress our euphoria that finally, the cuts were being targeted at the right people. With tears in her eyes, she voice cracking, she spoke of her shock and grief at losing some long-time colleagues, people she'd worked with for years. Good people. Oh, how awful. How painful. If she seemed upset in the coming hours and days, this was why.
We watched, remembering all of our collagues who'd been thrown into the volcano for month after month, wondering in sickened disbelief: She's only now realizing that these layoffs are painful?! WTF?
When future MBA students look back on this era, DysCO will likely be one more cautionary tale about a great company that crashed on the rocky shore, the unsinkable corporate ship reduced to flotsam and jetsam. That's the kind of thing that happens without a leader at the helm. The managers, if they survive the shipwreck, will be at the mercy of the surviving employees. They're the only ones who know how to get anything done. Somewhere, Darwin will be smiling.