A DISASTER OF MANNERS + CRISIS LEADERSHIP

The ease and speed with which an organization can tank is staggering. Equally astounding is the eventual realization of how important cultural triggers work to make it happen. A recent NYT article sets the stage for Sam Zell’s acquisition of The Tribune Company:

People had been living with uncertainty for so long and they hoped something good would come from an owner with a proven track record of success in other businesses.

It is a classic HaVUC scenario. The company changed hands precisely because of its vulnerability, scooped up in a complicated and risky process, but suggesting a possibility of success presumed by a previous track record of the buyer’s holdings elsewhere. What was not clear turned out to be how much a mis-fit in culture would damage the effort.

Based on interviews with more than 20 employees and former employees of Tribune, Mr. Michaels’s and his executives’ use of sexual innuendo, poisonous workplace banter and profane invective shocked and offended people throughout the company. Tribune Tower, the architectural symbol of the staid company, came to resemble a frat house, complete with poker parties, juke boxes and pervasive sex talk.

One of the first tasks involved a rewrite of the employee handbook to reflect change:

Working at Tribune means accepting that you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use,” the new handbook warned. “You might experience an attitude you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you don’t consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, nonlinear atmosphere is important to the creative process.” It then added, “This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment.

Mergers, acquisitions, buyouts or takeovers all create hazards to companies, and in turn form a vulnerability profile that might be specifically unique to each organization. Subsequently, the organization has either enough capacity/”capital” to survive and perhaps flourish, or not.

The titanic clash at the Tribune seems to be about civility and courtesy as much as anything. Peter Drucker said that “bright people ... often do not understand that manners are the “lubricating oil” of an organization.[1] What an old-fashioned idea! How the Victorians would have approved! Drucker himself could speak authentically – in all my dealings with him he never failed to be courtly, civil, courteous and utterly mindful of the other in every conversation.

But back to crisis – can a disaster of manners sink the mighty corporate ship? Apparently it can at least be a significant contributing factor given the company of clowns Zell set up to perform at The Tribune Company. Note that this further vulnerability deals mainly with men acting like idiots toward women.

Capacity and various forms of “capital” (social especially) mitigate vulnerability in the face of corporate hazards. As a manager when was the last time you included “courteous behaviors” in your disaster management scenarios? It may be too late to save The Tribune Company but one wonders whether it ever occurred to them that misogyny as a crisis scenario could kill a vulnerable organization?

[1]21stCentury, p. 167.

tags:

In Business, Crisis, Disaster, Leadership, Management, Peter Drucker, Women in leadership Tags capacity, HAVUC, misogyny, Peter Drucker, social capital, The Tribune Company, Zell