Posted by denised in In this week’s Managing the Meanies, Buck introduces us to the concept of cronyism – the practice of favoring one’s close friends for positions of power. It’s as rampant in business as it is in politics and often just as destructive…
Cronyism is the management style of keeping the boss surrounded with favorites
despite the glaringly obvious fact that these people are incompetent, if not outright harmful to the business. At its extreme this corporate-tribes phenomenon has the favorites fashioning themselves after the boss – all wearing sweater vests, for example – or embracing the beliefs of the boss, his faith or hobbies. Everyone sees through what’s going on except the bully boss because he’s too preoccupied with having his ego stroked. One of my colleagues referred to this bully manager’s favored inner circle as the boss’s “sucklings”, in confidence to me of course; this bully-boss played favorites and if you were in his inner circle then you could do no wrong. The rest of us were never consulted. The problem of course was that the inner circle was stocked with incompetents and the company ultimately, after thrashing around and struggling in the death-grip throes of mismanagement, faced bankruptcy.
The Court Jester
Back in the 1990’s a paper company I worked for had a marketing manager named Jack. He was a dangerous corporate buffoon who was so snuggled up with the senior bosses that he was untouchable. Not only was he incompetent, I can also say that much of his professional behavior was unethical. Like the king’s jester, he was a dangerous member of the corporate court. It was on more than one occasion that I was brought to the sickening realization that I had been set up to stumble into one of his traps. I was on a flight to Los Angeles with one of the senior managers and we had the occasion to talk. I asked him what was up with the court jester, and how it could be that he was still employed. The senior manager looked me hard in the eyes and replied, “Because he’s a good yes-man”. That company, by the way, eventually folded too but not until after I had left and went with a competitor.
Driving away talented people
A colleague of mine, a really talented and capable young manager, recently left his company too and for very similar reasons. He often complained to me about the stifling regime that he worked under, specifically the abusive low self-confidence thug that was his boss, a guy that single-handedly de-motivated the entire sales organization. This capable friend of mine couldn’t tolerate the stress of coping with this bully-boss any longer and after some considerable anxiety and self-inflicted guilt finally left the company and joined a competitor, an archrival who was thrilled to have him aboard and backed up their remarkable windfall with a significant raise in salary to boot. Funny how that always seems to work; our incompetent managers drive away the really talented people, yet these bully-bosses seem to remain unexposed while the company suffers the loss of sales revenue, the defection of key accounts, a drought in new products and the dearth of creative thinking.
A couple of weeks ago, we ran a post about the increasing levels of job dissatisfaction in this country and the impact that will ultimately have on our ability to compete in the global marketplace. Buck’s post reinforces the belief that the persistent combination of bad management and dissatisfied employees are a dangerous combination that can ultimately spell the decline of business in America as we know it.
Next Tuesday: Baring teeth as a sign of aggression
Editor’s note: Buck Hamilton is a sales and marketing executive who’s spent over thirty years working in the paper distribution business. He’s a prolific writer who’s presently working on a book which narrates the stories of sixteen Vietnam War veterans. You can read his weekly series “Managing the Meanies: A Survival Guide” every Tuesday here on Really Bad Boss.
