Let’s all say a thankful farewell to an awful year and make sure we learn the powerful lessons it has brought us
 

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I wonder how long it will take for business schools and management gurus to accept that the conventional, accounting-based, macho management approaches they have been touting for the past few decades are at the root of our current economic and financial woes?

Will they even admit their mistakes? Or will they go on pushing the same, discredited attitudes that have largely brought about the mess we are in as 2008 drags itself to a miserable close?

I’m not too hopeful about most business school teachers and fashionable management gurus, but at least we, the readers of Slow Leadership, can take a moment to remind ourselves of what we should all have learned from recent events and make a firm, New Year’s resolution never to let it happen again around us.

Let’s take a look at some of the typical characteristics of macho, Hamburger Management, as I have been describing them since this blog started in 2005:

• Everything has to go at break-neck speed. There’s no time for useless things like thought, reflection or learning from your mistakes. Action is all that matters, even if you haven’t much idea why you’re doing it, beyond the fact that it’s what you have always done. That will ensure that any errors are spread quickly and magnified for considerable periods before anyone notices them. That’s exactly what the Detroit carmakers have been doing for years. Never mind the success of foreign cars or the demand for smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. Just keep churning out SUVs—until you can’t give them away.
• All that matters is winning. Get the results and never mind how you do it. Don’t let yourself be slowed down by antique ideas like honor, trust or honesty. The only way you’ll win respect amongst the people who matter is by being richer than they are. Bernard Madoff anyone?
• Find out what everyone else is doing and copy it. Benchmarking is so much easier and quicker than independent thought or creativity. As soon as some organization seems to be making money, jump on their band-wagon. Of course, if time shows that the money making was all smoke and mirrors, you’ll be right in the brown stuff with them. But hey, never mind, your excuse can be that everyone else was doing it, so you had to join in to compete. Of course, in the old days, winning in competition was based on doing something different and better, and you were expected to take personal responsibility for your decisions. Aren’t you all glad that such antique ideas are long gone?
• The key skills of management are cutting corners, cutting costs and cutting the time allowed for anything. While you’re at it, you can also cut the time taken to judge whether something has been a success. So long as you ‘make the numbers’ at the end of the quarter, you’ll be a hero. If, two or three years down the road, you discover that the true results of your actions are a disaster, you won’t be expected to pay back all those huge bonuses.
• Since short-term wins are all that matters, you can ignore the mathematics of risk and indulge in any gambles you like, just as long as you chalk up some quick gains. Like gamblers since time began, the reality is that you will lose—and probably lose big—over the longer term. Yet, just so long as no one is keeping score beyond those immediate plays, you can continue to claim every lucky throw as the direct result of your personal brilliance. Of course, the smart guys make a quick pile and get out. The rest—the vast majority—believe their own hype and stay in the game until their losses become insupportable. Then they look for someone (like the taxpayer) to bail them out.
• Concern for others is a sign of weakness. This is all about Number 1. So what if you wreck others’ lives or ruin their careers? It’s a jungle out there and the only game in town is survival of the least scrupulous. When winning is all, any and all means are legitimate, just so long as no one finds out. We’re back to Bernard Madoff again.

There you have it: an anatomy of macho management and a clear exposition of the actions and attitudes that have brought the business and financial world to its knees. I only wish I could believe that those who preached this pernicious approach were about, collectively, to fall on their swords—or at least beg for forgiveness from the rest of us.

But then, being a guru means never having to say you’re sorry.

We’re going to take a break over the holiday, so the next posting will be on January 5th, 2009. I hope you all have a wonderful break too.

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