Don Nardone wrote:
>I would like to know of concrete examples like Harding Lawrence at
>Braniff, someone who destroyed their organization thru the most heinous
>incompetence.
Don, "heinous incompetance" does not describe the story quite as well as
"heinous hubris." In fact Harding Lawrence was widely recognized (and
propoerly so) as a brilliant airline chieftain. Don't forget that before
joining Braniff he built Continental into the "proud bird" of yore. And
after joining Braniff he turned it from a two-bit regional carrier with
lousy service into the hottest airline on the planet. He also pioneered
the hub-and-spoke system years before airline deregulation motivated other
airlines to do so.
While building the company brilliantly, Lawrence also built up his ego to
less salutary effect. His new headquarters was a monument to excess. He
named his son State Rights, for crying out loud. He adopted the motto,
"When you've got it, flaunt it." He handed over cash in unmarked envelopes
to the Committee to Reelect the President in 1972. All this is public
record.
Braniff's crash and burn under Lawrence was the result not of incompetence
but of supreme egoism. Lawrence believed that airline deregulation would
quickly be reversed, so he snapped up hundreds of routes in furtherance of
his efforts to enlarge his monument to himself. Under the government's use
it or lose it policy, he broke up his highly profitable Dallas hub, took
on a gigantic debt load, and spread the fleet so thin as to become
vulnerable to attack from all comers (especially American).
Bear in mind too that Braniff did not fail under Lawrence, although it was
on its way. The company survived for at least a year under Howard Putnam
before American finally delivered the death knell.
If you want examples of incompetence, you might consider instead the story
of People Express--a fantastic company built up through tremendous vision,
but destroyed through inattention to detail. Here again, though, the main
problem was hubris, in particular Don Burr's belief that he could handle
his all-too-rapid growth.
Other examples? Gulf Oil succumbed to Boone Pickens (and ultimately to
Chevron) because its leaders played the takeover game incompetently,
though this does not necessarily reflect on their performance as managers.
Texaco fell into bankruptcy in 1986 because it handled a court case
against incompetently, not because of any inherent problem with
management. Apple is on the edge of failure because of the stubbornness of
management (again: hubris) to embrace open architecture, even though the
operation was managed brilliantly.
I can't think of a single case where incompetance wholly or even
significantly accounts for failure. I can think of many where an excess of
ego is to blame, however.
Cheers,
Tom Petzinger
Thomas Petzinger Jr.
tompetz@msn.com
"The Front Lines"--Every Friday in The Wall Street Journal
"The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are,
the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members."
--Vladimir Nabokov
--"thomas petzinger" <tompetz@classic.msn.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>