The quick and the dead

Malaysian Business,  Aug 1, 2000  by Mohd Razif

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A MANAGER will rise in an organisation if he is quick - a driver with fast

hands who can hot-rod his way to a `good enough' decision to survive a

crisis. Quickness alone makes a manager promotable - in fact, he is

useless if he is not competent at high speed. Yet, somewhere in the

organisation, strategic vision is needed too, or the entire company can

spin out of control.

Many managers are like daredevil stock-car racers. All too many of them

enjoy short, brilliant careers ending in a plume of fire after a too-wide

turn and no room at the wall.

I saw a typical display of managerial `hard charging' one afternoon when

I was just starting out in the advertising industry. I found myself in the

corner office of an executive in his mid-40s who was then just below the

top level at our agency. Let's call him Adams.

Adams thought of himself as an `operator'. The world, in his eyes, was

too unpredictable to entrust business to the indecisive advocates of long-

range analysis; it was better to be guided by practical men like himself.

I was helping him negotiate a complicated contract with a new, valuable

cigarette account, and we were waiting for a return call from the client.

Only a few minutes had passed when a telephone call informed him that a

television network had arbitrarily rejected for broadcast a costly pain-

reliever commercial we had made for another client.

`Goddamn,' Adams said, swinging into action. He asked his secretary to

summon three executives, plus a company lawyer, to a short meeting that

they held on the spot. They decided on the tactical arguments they would

use to change the network executives' minds. Adams next telephoned the

distraught client, and dispatched two of the executives to plead the case

at the network offices, with a parting, `Go get `em.'

Meanwhile, an account supervisor - we'll call him Jackson - came in

laden with story boards showing three possible approaches for yet another

new campaign, this for an airline account. Adams had to predict what the

client would like, with several million dollars in business riding on his

clairvoyance.

He quickly chose his favourite campaign and was dismissing Jackson when

the agency's head of personnel appeared at the door with a note he'd

received accusing Polk, a young copywriter, of dealing in cocaine on the

premises. Adams did not call Polk, his own boss, or a company lawyer.

Those steps could wait. Adams simply said, `Tonight, after working hours,

let's turn Vinnie loose in Polk's office.' Vinnie, a retired police

lieutenant, was the company's security chief. As a first step, Adams's

suggestion was ethically questionable, but it worked. Vinnie found cocaine

in the office that night. The next day, Adams told Polk he should quietly

look for a job elsewhere, fast.

All of these issues Adams disposed of in a few minutes; each is complex,

and deserves reasoned analysis. But especially in business, a man with

Hamlet's decision-making style ends up losing everything, poisoned by his

own self-doubt. Adams was no Hamlet.

But there's more to business than a fast response time. Despite my

respect for Adams, I left the agency for a competitor, sensing trouble

ahead. It seemed to me that nearly all of the agency's top managers were

like Adams: long on horsepower, short on direction. I thought market

changes might wreck them in the end, because they rarely looked to see

where the road was leading.

As it happened, the `practical men' of Adam's company failed to

diversify into specialised areas of advertising and ignored the

opportunity to set up foreign operations. They were gobbled up by a huge

international agency, with a strategy of acquiring rivals who failed to

grow in the new, worldwide ad market.

We must indeed practise quickness. We must also study strategy - getting

the lay of the surrounding land while fighting it out on the regular

course. The company I joined was run by men who were just as adventurous

as Adams, but who were using ideas they had developed over the years. They

were able to build and travel a good, fast road where none had existed

before. - Universal Publishing Service

Copyright 2000
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.