The real stories behind the "leaders" of business
as told by someone who has seen them at very close quarters -
Tim Pritchard, former editor-in-chief of the prestigious
Report on Business of the Globe and Mail.
"Irascibly brilliant. Very fair. Very sane. And very human."
For much of my working life, I was a middle manager in the editorial department of The Globe and Mail and, latterly, the Financial Post.
I had to manage “up” to bosses with big egos and half-baked initiatives,
and “down” to a staff that was diverse in ability and motivation.
Challenging work, sometimes rewarding, seldom much fun.
Many books have been written about how to be a ”good” manager.
They are worthless.
Good managers, a rarity in any business, possess a combination of natural talents.
To encompass them with words and generalizations is difficult,
and attempts to do so don’t engage most readers.
It’s more useful — and interesting — to learn from management stupidity, which abounds.
Finding fault is an annoying preoccupation of mine.
My head is full of instances of bad managers making dumb decisions.
The newspaper business is rife with such pickings for many reasons.
On the editorial side, individuals have an amazing amount of freedom
to pursue their own narrow agendas.
This may bring success to a reporter but not to a reporter promoted to manager.
Careless, narrowly-considered or “bad” decisions beget more of the same.
They become the norm.
Let’s start with an all-too familiar piece of awkwardness:
A new boss full of “new” ideas.
How this would play out we never knew.
Within a few weeks Conrad Black (through Southam/Hollinger) bought the Post and that sports section
and whatever else was to follow died on the vine.
If only other such nonsense could be dealt with so expeditiously.
Next: The myth of the Business Leader.
