Hey, Management Guy! I know people really value honest, straight-shooting executives, but how honest is too honest? For example, does it ever make sense for the Big Boss to diss or put down his or her workforce? This seems like a really counterproductive and shortsighted management strategy to me.

— Sam in San Jose, CA.

Sam:

A couple of years ago, The Management Guy would have told you that it is over-the-top stupid for ANY senior manager to openly diss or talk trash about the company’s workers. Not only does this violate Hall Of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi’s old maxim that a leader should always “praise in public, criticize in private” (a philosophy The Management Guy has tried, with modest success, to emulate), but it also makes the manager in question look like a churlish philistine.

But, that was then and this is now. Today, there are certain trend-setting, award-winning executives, such as Tribune Co.’s Sam Zell, who make it a point to publicly (and unrepentantly) demean the very workers they need to help them move the business ahead.

Never mind that this behavior defies all logic or business sense. Guys like Zell do it because, well, the “devil made them do it.” Yes, the same comments would probably get any other employee fired, but sometimes, top executives get to be top executives despite the fact that they are missing a basic impulse-control gene. They succeed in spite of themselves, and that’s why they sometimes end up treating and talking about workers like they are the conquered chattel of Attila the Hun.

And, lest you think this an issue that only infects macho male executives, think again. In less than six months on the job as the new CEO of Yahoo Inc., Carol Bartz has shown that she can:
• Match any male executive, expletive-for-expletive, with a vocabulary that would embarrass a sailor on shore leave in Singapore;
• Publicly put a bounty on blabbermouth employees who leak her memos to bloggers and the public; and,
• Go out of her way to openly diss her workforce in public without even giving it a second thought.

Just this week, Bartz appeared at an investment conference in New York where she was questioned about how quickly the changes she was making at Yahoo would begin to pay dividends. That’s a pretty standard question, of course, and Bartz had a pretty standard answer, according to the Associated Press.

“While pointing to some progress,” the AP reported, “Bartz said it probably will take another year or two before Yahoo reaps the gains from her shake-up.”

Most CEOs would have left it at that, but Bartz, for better or worse, isn’t like most CEOs. She couldn’t resist the urge to follow up her straightforward assessment of Yahoo’s progress under her leadership with a gratuitous and unnecessary swipe at her workforce that would make Sam Zell proud. “For everything you can do in three steps,” Bartz added, “it will take Yahoo 22 steps [to get it done].”

What does that comment do for Yahoo’s workforce, except demoralize them even more than they already are after a couple of years of terrible management?

You would be right to point out that it is foolish, shortsighted, and does nothing at all, but then again, you aren’t a big-time CEO like Sam Zell or Carol Bartz.

Dissing your workforce in public would not seem to make a lot of sense for most managers, but Zell has taken a very cutting-edge approach at Tribune, even going so far as to push the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. That’s what I call a unique and out-of-the-box way to go after business success.

Now, Carol Bartz is not Sam Zell, but she does have a lot of the same qualities, including a wonderfully colorful vocabulary. It remains to be seen whether trash-talking her workforce in public will help in her revival of Yahoo, but The Management Guy remains unconvinced.

He’d rather put his faith in Vince Lombardi’s Super Bowl-winning advice than in the approach of Zell or Bartz, but then again, Lombardi was also known to swear like a trooper, too. The difference is, he never publicly dissed his workforce. Like all good coaches, he knew you don’t get very far by trash-talking the very players you count on for your ultimate success.

—The Management Guy

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