This may sound odd to some, but regular readers of this blog have probably figured it out already: I live, and thrive, on bad management.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate all that good-to-great leadership that people spend so much time talking about; it’s just that I find that I get a lot more insight, strategy and perspective from bad management than I do from good. I was always the guy in business school who wanted to hear more about the destructive shenanigans of guys like “Chain Saw” Al Dunlap at Sunbeam than the smart and savvy work of a visionary like Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines.

In short, I believe that there are great lessons in closely examining bad management. And, that’s why I follow Sam Zell so closely.

Zell is the foul-mouthed CEO of Tribune Co., the big media company that owns not only television and radio stations but also big newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun. He was in over his head from the moment he cut the deal to take control of Tribune, and his over-the-top hubris, chronic arrogance and terribly shortsighted decision-making (by both Zell and his management minions) have helped push Tribune into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

It’s a bad management trifecta that led me to award Zell with the 2009 Workforce Management Stupidus Maximus Award, given annually to the “most ignorant, shortsighted and dumb workforce management practice of the year.”

Well, we may be starting to see the end of Sam Zell, at least as the guy controlling Tribune. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that “Sam Zell’s days as a media titan in Chicago are nearly over. … Eight months after [Tribune’s bankruptcy] filing, two sources familiar with the process said creditors are working on a reorganization plan that elbows Zell aside. The creditors, including investment banks owed $8.6 billion from Zell’s Tribune takeover, would stage a takeover of their own and sell off the company’s newspapers and broadcast stations as they see fit.”

A big part of Zell’s problem, of course, is that he took control of Tribune and “piled on debt at exactly the wrong time, and a collapse in advertising for traditional media forced him to take the company to Chapter 11 bankruptcy.” But, Zell’s incredible arrogance in his own leadership and managerial abilities played a big role as well.

“This was a textbook case of a leverage buyout gone bad,” said William Brandt Jr., a corporate turnaround expert not involved in the case who talked to the Sun-Times. Brandt, president of Development Specialists Inc., hit the nail squarely on the head when he said that Zell and his team “were imbeciles who had no idea what they were doing.”

And, the newspaper noted that “Tribune debt recently traded for about 7 cents on the dollar, meaning investors think a lottery ticket is just as likely to pay off. The company’s total debt, counting what Zell assumed in his takeover, is around $13 billion. Brandt said the Tribune deal has become such a ‘reputational disaster’ for Zell that he’s probably not involved much in management other than creditor negotiations.”

I’m not sure why an “imbecile” like Sam Zell, a guy who knew absolutely nothing about the media business when he took over Tribune, thought he could swoop in and be successful where more experienced media managers had failed. Maybe it’s that “Master of the Universe” mania that author Tom Wolfe chronicled so famously in The Bonfire of the Vanities  that led Zell to think he was smarter and savvier than everyone else.

He wasn’t, of course, and it’s pretty clear that he’ll leave Tribune, when he finally gets out, a whole lot worse off than when he took it over. When that happens, I’ll miss Zell and his foul-mouthed ways, but it will be better for all if he’s relegated, like “Chain Saw” Al Dunlap, to a management school case study on how NOT to run a business and lead a workforce.

A famous Los Angeles Times memo to the staff once described Sam Zell as “a force of a nature,” and it was spot-on true. Unfortunately, Zell was a terribly destructive one, like an earthquake or hurricane, and those left at the company he has done so much to harm will be left to clean up the mess he created for many, many years to come.

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