Business' Sick Secret

An American president once said we have "more will than wallet."

He lied, and he knew it at the time. He knew that precisely the opposite was true. Money is plentiful. New ideas--truly unique ideas--are rare. For lots of reasons. One of my favorite CEO quotes, spoken directly at me, covers this phenom indirectly:

"I'm tired of my people walking into my office and dropping their monkey on my desk."

Their monkey. His people. Suddenly, his problem.

In the ensuing conversation, (let's call him) Ralph explained to me the pressures brought to bear on "those people" in terms of quarterly earnings and trimming costs. His lament was, essentially, where have my thinkers gone? I need to be challenged.

His premise, subconsciously, was that he needed someone to serve the ball first, in order to return serve, to plus the delivery with his own particular english and style. A very busy man, he was the reflected light of their sun.

He never came that close to describing it that way, but that's what he meant. He wanted actionable, worthy challenges against which to test himself. Plant management issues did not thrill him. Accounting minutiae left him cold.

He wanted LARGE challenges against which to test his mettle. He was bored.

Sounds great; very noble. Problem was, the next meeting consisted of quanitfying strategies that would extort the largest sums of tax forbearance for an expansion into a statewide region.

In this case, the former "bored" executive became a tiger, fully engaged in "stringing out" a state department of Economic Development and its director.

In this case, the ED director had made clear that he was quite willing to lay down on the ground and tie his own arms and legs to stakes and let "Ralph's" company torture him into pushing through whatever tax gifts company X wanted in order to begin doing business in State "V."

At dinner the following week, I asked Ralph why he insisted on Fresh Ideas from his direct reports yet resorted to the age-old tool of extortion from state and locals. He knew the competition was lame. He knew they would make money 3 months after opening. He knew he didn't need the benefits of tax foreberance (about .3% of gross receipts) for this to be a sound decision.

"They're whores."

USAToday

Greg Leroy