But you promised!

Leading by example is often discussed in these pages, considering how important one’s image is as a management tool. It is as simple as that: firms may creatively invent as many incentive management systems, policies, rules, organization charts and models as they want, the only thing that remains as the end of the day is the way their leaders act and the examples they show.

As a comparison, no matter how large the family, how rich the neighborhood, how smartly designed the house plan or the parents keep repeating, it is what they will do, tolerate or punish that will mostly shape the kids’ behavior. If you have ever told your kids several times to go tidy their rooms or do their homework or eat properly but haven’t ever done anything about it, you know what we’re talking about! You’re just background noise.

As my great-aunt, 95 and former CEO puts it: “example comes from above”. No need for a Harvard MBA, a 5-year-old will teach you the concept!

Now that example is established as a management tool, it is safe to infer it conveys promises. An easy one: “if you do like me you will be like me. If I am authority, you will be authority”. And we all know we recruit and promote who resembles us…

Firms are interrelations. Interrelations are implicit and explicit promises. Explicit: I work for you, you pay me for my work at the end of the week or month. Implicit: if I conform to the company norms, I will be well perceived with a positive impact on my career. If I play by the rules, I have more chances to win, but that also means I expect a fair game. If the game is not fair, why stick to the rules? And then… why spend time and money on defining rules?

How does that fit your company culture? Fair or not fair?

These promises are internal – amongst employees – and external – with customers, suppliers etc. All firms are thus nothing more than a set of promises. Some of the external ones are subtle and often not well controlled by the firm, which mixes up what it would like to promise, and what it actually does.

Advertising is a strong case of such misalignment, sometimes accidental, sometimes less. Washing powder is a typical example of the latter: who really believes that my wife will be as happy as women seem to be in detergent ads? Probably if I start doing the laundry she will, but that won’t be because I use a specific P&G or & Unilever product. Consumers have therefore learned to decipher such messages, thus severely undermining the power of promises a lot of commodity firms were making them.

Well, guess what: firms do that all the time, even those trying to be smart. Actually, maybe those trying to be smart are the worse… A few examples? Do your vacancy ads say something like “We have tough challenges to offer. Are you up to them?” or “we offer the best projects, great careers and an opportunity to develop yourself in an international environment” or something along these lines? Like… “Join the best!” Nice. You are just like everyone else then, commodity. Do your interview processes cover questions like “where do you see yourself in 5 years” or “what are your main drawbacks?” Same.

Not only did you just hint you were hardly able to distinguish one applicant from the other (such questions are useless and interviewers are usually unable to answer them themselves. I know, I systematically ask them back. Great fun), but you also blended yourself into the mist of all the other faceless companies which asked the same applicant the same questions. Let’s just hope you did not invest too much in your ads, or any other parts of your recruitment process, in order to try to make yourself notice because that investment was just wasted. You made promises then did not hold to them. Worse than no promise at all.

Another example comes from a practice I see sometimes, related to the merit increase processes. Most companies run such a process on a yearly basis. But in firms with a low employee turnover and long mean service time, managers increase employees every other employee every other year in order to ensure every one receives a significant increase at least every two years. In other words, salaries are not increased because employees performed – or not only – but because they did not receive any increase the previous year.

When asked, managers answer that due to the low turnover, the length of service and seniority are long and employees often show a high compa-ratio (employee’s salary divided by the mean for such type of job). It is then fun to consider the fact that if only performing employees were increased, then turnover would probably be higher because some of the non-performing employees would move on to other firms to seek the acknowledgment they probably think they deserve, or catch up with the market rates. In other words: a low turnover generates an increase policy which calls for a low turnover.
Firms are promises.

A good, structured approach when facing issues or looking for improvement would then be to list down and analyze the promises yours makes, and whether or not it is keeping its word. With a trap: there is always a chance the promises you make are the ones you would like to keep, yet don’t for some reason. The second level of analysis becomes then: would you like to really keep it, what keeps you away from it, and are you eventually ready to make the change so that you are finally deliver your commitment?

Monkey see, monkey do.

Greek philosophers often opposed culture to nature, stating that culture was a transformation of, or differentiation from, nature. The cooked vs. the raw if you will. I had started discussing the matter in A K.P.I. Culture., it is time to dig in the matter further.

Let’s pay tribute and simply define culture as “the way one does things”. We all often come across different definitions of the word. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

•    Excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture
•    An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
•    The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group

My personal understanding is that the third definition is superfluous, it is merely an application of the second one to an organization, while the first one is just the second one pushed to the extreme. We could even simplify what is left:

•    An integrated pattern of behavior

(that may possibly depend upon the capacity for social learning).

Why so? Because behavior is driven by knowledge and belief, and social learning depends heavily on symbolic thought. There can also be culture without social interaction. I may adopt a specific behavioral pattern A out of fear while I live alone in the jungle…

A few examples to support our new definition: I eat you because I know it will stop my hunger. Or because I will acquire your strength. Or because the head of the tribe does so or orders me to do so. And I go to the office every morning for about the same reasons, actually…

After such a boring introduction, let’s apply our new knowledge to Corporatia.

I often say culture comes from the top and is auto-filtering. There are many cracks culture seeps through, often non considered as such.

Imagine a business in which the new boss, appointed by the respected CEO, calls her team members by their last name, including publicly and in front of them. “Smith, you’ll need to come and see me, bring Johnson and McArthur along”. Quite soon said team members will start calling each other by their last names, too, be it as a joke or mimicry.

Let us say that this boss is also very keen on details and does not emphasize the big picture with her reports. Always dotting the I’s, barring the t’s, changing the color schemes, asking for documents, presentations, setting the directions… Fairly soon, her direct reports will start behaving in the same fashion with their teams so as to save their own energy and shelter from the leader’s wrath. If the boss is impatient and sends reminders every 3 hours, possibly reshuffling priorities even, then the direct reports will pass this pressure along to their teams.
All three examples illustrate the “culture comes from the top” part. One can easily imagine, for instance, what would happen if the boss were not to allow mistakes…

But auto-filtering? Soon managers who, as true knowledge workers, fancy to have their autonomy rather than execute will show their discontent and leave; others more prone to execution will stay, or be promoted since they give satisfaction, no question asked. Vacancies will need filling: capacity of applicants to execute will be probed. And if a bad job at selecting the good grunts is done, the new joiners will anyways not feel too happy and leave soon.

From that we can infer that the longer a boss at the helm of a team, the more obvious his or her cultural traits and trade-offs.

Nowadays systems, such as processes, sets of values, communication, organizational decisions… are as many tools that help expand this picture to wider organizations. In other words, leaders make their teams. If they complain about them, they complain about their management style. As I answered to a manager who recently shouted me “I don’t want to hire internally, they are no good”, “either you hire them this way, or you make them this way. Which will it be?”

The saying is true: managers have the teams they deserve. And it is certainly not new. Just watch the Planet of the Apes movies (1968 – 1973): monkey see, monkey do.

Lefties do it better

Imagine a company coming up one day, somewhat lost with say 6 or 7 products to introduce to the market, suffering from internal struggles as to which product should be focused on. It’s a very competitive market and they are number two. The leader has been steadily keeping its market share for a while but is losing its edge. However, it is known that they are going for a new launch in about 6 months; only no one knows whether it is going to be a new product, a 2.0 of their bestseller or maybe a whole range.

Our challenger then just decides they have got 6 months to take the market over. But how? In the most rational fashion, yet one not so common these days.

First, they advertise to everyone: “on a certain day, you will be able to choose which of our products deserve to live!”
Second, they go to meet their audience – not just their customers, also their nay-sayers – and present them the products, all their characteristics and features, totally openly and publicly.
Third, they put the products on a stand and ask their audience: for a symbolic Euro, you get to decide for the one which we will take to market and in a way, for the future of our company and the industry.
And finally, they stick to their word and only launch the one the audience selected.

That company got millions of people to elect the product they wanted. The campaign itself was a huge success. But here is the best part:

6 months: one would have thought the company was short of time, surely?  The campaign to design and select the product was the only thing the market was talking about for months, making the final product hugely known and taking the incumbent by surprise. It was the best advertising results they could get.

Internal struggles: the company was short of resources then? Instead of scattering their resources on several efforts, they could get all their means focused on one product, without any dissidence since the market had pointed an incontrovertible finger towards what it was ready to pay for. Total internal alignment to the service of that product!

The company was short of money? Here is pure genius at work. By asking the audience to pay a very minimal, symbolic fee of one Euro (or one Ruble, or one Dollar) in exchange of the right to vote, our challenger escaped a common bias of questionnaires, one which consists of people answering their honest-to-god-truth about what they would do in a given situation, but they probably won’t once facing said situation in real life. (eg: “an old lady gets mugged by a youngster 20 pounds lighter than you. What do you do?” Answer: “I’ll go”. Fact: “I hope I can pass by without being noticed”. Or worse, I pull out my phone cam)

In other words with that tiny, symbolic cost and barrier, they get people to commit. Voters do commit, this commitment costs them so it becomes dear to them: they will stick to it, more than if they did not have to pay at all. There is a larger commitment gap between 0 and 1 dollar than there is between 1 and 5 dollars. On the launch day, if these voters need such a product, they will come and buy the one they voted for and now even feel closer to (“hey, I made it happen!”).

But the company also made this campaign cash-flow positive before the product was even launch. Having people vote for the product they wanted, not only did the company focus on the relevant effort, saved time in lengthy internal resource allocation discussions and meetings, but ended up richer than they were prior to the campaign.

Alignment, focus, trust of the audience, better known, richer, and sure to present their best alternative to the incumbent.  Who wouldn’t  want to be in that position before, say, a presidential election if they were the candidate?

What I describe above is precisely what the Socialist Party did in France. In order to select their candidate, the left-wing just ran a business-school textbook marketing operation they could teach in a MBA, jointly designing a product with their potential customers – and their opponents: they could vote, too – putting a totally disorganized party right in marching order in less than 6 months and making money out of the process while increasing loyalty – that is, decreasing abstention. I am not taking side, but one must admit: on that very occasion, lefties did it better.

The ultimate leadership development lesson

Leadership and development are the cornucopia of business publications’ clichés. Running dry for the next issue? Why not talk about yet another leadership guru, or development survey or “best practice”? This is the business equivalent of the “6-pond diet before this summer” paper in some press.

Hm. Couldn’t resist. Here’s mine.

So let us be practical: just like any good diet, leadership and talent development are usually plain common sense. Which thanks to Mark Twain we know is not that common, really.

In the Acid Test series, I would like to offer one that is fun to bring in discussions with managers: “have you groomed your successor yet?” That might bring an awkward silence. See for yourself!

Why is that? Of course, the first thing that springs to their minds is “am I closer to the door than to a promotion?” which is often exactly the problem (it being the first thought). But it is not the core of the issue.

A good business leader is a lazy person. A manager is someone who has a team and a budget to achieve a goal. The more the team is proactive, self-confident, clear and well aligned about the right things to do, the closer the goal. That takes a good deal of autonomy. The best team is actually the one doing the right thing without having to check with the boss every minute whether they are heading in the right direction. The boss is therefore rather free of that task.

So what does that mean? It is the team that can do without controlling management for a while because everyone is a fraction of the boss, somehow, thanks to the latter sharing guidance and making sure everyone is clear about it, and supportive of the goal.

The only additional thing they need to become the boss is assertiveness which comes from understanding the priorities and the big picture. What is well understood being easy to explain, the ability to enlist people – that’s making them understand what they can gain from working with you (a cause, a clear goal, autonomy, development… name it) – becomes an easier task. And that is what bosses need to work on with their teams.

A number of team leaders I have met suffer from the “I am The Man” syndrome – gender equity tip: works with ladies, too. It is an affliction which, consciously or not, leads managers to think that :

• They are, for some reason, just the person – and the only one – for the job
• Some prerogatives are truly theirs and not to be shared or let others into (often: “I decide for the strategy and the priorities. And I won’t always share my conclusions beyond what I think you need to know”. Note how that differs from “what you need to know”).
• Everyone in the team is certainly nice, but they are not quite there yet (and they’ll hardly be)
• They were not really conscious they had to do it (happens more often than you think!)

In other words: knowledge being power, let’s retain some, sometimes even in good faith or without paying attention. In the process, let’s undermine the team’s ability to think and act. But also, let’s prevent the rise of someone who could eventually step up and be a successor. Not only will that endanger the talent pipe line of the company, but that will contribute to keeping of the manager in his or her current position rather than freeing him, or her, for the next move upwards with the reputation of being a talent developer. Or alternatively put, a leader. Now who wouldn’t want this and why will always be a source of wonder…

But I am talking, and talking… Let’s talk about you. Have you groomed your successor yet?

Is diversity cutting it?

No acceptable corporate communication today without a word on diversity, which is mostly understood as gender management and how the more women in their ranks, the greater companies are. The HBR even recently came up with a paper called “Women make teams smarter”.

And that is certainly true.

However, this corporate ideal has decayed into a holier-than-thou attitude which now hurts the employee ranks and brings forth two issues.

In some places, men now know for sure they won’t access certain exposed roles because their KPI is not high enough in the cup size area (how’s that for a sexist comment? Inappropriate, isn’t it. Trust me, that felt good). On the altar of the politically correct, they know they will never, ever, make it to the gender-diversity alibis some roles have become. Like that woman on the Board, alone representative of her gender on the Board. She just bought herself the safest seat: if she steps down, the Board loses its “gender diversity”. Fewer female than male executives equals less competition trying to take the cookie away from her… She is safer than her peers.

In this Fortune 500 company, the CHRO role is now so out of reach you need to wear high heels to grab it. No other way, Sir. It is discrimination, but in a way, that is alright and not really the point: women have been discriminated against in a number of ways so one could say it is only fair. Why not?

What is more concerning is the fact now some men consider leaving the boat and moving to friendlier shores much earlier with higher damages to the company. Internal battles for the highest, visible C-suite positions, used to see a very limited number of opponents, generally two or three, groomed by the Gods and put to the test for the fittest to survive. Like they say: “there can be only one”.

But now that the top doghouse has its access restricted, the top dogs have less incentive to enter the competition for the N-1 and N-2 jobs that are traditional paths to said top position. Where two used to fight for the top job, leaving one loser who would then move away, four, five, or more now fight for the positions underneath knowing these are the last available rungs on the ladder. That makes three or more losers who will seek their fortune under other skies.

Bottom line: we wanted a wider talent pool by considering the better half of mankind. But the way we applied our policies, we are likely to have restricted our talent pipeline. Unfortunately we will probably have to go that way for a while, be it only for the proverbial penny to drop and the culture to change. That is the first issue.

The second issue lies somewhere else but is certainly equally dangerous: the tree hides the forest. Gender diversity pumps the diversity budgets and steals the show whereas diversity is something else entirely and certainly not only restricted to gender. It is the necessity to confront different ideas, generated by diverse and different backgrounds. Ethnical diversity is certainly one thing to promote, but more than that, cross-functional mobility (from marketing to HR, from finance to manufacturing etc), or diversity of background and education are the best way to ensure “frank exchanges” on ideas, which means discussion, creativity and therefore difference, innovation, edge. That diversity is too rare in a world of co-optation in which one hires amongst one’s own.

Women are great, and they are men like everyone else.  They need equity in Corporatia. But beware to not be counterproductive in the name of the political correctness, and not miss the true meaning of diversity. That will only bring resentment amongst the troops and prevent from reaching the objective. This not a criticism of the purpose, only a warning regarding the way the action is led: hell is paved with good intentions.

The End… To End Era: All Kneel Before the Actuaries!

There are a few conflicting trends currently happening in Corporatia. These are not exactly new trends: they have been at work for quite a long time. Yet they are starting to re-shape the face of the working world in many aspects: the behaviour of consumers, the international labour division, international trade flows etc.

The point at stake here is the attitude towards risk in general, and the way Risk – capital R – is now becoming the obvious, most traded commodity. Companies, as a very complex and intertwined system of promises – promise towards the employees, towards the customers, towards the suppliers. The simple fact one issues an invoice and agrees to / has sufficient faith in the fact said invoice will be honored later, is an example of how the system works.

And it works well indeed. Yet, all actors of the system are now putting pressure on one another in order to decrease their own risks. This pressure usually takes the shape of a discount on the mother of all commodities, money: in order to lower my risks, I want you to lower your prices, always. Or the other way around: “look, less risks with me as my prices are lower!” So far nothing new under the sun.

What is interesting, though, is that in order to decrease risks taken by shareholders – that is, often and quite naturally, risks for the CEO to have to step down under the pressure of said shareholders – companies tend to focus on barbarian things such as their “core business”, e.g. usually markets in which they are in the top three competitors, thus divesting and selling away assets that are not considered as “strategic” (a beauty of the S-word: “often used to justify something that can’t be backed by a sound cash-flow analysis”, one of my professors used to say. Ah, wisdom!)

The trend could not stop there: companies are now selling departments or functions they do not feel they are getting enough value out of. Motto: “someone can manage it better!”

The trendy label for this is “outsourcing”: of IT, of Finance, of HR… What is sold to outsourcing firms is often the transactional side of back-office functions in a purely financial logic: let us exchange a department that costs X% of the turn over (say, payroll or accounting) against an outsourcing contract that will cost Y% of the turn over. Guess what: Y < X, I am sure that one took you by surprise.

While the company transfers all responsibility on said functions, exchanging partial control on some of its resources against a service level agreement (fully inclusive of penalties, fees, roles & responsibilities, bilateral governance…), it exchanges the operational risk to the outsourcer against a certain financial stability (“I give you the risk against a flat fee: if you don’t deliver, you compensate”). If the deal is badly negotiated as it is often the case, the selling firm partially loses its agility. I will say it differently: if I can exchange control + a cost of $10 every month against lesser control + a cost of $5, but the possibility to invest my new $5 in something I think will get me more returns, I as a 21st century corporation go for it any day of the week.

The bottom line here is that the ability to deliver is no longer the goal: the capacity to decrease the – financial – risk is, which accounts for the increasing influence financial markets wield on firms and shows how companies have become a financial investment vehicle, far from the label of corporate citizens or purveyors to the needs of Earthlings that some observers are trying to tag them as. Corporate citizen vs. Investment vehicle: a tough contradiction to solve, so long live the Vox Populi whose pressure kept danger at bay so far… most of the time! But that is another discussion.

That exchange of risk + control against financial visibility has so far made the day of India, Morocco, Mexico, all countries that fully benefit from the outsourcing trend and good for them. Ricardo (as in “David Ricardo”, the British economist, I was not going to take a Mexican example there) had seen it all along: countries are climbing their way to wealth thanks to specialization. At the same time, what the consuming trends require is that corporations take responsibility and full control over the risks that they pass on to their customers.

Risk? Buy a coffee at a certain fast food chain whose mascot used to be a red-haired clown (where is Ronald now by the way?) The water has to be drinkable or sue the water utility company! The whole thing must not cause any harm. Makes complete sense.

That was before. It now must alsobe served at a harmless temperature in case you were to trip and fall with it, or better, pour it on your skin as soon as it is delivered to you, or have the espresso machine maker pay! The cup has to be good to nature in case you were to throw it away next to the bin, so have the cup manufacturer pay! You should not be able to gag on the straw, either so… Next, the available sugar will probably have to be harmless to diabetics. And do not get me started on the hamburgers, the meat and all that jazz…

But I am getting off topic, here. My point really, is that this outlet that serves what is said to be edible tidbits is at the end of the value chain really. As such, it has to cope with all the risks that were generated by the whole chain and stands responsible for them before mankind, should anything feel like turning a unit of said mankind into a corpse for instance, and even though the hamburger retailer does not own the whole chain. Yet with the buy-and-sell of operating functions, back-office departments etc, we are creating more and more complex value chains, that is more and more complex risks with less and less power over them.

Of course controls exist all along this value chain to protect one another, but the zero-risk concept is alien to this world. So the company which runs the outlet will most likely want to hedge its risks, get them financially covered. We had delivery terms and conditions. We had a quality blueprint. We are probably on our way to be enslaved under the rule of the god of Service Level Agreements, without having a clear picture whether or not this exchange actually generates value since the cost of operating with outsourced resources or governing the whole joint system are hardly ever accurately taken into account.

Think of the old Agency Effect: now that, for example, front office and operations belong to one firm and back office to another, do you seriously think they have the same agenda? Who can tell what is the cost of that?

What is the conclusion then? Well… we live in a world in which the word is “affordable risk”, a concept firms translate immediately into “how can I reduce it?” Corporations decrease their operational risk in exchange of extra cash, or rather exchange operational control against cash control.

The question is: how much cash can that be… How are called people who compute the financial value of a risk and therefore the penalty to be paid should the risk occur? Yep. These probably have a great future ahead of them. It sometimes feels like “Foundation”, Asimov’s book. If there is a god of Service Level Agreements, He certainly has an army of servants. So Hail to them, the Actuaries!

ibad

Apples are special to mankind. They are both the reason why women ‘with pain will give birth to children’ or why three regular chocolate cake helpings make each breath harder to draw. It also makes it difficult to explain to your kids why an ounce of feathers is as heavy as an ounce of lead. Try for yourself!

One bad apple recently spoiled the whole bunch again. Steve is sick for the third time and the Apple community – which dramatically expanded since the Mac thanks to the iPod, iPhone and iPad – is in disarray. The stock went down by more than 8% in some places.

Apple has got quite a strange history and so does its founder. What is surprising is the company that gave Jobs the boot in 1985 to rehire him via an acquisition in 1996 and saw him on a sick leave not just once, but twice, never planned a proper . And quite unfortunately for Steve, although his first disease was dubbed a curable one, the idea of a relapse was always a blipping dot on the radar.

Quite unfortunately for Steve, yes. And for the world as well, which seems to love being iJacked. And for Apple, too, the company whose stock price obviously keeps demonstrating the principle of gravity for one single reason: “Jobs’s too good”. Or too bad, since the iCone (that he seems to slowly become keynote after keynote ) appears in the total incapacity to build a viable succession plan. Or to share the spotlights.

What could be the reason can only be guessed: pride? High expectations? Romanticism? The only sure thing is that Jobs, despite his quite moving and inspiring speech at Standford, has issues proceeding with the next step in the True Leader handbook: grooming Mr Right Successor.

Beyond a dropping share price and ensuing difficulties to finance (as well as to incentivize the board!), consequences are difficult for the company: disorganization, best talents jumping off the ship – always the first to leave! – and innovation, polished marketing and sales pitches, exclusive image and that je-ne-sais-quoi that once defined Apple and took so many years to build, going down the drain. Because one man could not find his spiritual heir to head the ship.

The key manager syndrome is more present in our environment than we think. One loves the concept of being irreplaceable: such an acknowledgement! And by definition, “there will always be time”. Yes, right: by definition time is gone.

The percentage of successful succession plans – ie: the number of decisions made in a succession plan that are actually implemented once the event occurs – is usually low, more often than not lower than 10%. This failure comes with a severe cost: every one wants to have a say in the (sometimes in-) famous “people review” decisions that is often viewed as one of the most prestigious HR (as well as managerial) acts: “I shall say who may replace whom, who is ready for a given career path and who is not”. Tickling sensations of power…

Such a poor implementation would have had the manager of a product or project review fired by the following Thursday, yet as soon as we start talking about people, “companies’ most precious assets” HR and leadership teams get away with it with a smile. Mankind is amazing…. You cannot believe it? Apple repeated not just once but twice the original mistake: fail to identify and groom the relevant leaders (plural!).

The solution is not to drop the succession planning process altogether and let the baby go down the pipes with the bath water. It is just to start implementing decisions and consider succession plans for what they are: the anti-collision plan a company needs to develop to face rough times. Thumbs up Bill Gates for bringing up Steve Ballmer, whatever one thinks of the character. Steve is reassuring enough to keep the ship staffed and afloat. Yes, maybe is Microsoft a bit less inventive. But they’re still there. Whereas Apple without any consideration to the next generation of leaders – it might be too late already – will dry, wrinkle, shrink and die forgotten until the idea of it disappears in its turn as well.

It took a couple of months to Apple to actually come up with a list – a list! – of successors. On February 23^rd of the year of our Good Lord 2011- it was about time! –  the firm started naming a list of prospective CEOs. Along with the worn-out name of Eric Schmidt, future-ex-Googler, are considered Tim Cook who is the current acting CEO, Phil Shiller and Jonathan Ive – how surprising: the marketing and the designer internal guys – as well as Jon Rubinstein, ex-Apple now HP. The real surprising is the re-surfacing of Steve Wozniak. The Woz: a real strategy or the “rubbish idea that sounded good at the time”? Or worse: maybe it is the substitute the only value of is to stand as a make-believe to reassure the addicts. “Couldn’t get Elvis but his manager is on the line”? The simple status of this list shows how much the company is in disarray.

What to think of such a leader who fails so dramatically to have a succession plan setup? Probably that he thinks more of himself than of the company he thinks of. When the company’s value is summarized to the presence or vacancy of a key man, surely the manager’s job is not done. It has a strange Pharaoh-Hosni-Mobarakish feel to it: “I am Egypt”. “I am Apple”. Poor management, poor manager who will get the company down the drain by his sole doing, no matter how high he previously took it, and not just once. In the absence of a successor, this apple is seedless.