“As a result of his efforts, Godfather’s Pizza sales were reduced from $275 million in 1986 to $242.5 million in 1988.” — Herman Cain’s Wikipedia bio
Herman Cain is touting is business management experience as his chief qualification to be President, but Susan Saulny writes for the New York Times that managing Cain is like managing a herd of cats.
But interviews with Mr. Cain’s former staff members, volunteers and supporters give a glimpse of a candidate who appeared to show ambivalence toward basic campaign management, which led to problems in hiring, scheduling, fund-raising and messaging.
Together, these problems are at odds with a central theme of his candidacy. Because Mr. Cain does not have a legislative or political track record, his campaign rests heavily on the contention that he would bring proven, executive-level expertise from the business world to the White House.
Ex-staffers also say that Cain maintains distance from his staff, who have been told to not speak to him unless spoken to.
Some former aides said they had longed to see the problem-solving side of Mr. Cain, or to see Mr. Cain at all. Over the spring and summer, he did not spend much time with workers. He did not plan conference calls or staff meetings and was given to changing his mind about appearances, sometimes with little notice, a tendency that angered his field workers.
“It was frustrating because we couldn’t get him here as much as I was led to believe he was going to be here,†said Kevin Hall, who worked for Mr. Cain in Iowa in June.
“Everything we tried to do was like pulling teeth to get accomplished,†said a former staff member in Iowa, who asked for anonymity. “I’ve never been involved in a job that was as frustrating as this one. We couldn’t get an answer on anything. Everything was fly by the seat of your pants.â€
This is actually standard behavior for CEOs in Corporation World. Most big companies don’t get things done because of the brilliant leadership of the head of the corporation. They get things done because over time they’ve put procedures in place that delegate responsibilities and that enable staffs to work together to accomplish complex tasks without having to re-invent the wheel every other day. Institutional memory helps, also, as do having competent employees in key positions far, far below executive level.
Wikipedia defines “business management” this way:
Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources and natural resources.
What has Cain actually managed? In the 1980s he was in charge of 400 Burger Kings in Philadelphia for three years, and during his tenure his Burger Kings gained considerably in profitability. So Pillsbury promoted him by putting him in charge of Godfather’s Pizza, which he royally screwed up. Then he and some other upper-level executives bought Godfather’s from Pillsbury, and after that sales were steady, but when he resigned ten years later the business still wasn’t making as much money as it was making before Cain became CEO.
Then he was CEO of the National Restaurant Association, a lobbying group; chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City; and he sits on a number of corporate boards of directors. While all that makes for a respectable resume, and certainly requires him to have some control of an organization, I don’t see that he’s had much success with enterprises that involve complex logistics, and he doesn’t seem to have ever been part of a team that produced anything tangible, like a new model of toaster.
In my experience, CEOs rarely come up through the ranks of production, manufacturing or engineering. They come from finance, advertising, marketing. They make decisions about money, sales, acquisitions. Often they have only a vague idea how the products their company sells actually get made. Nor do they care. As a rule they don’t deal with employees below the upper management level. Often they aren’t even that bright; they’re just really aggressive and narcissistic and intimidate everyone around them into obedience. Their success often depends on the quality of the staffs they assemble around them who take care of the details, like actually managing.
That’s a generalization, of course, and I’m sure there are exceptions. Most of my experience with them comes from dealing with CEOs who had written books, and I was the editorial production manager responsible for getting the manuscript edited, typeset, printed, and bound. So they had to deal with a peon like me. There was only one author in my how-to-succeed-in-business group who was a nice guy, but he wasn’t a CEO but a consultant who specialized in taking over failing companies and turning them around. He cleaned up after the standard CEO type had crashed and burned, in other words. I could tell he was a good manager, because he respected the process. He did what I asked him to do and kept to the schedule.
My other CEOs thought the schedule was a nuisance, but they still expected their books to be published when they wanted them published. We underlings were magically supposed to make up for the time they lost.
Talk to just about anybody who has worked in the product development, engineering, production, or manufacturing department of a big corporation, and they’ll tell you the same thing. The people at the head of the company were completely cut off from the process of making the products and getting them on the shelves. Their only involvement with products is to declare they want X product on the shelves in 3 months, even though the process would normally take 9 months. They don’t care, and nobody ever says no to them. So the little ants in the cubicle farm spend the three months working 12-hour days and cutting every corner in creation, praying that nobody makes a mistake and orders bottle caps that don’t fit the bottles.
From the beginning I’ve suspected that Cain was that sort of CEO, the type who “manages” by barking out an order and expecting his underlings to figure out how to give him what he wants. You could see the same trait in G.W. Bush, who seemed to think that declaring an intention to do something was the same thing as actually doing it.
Cain’s campaign staff is stymied at every turn over what ought to be simple tasks, like acquiring an email address or having bumper stickers made. He needs to hire someone to manage that, and apparently he hasn’t, and he is too disorganized to do it himself.
You could argue that a President doesn’t have to know how toasters get made, either. But the interesting thing about a President is that they actually have less power in their organization that CEOs do in theirs. If a future CEO-president ever tries to run the country like they run corporations, by capriciously barking out orders and expecting the underlings to carry them out (which, I understand, is how Rick Scott is trying to govern Florida), he’ll be in for a shock.
In years gone by, a lot of CEO’s did come up through the company from fairly meager beginnings.
And then, the myth of the MBA CEO and executives started in the 60’s-70’s and really gathered steam in the 80’s. You simply had to have a leader with an MBA, or your company was laughed at. Before, you had leaders who knew the ins and out of the business. Now, you ended up with guys (until recently) who had no association with the product(s) they were in charge of.
Read about one of the greatest sociopaths ever put in charge of a major US corporation, “Neutron” Jack Welch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch
And though Welch did come up through the ranks, he had some powerful allies. And his approach was ruthless. It was, in some senses, Stalinesqe or Maoist.
I remember from the early 80’s and until very early 90’s, before I got out of the cable TV industry (for what should have been the last time, but I was dope enough to come back in 2000), good people with experience were passed over by some yutz with a business degree, who then promptly went out and hired his yutz buddies. If cable TV wasn’t a monopoly, there was NO WAY it could have survived this infestation of business degrees and MBA’s, And when I returned in late 2000, I found that the situation was even worse than when I left.
Cain sounds like one of these assholes. Despite not being very business smartin that particular industry, they succeed by being totally ruthless sociopathic assholes. And they manage to shine by manipulating fear and reward. They sorround themselves with just enough smart and hard working people that they are insulated from their own egotistical ineptitude – they fire those who aren’t sufficiently hardworking, loyal or ruthless, while richly rewarding those who are.
I don’t find that just because you didn’t run a shitty pizza company into the ground doesn’t mean that you couldn’t. Mr. Cain obviously had enough competent people around him to keep him from doing that.
And I do know that his pizza sucked. I For for anyone wondering, I’m sure that no Hess gas station was ever rated in Zagat’s for the quality of their food. Having said all of that, most star chef’s are just sociopathic assholes with better taste and cooking skills. So, I don’t think I’d vote for Emeril or Mario anytime soon, either.
Competence, please! With some sense! And empathy. Nope, I don’t see anyone on the Republican side either…
In years gone by, a lot of CEO’s did come up through the company from fairly meager beginnings.
And then, the myth of the MBA CEO and executives started in the 60’s-70’s and really gathered steam in the 80’s. You simply had to have a leader with an MBA, or your company was laughed at. Before, you had leaders who knew the ins and out of the business. Now, you ended up with guys (until recently) who had no association with the product(s) they were in charge of.
Read about one of the greatest sociopaths ever put in charge of a major US corporation, “Neutron” Jack Welch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch
And though Welch did come up through the ranks, he had some powerful allies. And his approach was ruthless. It was, in some senses, Stalinesqe or Maoist.
I remember from the early 80’s and until very early 90’s, before I got out of the cable TV industry (for what should have been the last time, but I was dope enough to come back in 2000), good people with experience were passed over by some yutz with a business degree, who then promptly went out and hired his yutz buddies. If cable TV wasn’t a monopoly, there was NO WAY it could have survived this infestation of business degrees and MBA’s, And when I returned in late 2000, I found that the situation was even worse than when I left.
Cain sounds like one of these assholes. Despite not being very business smartin that particular industry, they succeed by being totally ruthless sociopathic assholes. And they manage to shine by manipulating fear and reward. They sorround themselves with just enough smart and hard working people that they are insulated from their own egotistical ineptitude – they fire those who aren’t sufficiently hardworking, loyal or ruthless, while richly rewarding those who are.
I don’t find that just because you didn’t run a shitty pizza company into the ground doesn’t mean that you couldn’t. Mr. Cain obviously had enough competent people around him to keep him from doing that.
And I do know that his pizza sucked. It sucked so bad its best market was starving travelers on the interstates who had few other choices. And for anyone wondering, I’m sure that no Hess gas station was ever rated in a Zagat’s guide for the quality of their food.
Having said all of that, most star chef’s are just sociopathic assholes with better taste and cooking skills., who’d rather chop meat and veggies rather than people. So, I don’t think I’d vote for Emeril or Mario anytime soon, either.
Competence, please! With some sense! And empathy. Nope, I don’t see anyone on the Republican side either…
Twice?
OOOOPS!
I guess while I was correcting, I hit ‘submit comment.’ SORRY!
Do you know the country song “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life”? Well, Barbara (alas for me), you just wrote my life. This exactly describes my experience in Wage Slave Land.
Why is his campaign still running? Could it be because the Koch brothers are still funding it? Do you really think that envelopes full of money are being sent to him? I sure don’t. Seems like the R’s have a goldmine, though, in being able to say how non-racist they are, having given Herman’s candidacy “consideration” before moving on to someone whiter who can actually get actual votes from their actual base.
The low level of information possessed by voters who have opinions without any grasp of how government works or how our current economic situation came to be makes the continuation of Cain’s candidacy possible. The desperation of the other R candidates is now becoming an elaboration of his 9-9-9 plan, and just you watch: there will be yet another “flat tax” plan offered, and it will be just as bad as Little Ricky’s non-flat version. Lord, please let it come from Bachman. Her IRS career should give her just enough buzz-words to make it truly hilarious!
If these people can’t see that Huntsman (their version of Kerry, they think) is the only sane person on the podium, it is a real pity. But of course he is unelectable to many R’s because of religion. Romney has the same, but I’m just waiting for the day he says he was a Methodist before he was a Mormon, and that Prespbyterianism is lookin’ good for next week.
C U:
I had lots of friends in Silicon Valley. The common wisdom was that the company’s days were numbered when they hired their first Harvard MBA “to take them to the next level.”
Whereupon the H-MBAs would jump ship to a promotion somewhere else. Rinse. Repeat.
Dan — Yeah, and do we want to talk about what Carly Fiorina did to HP? Now that Steve Jobs is gone, how long will it be before people start to say that Apple used to make great products?
Dan,
Yup, and this ‘always fail upwards’ just reinforced their Galtian sense of always being right, and smarter than everyone else.
If some poor schmuck made the same mistake once on the line that some Sr. Marketing VP did, they’d have been out on their ass faster than Glenn Beck can shed a tear on command.
I could tell some stories about some of the MBA’d dipshits I’ve seen across the years. It would be funny, except for the collateral damage to real workers.
Back to where you said, “In my experience, CEOs rarely come up through the ranks of production, manufacturing or engineering.” This old geezer followed GM (General Motors) when the company was run by car guys, i.e. Billy Mitchell and Zora Arkus-Duntov. Once the bean counters took over (ca. 1980), it was a long gradual slide downhill till they got bailed out.
If Herman Cain actually lived in my hometown while he was CEO of Godfather’s, I can’t for the life of me imagine how he survived there. Perhaps he was like George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air, and kept a tacky little apartment in Omaha that he rarely saw. Or perhaps he just hid out in Willy Thiesen’s old mansion and waited for Ginni and Clarence Thomas to drop by whenever she was in town “visiting the folks.” Cain’s too contentious to fit into the thriving African-American community, and too bizarro for the symphony- and museum-supporting wealthy crowd.
Come to think of it, Herman Cain still behaves like a cultural Robinson Crusoe.
Well, I also have to temper that message with my own personal experience. I worked for a you-would-know-the-name biotech as a moderately low level worker bee and was walking to work because of car trouble and got picked up by the CEO driving in – he knew me by name.
That job is where I decided that upper management was a small fraction as valuable to a company as the floor supervisor. The problem is, in America, if you do not get promoted off the floor (or wherever you currently are) within two years, you are considered a failure. Instead of recruiting and rewarding these people who actually get the job done, they are considered entry-level fodder. So many of them were superb at what they did, and failed miserably when promoted (and it is a crapshoot whether the replacement will be any good at all).
Many years ago one of my three brothers was offered a job heading a Silicon Valley start-up. He lasted one day on the job explaining to the Board that he knew absolutely nothing about the products etc. that were the basics of the company. The Board told him that he really didn’t have to ‘know’ anything to run the company. He said that he didn’t even understand what those under him were talking about when discussing the products etc. He didn’t have to was the reply.
His qualifications at the time? Tall, good-looking, affable, gregarious, a go-along disposition, and loyalty to whoever was cutting his pay check at the time. He’s what you might call ‘a great guy.’ Still is – became an artist, by the way.
Dan,
Your last two sentences are called The Peter Principle.
My son has a temp job at a major manufacturer of overhead garage doors. It is a temp job but he knows every aspect of the packaging and shipping of these doors. The company has a job announcement to hire three customer service reps to answer telephone queries about the doors. The only requirement in the job announcement is having a bachelor’s degree which my son does have.
He has not heard anything yet about the application he submitted.
Godfather’s and Burger King are franchises. It seems to me (an MBA-er) that the key to making money in a franchise is selling more franchises, not worrying about the details of delivering a product. That’s what the franchise operators have to do.
In short, Cain’s business experience is really finance and sales.
[T]he key to making money in a franchise is selling more franchises, not worrying about the details of delivering a product.
In other words, Cain was at the top of an Amway-style pyramid.
Cain’s business experience is really finance and sales.
Of course, one can have “experience” of something without being any good at it, and based on his presidential campaign, I’d never put him in charge of either finance or sales. As someone commented recently, Cain seems instead to be auditioning as a Fox News commentator. Or maybe as a columnist for the WSJ.
From all my working experience starting from 18 until I was 63, I think the one talent/skill/ability a person needs to be a good CEO or President is the ability to hire the right people for the right job. Maha touched on this; but, I think it needs to be stated more succinctly. Getting the right people in the lower level positions is what makes or breaks a company. Our Presidents before Ronald Reagan used to select their political appointees by talent/skill/ability to do the job they were being appointed for–even Richard Nixon (need to go wash my mouth out with soap; be back in a minute). Now, the persons appointed by Republicans are way too often just people who contributed most to the campaign. However, we have already seen that it doesn’t matter how qualified a person who Obama appoints may be, the Republicans will keep the appointments from being approved. That the R’s can get away with this is what shows our politics to be a big joke these days. Does Godfather’s Pizza still exist any where? I know there aren’t any here in the Sea-Tac area.
Does Godfather’s Pizza still exist any where?
Bonnie, it’s mostly in the Great Plains states (HQ in Omaha, NE). I just grabbed the phone book and found 4 locations where I live.
Bonnie,
If you want to find a Godfather’s, go find a long stretch of interstate where there’s a lone gas station with no fast or local food places anywhere near it.
Walk in, get a slice, and remember to call EMS before you finish that piece, which has probably been under that food warmer since the DOW was over 14,000, and the coli, a-x, have had time to really incubate.
I like you a lot, so what I’d suggest is, when you find that Godfathers, instead of getting that slice, grab a package of Nabs, some potato chips, beef jerky, some day old coffee, some Mountain Dew, and drive home.
Yeah, I just did a quickie search and found 30 GPs within a 200-mile radius of my undisclosed location just north of the Bronx. But none in NYC; they’re all out in the boonies upstate or in more rural parts of NJ, MA or PA, or along an interstate somewhere. I can’t say I’ve ever eaten a Godfather’s pizza. If I did, it would have been years and years ago, before Cain, or I’d remember.
Pingback: Links 11/1/11 | Mike the Mad Biologist