No More Mr. Nice Guys

WHAT IS A tough boss? Many of us picture the tough boss as a person who is driven, egocentric, impatient, demanding, irascible and often coarse with employees. (Robert Malott, chairman of FMC Corp., once rather indelicately told a group of his managers that “leadership is demonstrated when the ability to inflict pain is confirmed.”) Some people characterize the tough boss as an individual who can make difficult decisions in a cold, rational manner for the good of the company-decisions that are often hard to carry out. Still others believe that the tough boss is the one who achieves bottom-line results: the man or woman in command who gets the highest productivity from subordinates. But in the final analysis, the tough boss is the one whose employees consider him tough.

Toughness is not necessarily an undesirable management style. On the contrary, nearly all of our tough bosses sit atop successful, profitable corporations. But Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr., the authors of In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies, have concluded that too many companies verbally berate employees for poor performance; and that even though they call for risk-taking, corporate managers too often punish their employees for even tiny failures. “None of us is really as good as he or she would like to think, but rubbing our noses daily in that reality doesn’t do us a bit of good,” the two authors wrote in their study of corporate America. “We are not talking about mollycoddling. We are talking about tough-minded respect for the individual and the willingness to train him, to set reasonable and clear expectations for him and to grant him practical autonomy to step out and contribute directly to his job.”

Yet some management experts go as far as to claim that the chances are good that you never liked the best boss you ever had, primarily because good bosses make their employees face their shortcomings. The important ingredient seems to be respect. Even so, there appears to be an inherent conflict between boss and subordinate, in that more things seem to isolate the boss from his employees than to unite them.

“The tough-minded boss calls a spade a spade,” says one Dallas headhunter. “At least you know where you stand, and you know what’s expected of you. The less-than-tough-minded manager can be unfair to his people.”

Although we don’t pass off our listing as the definitive word on the subject, you’ll probably have to search far and wide to find a boss any tougher than those listed below. We sought them out by talking with Dallas business people in many fields-including the headhunting firms that know the qualities of local talent, the public relations firms that work with both large and small Dallas corporations, academicians who gave us a theoretical perspective on Dallas management styles and even a few big corporate bosses. After this unscientific survey, we checked to see if they were indeed deserving of their reputations. The subsequent stories we heard were both encouraging and, in some cases, horrifying. (Some of them couldn’t be reprinted because they stretch the boundaries of good taste.)



DARTH VADER AND THE EMPEROR



The dynamic duo at American Airlines, Albert Casey and Robert Crandall (nicknamed “Darth Vader”), may have the toughest reputations of any bosses in Dallas. If Crandall is Darth Vader, then Casey is the Emperor-the man who oversees the American star fleet. In fact, according to those who know them, each man’s toughness seems to complement the other’s.

While Crandall likes to intimidate his executives, he isn’t fond of having to fire them. Casey, on the other hand, almost seems to delight in carrying out such dirty work. “As a kid, Casey probably pulled the wings off flies,” says one former American cohort.

Casey is short-fused; Crandall is slow to anger. Although former execs say Crandall is somewhat lacking in the social graces of the corporate honcho, Casey can turn on his old Irish charm at will.

“Crandall is a very tough cookie,” said one former exec. “He’s demanding to the point that he’s unrealistic in his demands. He’s bright, driven, dedicated and intelligent. And he expects everyone else to be the same way. He’ll beat you up and he’ll bully you. He demands loyalty.

“But Casey, at times, gets really hateful. I’ve seen him dress down Crandall a number of times. Even Crandall quivers when Casey dresses him down.”



EVEN LOU GRANT HAD HIS SOFT SIDE



When Stuart Wilk was named city editor of The Dallas Morning News, the entire city room staff headed straight for Joe Miller’s bar to drown their sorrows. Wilk, a one-time investigative reporter from Wisconsin and a former editor at the National Enquirer, had never been very popular during his stint as assistant night city editor.

Wilk had achieved a reputation of being a tough, intelligent, thorough editor who scrutinized reporters’ copy with a fine-toothed comb. Often abrasive and impolite when dealing with reporters, Wilk was jokingly referred to as “Mr. Warmth” or “Mr. Compassion” by city staffers, who found editing sessions with Wilk very unpleasant

We’ve all probably encountered bosses like Wilk at one time or another during our careers. When he phones a reporter at home at night to ask a question, he never bothers with such pleasantries as saying hello or asking about the kids-he just fires away. Around the city desk, Wilk has become infamous for operating military-style, including the part about not fraternizing with the troops (Wilk once chided a fellow editor for getting too friendly with the reporters he supervised). Although previous city editors at The News sat in the group of clustered desks with the rest of the editors, Wilk moved into his own office shortly after he was named city editor.



STICK IT IN YOUR EAR, HARDING- ER… MR. LAWRENCE



Even if he weren’t running things with a firm hand at U.S. Telephone these days (which he is), CEO Neal Robinson’s history of toughness while he was chief financial officer at Braniff is enough to establish his reputation. Robinson was the man who reportedly-and on more than one occasion-told Harding Lawrence where to get off and became known for not letting Lawrence push him around. Telling off Lawrence, a man who prided himself on intimidating and manipulating people, is like tugging on Superman’s cape. Lawrence and Robinson reportedly didn’t speak to each other for more than a month during the final days of business at the old Braniff.

Today, Robinson, after managing U.S. Tel’s first public stock offering and now negotiating its sale to United Communications, seems to have the company on the mend. He is bright, hard-working and makes decisions solely for the good of the company, but he is also impatient, demanding and egocentric. “His executives have to run 50-yard dashes 24 hours a day just to keep up with him,” says one Robinson observer.



SPEAK SOFTLY, DON’T SMILE AND CARRY A BIG STICK



In the NFL, where coaches have the life expectancy of World War II paratroopers, they’ve got to be tough to survive. Tom Lan-dry is such a man-very intense-but the coaches who work for him say that he rarely raises his voice. And he’s just about as serious off the field as he is when we watch him, sans smiles, on Sunday afternoons. But away from the crowds, Landry’s toughest dressing-downs come in the form of dagger looks. The coaches call it his “silent stare.”

“He’s real quiet,” says coach Jim Meyer, who has worked for Landry for 23 years. “Once he tells you to do something, he’s not excited about trying to tell you a second or third time. He doesn’t compromise very often. Oh, he listens, but he makes the decisions. He deals in facts and figures and has very little desire to hear opinions expressed.”

“He wants what he wants done when he wants it done,” says assistant coach Dick Nolan. “He doesn’t waste words. When he wants something done, he only tells you once.”

Nolan agrees that Landry gets his point across without so much as raising his voice. Come on, guys, a football coach who doesn’t yell? “Oh, he might holler once in a while at the players,” Nolan admits.



HE NEVER MET A MAN IN A PASTEL SHIRT HE LIKED



Ross Perot was a nearly unanimous “tough boss” choice among the executives we polled. According to them, Perot gives new meaning to the word demanding. Legend has it that to work for Perot is to expect long hours and phone calls from anywhere in the world at any time of the day; that is, of course, after one acclimates himself to the staple requirements of white shirts, sober ties, dark suits, unfashionably short hair, clean-shaven faces and Perot’s puritan code of ethics.

On the other hand, Perot reportedly takes good care of his people, since he doesn’t hire them unless he believes in them. (He calls his top men “eagles” because they fly high, get the job done and give him results, not excuses.)

One of his executives, a former captive in an Iranian prison, summed up Perot: “He asked a lot of you-boy, he was just about the most demanding employer you could have -but when you needed to rely on him, he was like a rock.”



HARD TIMES IN THE SOFTWARE CULTURE



Heard the one about the Texas Instruments executive who, upon his retirement, decided to write his memoirs and call the book My Fifty Years at TI? The punch line: He only worked at the software giant for 25 years.

It’s a bad joke, but it pretty well sums up the TI experience. The keeper of the nose-to-the-grindstone ethic at Texas Instruments is its chairman, Mark Shepherd Jr. “He’s irascible, demanding and unforgiving,” says one former TI manager. “There’s an inside joke about the TI philosophy that goes something like this: They take you out 100 yards in a rowboat, throw you in the water and see if you can swim to shore. If you can, they try it again, only this time at 200 yards. If you’re successful several times but get, say, 1,100 yards out and can’t make it to the shore, then they tell you, ’We knew you really didn’t have it in you.’”

Shepherd and his henchmen have a lot to do with the achievement-oriented climate at Texas Instruments. People who work there either accept it or move elsewhere. If they don’t produce, they’re not necessarily fired or yelled at; they’re just sort of ostracized at the coffee bar and have a feeling of letting down the team. The Shepherd formula entails the delegation of responsiblity without authority. If there is one employee criticism of Shepherd, it concerns his emphasis on immediate results, while the long-range picture takes a back seat.



IN THE EYE OF THE EYE-TECH STORM



The chances are good that when Bill Moore, CEO of Recogition Equipment Inc., tenders pink slips, he goes about it in a very gentlemanly fashion. Pink slips at Recognition Equipment Inc., a firm that manufactures “eye-tech” machines that read such things as the codes on personal checks and the magnetic strips on credit cards, have become about as plentiful as Michael Jackson albums. Heads have rolled on a pretty regular basis since Moore came to Recognition two years ago, at which time he even fired the corporate gardener and persuaded employees to landscape the office grounds themselves on the weekends.

It’s not that Moore is a bad guy; it’s just that when he came to REI in March 1982, the board of directors told him that they were growing weary of losing money. Moore discovered that the company, although strong in technology, was lacking in management and marketing. He then implemented what he called his “tough-minded financial discipline and increasing marketing sophistication” philosophy. Those who couldn’t sell were simply eliminated from the payroll. (It’s estimated that half the marketing staff has either been fired or has resigned since Moore took the reins.)

Within a few financial quarters of taking over, Moore’s tough management philosophy put REI back into the black, where it has since remained.



EDDIE: EASY COME, EASY GO



The turnstiles at Arlington Stadium are music to Texas Rangers owner Eddie Chiles’ ears, but the ones at The Western Co. probably make Chiles as mad as liberals and Communists do. Chiles has quite a big “alumni group” of managers, according to one former executive.

The reason: Chiles demands a lot from those who work for him. “He expects a lot out of people,” says a former executive. “Often, it’s things they just can’t do.” In addition to being a very emotional man, Chiles has a modus operandi that includes the use of rigid planning systems-:’tools to whip you with,” in the words of one alumnus.

Case in point: A former manager recalls the time years ago when Eddie tried to start a specialty concrete business and formulated a five-year plan that assumed an average annual rainfall. But there were problems the first year, because the rainfall was three times the annual average. Another one bites the dust.



NO BOWL OF CHERRI’S



Turnover seems to be the norm in the Carlisle Street offices of the Cherri Oakley Co., which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary in the public-relations business. Those who know Oakley say that she is so driven that those around her have a hard time keeping their heads above water. Her drive to win new clients results in a very high-stress office environment for the dozen or so people who work for her. “She’s very tough to work for,” says one former Oakley employee. “I love Cherri, and she taught me a lot, but her company isn’t the sort of place where people want to work for any length of time.”

But apparently, it has paid off: Cherri Oakley Co. has established a reputation for solid work-and for staying power, as well.