The Prodigal Executive and the Myth of Once a Jerk, Always A Jerk

Have you met a competent jerk?

A colleague, Dr. Kenneth Nowack, describes the competent jerk as someone who is difficult to work with or lacks interpersonal skills, but is highly knowledgeable and capable. Sometimes they are “unwavering in their convictions (mostly having to do with them being right) that they are unwilling to take counsel and see absolutely no reason to change their ways” (Envisia Learning White Paper, 2006, “Coaching Competent Jerks: Can Zebras Change Their Stripes?).

Now this is tricky because many executives have been so rewarded for being a jerk throughout their career, being a jerk has exquisite value. The jerk’s position is, why change? They see no benefit to be gained from transforming from being a jerk to becoming a decent human being. In fact they have much to lose.

The competent jerk’s reluctance to change is understandable. This always reminds me of the story of a very nice man, Bob Newhart, the former accountant who mined his nervous stammer and deadpan demeanor for comedy gold. As a stand-up comedian, Newhart’s underplayed delivery and gentle stammering earned him three Grammys and the first comedy album to reach #1 on the Billboard charts. His unique brand of humor translated well to television, where he starred in two of the best-loved sitcoms of the 1970s and 1980s.

When he was doing The Bob Newhart Show, one of the producers pulled him aside and said that the shows were running a little long. The producer wondered if Newhart could cut down the time of his speeches by reducing his stammering. "No," Newhart told him. "That stammer bought me a house in Beverly Hills."

For many executives, being a jerk got them where they are today. Actually being a jerk can work under certain circumstances or life cycles of an organization. For instance, this can work well when a company needs someone to take charge in a turnaround situation or crisis mode, but doesn’t work so well when you are in growth mode.
The poster child for the competent jerk boss is Al Dunlap, author of Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great (Dunlap with Bob Andelman, 1997). His tough, tell-it-like-it-is persona stems from humble beginnings in Hoboken, New Jersey. ``My parents couldn't afford to send me to college,'' he says, ``so either I got a scholarship or I wouldn't get an education.'' A West Point graduate, he believed in screaming at and purposefully humiliating his employees like, including top management. Dunlap was so ruthless in downsizing corporations for short-term shareholder profit that he earned nicknames such as "Chainsaw Al" and "Rambo in Pinstripes."
Wall Street loved Dunlap at Scott Paper, where he laid off thousands, but then hated him at Sunbeam, where he himself was finally fired. Another book, Chainsaw, by John A. Byrne (2003), dramatically documents the rise and fall of Dunlap, the havoc he wreaked on companies and people's lives, and how he came to power in the first place. Dunlap, unhappy about Byrne's reporting, once said of the Business Week writer, "If he were on fire, I wouldn't piss on him." It's a charming quote that Byrne uses to kick off his last chapter.

In my experience, even the competent jerk can change. For me this conjures up images of someone I coached named Stuart, a boss that yelled and screamed, purposely to make people feel intellectually inferior. Stuart was leading the company during a turnaround crisis and he wanted the company to act with urgency. He saw himself like an emergency room physician attending a bleeding trauma patient. In that world there is no time to be nice.

Stuart’s management style worked, in the short run. But when things turned around at the company, that behavior didn’t work any more. If Stuart wanted to continue to lead he needed to learn skills like persuasion and inspiration. When finally confronted with the honest truth (“you either get an executive coach or an outplacement specialist to help you find a new job”), Stuart found the inspiration to change his ways.