Virtue:
Magnanimity
Other names:
"Big-soulledness"
Vitality, the experience of energy, enthusiasm and aliveness (CSV)
Definition:
Willingness to take on large, important challenges
Advice:
Empirical Research:
We have not found any empirical research on Magnanimity. The closest virtue studied appears to be vitality, the experience of energy, enthusiasm, and aliveness.
Vitality is often a sign of physical and psychological health, and may also be a protective factor in both cases. Studies suggest that smoking, poor diet and lack of exercise can lower one's feeling of vitality (R.M. Ryan & Frederick, 1997).
A supportive social environment helps to increase an individual's sense of vitality (R.M. Ryan & Frederick, 1997).
Case examples:
Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Further reading:
Havard, Alexander. Created for Greatness: The Power of Magnanimity.
Vices opposed:
Pusillanimity
Presumption, in this case irresponsibly attempting to do more than you are capable of
Ambition, in the sense of lust for honor; attempting to do more than you are capable in order to impress others
Case Study 1
ReplyDelete“For most of my life,” Abbate explains, “My mantra was ‘Me first.’ It was the perfect vision for a young and aggressive kid. I have always wanted to win; I’m competitive and have been this way for as long as I can remember. In fact, I hate losing more than I like winning. Even today, I struggle with an overly competitive nature.” (29)
Abbate acknowledges that his desire for excellence remains an essential part of his personality and a key factor in his success. What he struggled with in the years leading up to his pilgrimage to Medjugorje was the difference between a self-centered desire for excellence, and a virtuous, God-centered desire for excellence, or magnanimity.
"I know much of my paradigm shift on the integration of my faith into my business would never have been possible without my initial pilgrimage experience in Medjugorje. That experience was the catalyst that allowed me to “be not afraid” and dare to truly think differently about my role and responsibility as a Catholic leader in our culture today. It is responsibility that demands magnanimity—a virtue I had not applied to my life until then.
"Magnanimity is a desire to push toward greater achievement morally, spiritually, physically, and mentally. More important, it is truly desiring that same success for others as well. The perpetual challenge for any business leader is the communication of a vision. Today, I spend a large portion of my time applying my philosophical approach to business through my actions and words. In order to be truly successful on our mission, I need all key stakeholders to buy in and help us execute the vision, every day and in each of my restaurants. We simply cannot be successful in this endeavor unless all our supervisors, general managers, and department managers buy into the philosophy of being magnanimous leaders." (56) (Abbate, Invest Yourself, 29 and 56)
Case Study 2
ReplyDelete"People often ask me how I built my company and became a business leader and educator. Many of these individuals see my current success and think I must have won the luck of the draw in life. What they don’t see are the stressful nights in the initial years, when I wondered if we could meet payroll that month. Or the long days marked by complex problems that made my brain hurt from the sheer effort of thinking through them. Or the countless times when I’ve had to make decisions without having any idea what the right answer was.
"Even though the journey has been grueling at times, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Entrepreneurs are addicted to the challenge. If it were easy, we’d be bored. Most people try to be comfortable and happy in life. I find my fulfillment in overcoming hardships and persevering to accomplish a goal. I’m competitive, and never satisfied. If we meet a sales goal, it’s a temporary high, and then I’m ready to charge after the next one. I think athletes can relate to me on this—winning a game only provides brief satisfaction before you’re ready to take on the next contender." (Luddy, Entrepreneurial Life, intro.)
Case Study 3
ReplyDelete"Smith brought that same ferocious resolve to rebuilding Kimberly-Clark, especially when he made the most dramatic decision in the company’s history: Sell the mills. Shortly after he became CEO, Smith and his team had concluded that the traditional core business—coated paper—was doomed to mediocrity. Its economics were bad and the competition weak. But, they reasoned, if Kimberly-Clark thrust itself into the fire of the consumer paper-products industry, world-class competition like Procter & Gamble would force it to achieve greatness or perish." (Collins, Good to Great, 17-18)
Case Study 4
ReplyDelete"When Procter & Gamble invaded the paper-based consumer business in the late 1960s, Scott Paper (then the leader) simply resigned itself to second place without a fight and began looking for ways to diversify. 'The company had a meeting for analysts in 1971 that was one of the most depressing I’ve ever attended,' said one analyst. 'Management essentially threw in the towel and said, "We’ve been had."' The once-proud company began to look at its competition and say, 'Here’s how we stack up against the best,' and sigh, 'Oh, well … at least there are people in the business worse than we are.' Instead of figuring out how to get back on the offensive and win, Scott just tried to protect what it had. Conceding the top end of the market to P&G, Scott hoped that, by hiding away in the B category, it would be left alone by the big monster that had invaded its turf.
"Kimberly-Clark, on the other hand, viewed competing against Procter & Gamble not as a liability, but as an asset. Darwin Smith and his team felt exhilarated by the idea of going up against the best, seeing it as an opportunity to make Kimberly-Clark better and stronger. They also viewed it as a way to stimulate the competitive juices of Kimberly people at all levels. At one internal gathering, Darwin Smith stood up and started his talk by saying, 'Okay, I want everyone to rise in a moment of silence.' Everyone looked around, wondering what Darwin was up to. Did someone die? And so, after a moment of confusion, they all stood up and stared at their shoes in reverent silence. After an appropriate pause, Smith looked out at the group and said in a somber tone, 'That was a moment of silence for P&G.'
"The place went bananas. Blair White, a director who witnessed the incident, said, 'He had everyone wound up in this thing, all up and down the company, right down to the plant floor. We were taking on Goliath!' Later, Wayne Sanders (Smith’s successor) described to us the incredible benefit of competing against the best: 'Could we have a better adversary than P&G? Not a chance. I say that because we respect them so much. They are bigger than we are. They are very talented. They are great at marketing. They beat the hell out of every one of their competitors, except one, Kimberly-Clark. That is one of the things that makes us so proud.'"
...
"Robert Aders of Kroger summed this up nicely at the end of his interview, describing the psychology of the Kroger team as it faced the daunting twenty-year task of methodically turning over the entire Kroger system. 'There was a certain Churchillian character to what we were doing. We had a very strong will to live, the sense that we are Kroger, Kroger was here before and will be here long after we are gone, and, by god, we are going to win this thing. It might take us a hundred years, but we will persist for a hundred years, if that’s what it takes.'" (Collins, Good to Great, 80-81)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteTom Monaghan, founder of Domino's Pizza, describes an episode from the early years of his company in his autobiography, Pizza Tiger. "I'll never forget the meeting of the Ann Arbor President's Club in 1980 at which members were asked to state the five-year goals for their organizations. I stood up and said mine was to make Domino's Pizza a household word in America. Eyebrows shot up like window shades all around the room. I heard loud groans of protest and a few snickers. I couldn't blame the members for being skeptical. Most of them knew that Domino's, with 290 stores, was pretty small change in the franchising field. And several in the group were aware of the massive business problems I'd had in the past. A few also knew that we had just lost a lawsuit brought by Amstar Corporation to protect its Domino Sugar trademark. Even though we were appealing the decision, it seemed certain that we were going to have to pour a lot of money into changing our company's name and that confusion of corporate identity and consequent loss of revenue undoubtedly would follow. After the meeting, one of the members came up to me and said, 'A household word, eh? You've got to be kidding, Monaghan.'
"'No,' I replied, 'I'm not kidding. We're going to continue growing at a rate of forty to fifty percent a year, just as we are now. That means we'll have at least two thousand stores by 1985, and we'll be a truly national company with nationwide recognition.'"
We did maintain that rate of growth during the next five years. Furthermore, we exceeded our projections for new stores and our per-unit sales volume grew every year. Our profits have been growing faster than our sales, and an independent survey shows in 1985 fully 90 percent of the people in the United States recognized the name Domino's Pizza." (Monaghan, Pizza Tiger, pp. 5-6)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It's Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy, Captain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S. Navy emphasizes both the difficulty and the necessity of original thinking and bold risk-taking with even the most hierarchical organizations. "Many people consider going out on a limb a sure way to endanger your career, but this conventional wisdom is no way for an organization to stay alive and strong. Organizations should reward risk-takers, even if they fall short once in a while. Let them know that promotions and glory go to innovators and pioneers, not to stand-patters who fear controversy and avoid trying to improve anything. To me, that’s the key to keeping an organization young, vital, growing, and successful. Stasis is death to any organization. Evolve or die: It’s the law of life. Rules that made sense when they were written may well be obsolete. Make them extinct, too." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, p.9)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It's Your Ship, Captain Michael Abrashoff describes how he strived to cultivate the virtue of magnanimity amongst his whole crew. "Once a year, all Navy ships undergo a thorough assessment, in which outside inspectors validate the ship’s readiness. The ship as a whole and the crew’s abilities and proficiencies are rated in twenty-four categories, on a scale ranging from basic Level One to advanced Level Four.
"The purpose is to determine how much additional training the crew needs to be ready for combat. But if you assume that the higher a ship’s level, the less time it would spend training at sea, you would be wrong. In fact, regardless of its readiness rating, every ship spends the next six months training at sea.
"Thus there was no incentive to reach Level Four, and in fact, no ship ever did. Level One was the required minimum, and that was usually considered good enough.
"Then Benfold came along.
"Originally, my goal was to reach an overall rating of Level Two, but when I recognized the enormous potential of my crew, I raised the bar to Level Three, much to the chagrin of those who saw it as a quantum leap in their labor and my hubris.
"I must also admit that, in addition to my noble motive of making the ship as good as it could be, I wanted to blow my archrival out of the water. Their assessment was scheduled to begin the week following ours. My rival’s strategy was to do little and attain basic Level One. The CO had no idea that we were laying the groundwork to shake things up a little. In fact, we were about to rock his world.
"Our first challenge was finding enough senior people to supervise the twenty-four areas of testing. My combat systems officer hit me with the unexpected news that we had only twenty qualified people who were not involved in other critical operations.
"Thinking fast, I said, 'Fine—pick supervisors from the next group down. You don’t always need a senior person in charge. It could be a young, third-class petty officer.'
"'That’s never been done before,' he said.
"'See what they can do,' I said. 'The alternative is to do nothing, right? Let’s assign senior people to the most demanding areas and work our way down to the junior ones. If we don’t get Level Three in some categories, so what? We will get Level One or Two. We have nothing to lose.'
"As it turned out, the third- and second-class petty officers were so honored to be chosen that they worked hard enough for several of their teams to outshine those supervised by senior people. The search-and-seizure team was particularly impressive. We assigned it to one of the ship’s most junior sailors because we suspected he had the ability to honcho it. The outside inspectors protested, saying they could not validate the work of an important team that wasn’t headed by a commissioned officer. But I insisted, and the young sailor did such a fantastic job that the inspectors ate their words and placed us at Level Four in that category." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, pp. 185-87)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It's Your Ship, Captain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S.S. Benfold reflects on the pursuit of excellence. "If you decide to go the Benfold route in your own organization, be warned: By doing new and innovative things, you may create jealousy and animosity. Try to be sensitive to that.
"On the other hand, don’t pull your punches just to avoid hurting your colleagues’ feelings. Getting an entire group to excel is worth any number of offended peers. Maybe it is best simply to accept the fact that excellence upsets some people. It always has and always will. Live with it." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, ch. 13)
In her book, The Paperboy, Mackenzie Busch, daughter of entrepreneur-philanthropist Timothy Busch, recounts a conversation with her mother that highlights the true nature of magnanimity. "'Would you say Dad is a dreamer?' I asked Mom one day over lunch.
ReplyDelete"Mom thought about it and said, 'Dad thinks big. But he’s not a dreamer.'
"'Why would you say that?'
"'Well,' she explained, 'Tim is very much a visionary, a goal setter, a planner, an organizer, and a doer. But I hesitate to say he’s a dreamer. He does dream big and has big goals, but he acts on them. They never dissipate, and that’s the end of it.'" (Busch, The Paperboy, ch. 6)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, More Than a Hobby, Hobby Lobby founder David Green reflects on the centrality of magnanimity to his own way of doing business. "I love the fact that retailing is very competitive. I never got the chance to play sports in school, but the retail world is as competitive as any football league.
"Every new year sees huge retail companies fall, despite their high-priced consultants and sophisticated marketing research. Retailing is difficult—that’s what makes it exciting for me.
"In 2001 we started a new spin-off company, a high-end home furnishings store called Hemispheres. Besides sofas and tables, we carry framed art, Oriental rugs, and row upon row of mirrors and lamps. For the outdoors, we provide patio furniture, fountains, and large planters—all at value prices. I know that my odds of succeeding with this venture are only one out of ten; 90 percent of start-ups in this field don’t make it. I fully intend to be in the 10 percent! So far we’re losing money, but we’re learning a great deal, and we’re pushing to get the sales volumes up and the margins up. This is my sport.
"What if we in retail had sportscasters doing the play-by-play on our efforts? 'David Green just made a brilliant buy on decorative baskets—but look out, he’s going to mess up in the way he’s pricing them...' Maybe we need to see ourselves under such a spotlight. We need to watch the instant replays and see in living color where we went wrong.
"I want to be the very best competitor I can be. The Bible says, 'Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom' (Ecclesiastes 9:10)."
(David Green, More Than a Hobby, ch. 1)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteHobby Lobby founder David Green explains how he views magnanimity as central to both business practice and Christian living. "Is Hobby Lobby an 'easy place to work?' Not necessarily. Some applicants who are fellow Christians of mine think I’ll be all nice and soft and sloppy in order not to hurt anyone’s feelings. That’s not the case at all. The Bible that I carry says, 'Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men' (Colossians 3:23). If anything, the Christian employee ought to be more diligent than anyone, given this spiritual perspective.
"Dorothy Sayers, the British writer who inspired C. S. Lewis and a number of others, put her finger on the matter when she wrote: The Church’s approach to an intelligent carpenter is usually confined to exhorting him not to be drunk and disorderly in his leisure hours, and to come to church on Sundays. What the Church should be telling him is this: that the very first demand that his religion makes upon him is that he should make good tables. Church [attendance] by all means, and decent forms of amusement, certainly—but what use is all that if in the very center of his life and occupation he is insulting God with bad carpentry? . . . The only Christian work is a good work well done.
"I’m not about to insult God by running a sloppy retail company. I’m determined to do the best job I can. If part of this means telling someone that he or she is not meeting our standards and need to go work somewhere else, I’m quite willing to do so—and have. We want to be the very best workplace for people who are serious about doing a good job. The rest need not apply." (David Green, More Than a Hobby, ch. 11)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Everyone's a Coach, football legend Don Shula explains how he pushed the Miami Dolphins to strive for excellence immediately after taking charge of the team by instituting a regime of no less than four practice sessions per day. "My players couldn't believe what I was asking them to do. There was a lot of moaning and groaning from the guys. 'Four practices a day!' 'This is unheard of.' 'What's he trying to do? Kill us?' But also a few laughs. 'All we're doing is dressing and undressing. What are we, ballplayers or strippers?'
"When we won our first preseason game, there was less complaining. After we'd won a few more preseason games, and the press asked the players the reason for the turnaround, they all attributed it to the hard work we'd done to get ourselves ready to compete. The things they had complained the most about they later credited for the change in the football team. Incidentally, we went on to win ten games that season and were in the Super Bowl the next season.
"What has produced winning football teams for us over the years has been our willingness to create practice systems and procedures that are aligned with our vision of perfection: We want to win them all. Everything I do is to prepare people to perform to the best of their ability. And you do that one day at a time." (Blanchard and Shula, Everyone’s a Coach, p. 19)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Everyone's a Coach, Ken Blanchard discusses co-author and legendary football coach Don Shula's willingness to go beyond the minimum requirements in order to achieve success. "One thing that distinguishes successful from unsuccessful people is that they are willing to go the extra mile - to do what others are not willing to do. Describing Shula's energy and dedication to getting the job done right, longtime friend and former Dolphin assistant coach Monte Clark said 'I think the church he goes to is called Our Lady of Perpetual Motion.'
"The first week before the opening preseason game, Shula insists that all his players bunk together at the training camp. If the players were required to stay overnight at camp, guess who else was required? I had dinner one evening at that time with the Shulas and with Don's daughter, Donna, and her husband, Steve Cohen. After the meal, Don kissed Mary Anne good-bye and dutifully headed off the camp." (Blanchard and Shula, Everyone’s a Coach, p. 58)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Everyone's a Coach, football legend Don Shula explains how he disciplines his players in the practice of "overlearning" in order to achieve true excellence. "Overlearning means that the players are so prepared for a game that they have the skill and confidence they need to make the big play. More than anything else, overlearning - constant practice, constant attention to getting the details right every time - produces hunger to be in the middle of the action. When players have absolutely no doubt about what they're supposed to do or how to do it, they thrive on pressure. If the heat's on, they want it coming their way. If the player is a halfback, he wants the ball. If he's a lineman, he wants to make the important block and tackle. I don't want my defensive halfback praying that the ball is thrown to the other side of the field. I want him to want the ball coming his way.
"That kind of desire to be in the middle of the action was a characteristic of the 1972 championship team. I decided to alternate Mercury Morris and Jim Klick at halfback. I felt that with some teams, Klick should be the man. Whoever didn't play as much on a particular Sunday was always in my office on Monday, complaining about it. They wanted the big play; they wanted to be there. Neither of them wanted to be on the sidelines when there was action on the field.
"Our staff works hard with our players to instill pride in practice performance, giving everything they can in daily practice - the part the crowd and the reporters never see. The concept of practice perfection is difficult for some players to understand. Many times when they go out on the practice field, they're tired or they're beat-up from the previous week's game. There I am, asking them to pick up the tempo, be on top of their play mentally and physically, be sharp in their practice execution. Sometimes these players would rather take the easy way. Like kids, they complain that 'none of the other teams practice this hard' or 'other teams don't wear pads this often in their practices.' Right! Those are usually the teams who have disappointing seasons." (Blanchard and Shula, Everyone’s a Coach, pp. 74-75)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People, Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy explains the importance of striving towards magnanimity. "To continue making a positive impact on the people around us, we must avoid complacency in all aspects of our lives. The dictionary defines complacency as 'self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.' Too often we see people who are satisfied with mediocre performance and minor achievements. They look next door and see that they are doing as well as their neighbor. At work their accomplishments rank right up with the national average.
"But look at what it means to be average. You are the worst of the best and the best of the worst. You're not achieving anything unusual, choosing instead to go with the flow. When we do less than our best, we become discontent and 'burned out.' Occasionally, I will have an Operator offer to terminate the franchise agreement with the explanation, 'I'm just burned out on the restaurant business.'
"'Are you performing at your best?' I ask.
"'Not all the time,' comes the invariable answer.
"It is when we stop doing our best work that our enthusiasm for the job wanes. We must motivate ourselves to do our very best, and by our example lead others to do their best as well." (Cathy, Eat Mor Chikin, pp. 161-62)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his autobiography, Beyond the Norm, former Interstate Batteries CEO Norman Miller reflects on the virtue of magnanimity. "As I've thought about mediocrity versus excellence, I am reminded of how I developed my philosophy about this and how I sought to transmit this in a motivational sort of way to our people at Interstate, especially in the earlier days when I was seeking good people with long-term potential.
"I remember thinking, Well, everyone had to work. Very few people have the financial means to not have to work to earn a living and make their way through life. So you begin with the fact that there are a certain number of givens in life that we are required to do. Work is one of them.
"You begin with the basics - getting up in the morning and making yourself presentable so you are 'workable.' Then, once at work, you have to do sufficient activities to maintain your job. So when I added all that up, I could see that those are the 'fixed costs,' as it were, and that everyone has a basic fixed cost that they have to pay in order to earn a living.
"The issue then becomes: What percentage of performance do you think people have to make in order to keep their jobs? So when I'd talk to our people, I'd ask them, 'What do you want out of life?' The answer was uniformly similar - everyone wants success, happiness, and some fun in life too. They also want to do a good job.
"Then I asked them: 'If we figured that 100 percent is excellent, what percentage do you think you have to do to keep a good job?' Most everyone responded with between 70 and 85 percent. So let's say that 75 percent is what you have to perform in order to just keep your job. The issue then becomes: What's excellent?
"Excellence, let's say, is 90 percent, give or take a few percentage points. So the difference between being excellent or mediocre - just getting by in a job - can be as little as 15 percent. So if you add that to your daily goals, achieving excellence means you only need to crank up your efforts, crank up your commitment, and if you want to, crank up your time by that 15 percentage points.
"What is a 15 percent to a forty-hour workweek? It's only six hours. An hour and fifteen minutes a day can mean coming in twenty minutes early, leaving twenty minutes late, and only taking a half hour for lunch. And in my book that can be the difference between excellence and mediocrity. Not too big a price to pay." (Miller, Beyond the Norm, pp. 81-82, edited slightly)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteFor EWTN founder Mother Angelica, the desire to serve God and remain attentive to His inspirations was the driving force behind her willingness to take on ever larger projects and challenges. “She chased inspirations the way lesser mortals pursue fame, titles and riches,” explains biographer Raymond Arroyo. “Inspiration was Mother Angelica’s lifeblood, the fleeting elixir that fed her vision and fueled her actions.”
One such inspiration that Angelica pursued in the early ‘90s was founding a global radio network affiliated with EWTN. “The shortwave radio inspiration made no sense – not to Mother Angelica. Or to any of her intimates. So she prayed over the thing, tending it like a grapevine in her grandfather’s backyard vineyard, straining for the light to see what was required of her.
…
“In the monastery parlor, feeling her way through the haze of her latest prompting, Mother told [associate] Bill Steltemeier, ‘The Lord said, ‘Go to Rome.’”
“‘Why?’ Steltemeier asked.
“‘I’m not sure.’
“‘Well, He’s talking to you, not me. Just pray,’ Steltemeier advised. Steltemeier could put flesh on an inspiration, but Mother had to birth it first. She returned to praying.
“The following day, Angelica called a VP meeting in the network conference room. Like Moses coming down from Sinai, it was a solemn moment. ‘The Lord spoke to me last night and I saw the world,’ Mother began. ‘And He said, “Angelica, I’ve trusted you with the small things; now I want you to do something big.”’
“‘Talk about humility: small things? These were the biggest things I had done in my life,’ [VP] Matt Scalici said, tears welling up in his eyes. ‘That’s when she revealed her idea for radio. The United States wasn’t our only market. Catholicism was aching to be released in other parts of the world, she said.’”
“‘In blind obedience,’ the VPs accepted Angelica’s vision, though none really understood or endorsed the project. Worse, they had qualms about its necessity. But Mother Angelica would not be deterred. No matter how cloudy the marching orders, she was obliged to fulfill them. It was not a question of whether the shortwave operation would be built, but when and how.” (217-218)
Ultimately, the WEWN radio network would be a great success, spreading the Gospel to audiences worldwide. (Arroyo, Mother Angelica)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, Thinking Outside the Box: The Wine Group Story, Arthur Ciocca, founder of Wine Group, Inc., describes how committed himself to directly buying his company from Coke-NY, despite the financial risks and difficulties involved. “The company was put on the block without my knowledge. When news that it was for sale reached our organization and threatened to undermine the morale of our people, my own personal integrity and everything we had built to date, I was outraged!
“I had two choices. I could sit quietly and preside over the demise of our organization as rumors devastated morale and crumbled our outfit, or I could become part of the solution.
“Before I knew it, I was on the next plane to New York for a confrontation with the Coke-NY board. It was February, 1981.
“I told them that word had leaked out to the industry, spirits were low because our people felt betrayed and there was a good chance this could result in management defections and important losses of trade support. I described the compromising position it put me in and implored them to involve me in the sale process so that I could manage my organization and our customers.
“Some directors were sympathetic, others were not. At one point, one of them suggested that wine was a lousy business and they should cut their losses and get out fast, irrespective of the fallout. I was dumbfounded but determined to make my point. From out of nowhere and without an ounce of preparation, I said, ‘This is a damned good business and a superb company and if you can’t appreciate that, sell it to me. I’ll buy it.’
“That stopped everyone in their tracks, especially me. On one hand, it was an empty offer because I had no money to back it up. On the other hand, they didn’t know that and there was absolutely nothing empty about my conviction.
“I can’t remember how the meeting ended, but they took me seriously enough to invite me to become part of the sale process so I could help better manage it. The full impact of my action started to become clear. I was charged with my responsibilities as CEO of The Wine Group to assist with the sale of the company at the same time as I announced a conflicting plan to lead my own, not exactly friendly, takeover effort which no one said I couldn’t do. Some directors even supported it (probably to see if there was actually any substance behind my words.)
“As my plane raced back to San Francisco, my mind raced even faster. There was no turning around and no backing down. I had absolutely nothing to lose by testing the art of the possible. If I could raise some money and get lucky, I could save the company. If not, it would probably be sold to a large conglomerate that would integrate the brands and assets and dismantle the organization in the name of synergy. It was Do or Die!” In the end, Ciocca successfully bought out the Wine Group. (Ciocca, Thinking Outside the Box, pp. 51-52)
Case Study
ReplyDelete“Too many new employees seem to think that their job is simply to do what they are told. Of course there are times when it is wise and prudent to keep silent, but, as a rule, it pays to express your point of view whenever you can contribute something. The quiet, timorous individual who says nothing is usually credited with having said nothing.” (King, The Unwritten Laws of Business, 13)
Advice
ReplyDelete“Too much preoccupation with the pursuit of security is apt to lead to greater danger and insecurity. In a competitive world you must take chances – bold and courageous chances – or else others will, and they will win out just often enough to keep you running, all out of breath, trying to catch up. So it behooves you as a manager to undertake stiff business development programs, thereby setting a high mark, and then working aggressively to meet it.” (King, The Unwritten Laws of Business, 52-53)