Many people were enraged this week when “Kenny Boy” Lay died of a heart attack, thus opening the possibility that both the shareholder class action and SEC lawsuit against Enron could be derailed.
Because Lay died before sentencing, his conviction will probably be erased on the basis that he did not have a chance to appeal, a strange quirk in US law. Since his criminal conviction will be reversed, some pundits have predicted problems ahead with the civil suits.
Less dramatically but along the same moral pathway, it amazes me how many times bad guys in technology finish first. I can think of half a dozen such specimens in my local area, not to mention certain prominent national and international examples.
Logic tells me that this is probably a truth in other industries as well. Still, technology tends to create leaders by ignoring bad work habits that would derail a candidate on the fast track to management in other professions.
These include an inability to plan, poor communications skills and a lack of complete procedural follow-on.
These sound pretty basic, don’t they? Having observed this for years, I’ve concluded that these qualities of a good manager do stem from something very basic, indeed: character. Respect for other people, self-discipline, humility, patience are among the virtues we consider evidence of good character.
Instead, more often, we see the opposite in technology managers: individuals with a narrow world view, limited life experience and lacking a good general business background.
These personal flaws do eventually cause problems, sometimes major ones, for companies, but rapid growth often hides the symptoms. Too often, heads of organizations opt for young and cheap, not realizing that the legacy of inexperience can last a very long time.
This does create challenges when you need to look for a new gig, which is the position I find myself in now. It’s a truism, you can find a great barrel of apples, but one rotten one can spoil the bunch.
If you can innoculate yourself, you’ll probably be okay. More often than not, though, it’s someone in a position to mess up your life who’s the carrier of Botryosphaeria. Or, as almost a dozen workers in the John Hancock tower recently learned to their chagrin, measles.
This is not to say that all technology managers are unprofessional. I’ve met some very good ones, in fact, but they tend to be the exception, and sometimes they get moved up and even out of companies.
That’s really sad, because it’s pretty easy to advance your career by managing “up” – most Americans are terrified of authority and eager to please. The trick is, to manage “down”.