Selected items of interest to the media community
• Seven Habits of Spectactularly Unsusseful Executives
January 15, 2012
Eric Jackson, a contributor to Forbes.com recently reprised a column from Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College about “Why Smart Executives Fail.”
Jackson says that these traits for failure just don’t lie in the past but are typical of current failures too; they should be cautionary tales for executives in currently unbeatable firms like Apple, Google and Amazon.com. Here are the habits, as Finkelstein described in a 2004 article.
1. They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment
2. They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests
3. They think they have all the answers
4. They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them
5. They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image
6. They underestimate obstacles
7. They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past