Who is the psychopath or mother superior in your workplace?

In the popular press recently, it’s been suggested that some psychopathic tendencies are helpful in becoming a successful entrepreneur and boss. This prompts some thoughts about other must-have leaders in the ideal management team, for example: Handyman (production), cheer leader (advertising and promotion), bean-counter (numbers and solvency), preacher (sales), mother superior (training and employee well-being) and visionary (business strategy).

With 20:20 hindsight, a business in which I was involved during the nineties and early noughties had most of these, but crucially not all. It did have some vision and direction, a brilliant numbers/solvency-protection wizard, reasonable sales and promotion, and a modicum of employee nurturing. What let it down was variable production efficiency.

For the most part, those involved in production were perfectly capable, well intentioned and committed. But what we lacked was an enforcer; an occasionally slightly psychopathic nutter of whom everyone, management team members included, was a bit scared; someone who didn’t need to be loved by their colleagues.

All successful enterprises need someone with authority who is willing to say, “That just isn’t good enough; please do something about it by tomorrow/next week/next month”…then check whether remedial work has been done and dispense praise or sanctions accordingly. Also for success, other managers need to emulate this example. For those to whom this doesn’t come naturally (most of us?), demonstrating good discipline and insisting on it from subordinates needs to be an explicit element of their job description and training. In contemporary society, it seems that the value of good discipline has slipped down the pecking order in favour of compassion, human rights, and freedom of choice. We mustn’t make this mistake in business.

As it turned out, the business in which I was involved remained solvent throughout, gave good client service fairly consistently, and provided employment for several dozen people over its 13 year existence before its orderly, all-taxes-and-debts-paid, closure. But it never ripped up the tarmac financially, and the component missing from this drag-racer was an enforcer of good discipline and good disciplines. While I don’t pretend the management team line-up above is complete or perfect, I hope you agree that all those roles are essential. To end on two of my favourite clichés*, ‘there are no bad soldiers, just bad generals’; and ‘the fish rots from the head’. [*cliché: a very short distance between two minds].