It’s hard to be a
fan of an executive in the same way we look at top performers like Brian
Williams, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick.
But once in a
while an instructive juxtaposition of events illustrates for us some important
issues of high-level leadership.
This week NBC
news anchor Brian Williams is on a very hot seat as NBC investigates
allegations that Williams falsely lionized himself in his reports on events
during his visits to battlefronts. There is a chorus of demands that he resign.
Williams anchors
the NBC Nightly News, the top-rated evening news program on American
television.
Last week, it was
Brady and Belichick of the New England Patriots being boiled in widespread
condemnation, accused as cheaters seeking unfair advantage in alleged deflation
of footballs. Even Brady’s idol, San Francisco Hall of Famer Joe Montana,
jumped on.
While the public
figures have been getting a lot of attention in both situations, it is
worthwhile for us project managers to consider the history and behavior of their
employers. In our project work, the proper functioning of the senior manager
relationship is vital to success.
What do we know
about that in the NBC and Patriots situations?
Robert Kraft
bought the team in 1996, and had unhappy experiences with two head coaches
before he brought Belichick in for the 2000 season. Brady was a sixth-round
pick by Belichick in the draft that year, and became the starting quarterback early
in the 2001 season.
Belichick and
Brady won their first Super Bowl right away, and their fourth last week.
It hasn’t been an
entirely smooth ride. Belichick generally is a grim, fanatical dictator. Brady
is handsome, rich and – by all accounts – unbelievably disciplined. The two of
them are intensely beloved by New England football fans. We are told the rest
of the country hates the Patriots with equal fervor.
Kraft himself is
somewhat unusual in his public prominence, and is often visible in the media.
He is widely seen
as extremely influential in the high councils of the National Football League.
His organization financed a new stadium that is the centerpiece of a huge
entertainment and commercial mall in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
The general negativity toward the
Patriots was immeasurably heightened in 2007 when the team was punished for
videotaping defensive signals being sent from the bench of the New York Jets.
Belichick personally paid a $500,000 fine. The team was fined $250,000 and lost
a first-round draft pick.
So critics were
instantly disposed to believe the Patriots were tampering with footballs in a game
this season against the Indianapolis Colts, after the Colts asked the league to
investigate. As one Indianapolis columnist wrote, “Cheaters cheat.”
The league waited
a few days, then confirmed it was investigating. At this writing, the probe
continues, still without further word. But additional information, apparently
credible, has surfaced.
The entire matter
is now largely seen as having been based on falsehoods and assumptions – but
that is not the point here.
Nor is the point
what Belichick and Brady did, which is to hold two press conferences each. In both, Brady professed ignorance as to what
happens to balls before and during any game, other than the allowable
breaking-in that he does.
Belichick, in his first appearance,
reported that he knew considerably less than Brady, having had nothing to do
with footballs in his 40-some years in the industry.
There was widespread
disbelief in much of the country.
Then two things happened. One was that Belichick took a couple
of days off from preparation for the imminent Super Bowl to do extensive
experimentation with football inflation in various circumstances. In a second
press conference, he reported that noticeable pressure changes indeed take
place without human manipulation.
The other,
perhaps determinative, event bears directly on the point of this commentary.
It was two days
after Belichick’s second press conference and at the start of Super Bowl week
when Bob Kraft, the owner of the Patriots, arrived in Arizona. He was loaded
for bear.
Kraft called his
own press conference. He added no new information, but he unequivocally came
out for Belichick and Brady. He placed his own considerable prestige behind
them, and blasted the National Football League for allowing the situation to
drag along, fueled by leaks, rumors and speculation.
He demanded an
NFL apology to Belichick and Brady, in his certainty that the flap would be
dissolved by the truth. He said that his close private relationships with the
two often had their sharp edges, but he totally endorsed their integrity.
As public
attention shifted more to the upcoming game, the negativity seemed to thin
somewhat. Then the Patriots won what some say was the most exciting Super Bowl
game in the event’s 49-year history.
The
matter of Williams and NBC was entirely different, although
the Nightly News – like the Patriots -- has consistently been at the top of its
field.
The most glaring
differences are in the ongoing conduct of Brian Williams and of the senior
management of NBC, and in what has happened since the accusations against
Williams could no longer be ignored.
The Associated
Press reported Thursday that NBC News President Deborah Turness had initiated
an investigation after Williams publicly apologized for falsely saying on the
air that he was in a helicopter hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in
2003.
Over that decade,
the story as told by Williams, morphed in successive steps away from the truth.
Apparently, Williams actually had showed up some time after a helicopter – not his
– was hit.
The AP reported
that suspicions have also been raised about Williams’ reports from Hurricane
Katrina that he saw a body float by his hotel. Others on the scene said the
body sighting was blocks away, and involved people other than Williams.
In short, the
claim is that a third-person story became a first-person account centered on
Williams himself.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd
wrote Friday, “NBC executives were warned a year ago that Brian Williams was
constantly inflating his biography. . .
But the caustic media big shots who once roamed the land were gone, and
‘there was no one around to pull his chain when he got too over-the-top,’ as
one NBC News reporter put it.”
There are other
reports that Williams’ self-aggrandizement has been the butt of ridicule in the
news division for some time.
“With no pushback from the brass at
NBC, Williams has spent years fervently “courting celebrity’,” Dowd wrote in
quoting The Hollywood Reporter.
Another
difference in the NBC case is that Tom Brokaw, Williams’ well respected
predecessor as Nightly News anchor, declined to join the chorus – unlike Joe
Montana in the case of Tom Brady.
The AP reported
that Brokaw had denied a report that he has suggested Williams be dismissed.
“Brian’s future will be decided by him and the executives of NBC News,” Brokaw
said.
Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots
and Deborah Turness of NBC News. Both in powerful positions in media
environments.
One executive is intimately
knowledgeable about what’s going on, and exercises strong influence in the
organization. He is supremely confident in proclaiming a total endorsement of
his key employees.
The other
executive apparently has been isolated from the culture surrounding her most
important asset. She has been either unaware of this major flaw in Williams’
professional make-up, or unwilling to accept responsibility for doing anything
about it. From all reports, the anchor was essentially free of management
oversight.
Hey, the guy has
been on the air doing this stuff for a decade . . . and now you’re summoning up
an investigation about it?
In regard to
Robert Kraft: He is not an uncritical acolyte of Belichick or any other head
coach. He didn’t become a successful business executive without developing some
pretty strong convictions.
Early in his tenure with the Patriots, he
battled with the feisty Bill Parcells, the head coach he inherited when he took
over the franchise. Then he fired Pete Carroll, Parcells’ successor, after
three years.
We can assume
that he and Belichick (who himself had been fired a few years earlier by the
Cleveland Browns) had some mature discussions about relationships as well as
team management before they joined forces.
Too often, I have
detected a certain tone of dissatisfaction in my colleagues’ attitudes, colored
with a sense of helplessness. Too many of us do the “yessir” thing. Too many of
us suffer through distrust in such relationships.
My own
conventional management career, spanning several decades, was often distorted
by suspicion, lack of communication and great gulfs of unaddressed
disagreement.
Today, I believe
that project managers must be proactive in establishing and maintaining fully
functional lines of communication and structures of collaboration with our
superiors. Sure, it’s up to them to take the lead, but it’s up to us to make
sure it happens no matter what they do.
This doesn’t
always work out in my connections with the people I work for. When it doesn’t,
the shortfall is an important risk factor, and the conduct of the work must
take that into consideration. That’s my responsibility.
Kraft, Belichick
and Brady seem to see it that way. Turness and Williams don’t appear to have
done so. Pick your model.
SEE ALSO:
Authority, Responsibility, Management
http://jimmillikenproject.blogspot.com/2012/01/authority-responsibility-project.html
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