Firing Back after Failure as a Top Level Executive

I am collecting thoughts of various management professionals and professors. To do that, I am presently going through Harvard Business Review of various months. I started with June 2008 and I came down up to January 2007.

Some of the articles in the review need to be studied more deeply so that I can keep them in memory for a longer period and hope that I can recollect them in times of need.

"Firing back" by Sonnenfeld, Jeffrey A., Ward, Andrew J., (HBR Jan 2007) is one such article.

The article advocates that senior managers need to have the ability to adjust quickly to a failure and get back to the work.

Examples of persons who fired back

Jamie Dimon, who was fired as president of Citigroup but now is CEO of JPMorgan Chase. Vanguard founder Jack Bogle, was removed from his position as president of Wellington Management but then went on to create the index fund and become a leading voice for governance reform. Similarly, there's former Coca-Cola president Steve Heyer, who was surprisingly passed over for the CEO position at Coke but then was quickly named head of Starwood Hotels. Most colorful, perhaps, is Donald Trump, who recovered from two rounds of financial distress in his casino businesses and is admired today both as a hugely successful estate developer and as a producer and star of popular reality TV shows.

The authors said, that in their research that analyzed more than 450 CEO successions between 1988 and 1992 at large, publicly traded companies -- they found that only 35% of ousted CEOs returned to an active executive role within two years of departure; 22% stepped back and took only advisory roles, generally counseling smaller organizations or sitting on boards. But 43% effectively ended their careers and went into retirement.

At the highest level they quoted the journey of President Jimmy Carter. After his devastating 1980 reelection loss to Ronald Reagan, Carter was emotionally fatigued. As he told us sometime later, "I returned to Plains, Georgia, completely exhausted, slept for almost 24 hours, and then awoke to an altogether new, unwanted, and potentially empty life." While proud of his achievements -- his success in deregulating energy, for example, his efforts to promote global human rights, and his ability to broker peace between Israel and Egypt through the Camp David Accords -- postelection, Carter needed to move past his sense of frustration and rejection, particularly his failure to secure the timely release of the American hostages in Iran.

Despite his pain and humiliation, Carter did not retreat into anger or self-pity. He realized that his global prominence gave him a forum to fight to restore his influential role in world events. Accordingly, he recruited others into battle by enlisting the enthusiastic support of his wife, Rosalynn; several members of his administration; academic researchers in the sciences and social sciences; world leaders; and financial backers to build the Carter Center. He proved his mettle by refusing to remove himself from the fray. Indeed, he continued to involve himself in international conflict mediation in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Liberia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Venezuela, demonstrating in the process that he was not a has-been. He regained his heroic stature when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." And he has rediscovered his heroic mission by using the Carter Center to continue his drive to advance human rights and alleviate needless suffering.

Another example is that of Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus. Marcus decided to sidestep the quicksand of litigation against Sandy Sigoloff, the conglomerateur who fired Marcus from Handy Dan Home Improvement. Marcus made his battleground the marketplace rather than the courtroom. Thanks to this strategy, he was free to set the historic course for the Home Depot, which now under his successor is approaching $100 billion in sales, with several hundred thousand employees.

Showing mettle is not easy. Fallen leaders face many barriers on the path to recovery, not least of which are doubts in their own ability to get back to the top. As one fired CEO told us, "I'd never sit here and say, 'Geez, all I have to do is just replicate and do it again.' The chances of doing it again are pretty small." Yet leaders who rebound are unfailingly those who get over this doubt about their ability to do it again. Even when forced from familiar arenas into totally new fields, some leaders remain unafraid of trying new ventures. This capacity to bounce back from adversity -- to prove your inner strength once more by overcoming your shattered confidence -- is critical to earning lasting greatness.

Most great leaders want to build a legacy that will last beyond their lifetime. This does not mean having their names etched on an ivy-clad university ediface but rather advancing society by building and leading an organization. This is what we call the leader's heroic mission.

It is the single-minded, passionate pursuit of a heroic mission that sets leaders like Jimmy Carter apart from the general population, and it is what attracts and motivates followers to join them.

Concluding statement of the authors

Whatever the arena in which your recovery takes shape, the important thing to remember is that we all have choices in life, even in defeat. We can lose our health, our loved ones, our jobs, but much can be saved. No one can truly define success and failure for us -- only we can define that for ourselves. No one can take away our dignity unless we surrender it. No one can take away our hope and pride unless we relinquish them. No one can steal our creativity, imagination, and skills unless we stop thinking. No one can stop us from rebounding unless we give up.

The Indian context:

Recent examples in Indian context are Indira Gandhi and L K Advani. She came to power after a massive defeat.

Advani was forced to step down as president of Bharatiya Janata Party. Many of his close associates criticized him. But Advani took things more calmly and continued his work and today his is the candidate for prime ministership if NDA comes to power.
There will be more such examples in parliamentary democracy where leaders have to accept failure and move ahead.



http://collection-mgmt-thoughts.blogspot.com/2008/07/ability-to-transcend-lifes-adversity.html