Autocratic approach is not as popular as feelgood style of management – but it is more effective, writes LUCY KELLAWAY
ON SATURDAY, the Financial Timespublished a list of the top 50 women chief executives in the world and, loving such lists, I settled down over breakfast to study it. First, I admired the double string of pearls worn by the chief executive of Avon; the pearly white teeth of the Sara Lee chief and the spookily perfect skin of Yoshiko Shinohara, founder of Tempstaff in Japan, who looks younger than I do but turns out to be 74.
Next I read the secrets of their success. The number one woman, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, says you must work hard and have fun. Irene Rosenfeld of Kraft says you must follow your passion. The others talk about the importance of having a mentor, being yourself, work-life balance, teamwork and of being humble.
Reading this, I felt I was sinking into a low-slung foam chair from which I couldn’t get out. It wasn’t that there was anything in particular to disagree with. It was that these women, who have all achieved exceptional things, mindlessly repeat the caring, sharing views every modern chief executive – male and female – is required to have.
There was only one discordant note. This was sounded by Dong Mingzhu, who runs a Chinese manufacturer of air conditioners and is rated the world’s ninth most important businesswoman. “I never miss,” she says. “I never admit mistakes and I am always correct.”
I read this and laughed. It was so bracing, so shocking, so out of line that I thought it a joke. This is the management equivalent of saying one is into incest or has a lot of respect for paedophiles. Yet Sister Dong, as she is sometimes known, has achieved results. Gree Electric Appliances has achieved total shareholder returns in the past three years of 529.5 per cent.
Compare this with Avon, say, where Andrea Jung boasts that her biggest inspiration is the six million strong sales force. Alas, it seems that listening to six million ideas may have distracted her from the bottom line. Her return over the same period is -10.5 per cent.
One might argue that the Sister Dong never-wrong school of management is something that only works in China, where the fondness for autocracy is considerable and theory of management is still about making money and hasn't evolved to include such soppy practices as mentoring or 360-degree feedback. Yet last week I went to see The September Issue, a documentary about life at American Vogue, and can confirm that the Sister Dong never-wrong approach can work quite brilliantly in the most highly evolved and most competitive of industries: fashion.
Anna Wintour, the magazine’s editor, is Sister Dong’s Manhattan soulmate. In the course of the film, one of her staff comments that working for the magazine is “like belonging to a church”. Does that mean Wintour is the high priestess, she is asked. “No,” she replies. “More like the pope.”
For 90 minutes, we see a not very personable, deeply repressed woman who never praises anyone and hardly ever smiles, getting into or out of chauffeur-driven cars and telling her underlings their work is ugly or boring. Yet for 20 years, this woman has hung on at the top of her business, while most chief executives – male and female – last four or five years before they are spat out or squashed. Alas, Wintour did nothing as vulgar in the film as to reflect on her own success as a dictator. So I’m going to attempt to do it for her and explain how a tyrant can rule in the West.
Step one. Have a genius as number two who dares to purse their lips disapprovingly when you get out of line. Wintour’s greatest asset is Grace Coddington, her flame-haired creative director, who has lasted 20 years too.
Step two. Make decisions. Most chief executives consult, dither, look over their shoulders, fret about upsetting people and change their minds. Wintour simply decides. And when she’s decided, that’s it.
Step three. Command respect. Watching the film makes one realise what an enormous deal respect is and how it is not won by being nicey-nicey. One luckless underling who had been given a frosty bollocking said to the camera: “I am going to kill myself.” But the next time we saw her she was alive and had redoubled her efforts to do better. Praise, it seems, is far less effective as a motivational tool than the desire to please the pope.
Step four. Be right. Like Dong, Wintour thinks she is never wrong. But in Wintour’s case, the extraordinary thing is that she almost never is wrong. Partly this is because she is very clever, very experienced, very hard-working, and minds more than seems reasonable. But it is also because she has been so right for so long that she is now right by definition. If Anna says fur is in, it’s in. If she says Sienna Miller’s hair is lacklustre, then it’s lacklustre.
Pulling off the same feat with air conditioning must be harder. For Dong, and for the other CEOs who run complicated, global businesses, it is hard to tell if they are wrong or not. And in the meantime they have a choice. Either rule by fear – which still works in China and in fashion – or rule by banging on about passion and mentors and hoping that if you are wrong, no one will notice. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009)
