Schumpeter | The last 90 days

摘要

Business leaders are obsessed with how to begin new assignments. One of the bestselling business books of all time is "The First 90 Days", by Michael Watkins, which provides a template for newly appointed managers to start with a bang. When Mitt Romney, a private-equity tycoon, ran for the American presidency in 2012 he had a 200-day action plan for turning round the free world, replete with floor plans and flow diagrams. Far less thought has gone into how bosses should leave successfully. Lord Browne, who ran bp for 12 years, wrote in his memoirs that, as he pondered retirement from the oil giant: "My emotional self prevailed over reason. I did not know how to leave." Niccolo Machiavelli bungled his exit from the government of 16th-century Florence. "I am rotting away," he said after being fired. He went on to write a masterpiece on manipulation. But "The Prince" mainly dwells on how to acquire and retain power, not how to relinquish it. To fill the void, Schumpeter has drafted six rules to govern bosses' departures.