Viewpoint -- All The Lessons Fit To Learn

Dec. 21, 2004

Even if you do not read the New York Times, its management failures are instructive.

In a time when several of the mighty have fallen -- think Enron, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen and Martha Stewart -- there has always been the New York Times. It has been the nation's newspaper of record, the unequaled chronicler of events, the responsible first drafter of history. It has been all these and more -- until recently. Now the New York Times itself must be questioned. Specifically the management of the New York Times must be questioned. How was a young reporter able to misrepresent himself and his work product for so long? Why weren't the "red flags" that some editorial staffers raised taken seriously? Why weren't more red flags raised? Where was senior management? Why wasn't there an immediate and unquestioned sense among management to take responsibility for investigating the allegations of journalistic wrongdoing and to correct both the situation and the record? I have been in journalism for most of my adult life and have been covering business executives and their companies for more than three decades. I have been around long enough to know that the management questions that must be raised about the New York Times also must be raised about other companies. Indeed, executives in manufacturing companies, whether or not the scope of their business is as broad as is the coverage of the New York Times, must ask themselves two pointed questions. First, "Do we have any employees misrepresenting themselves and their work product?" Second, "What must we do to ensure that doesn't happen here?" The first question is a question that only you can answer. The answer to the second question is that you can't be absolutely sure that something similar to what happened at the New York Times won't happen in your company. But you can reduce the chances of it happening by improving communications among management and all other employees, by guarding against management favoritism and arrogance, by encouraging a variety of ideas and not stifling dissent, and by recognizing that in its drive to excel in the marketplace, management will occasionally make a wrong turn. These principles seem so basic to sound business operations; they seem so unnecessary of having to be repeated. But some companies and some executives seem never to learn them and how to apply them. The two senior editors at the New York Times appear to have been among that group. Such failures can not only cost executives their jobs, as happened at the New York Times, but also, contends Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of strategy and leadership at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, set up a business for collapse. Indeed, in a fascinating and powerful new book "Why Smart Executives Fail" (2003, Portfolio) he discusses at length and with lots of real world examples such vital matters as the communication breakdowns that block the flow of urgent information and the leadership characteristics that keep executives from changing their courses of action. What specific things can you do so that you and your company don't become casualties? Here are some suggestions from Finkelstein's book, the subtitle of which appropriately is "And What You Can Learn From Their Mistakes":

Deal with worst practices as well as best practices. People are not to be jumped on for describing what didn't work.
Communicate the lessons learned from mistakes throughout the company from shop floor to the executive offices.
Emphasize critical thinking, innovation and challenging the status quo.

"The name of the game," summarizes Finkelstein, "is to make it as easy as possible for people to count, to be heard, to have a voice." John McClenahen is an IW senior editor based in Washington, D.C.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.