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Peter Honey

Peter Honey

3 Nov 2011 | 11:21

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I have been reading extracts from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. Jobs, generally credited with being a genius, sounds as if he was the boss from hell. Apparently he had unpredictable mood swings, a propensity for pinching other people’s ideas and claiming them as his own, and an unrelenting drive for perfectionism. I never met him (a narrow escape!) so I have to assume that what Apple employees told Isaacson is a fair reflection of what it was actually like to work with him on a daily basis. At the very least, Jobs was certainly an eccentric and I confess to having a soft spot for managers who are out of the ordinary (see my blog of 1 July 2008, ‘Where have all the eccentrics gone?’

And today I read Sir Jimmy Savile’s obituary; another eccentric bites the dust. Years ago, in his early days as a disc jockey with Radio Luxembourg, I interviewed him for a university magazine. Even then, in 1959, before Top of the Pops and long before Jim’ll Fix It, it was obvious that I was in the presence of an extraordinary man. Even though we had not met before, he treated me like a long lost friend, offered me a cigar, gave flippant answers to absolutely everything, sussed out that my name spelt ‘phoney’, was impossibly hyper-active and, when the interview was over, insisted on dropping me off at my hall of residence in his Rolls Royce.

I have encountered many eccentrics over the years:
• The senior manager who, when frustrated, would feed countless pencils, one after the other, into the jaws of a battery-driven pencil sharpener.
• The HR director who had - just had - to win every argument, however trivial and unnecessary, regardless of the consequences. He once got into an argument about the inventor of the trapless china water closet. He insisted it was Thomas Crapper when in fact it turned out to be Thomas Twyford in 1885 (I just thought you’d like to know, in case it ever comes up in a pub quiz).
• The entrepreneur who used to ban the use of words like ‘strategy’ and ‘vision’ when people couldn’t agree their precise meaning (which was surprisingly often).
• The general manager of a manufacturing plant who roamed the plant at night (he had an unhappy marriage) leaving post-it notes on everything that wasn’t to his liking (most things).

I remember them all rather fondly. Of course, they drove their colleagues mad but to me, an outside consultant who could come and go (especially go), they were a delight. But, bearing in mind these are senior people, often with handsome remuneration packages, and with considerable power to influence things for better or worse, should we turn a blind eye to their eccentricities? On balance, do you think eccentric bosses are harmful or harmless?

Comments

1. At 13:20 on 03 Nov 2011, Julie wrote:

The word that was missing from your blog for me was 'charisma' - the eccentrics for whom I have worked (and currently work) have a magnetism which means that just when you think you might throw in the towel they do or say something which inspires you anew. It can sometimes feel like you are on a rollercoaster and ultimately it may make you feel a bit queasy but it is much more fun than the carousel!
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