The Arsonist (--E-)

What happens if the (E)ntrepreneurial role is performed exclusively, and the other three roles are not? This manager’s efforts would consist entirely of innovating, just charging at any target that appears on his organizational horizon.

This is the type of mismanager I am most familiar with, because I usually work with CEO’s and company founders, who are strong in the (E) role. I call him the Arsonist.

What are the characteristics that typify an Arsonist?

What we do is not important. How we do it is not important either. The Arsonist is concerned with why not. Change. Ideas.

When does the Arsonist come to work? Who knows? When does he leave work? Who knows? When do his subordinates come to work? Before him; by the time he comes to work they’d better be there. When do they leave work? Right after him. I’ve seen vice presidents working for this type of mismanager – it’s seven, eight, nine o’clock at night; there’s nothing to do, but they can’t leave, because if they leave what might happen? The boss might call a meeting: “Drop everything you’re doing. Everybody to the meeting room, right now.”

Do his meetings have an agenda? If they do, nobody knows what it is. And if there is an agenda he violates it anyway, moving from subject to subject at will. Nevertheless, he expects people to be prepared for the meeting.

Luckily for them, who does all the talking in these meetings? He does.

Meanwhile, what do his subordinates do? There is a joke that illustrates their behavior. It is an ethnic joke, but I don’t think it’s in bad taste. I hope I am not offending anyone.

Italians are known as great lovers and for their music and food – but not for their military accomplishments. The smallest book ever written is titled Italian Military Accomplishments. Now, the joke:

It is the First World War. The Italian soldiers are in the trenches, ready to attack. Out of the trenches emerges the captain – in a beautiful blue uniform with red sashes, all the decorations, golden epaulets, hats and feathers. He looks dashing. He pulls out his sword and shouts: “Avaaaaaaantiiiiiii!”

What do the soldiers do? They clap hands and shout: “Bravooooooo!” But nobody gets out of the trenches.

Why? Because an Arsonist doesn’t say, “Attack in this direction!” He says, “Attack in this direction, that direction, that other direction, and that fourth direction.” All simultaneously.

Who usually gets out of the trenches and attacks? Only the people who are new to the organization. Those with some experience know there is no use in getting out of the trenches and attacking. Very soon, the (--E-) will change direction or decide on a new strategy.

So what can the soldiers do? They stay in the trenches and shout “Bravooooooo!” And when they’re asked, “Are you attacking?” their typical answer is “We’re working on it.”

Here is another analogy: Picture an organization as an axle. There is a big wheel at one end (in English, “a big wheel” even has a corporate meaning) and a small wheel at the other end. When the big wheel makes one revolution, the small wheel must turn many times. If the big wheel is an Arsonist, he will frequently change direction while the smaller wheels are still in motion. Eventually the gears of the smaller wheels are stripped and the axle breaks down. The big wheel is left spinning alone.

But the (--E-) does not realize that he himself is responsible for the breakdown. Instead, he thinks, “Somebody must be undermining my efforts.” He becomes paranoid and looks for someone to blame.

Still, the Arsonist is usually very likable, because he is stimulating, enterprising, and full of energy. Working for him can be exciting – until you figure out that no matter what you do the Arsonist will find fault with it, because his priorities are continually changing; before you’ve completed one project, he wants to know why you haven’t made any progress on a new one.

The Arsonist likes chaos: He loves to witness the furor that his initiatives cause. He seeks maximum short-run impact, and he obtains it by generating crises.

Under such managers, projects are always being completed under pressure. The staff is forced to work overtime and crucial details remain in a state of flux right up to the last minute.

Details are the Arsonist’s Achilles heel. The (--E-) tends to ignore details; he works with a big brush on a wide canvas, as if he were looking down from 40,000 feet at a topographical map. For an (--E-), a million is somewhere between 700,000 and a million and a half – while for an (-A--), 999,999 is not the same as a million. You can see why (E)s and (A)s don’t communicate well.

Picture the (--E-) as an eagle, flying thousands of feet over the mountains and seeing the big picture but not the small details. From up there everything looks simple; with one movement of its wings it can fly from one boulder to another. The eagle cannot comprehend that down on the ground, in order to make the move from one location to the other, you have to go up and down mountains and canyons.

Arsonists act out of emotion and nervous energy; very often it’s negative energy. They have a huge need to build something new, which often means destroying what’s already in place. In order to “own” their idea, they feel they have to start from scratch or change what is there even if it is more than adequate already.

Because they create on the run, Arsonists often contradict themselves: The mouth is talking, the mind is working, but there isn’t necessarily a connection. An (--E-) often says, “It’s too late to disagree with me; I’ve already changed my mind.” He starts with one angle, and changes to another angle, and then a third angle, and eventually you can’t follow what he’s saying.

Yet not being understood upsets and offends Arsonists, and they can react with unbelievable hostility when their argument is challenged or even when inconsistencies are pointed out.

An Arsonist habitually works on the “why don’t we?” principle: “Why don’t we do this?” “Why don’t we do that?” But what is a mere question for an (--E-) is assumed to be a decision by his subordinates, especially the (P)s. Sometimes the (P) subordinates believe the boss has made a decision, so they begin to implement it and then they get penalized for acting without authorization. Then, the next time the (--E-) thinks out loud, his subordinates don’t act, thinking that this, too, is just an idea. The Arsonist then becomes upset – this time because the staff didn’t implement his instructions. Subordinates feel they can never satisfy him, no matter what they do or don’t do.

Of the four types, the (--E-) is the worst listener. Why? Because he’s full of ideas, and it’s so easy to trigger more. Anything you say might trigger a chain of thought in him, and while he’s developing the little seed you planted, he’s so busy listening to himself that he doesn’t hear what else you are saying.

In conversation, the Arsonist is emotional and expressive. He uses words like “never,” “always,” “impossible.” He exaggerates in order to really push his ideas through.

In a company managed by an Arsonist, Monday mornings are dangerous, because over the weekend the Arsonist has had time to think, and guess what? New directions, new priorities, new goals, new objectives.

Ironically, however, not much happens in a company run by an Arsonist, because he doesn’t like to finalize anything; even in midchange he might change things again in yet another, “better” direction. Every idea leads to another idea. He does not understand that by adding an idea, he’s diminishing the value of other ideas because there’s a limit to how much one person or one company can handle.

Nor does he measure the cost of his plans against their value. The opposite of the Bureaucrat, the (--E-) “knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing.” An (--E-) is always talking about the brilliant innovations he’s going to make. But how much will they cost? “These are details,” he’ll shrug. That is why an Arsonist can build a big company and lose it overnight.

The Arsonist cares about the process, the novelty – not necessarily the results. He is interested in the why not, whereas the Lone Ranger is interested in the what and the Bureaucrat in the how. The Arsonist typically will develop fantastic ideas and then expect others to figure out how to implement them. If he is pressed for specifics, he gets annoyed.

Arsonists do not play well with others. If you give an (--E-) an idea, he immediately says, “No, I don’t agree with you,” but then next week he will give you back the same idea, rephrased, as if he’d thought of it himself. That makes people very upset.

Arsonists are often seen as narcissistic, self-centered trouble-makers. They always act like they know best. They are constantly giving advice and can hardly stand to take it. But the truth is, they need a tremendous amount of approval and applause.

It takes a very strong person to work with an Arsonist, and yet (--E-)s tend to surround themselves with weak people. Why? Because an (--E-) has to win every argument, and a weak subordinate will never challenge him.

If the Lone Ranger’s subordinates are gofers and the Bureaucrat’s subordinates are yes-yes men, the typical subordinates of the Arsonist are claques. Claques (it’s a French word; in Mexico they are called paleros) are the hired hands in opera houses who are paid to start clapping when a singer ends an aria, to encourage the rest of the audience to clap as well.

Claques are paid to agree with the Arsonist’s ideas, at least in public. The result is that the Arsonist invariably receives tumultuous applause, but it isn’t real.

The Arsonist’s subordinates learn not to reject his plans outright, because he will interpret a rejection of his ideas as a rejection of himself. Thus, the subordinates are forced to accept tasks that they already know are impractical. They come up with creative excuses instead, trying to appear cooperative without actually cooperating.

The Arsonist’s typical complaint about his staff is, “Nobody understands me.” No one is following his priorities; he feels he’s surrounded by idiots. The following unattributed aphorism was probably first said by an Arsonist: “It is difficult to soar like an eagle when you surrounded by turkeys.”

Sometimes the Arsonist will go through successive stages of firing and then bring in someone new. For a little while, he thinks this new kid on the block is a genius: “Look at him! Look how good he is!” He walks on water – for a while. Six months later, the Arsonist has become convinced that this man does not understand his genius either – and he’s gone.

Still, (--E-)s dislike firing people personally. They prefer to get a hatchet man to do the firing or, more often, they’ll make your life so miserable that you’ll eventually resign. They demean you, put you down, criticize you in public, humiliate you. They force you to resign and then accuse you of disloyalty. But they personally don’t usually fire.

For the Arsonist, planning does not mean committing the organization to a course of action. Planning means making long lists of ephemeral goals. Whereas the Lone Ranger rarely takes the time to plan at all, and the Bureaucrat derives next year’s budget by adding some percentage to last year’s results, the Arsonist may not even have a budget, and if he does it is usually unrealistic.

The Arsonist is so preoccupied with opportunities that he sees few if any threats. He can endanger an organization by recklessly trying to exploit too many opportunities at once and spreading himself and his organization too thin.

One might expect to find creativity throughout an organization managed by an Arsonist, but in fact the opposite is usually true. An organization managed by an Arsonist is not a creative, flexible structure but a slave ship. The Arsonist sets the course, changes direction, ignores the suffering of his subordinates, and takes all the credit for successes.

Because he is bored by details, the Arsonist’s attitude and preferences are to decentralize. But it’s equally important for him to maintain control of the decision-making process. The result is a catch-22 for his subordinates. They are expected to decide – as long as their decisions coincide with the decision he would have made. But they don’t know what he would have decided, because he keeps changing his mind. For his subordinates, that decision is a moving target, and the result is paralysis.

Like the Bureaucrat, who is so focused on efficiency that he overdoes the controls and creates an inefficient bureaucracy; and, like the Lone Ranger, who wants so much to be effective that he does it all by himself, thus creating an ineffective organization; the Arsonist is so exclusively focused on causing change that he creates paralysis.

When the (--E-) leaves, the organization is a shambles and its people are exhausted. They’re desperate for peace and quiet, for stability. As a result, they usually ask for, and eventually get stuck with, a Bureaucrat.