The Very Model of a Modern Senior Manager

The very model of a modern senior manager

He’s leaving the building, and he’s taking Sweetie and Scotty with

him,” reported the deep male voice coming through the cell phone in Anne

Baxter’s hands. The HR director shot a quizzical look at Barker Foods’ CEO,

Colin Anthony, who was sitting directly across from her, rifling through the

papers strewn across his desk. Colin waved a hand dismissively—the

universal sign for “Let him go, let him go”—and Anne relayed the message.

Doug Lothian, the just-fired national sales director of Barker’s chocolates and

confections division, was being escorted out of the building by a security

guard and a junior member of the human resources staff. Among the

personal belongings he was carrying out were framed animation cels of

Sweetie and Scotty, the characters Barker Foods had featured in its ad

campaigns in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Several senior executives—the

highest-performing managers in 2004—had received the collectibles as part

of a holiday bonus, and the prints were prized among the leadership group,

mostly because only a dozen or so existed.

“I’d just better not see them on eBay,” Colin remarked before turning his

attention back to the matter at hand. Anne was there to debrief him on the

schism in Sales, the company’s latest leadership crisis.

Doug had come up through the ranks. Since he had impressed his

supervisors as an aggressive local sales rep, they had put him through

leadership training and promoted him to regional manager. After six years in

that role, eight product launches, and one regime change, Doug was heading

up national sales, where his creativity and impulsivity were considered both

managerial strengths and potential weaknesses. Just a year or so into Doug’s

tenure as national sales director, Barker had decided to relaunch several of

its classic candy bars in a series of limited-edition flavors, hoping to breathe

life into the brand. As different functions in the...