5 ms·

>Lowe's happy-go-lucky persona marked a shift from the all-business Spikes, whom he had replaced in the company hierarchy as CEO. On the rare occasions Lowe mad

>Lowe's happy-go-lucky persona marked a shift from the all-business Spikes, whom he had replaced in the company hierarchy as CEO. On the rare occasions Lowe made it into the office, staff would need almost an entire day to get him up to speed. His general attitude, as one source described, was, 'Well, what do you think we should do?' How do people like this make it so far in their careers?

Ididntdothis 7y ago
You can go very far if you are charming and can communicate well with investors and other high power people. Look at Elizabeth Holmes. Theranos achieved almost nothing besides the ability to talk to investors and board members.
AlexandrB 7y ago
Luck and privilege. Money can buy a lot of second chances.
teej 7y ago
I feel infuriated by this statement. Did he just not care? The company was burning around him, turning it around should have been his number 1 priority.
- pnutjam 7y ago
  Honestly, when you're riding tsunami you only worry about staying on the board. How could he have turned that dumpster fire around?
  - teej 7y ago
    He could have tried. As a shareholder (stupid, I know) I feel betrayed that he wasn’t even trying.
bumby 7y ago
I agree in the context of not being in the office when his team needs guidance, this is bad. But asking "what do you think we should do?" shouldn't be lambasted as an indicator of incompetence. In my experience, leaders who feel like they should have all the answers are the most incompetent ones.
- joemi 7y ago
  Surely there's an ideal middle ground somewhere between having all of the answers and having none of the answers.
  - bumby 7y ago
    Just my personal opinion, but I think the best leaders set the table to allow those closest to the problem come up with the solution. They frame it in a way to align with the organization's strategic goals, help facilitate collaboration for those solutions to get proposed/worked out, provide the tools and resources to implement them, and give the right people credit. Rarely do I see them actually create the idea, it's more about managing the energy of the organization as cliché as that sounds
smacktoward 7y ago
The writeup says that Lowe was installed as CEO by the company that bought MoviePass, Helios & Matheson Analytics, and that the shift down to the $10 price point was the brainstorm of H&M's own CEO, Ted Matheson. Put yourself in Matheson's (presumably quite expensive) shoes for a moment. You're in the process of acquiring this company, MoviePass, and you have some Big Ideas™ for it. Who would you want to have sitting in that company's CEO chair? Not an independent-minded entrepreneur who's full of ideas of their own, that's for sure. No, what you'd want is a yes-man, an amiable non-entity who can be counted on to do what you tell them to do while otherwise staying out of your way and letting you play with your new toy. It's not uncommon for wealthy people to have a few people like this in their entourage, people whose job is to fill a chair so as to prevent someone who could cause the rich guy trouble from filling it instead. It's a job whose only requirements are that you get along with the Big Guy and are willing to unquestioningly do anything he tells you to. In other words, it requires all the business savvy of a block of cheese. But it definitely pays well.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  They also serve as a fall guy for the real decision maker(s), in case things go south.
- nafey 7y ago
  This reminds me of Gervais principle. Basically sociopaths use clueless managers as pawn. More details here: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
  - debatem1 7y ago
    That's an amazing article. Thank you for sharing.
  - cntrlaltdlt 7y ago
    That was an entertaining read. Takes me back to a course in IO psychology I took on workplace motivation. Intriguing as it was in some sense, the "models" that are hypothesized in this field are both hilarious and ridiculous. They are at best ad hoc representations of anecdotal information. I think the only redeeming portion is relating all of this posturing to some sort of Darwinian understanding of expressed phenotypes with in corporate culture. Instead of reproduction via valued phenotypes. It's task assignment via phenotypes (typically irrespective of gender although that's a different discussion obviously). The reason these types of classification structures fall apart from my view suggests a form of causality or even a form of determinism I've never been comfortable with. This is shown further with post hoc justification. All that said I still enjoy reading this kind of stuff, if nothing else then to understand how different people group/classify/model the world around them but group/subgroups.
brighter2morrow 7y ago
Normal people can't fathom the depth of Jewish privilege
- brokensegue 7y ago
  go away anti-semite.
scandox 7y ago
He was involved in Netflix early on. I'd say that will keep you rolling a long time.
H8crilA 7y ago
Warren Buffett: "You want to buy a company that can be run by an idiot. Because one eventually will."

Ididntdothis 7y ago

You can go very far if you are charming and can communicate well with investors and other high power people. Look at Elizabeth Holmes. Theranos achieved almost nothing besides the ability to talk to investors and board members.

AlexandrB 7y ago

Luck and privilege. Money can buy a lot of second chances.

teej 7y ago

I feel infuriated by this statement. Did he just not care? The company was burning around him, turning it around should have been his number 1 priority.

pnutjam 7y ago
Honestly, when you're riding tsunami you only worry about staying on the board. How could he have turned that dumpster fire around?
- teej 7y ago
  He could have tried. As a shareholder (stupid, I know) I feel betrayed that he wasn’t even trying.

bumby 7y ago

I agree in the context of not being in the office when his team needs guidance, this is bad. But asking "what do you think we should do?" shouldn't be lambasted as an indicator of incompetence. In my experience, leaders who feel like they should have all the answers are the most incompetent ones.

joemi 7y ago
Surely there's an ideal middle ground somewhere between having all of the answers and having none of the answers.
- bumby 7y ago
  Just my personal opinion, but I think the best leaders set the table to allow those closest to the problem come up with the solution. They frame it in a way to align with the organization's strategic goals, help facilitate collaboration for those solutions to get proposed/worked out, provide the tools and resources to implement them, and give the right people credit. Rarely do I see them actually create the idea, it's more about managing the energy of the organization as cliché as that sounds

smacktoward 7y ago

The writeup says that Lowe was installed as CEO by the company that bought MoviePass, Helios & Matheson Analytics, and that the shift down to the $10 price point was the brainstorm of H&M's own CEO, Ted Matheson. Put yourself in Matheson's (presumably quite expensive) shoes for a moment. You're in the process of acquiring this company, MoviePass, and you have some Big Ideas™ for it. Who would you want to have sitting in that company's CEO chair? Not an independent-minded entrepreneur who's full of ideas of their own, that's for sure. No, what you'd want is a yes-man, an amiable non-entity who can be counted on to do what you tell them to do while otherwise staying out of your way and letting you play with your new toy. It's not uncommon for wealthy people to have a few people like this in their entourage, people whose job is to fill a chair so as to prevent someone who could cause the rich guy trouble from filling it instead. It's a job whose only requirements are that you get along with the Big Guy and are willing to unquestioningly do anything he tells you to. In other words, it requires all the business savvy of a block of cheese. But it definitely pays well.

lotsofpulp 7y ago
They also serve as a fall guy for the real decision maker(s), in case things go south.
nafey 7y ago
This reminds me of Gervais principle. Basically sociopaths use clueless managers as pawn. More details here: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
- debatem1 7y ago
  That's an amazing article. Thank you for sharing.
- cntrlaltdlt 7y ago
  That was an entertaining read. Takes me back to a course in IO psychology I took on workplace motivation. Intriguing as it was in some sense, the "models" that are hypothesized in this field are both hilarious and ridiculous. They are at best ad hoc representations of anecdotal information. I think the only redeeming portion is relating all of this posturing to some sort of Darwinian understanding of expressed phenotypes with in corporate culture. Instead of reproduction via valued phenotypes. It's task assignment via phenotypes (typically irrespective of gender although that's a different discussion obviously). The reason these types of classification structures fall apart from my view suggests a form of causality or even a form of determinism I've never been comfortable with. This is shown further with post hoc justification. All that said I still enjoy reading this kind of stuff, if nothing else then to understand how different people group/classify/model the world around them but group/subgroups.

brighter2morrow 7y ago

Normal people can't fathom the depth of Jewish privilege

brokensegue 7y ago
go away anti-semite.

scandox 7y ago

He was involved in Netflix early on. I'd say that will keep you rolling a long time.

H8crilA 7y ago

Warren Buffett: "You want to buy a company that can be run by an idiot. Because one eventually will."