In a column earlier this year, we discussed ways to deal with the Psychopathic Bad Boss ; that is, the supervisor who operates from a position of power and control entirely to his own ends, without thought of the effect on direct reports or the firm. The Bad Boss sees the entire organization as nothing more than a field of resources to be mined for his personal gratification, be it financial, emotional or whatever. This Bad Boss sees no distinction between his own immediate and long term goals and those of the firm, as the two are interchangeable.
For example, I once helped a CFO who was the named successor to the CEO of a billion dollar international company. In the last years before the transition, the existing CEO (who had made some bad investments and was in poor health) began a series of initiatives to sell the company to a competitor so he could cash out stock options, in spite of the fact that there was no interest in selling elsewhere in the organization. My job with the successor was to help him craft ways to neutralize the initiatives without alienating the CEO and survive until the transition. It was plain that the CEO’s motives were entirely unilateral and against the will of everyone else in the company.
