Tag: Management

Rumsfeld’s Rules

Donald Rumsfeld’s Rules (Advice on government, business and life) may have been around for a while, but I only found them today, courtesy of a link in one of Kevin O’Keefe’s tweets and Rick Klau’s weblog. As Rick Klau comments, “They are, put simply, brilliant”. Read them: this is the link.

I particularly enjoyed this one,

Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers. They get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.

Some 30 years ago, I was the gofer to one of the corporate partners in the firm that then employed me. We were advising a merchant bank, in turn advising the independent directors of ATV. It was (or seems) a very long time ago, but I have two vivid memories of that particular transaction.

The first was the appearance, very late one night, of the irrepressible Lew Grade. He, and his cigar, came through the double doors that led off into the Executive Suite at the top of the building. He just wanted to know that we were all being looked after; and as he left, he executed a couple of steps just to let us know that he was still a hoofer at heart.

My second memory, and this was triggered by reading Rumsfeld’s advice about lawyers, was of Robert Holmes à Court walking unannounced into an all parties meeting: clients, merchant bankers, stockbrokers, accountants and a fair number of lawyers. His Bell Group had just emerged as  a buyer. Holmes à Court looked at the suits sitting round the table: there were probably some 20 plus people in the room, and he slowly worked round the table, asking everyone who they were, who they were with, and what they were doing. Depending upon the answer given it was either a “You may leave now” or “You may stay”. All very courteous but nonetheless there was steel in his eyes.

I was one of the last he got to.

“Well, what are you doing?”

“Taking the notes.”

“You had better stay”

And stay I did. Holmes à Court was himself originally a lawyer, and had a very well-developed sense of who and what was needed.

How hard is it to say sorry?

Leaving aside the fact that in private I tend to say sorry rather too often (a failing I apparently share with the majority of Englishmen of my age and background: probably early Prep school trauma), in the world of work my early bosses were committed exponents of the “Never explain, never apologise” school. I have always tended to favour the opposite, reckoning that my clients would prefer me to put up my hands if something has gone wrong. The complicating factor, at least for lawyers, is that professional indemnity insurers have their own take on this subject (veering very much more to the somewhat more robust approach of my first employers) and equate sorry to an admission of liability. The trick is to find a way of saying sorry, meaning it and not losing cover. In yesterday’s FT there was an excellent article by Stefan Stern, Say sorry and mean it – or don’t say anything at all. In the right context, saying sorry is a very powerful statement. As Stern notes:

Genuine apologies disarm opponents, win new friends and help you hang on to old ones. In business, when necessary, bosses should apologise sincerely and quickly, or not at all.

This is certainly true of clients. The danger is saying sorry in such a way that it is quite clear you either aren’t, or worse are saying it because you have to (train managers on First Great Western). Perhaps the only thing worse is when it is a pre-recorded announcement (next time you are waiting for a late train, listen hard!).