In October, a long and tempestuous relationship between the owner and coach of the New York Yankees came to the breaking point. Even if you aren’t a baseball fan, or hate the Yankees, what lessons can we all learn on managing the leaders of our businesses?

To review, Joe Torre, with only a couple of years left before retirement,  expected to remain with the team he took to twelve (12) playoffs and four (4) world championships. With his track record and penchant for managing to the highest standards of integrity, respect and consideration for his players and fans, Torre felt he was beyond evaluation or a performance-based contract. George Steinbrenner, the owner, was in complete disagreement. As the boss of baseball’s most storied team, he and his sons have a singular expectation–World Series Championships–and pay the price for victory at any cost. As we all know, the opera of Joe and George had its finale when Torre rejected Steinbrenner’s victory-based one year contract out of hand, leaving both without a contingency plan.

As business owners, what we can learn and avoid from this sudden ending to one of baseball’s greatest successes?

If you and your president:

•  Personally or professionally disagree on objectives, get on the same page now for your organization’s sake.  Otherwise your people will try to reconcile your differences and in the process waste everyone’s time, money and energy.
•  Have to compromise on how your objectives will be met, determine your personal threshold of acceptable disagreement that you will not only tolerate.  Never fight in front of the “children” whether they are customers, employees or vendors.
• Create a contingency plan or go-to resource for resolving differences, you can avoid needless escalations that can bring you to business divorce.
• Prepare a doomsday scenario and a triage plan if you have to eject your president or if he/she walks out.  Understand that the more you have prepared for a crisis, the less it will be seen as one

Managing a talented, capable leader can be one of the most trying challenges for you as the owner. And if your president becomes respected by your customers, employees or vendors, you may have created a peer who threatens you.  But if you recognize you cannot lead your business all by yourself and have found a talented second in command, managing through your two egos, testosterone and quirks will be a lot easier.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Andy's Reactions, Miscellaneous, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.