What Can I Learn From A Corporate D'ck?

In the late 1990’s, my Delray Beach Florida office was one floor below and directly underneath the office of “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap. He had been dubbed “Chainsaw” (as well as "Rambo in Pinstripes") because of his ruthless downsizing history.

Al had just become Chairman and CEO of home-appliance company Sunbeam. This was years before the Securities and Exchange Commission barred him from ever serving as an officer of a public corporation; but it was after his tenure at Scott Paper, where he had decimated the company and fired hundreds of employees. He had been brought to Sunbeam to bring his abrasive turn-around style to the struggling company and with his first weeks, he rocketed their stock to an all-time high.

When he moved in upstairs above my office, he had just written “Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great”; his NYT bestseller. I read the book the day it came out; I wanted to know who-the-hell had moved in upstairs.

Those who know me know that I have some serious workaholic issues and have for a long time. I usually arrived at my office around 5:30 am and would depart around 11:00 pm. Dunlap usually rolled in around 6:00 am and left around 8:00 pm. Like me, he worked Saturdays and Sundays as well.

There were many hours that he and I SHOULD HAVE BEEN the only people in the building. There was, however, a third person: his bodyguard. It seems that he had disrupted so many lives at Scott Paper that every week he received dozens of death threats.

Consequently, he would arrive at the office, chauffeured by his bodyguard. Al would sit in the back seat of his white bullet-proof Mercedes, while his body guard, with gun drawn, would “sweep” the building, the parking lot, and check for rooftop snipers. After determining it was relatively safe, the bodyguard would open the back door of the car and cover Dunlap as the two of them would run to the front door of the building. Daily departure was basically the same routine.

On March 25, 1988, I approached Al in the lobby of the building. We had spoken a few polite “Hello, how are you” ‘s a few times. On This particular early Wednesday morning, I said, “Mr. Dunlap, I read your book this past weekend.”

Alas, I can attest to the ego of a book author; and he had that combined with his over-the-top reputation as the darling of Wall Street. He couldn’t resist my fan-boy approach.

“What did you think of it?” he asked, seemingly genuinely curious. I had nothing to lose and nothing to prove, so I told him what I thought: that he made many valid points, provided a lot of insight into corporate America, but was extremely harsh toward his workforce.

Rather than brush me off, he invited me upstairs to his office. That visit turned out to be the first of many, mostly Sunday afternoon, visits. We talked about his businesses, his philosophies, his opinions of other corporations.

One of my favorite quotes from him was, “Gary, let me tell you one thing that you should carry without through your business career; corporate America has its head so far up its ass that these bastards will never see the light of day. Whatever a corporate CEO tells you, realize it is bullshit if his lips are moving.”

Known for more famous quips (such as his “if I want a friend, I will buy a dog; I am here to make money for stockholders”), his gem to me was not the least bit out of character.

MUCH more interestingly, was the broad range of non-business subjects he wanted to discuss: cheap land in Tennessee; most loyal dog breeds; whether the Apple or DOS computer platforms would eventually dominate business; gated communities versus public access; executive suite work-ethics; land in Ocala Florida’s horse-country versus the suburbs of Boca Raton; if investor Ronald O. Perelman was a genius or a moron; and the future of something called e-commerce.

Before Time Magazine named him one of the ten worst bosses in American History, before Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, Dennis Kozlowski, Al Dunlap was the king of negative corporate culture.

So what did I learn from him?

Hmmmm.

I think THE most important lesson was, that if one is going to act like Al Dunlap then one needs to have an armor-plated car with bullet-proof windows and a bodyguard checking the parking lot before you get out.