Why You Don't Want to Work For 'Breaking Bad's' Walter White

Michael Powell's maiden Influencer post takes a fascinating look at the brilliantly unintuitive decisions made by the creative team behind Breaking Bad, the breakout AMC hit that ends its five-season run this next month.

If you are binge watching to prepare for the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad — stop reading now, bookmark this and come back at 10:01 pm (ET) Aug. 11.

Powell praises Vince Gilligan for making and sticking with production decisions that were not obvious at best, and controversial at worst. Gilligan picks suburban Albuquerque instead of Big City America as the venue (unlike pretty much every drama on TV). He makes meth a star (unlike Showtime's "Weeds," which showcases a drug that is more easily romanticized). Gilligan, in Powell's words, "may not be the first name that comes to mind when you think of natural leaders, but let’s look at what his experience can teach us."

But what of Gilligan's epic anti-hero, Walter White? How does the protagonist of Breaking Bad, the baddest boy imaginable, stack up in the leadership and management department? What can White teach us from his journey from "Mr. Chips to Scarface" that will make us better people?

White is pretty much the boss from Hell. The guy you'd never want to work for. It sucks to be around him, and most of his co-workers (and lots of others) end up dead.

Still, White is remarkably successful — almost a prototypical entrepreneur. Shades of Steve Jobs, even, in his ability to take a known product and re-imagine it in a way that ignites demand and makes him fabulously wealthy. White — he explains late in the series — isn't in the meth business, or the wealth business. He (like Jobs) is in the empire business.

Like many driven geniuses White makes something out of nothing, transforming himself from an underachieving guy with two jobs into a drug kingpin, his alter ego: Heisenberg (a reference to the scientist best known for the Uncertainty Principle that is a lovely metaphorical flourish).

White succeeds on the strength of genuine skills — his meth is more pure, and thus more intoxicating, than anything anyone has ever seen. But he also does this on sheer strength of will, refusing to accept meager returns or the slights (real or imagined) of associates. Product is nothing without street cred, and vice versa.

It's not as if we can't learn something from this evil genius. It's just that the bad lessons overwhelm the good ones. And getting close enough to have anything rub off on you would be hazardous to your health.

On the plus side: Watching White negotiate himself from positions of abject weakness to dominance in a single conversation would serve you well. One incident alone — outgunned in the desert, he convinces cartel representatives Arizona-based competitors a) not to kill him, b) to do business on his terms, and c) give an associate $5 million cash as a retirement gift — is a master class in bluff, bluster and debating.

"Say my name," he challenges his trigger-happy adversary, who pretends not to know White's alias. "Heisenberg," the opponent finally whispers. "You're damn right," White replies, closing the deal.

But that's as good as it gets. White is almost a textbook case of The Peter Principle: he has risen to his level of incompetence. As an employee — the best darn meth cook the world has ever known — White is in his element: obsessively scrubbing down equipment, poring over the books, maniacally ridding the lab of "contaminants" (a house fly). But give him any real power, and it goes to his head. He can't handle it, and everyone suffers.

White abuses his business partner, Jesse Pinkman, one of the only four people in the world he can (and has to) trust. He treats Pinkman like an employee when that suits his agenda, and a less-than-stellar one at that. Jesse needs a mentor — really a father — and one of the most poignant exchanges between the two was when White, for no particular reason, didn't want to hang out after work. Let's not even get into White allowing the love of Jesse's life (Jane) to die just so she wouldn't compete for control of Pinkman.

The dysfunctional White/Pinkman relationship alone speaks volumes of how not to mentor. But the list of White's leadership shortcomings is long. Here are five biggies:

• Fear is a lousy motivator: White resorts to fear, and withholds love, to motivate — which is amateurish. For Gus Fring — whose empire White envies — fear is never the opening gambit, which makes him even more fearsome.

• Don't be unpredictable: White kills when it is good for business, but also out of anger — which is undisciplined. Fring kills with equal dispassion, but even when he massacres a old rival's entire posse it's only business. The sweet revenge is incidental. He allows the man he perhaps hates most in the world (Hector) to live until that rival's mere existence seems to threaten his empire.

• Sloppy hiring can sink you: White doesn't sufficiently vet his employees. He brought along a new one to the great train robbery scheme — and that guy brings a gun he told nobody about, and kills a kid.

• Hubris kills — Perhaps you've heard of Shakespeare? Walter seems intent on sowing the seeds of his own destruction — which of course means the destruction of everyone in his enterprise. Why else would he leave a huge, obvious clue to his secret — an inscribed book in his bathroom — where his law enforcement brother-in-law would be sure to find it? That, after twice hinting to same law-enforcement brother in law that he just might be up to no good?

• Share the wealth — disgruntled employees are your worst enemy: White learned nothing from John Tu and David Sun, the founders of Kingston Technology, who in 1996 gave each of their employees the current-day equivalent of nearly $200,000 as a Christmas bonus when they sold their company for a huge profit. No, White hires hit men in three prisons to assassinate 10 former employees in a single two-minute killing spree instead of trying to buy their silence.

Feeling better about your boss now?

What am I missing about Walt? Does it get any worse? Or, are there any redeeming characteristics that might make Walter White a (ahem) role model?

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