Summers One of 2006's Worst
Business Week just published a best and worst list for 2006, and Larry Summers is on it! He's one of the worst.
Under the section, "
The Worst Leaders of 2006," there appears this (thanks to the blog SmartLemming):
- Worst Reaction Time: Michael Dell, Dell Computer
- Worst Talent Manager: Paul Pressler, GAP
- Worst Buyer’s Remorse: James R. Tobin, Boston Scientific
- Worst Twilight Years: John Browne, BP
- Worst Crossover: Larry Summers, Harvard University
- Worst Boardroom Rivalry: Patricia Dunn and Tom Perkins
The Crimson reported this out a little, getting an HBS prof to question the finding.
Weatherhead Professor of Business Administration D. Quinn Mills, who lectures on leadership at the Business School, wrote in an e-mail that BusinessWeek did not have the “right to characterize President Summers as the worst cross-over.” “I don’t think his style was different in the two situations,” Mills wrote yesterday of Summers’ political and academic roles. “There are many people who think President Summers was trying to provide good leadership, but that Harvard’s faculty would not accept it,” Mills added.
Mills has clearly written a lot on leadership, but his comment seems odd to me. The idea that Harvard's faculty "would not accept" good leadership is casually made, but loaded with dramatically negative implication. What does it suggest about the Harvard faculty that they won't "accept" good leadership? That they are anarchists?
Moreover, Summers' leadership style may not have been different in the two situations...but isn't that the point? The Treasury Department has one organizational culture; Harvard has another. The same leadership style that works at one might very well not work at the other.
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P.S. Dear Crimson—"Conflictive"—as in "[Summers] often
conflictive relationship with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—is not, in fact, a word.
