The Battle Within - read time 34 sec

This is the one they don't teach you how to win in Business School and no - it is not the battle with your inner demons. I mean the battle within one's own camp. The freshly minted MBA imagines that the CEO rules his army. Not at all. The army rules him. The CEO must feed his managers' and directors' appetite for novelty and adventure, keep them fit and confident (but not too confident, lest they grow insolent), discipline them, coddle them, reward them with bounty and bonuses, but contrive to make sure they blow their loot on luxury cars and mortgages so that they are hungry to march and fight again. Leading a company is like wrestling a hundred-headed hydra - you kill one serpent, only to face ninety-nine more. And the farther you march - the harder it gets. So what are the CEO's options? In the end he may lead his company only where it wants to go.