Jacob Stewart – Machiavelli Badaracco Essay
3/3/2016
Reading both Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince", and "Leading Quietly, An
Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing" by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr, one
might wonder what different motives and methods of leadership might be
learned from each. Both books offer guidance for making decisions and
preparing their readers for leadership roles. Machiavelli's medieval Prince is
offered ruthless rules and stark advice such as killing an enemy’s family so that
they will not reappear and make a challenge for power, while Badaracco
suggests today's leaders may have to use delaying tactics such as game playing,
buying time, not telling everything you know, and use political allegiances as
effective and valuable tools for decision making. If each book’s suggestions are
put into the context in which they are given, they each have something to offer
today’s leader. I feel that "The Prince" which might have been better titled "How
to Gain Land and Power, and Have Influence Over People in the Middle Ages",
and Badaracco's book, which perhaps would benefit from the moniker, "A
Sensitive New-Age Manager's Guide to Uncontroversial Decision Making in a
Turbulent Volatile World" both offered their own perspective on leading and
making strategic decisions in today's world.
By looking at their respective approach to Leadership and by comparing
Machiavelli's advice to Badaracco's rules the reader can gain valuable insight into
how people control organizations, build businesses, get elected, or otherwise
become great leaders.
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Jacob Stewart – Machiavelli Badaracco Essay
3/3/2016
On the surface, both Badaracco’s and Machiavelli's "Leaders" seem to be
concerned with advancing themselves with motives full of self-interest and
seemingly little regard for the well being and interests of the organization in
question. Machiavelli's Prince concerns himself with gaining and keeping power
and influence, so that he might make his political and financial clout greater by
taking control of more lands and exacting tribute from minor feudal lords, in
order that he might have a great army to defend his state. Badaracco's leaders
appear to have substituted tenacity for ambition, with their motives being an
awkward mixture of self-preservation, advancement and organizational loyalty.
One particular set of passages from the books highlight the similarities
and the differences in strategies offered by the authors. Both Rebecca Olson,
from "Leading Quietly" and Machiavelli's Prince had to concern themselves with
coming into leadership from an outside position, and try to maintain and
consolidate power so that challengers could not succeed in displacing them.
Machiavelli's Prince is given advice on how to keep power over his feudal lands,
whether he acquired it through force, natural ascension, or as a gift from friendly
kingdoms.
In Rebecca Olson's case, she was an outsider made President of a large
innercity hospital, who had to rid the organization of a troublesome executive
that abused his position of power by harassing workers at the hospital. Due to
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Jacob Stewart – Machiavelli Badaracco Essay
3/3/2016
his long held position, this executive was considered an insider, and still had a lot
of influence inside the organization.
Rebecca Olson could have learned a thing or two from reading
Machiavelli's book, and possibly avoided the negative consequences from her
decisions regarding Millar. In "Leading Quietly", on Page 70, Badaracco states,
"Rebecca Olson could not have predicted that Richard Millar would imperil his
own reputation by engaging in guerilla warfare against the hospital." I disagree
with Badaracco on this point. Even though she methodically consulted lawyers,
offered a generous severance package, and gave Millar a quiet and graceful way
to escape the situation, she didn't require a mutual non-defamation agreement
as a condition of the severance package. She assumed that since the Hospital
was not going to make trouble for Millar after his departure, that he would
reciprocate in his actions. In Chapter III of “The Prince” Machiavelli offers this
advice to a Prince who has newly acquired lands, on how to deal with those
competitors who would potentially challenge a leader for power: "if he wishes to
hold them [lands], has only to bear in mind two considerations: the one, that the
family of their former lord is extinguished; the other, that neither their laws nor
their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will become entirely one
body with the old principality." This seems to suggest that vanquished foes
should either be neutralized or removed from the scene completely so that they
cannot cause problems. While Machiavelli’s suggested course of action seems
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Jacob Stewart – Machiavelli Badaracco Essay
3/3/2016
brutal and unrealistic in today’s world, there is still a lesson to be learned for
leaders.
While both these books offer a unique and illuminating vision of leadership
and the complicated motives, strategies and consequences of decision making, a
person should not base their leadership style exclusively on one or the other of
these books, but rather try to intuit how general rules and strategies learned can
apply in their own unique situation. Those leaders wanting to succeed in today's
constantly changing world can utilize successful strategies from both books to
help guide them, but should remember what methods and approaches are
morally and ethically appropriate in today's modern society. Although the
authors approach it in different ways, perhaps the biggest message in both
books is that at the days’ end, both great leaders and petty ones must live with
themselves within the confines of the situations they have created through their
own decisions and choices.
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