A Class with Drucker - Headway | Work on yourself

OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE IS INCONSISTENT ■ 83
or the top non-commissioned officer ranks, can serve even longer yet. As
a consequence, when “Japanese management” caught on in the U.S. in the
1980’s, and management gurus began to advocate “lifetime employment”
as the Japanese supposedly had, Japanese management looked very much
like this aspect of a military career.
As a result of this system few in the military fear loss of employment. Of
course, this is not necessarily true during reduction in force as occurred in
the early 1990’s <strong>with</strong> the end of the Cold War and at various other periods.
However, on the day Peter began to lecture about risk-taking and employment,
I didn’t fully recognize the fear of loss of employment as a problem.
Peter said, “Outstanding performance is inconsistent <strong>with</strong> fear of failure.”
I mentally yawned. I thought, “Of course, one does the best one can.
If you blow it, you get ‘relieved of command.’ What’s new?” The military
does refer to this colloquially as “getting fired.” But unless you’ve done
something illegal or immoral or are a senior officer, it is not the end of your
career. You are still in the military. They usually just assign you to a new
position, generally at some distance geographically and in a totally different
environment. Frequently you’ll get another chance in a new place, <strong>with</strong>
a new job, and <strong>with</strong> new responsibilities.
I’ve known many people to make major mistakes, get a new job, and
perform so well that they get promoted. If you read Colin Powell’s book
My American Journey (Random House, 1995), you’ll see that this happened
to Powell himself, even as a senior officer. He, of course, eventually ended
up a four-star general and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top
uniformed job in our armed forces.
In my naiveté, I hadn’t given much thought to whether someone of
Colin Powell’s capabilities could make a mistake, yet avoid being fired in
civilian life, although by the time of Peter’s lecture I had been in the corporate
world for several years and read lots of business books. I should
have known better, but I didn’t.
As Peter went on, I began to see that he was saying that this wasn’t true
in the business world at all. You could be fired at any time. You didn’t even
have to make a serious mistake. Many times bosses had the authority to fire
you for just about any reason, and some did. It suddenly dawned on me
that what I had considered a peculiar incident two years earlier, when I had
first started <strong>with</strong> an engineering company, was not so peculiar at all.
Sierra was a medium sized company located in the foothills of the San
Gabriel Mountains in Sierra Madre, California. The company manufactured