Gone is the 40-hour work week at Enfield’s Specialized Technology Resources Inc. Boxes of toys are piling up in the middle of its testing lab, workers are coming in on weekends, and product testers who normally would check tools or candles are working on chess sets and plastic cars.
Supervisors, middle managers and corporate executives — suits, if you will — on Thursday nights go to a frightening source for leadership lessons. Many will put down their copy of “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker and tune into the weekly NBC comedy “The Office.”
This borders on disturbing. After all, the show centers on a bumbling boss and his interactions with a workplace team of geeks, kiss-ups and slackers. But in a world overrun with gurus such as Michael Porter, Tom Peters and Warren Bennis, who have turned leadership into a giant industry of books and seminars, bosses across the country will be watching “The Office,” not only to laugh at themselves, but to harvest leadership lessons from the main character, Michael Scott.
Readers who are unfamiliar with “The Office” don’t realize how unsettling it is that bosses may be taking cues from the regional manager of fictitious office-supply distributor Dunder Mifflin. Michael’s character is played by A-list movie actor Steve Carell (“Little Miss Sunshine,” “The 40 Year Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up”), who exhibits jealousy when his birthday is overshadowed by an employee’s skin cancer test. His eyes linger upon workplace cleavage and, when apologizing for a homosexual slur in one episode, he maladroitly outs a gay employee.
Michael has such a tin ear for the politically correct that in one episode in the first season called “Diversity Day” he asks his only Hispanic employee if he would prefer to be called something other than Mexican.
Fans Cheer
Yet, among the CEO fans of “The Office” is Luis Rivera of e-mail marketing software company J.L. Halsey in Wilmington, Del. Like many CEOs, Rivera looks past Michael’s blemishes and finds him sympathetic.
“It’s thoroughly enjoyed at our house,” Rivera says. “What makes up for his character flaws is the way in which Michael conveys to his team that, somehow, he truly cares for them as people. His flaws make him more human and, as a result, his crudeness ends up being overlooked. In the end, “The Office” employees end up caring for him.”
One ongoing gag is that Michael keeps a supply of World’s Best Boss coffee mugs in his desk drawer, just in case one breaks. “Isn’t that kind of foresight the sign of a truly great leader?” asks Andrew Alexander, CEO and executive producer of The Second City comedy troupe, of which Carell is a 1991 alumni.
Rivera and other CEOs aren’t ready to declare Michael boss of the year. Far from it. They take comfort in knowing that they are not him. “No matter what mistakes we might make as managers of people, we can’t be as bad as Michael, can we?” asks Susan Story, CEO of Gulf Power, a utility in Florida with 1,300 employees. But as the fourth season launches tonight, a number of CEOs say they draw encouragement from the Michael character because he demonstrates that perfection is not a prerequisite for leadership. Employees will laugh at bosses behind their backs. Always have, always will. But “The Office” validates that those same subordinates are willing to follow the flawed.
“Michael puts himself in a position of responsibility, where most people feel uncomfortably vulnerable,” says Noah Rowles, CEO of Los Angeles software company Iolo Technologies. “He takes ownership of his flock. The lesson learned is that people would much rather follow someone who is passionate and dedicated than someone who may be perfect on paper but otherwise uncommitted to achieving success as a group
In the face of employees who are brown-nosers and idlers, Michael Scott survives and occasionally shines, which proves you need neither strength, courage or competence to lead, Rowles says.
“Michael is the butt of everyone’s joke, and no one seems to take him seriously,” Rowles says. “However, if you observe his character, a different story unfolds. He may be infinitely inept, inexcusably inappropriate and incessantly inane, but when the you-know-what hits the fan, he is also in charge.”
Creator Greg Daniels, who won an Emmy in September for outstanding writing for a comedy series, says the new season will carry on with a story line introduced in last season’s final episode when character Ryan Howard, a former temp, leapfrogged Michael to win a promotion to corporate headquarters.
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New Boss
The Sept. 27 premier began Ryan’s reign as Michael’s younger boss. Ryan has strengths that Michael does not — smarts, competence, education and analytical skills — but he’s “terrible with people, is pretty cold-hearted and does not win fans at the workplace,” says actor-writer B.J. Novak, who plays Ryan’s role.
Like leaders everywhere, Ryan will find it thorny to lead without a buy-in from his team. He will attempt to take the company digital this season only to be met with the resistance every boss has come up against. If Ryan is to become a competent leader, his style will have to evolve, says Novak, who has never worked in an office but says he gets a feel for what it is like when drinking beer with friends who do.
As an agent for NBC, a division of General Electric, Daniels says some of the material for “The Office” comes right out of the annual sensitivity training that the company mandates. The training often refers to outrageous things bosses have done in the past, which becomes script grist with minor tweaking.
He leads a staff of a dozen writers, which helps him understand that bosses everywhere fear that they are one dumb remark from being Michael. Daniels says he will often utter such dumb remarks, but he has the luxury of pretending it was but fodder for the show.
He doesn’t know how banking executives deal with insensitive slips. “I guess they could pretend they were joking also,” Daniels says.
Like Michael, Daniels is a 40-something boss in charge of a staff of 20- and 30-somethings. Therefore, he is left to stand guard over Michael’s likability. Take for example an episode two years ago where Michael had to fire someone. Other writers saw it from the perspective of how awful it is to get fired. But Daniels knew that it was also horrible to have to fire someone, and the episode’s gag became Michael’s naive desire to remain friends with the employee he lets go. Michael said it was like going hunting and merely “winging” the deer.
The lesson of “The Office” is apparent, says Andy Palmer, CEO of Vertica Systems, a 30-employee software start-up in Andover, Mass.: Bosses need to quit taking themselves too seriously.
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