Gillette found itself trapped in a downward spiral. In a pamphlet Kilts produced entitled “Escaping the Circle of Doom,” he pointed out that businesses get in trouble by setting overly ambitious objectives, such as increasingly unrealistic sales growth targets; then, in trying to meet those targets, making bad decisions. Gillette compounded its circle-of-doom problems by allowing its spending and overhead to grow out of control. The company had become the fastest bill-payer in the industry and the slowest collector of receivables. As part of its lack of financial discipline and poor information systems, sales results were not tallied every day or even every week - merely at the end of each quarter.

Eckert adds, “As the new guy, I realized that every first encounter with a Mattel employee had the potential to be fraught with tension, and I felt it was my responsibility to do everything possible to reduce it. Surprisingly, I found that in each situation, recognizing my own lack of knowledge about the company’s people and culture - in effect, allowing the employees to be the ‘boss’ in certain situations - actually helped me lead.

... Jim Kilts realized that the culture of Gillette needed to be changed even before he walked in the door. From his external competitive review, detailed financial analysis, board interviews, and meetings with company executives, he saw that the company was underperforming. “When I asked the HR chief to take me through an overview of how we were rating our people,” he says, “I was told that seventy-three percent were rated as ‘exceeds expectations.’ I asked him how we could be exceeding expectations when we hadn’t grown the business for the past five years on either the top or the bottom line.

David D’Alessandro, CEO of insurance company John Hancock, wrote in Career Warfare that “more than anything else, bosses want three things from their managers: loyalty, good advice, and to have ‘their personal brands polished.

In broad terms, my management philosophy is to keep things simple. I want rigorous analysis and thoughtful assessments, but I do not want complexity. If strategies and plans aren’t easily understood by everyone, they will be acted on by no one. So by keeping things simple, we will be able to act decisively… and communicate clearly… throughout the entire organization.” - Jim Kilts.