The story so far
As a young man that started to make his way into the business world, my first work experience was incredible challenging. You could say that besides building understanding as to how business actually work and how to do my job, it also bombarded me with how not to run a business. While they are all around us, here I came up close and personal with a “business Psychopath”. Many of you have read or heard about the prevalence of these creatures that walk between us like blood sucking vampires. In fact they are not much different to the mythical vampire, as they are great chameleons that can be exceedingly charming and come over as suave engaging people. But they rape and pillage their way through life, leaving broken people all around, and they do it without conscience.
At this stage in my career however, I have not yet fully formed my understanding and views on leadership, and definitely have not started to understand the psychopathic behaviour that we look at as go getters or strong leaders.
Making a move
Moving to a market leading joinery, manufacturing all kind of timber products, I not only made my first change of job, but also of job type. It was middle 1990, and computerisation was in full swing, and starting to speed up with the first wave of the internet hitting South Africa. I decided that the way to move was to get involved with technology, and through a friend of mine got a position as IT manager at the company. They had no IT department and the head of finance was also to be head of IT. The only computers in the business was the finance department, and there was a couple of standalone computers at the sales desk. While a really large business, and the largest joinery in the region, the business was essentially a family business.
The picture below is of the premises where Rutherford’s use to be.
(Photo from pvigroup.co.za)
John Rutherford’s farther started the business and grew it with a few partners. Over time, people married into the family and the business, and had senior positions in the company. John was a playboy travelling Europe in the 1980’s, and as his older brother was raised to take over, actually had little interest in the business. Then tragedy struck and his brother shortly after taking over had a heart attack playing squashed and passed away. John had to take over. He was a very calm, reasonable and intelligent person, and I found it easy to engage with him. However, my immediate boss Keith Featonby was another story. He married John’s sister, having worked at Rutherford’s for a while, and thus controlled a strong block of shares. He did everything in his power to undermine John, and made some of the most ridiculous decisions around spending and technology. Instead of taking a conservative approach and rolling out the use of technology, he brought in a large IT company and for a massive fee decided to implement a full blown ERP solution from the start. A combination of poor skills on the IT companies team, poor understanding of how technology works and a hell bent desire not to listen to anyone, including yours truly, to stand back from areas of computerisations where the solution does not provide standard functionality, Keith started asking for customization, and as they were making good money, the IT supplier was too happy to oblige.
No amount of logic or facts was going to sway Keith, and I was simply side-lined and handed smaller projects to work on. At the end I had a very frank conversation with John, whom actually admitted to me that he has the same issues, but while he was CEO, he actually had very little say with the board being manipulated by his brother in law. Personal agendas, big ego’s and a complete disregard for the impact on others was all traits you could ascribe to Keith. While not as bad as my previous boss, this guy definitely was up there in terms of behaviours of a psychopath.
IN the end the business was sold for a fraction of what it was worth. Family in fighting and individuals driving their own agendas killed a great business that has been around for decades. At the time I was firstly to junior to be able to effectively deal with the issues and people. I also believed that it was merely poor business and technology understanding that was killing them. But looking back, it was the psychopathic behaviour of one or two people that ensured the business had very little chance.
Leaving Rutherford’s
I left the business finding a new job at another Parow based business, but this time went for the softness of underwear, rather than the dusty hardness of joinery. Here I encountered some interesting people, and while I cannot say any of them was Psychopaths, definitely the CEO and head of HR was both a piece of work. The business was Cape Underwear Manufacturers, and that had a fascinating history of labour unrest and union activity. Definitely there was much I learnt about what not to do, and also experienced my first exploitive working environment with a large factory where seamstress worked in sweatshop like conditions. I learnt a lot about technology about technology companies and products and about dealing with staff. The road to being an entrepreneur was taking shape.
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From @robertm