Published February 2004

'Sopranos Style’ management doesn’t apply to the real world

A new book by Deborrah Hinsel, “Leadership Sopranos Style,” attempts to draw management lessons from the fictional mob boss Tony Soprano. Fuhgeddaboudit.

Books that use current celebrities, business executives or historical figures to illustrate management concepts and techniques have been around for quite a while. They remain popular because they are often both fun and funny.

The idea, for example, of sitting at Attila the Hun’s knee and having him instruct us in the subtleties of negotiating bribes from besieged towns and city states — and explaining that it works better if you conduct the meeting without actually mentioning the word “pillage” — is great fun.

Unless you plan to ride at the head of a vast army of marauding barbarians, though, much of Attila’s experience-based wisdom is probably of little value to you in today’s business world.

And, more importantly, business executives, however successful, don’t always know exactly why. That doesn’t stop some of them from confidently explaining how it was all thoroughly planned and flawlessly executed on the basis of a few guiding principles — which they will share with us in exchange for $24.95.

In the 1991 movie “The Grifters,” Annette Bening plays Myra, a con artist who specializes in relieving investors of their excess cash in a variant of the old “wire” scam (remember “The Sting”?), where, in this case, a broker claims to have a 7-second lead on Tokyo market information before it hits New York.

She explains how the investors can be so gullible: “All over the Southwest, you’ve got these businessmen, they were making money when everybody was making money, they think that means they’re smart.”

And, of course, as every con artist knows, the smarter we think we are, the easier it is for us to fall for the con. It is very natural for us to believe, or imagine, that our failures are caused by others while our successes are our own. And, in some cases, it is true. Certainly, successful business people may be smart. The truly smart ones, though, often recognize the “right time, right place” factor in success and don’t get carried away with themselves.

But if that explains why most “How I …” business books aren’t worth printing, let alone reading, that still leaves this new book about Tony Soprano in a category by itself.

To start with, Tony Soprano is a fictional character, and so are all the other Sopranos and their little friends. And while some people these days seem to have trouble distinguishing between fact and fiction, there really is a difference.

It makes as much sense to talk or write about Tony’s management techniques as it would to draw lessons in customer relations based on the Acme Co.’s interactions with Wile E. Coyote. (Actually, someone did write about this from the point of view of Wile E. as a dissatisfied customer, but it was meant to be funny, not instructional.)

Also, the harsh reality of organized crime works against there being anything useful to learn about management from a mob boss — unless you are planning a life in organized crime yourself.

Significantly, the bonding agent that holds a crime organization together is loyalty — a type of fealty, really — that derives its strength from some combination of the principal sources: fear of retribution (either through direct violence or being set up and turned over to the police), personal bonding (the organization’s leader is often the source of income and job security that most members would find difficult to replicate elsewhere) and family.

Modern business organizations are based on collegiality, not loyalty, and management principles or lessons have to bear that in mind. In contrast to crime organizations, relationships in most business organizations are impermanent, even transitory. They resemble sports organizations much more than mob organizations in their impermanence — playing to win for a season, or for as long as we are together — not forever.

Good management, then, has to develop principles and techniques that are effective with this kind of associative organization — much like a coach has to get the best out of the people who are on the team now, knowing that a good number of them, for one reason or another, won’t be here next year.

Because businesses are such collegial and constantly changing organizations, it really isn’t all that helpful to find out how a mob boss deals with his brother-in-law who has been skimming the cash flow from the prostitution operations in Jersey City, or how he applies just the right amount of violence to his employee relationships. Generally, these are not options that a business manager has.

So, if you choose to watch “The Sopranos” on television, you should enjoy it for its entertainment, not its instructional, value.

James McCusker, a Bothell economist, educator and small-business consultant, writes “Your Business” in The Herald each Sunday. He can be reached by sending e-mail to otisrep@aol.com.

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