Word: geneen
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Highest Paid. Geneen plays this corporate machine like an organ and tries to keep his fingers on every last key. A trained accountant, he thinks in figures-sales, profits, production, inventories. He requires subordinates round the world to send him reams of detailed reports, which he stuffs into several briefcases for perusal while being chauffeured to and from ITT's checkbook-modern Manhattan headquarters. His long working days are spent in meetings with ITT people, and his social engagements are related to business. Though he is perhaps the highest-paid executive in the U.S. (1970 salary...
...management structure of ITT is that of a federated empire. Division chiefs are free to run their operations, so long as they can convince Geneen that they are hitting his targets of a 15% compounded growth in profits every year, or have excellent reasons why they cannot do so. In order to check, Geneen summons more than 100 lieutenants to two monthly meetings, one in Manhattan and one in Brussels. The meetings, which are exhaustive reviews of all the figures and problems of each division, often last four days and nights...
Running them, Geneen lets junior executives put searching questions to their bosses, and he can be argued out of a position by a rare manager who possesses more facts than he does. But Geneen is also impatient, demanding quick figure-filled answers to his questions, and occasionally brutal, verbally flaying or simply ignoring executives who pose questions that he considers irrelevant. Working for Geneen is a tension-filled experience; ITT managers tend to be garrulous, because of the necessity of constantly justifying themselves. They find his constant demands challenging, if unnerving. They also are paid top dollar; five ITT executives...
...executives speak to and socialize almost exclusively with other ITT people. The club has a mania for security; paper-shredding machines like the one that chewed up ITT's Washington files whine continually in most ITT offices. Returning from Washington on a company plane last week, Geneen cracked: "Now I guess we'll have to acquire a company that makes paper-shredding machines...
...underdeveloped part of the host country. Close ITT watchers do not find it the least unusual that the company-or, for that matter, many a large, powerful firm-when threatened with antitrust prosecution, would approach Administration leaders directly and do everything possible to weigh the scales in its favor. Geneen, cloistered in the company, might well be unaware of how damning some of these moves could appear to the U.S. public...