What Losers Say: The Four F-Words of Failure

What Losers Say
The Four F-Words of Failure
Timothy T. Nerenz, PhD
Abstract: When a business executive is given the new

responsibility for leading a poorly performing business
segment, either through an acquisition or a major
restructuring initiative, an urgent priority is the triage as-
sessment of the leadership cadre that has been inherited
to determine dependability and suitability for leading
change. While scholars have identified the importance
of leadership in the change process, practical guidance
for practitioners on how to quickly assess the quality of
change leadership in the inherited organization is not
as readily available. Drawing on nearly four decades
as a business executive and change agent, this article
describes the authors framework for quickly catego-

rizing inherited leadership dependability and provides
a simple technique for assessing likely dependability
of inherited leaders using word-choice analysis during
short and informal discussions. If we simply let them,
our poor leaders will identify themselves by repetitive
Dr. Timothy Nerenz is a former
company president with almost 40 reliance on four F-words: feasible, fair, fault, and fixthe
years of international leadership language of losers. Conversely, our high performers will
experience before leaving the private identify themselves by repetitive use of four P-words:
sector to research, write, and teach possibility, performance, praise, and participationthe
MBA courses on leadership, strategy,
major change, M&A, and organizational language of winners.
development in graduate schools in
Canada, the United States, and Europe. Keywords: best practice, business administration,
He is the 2011 inductee into the Order business leaders, corporate leadership, executive,
of Athabasca University in Edmonton,
Alberta and is currently a business
leadership, leadership inquiry, leadership studies,
professor on the faculty of University of leadership theory, M&A, major change, management,
Maryland University CollegeEurope in organizational development, practice, research,
Kaiserslautern, Germany. turnaround
Introduction
Less than a week into retirement from my first career
as a business executive, I was asked to write and teach
a course in Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) for the
world-ranked Executive MBA program at Athabasca Uni-
versity, drawing upon four decades of experience leading
Business Expert Press 978-1-94709-816-9 (2018) Expert Insights

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What Losers Say
major organizational change. The new M&A conversations, focusing on four words
course (Nerenz, 2013) was d eveloped from that begin with the letter F and four
the perspective of a CEO, where strategy, other words that begin with the letter
financial, and human resource facets of the P.For convenience, we labeled it the 4F
combinant event are seamlessly integrated method.
throughout the entire acquisition p rocess Counting the corporate leadership de-
goal-setting, locating, targeting, v aluation, velopment mentees, our business partners
negotiation, closing, and post-closing cultural with whom we shared best practices
assimilation. during my career, and my EMBA students,
One of the course lessons that always gen- the 4F device has been successfully used
erates robust discussions among students by hundreds of executives and senior
with experience in leading major change managers across a broad spectrum of major
events is the one in which we c onsider the change circumstances.
triage of the inherited leadership struc-
turethe determination of who we can de- Cant, Can, Will, and Did
pend on and who we need to quarantine in In any organization there are both formal
the newly acquired organization in order for and informal leaders who exert influence
a new direction to be developed, planned, over the people in their teams, departments,
and enacted quickly and effectively. divisions, business units, companies, or
A leading textbook on M&A describes these groups. When taking responsibility for a
high-quality initial leadership decisions new organization, one of the most urgent
one of the most important, but least effec- priorities for the new executive is d eciding
tively executed M&A c apabilities (Galpin who among the inherited cadre of lead-
and Herndon, 2014). While a cademics and ers can be trusted to get new things done,
consultants have provided many tools and i.e.,who we can depend on.
processes for HR professionals to complete And just as importantly we need to
the task of staffing a newly a cquired or sig- identify those at the other end of the

nificantly altered business segment after a spectrum, those who we can expect to

new leadership structure has been deter- actively resist and undermine the changes
mined, there is little in the way of useful necessary to correct the poor performance
how-to for practitioners when it comes to that precipitated the need for divestiture or
quickly and effectively triaging leadership major change. We speak often of removal of
dependability in the inherited organization. barriers when discussing improvement of
To close this gap, the new Athabasca organizational performance, and we must
M&A course (Nerenz, 2013) proposed a first recognize that each of those barriers
four-quadrant framework for c ategorizing was erected or kept in place by a person(s)
leadership dependability and a simple in a position of authority who is still on the
technique for determining which of payroll. The car does not drive itself into
those quadrants was the likely best fit the ditch.
for leaders at all levels of the inherited Most of the leaders at all levels of the
organization. It is a method of leader-
organization will fall somewhere in b etween
ship t riage that Ihad developed over my the two extremes of dependable and
many years in turnaround m anagement resistant; while development of leadership
practice and taught in the corporate
potential for these inhabitants of the tall
leadership development p rogram in my parts of the bell curve is an important
former company. long-term goal, it is not an urgent necessity
Anyone can master the technique; it in the critical first days and weeks of a
relies upon active listening for specific turnaround situation. We focus on the two
word-choice patterns during informal extremities.
2 Business Expert Press 978-1-94709-816-9 (2018) Expert Insights

What Losers Say
We can broadly define four categories

of inherited leadership dependability by
borrowing some terms from the popu-
lar cultures description of a can-do at-
titude, placing the inherited leaders of an
organization into one of four modes of re-
sponse to major change and new executive
leadership:
1. Cant Do. The resistors and subversives

who actively thwart and undermine new
initiatives.
2. Can Do. The fence riders who wish us
luck, but avoid engagement.
3. Will Do. Those who accept new assign-
ments and execute when tasked. the inherited leadership of the organization
4. Did. The hard-chargers who recognize that will be changed.
and solve problems without waiting to
be told. Cant Do. Unwilling to engage and unable
to lead change
Experienced managers and leaders will Can Do. Able to lead but unwilling to engage
recognize each of these four dependabil- Will Do. Willing to engage when tasked
ity modes, and can likely think of current but unable to self-select change leader-
staff who fit each description. The term ship priorities
dependable may be too murky for some, Did. Willing to lead and able to lead change
and a handy way to sharpen the edges effectively on their own initiative.
and add clarity is to think about the two
key characteristics found in the common Obviously, an executive facing the
phrasewilling and ableto differenti- challenge of turning around a poorly
ate and categorize leadership potential. performing organization would love to

Unlike continuous improvements, which have a payroll stacked to overflowing with
are managed processes, a major change is willing and able Dids, but no bell curve
an event that must be led; the objective is of human beingsnot even those accom-
buy-in, not compliance. Willingness to lead plished men and women who sit around
or actively support change is not the same a boardroom tablewill ever fall entirely
thing as ability to lead or actively support into that category.
change. People in lead roles can be willing The development of change leadership
or unwilling to engage and commit, and capacity in the numerous Can-Dos and
they can also be able or unable to lead oth- Will-Dos is a long-term proposition. Over
ers through a major change. time, many of the Will-Dos can be taught to
We can use the familiar device of a two- lead change, so that their ability matches
axis matrix to illustrate the framework, their willingness; and many of the Can-Dos
i.e.,creating a grid with willingness to engage can develop confidence to act of their own
and initiate new ideas (low to high) along initiative rather than waiting for explicit di-
the x-axis, and ability to lead and implement rection. And in many cases, we simply have
change (low to high) along the y-axis. Four no basis to judge leadership dependability,
quadrants of dependability are produced to since a person in a management role may
which we can make our initial mapping of have had little or no leadership experience
or development. In movie titles heaven
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What Losers Say

The Four F-Words of Failure

Timothy T. Nerenz, PhD

Abstract: When a business executive is given the new

Business Expert Press 978-1-94709-816-9 (2018) Expert Insights

2 Business Expert Press 978-1-94709-816-9 (2018) Expert Insights

We can broadly define four categories

1. Cant Do. The resistors and subversives

Business Expert Press 978-1-94709-816-9 (2018) Expert Insights

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