Likeonomics: The Unexpected Truth Behind Earning Trust, Influencing Behavior, and Inspiring Action

Conclusion

In May of 2009 the business magazine Portfolio assembled a panel of professors from top business schools to create a Top 20 list that no executive wanted to be on. Their task was to comb through history and find the worst American CEOs of all time. Going back over 150 years, they looked at tales of corporate failure and greedy executives from many time periods. Coming in at #1 was Lehman CEO Dick Fuld who inspired hatred from all corners of the world for defending his own $484 million salary while Lehman was going through the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history ($613 billion in debts outstanding).

Way down at number 6 was a man from a different time who probably deserved to be #2. In his career as a corporate executive, Al Dunlap had several nicknames…but the most popular was “Chainsaw Al.” His specialty was firing people. Lots of people. A few months after he became CEO of kitchen appliance maker Sunbeam in 1996, he fired half of their 12,000 employees. At the time, it was the largest workforce reduction by percentage in corporate history.

Unapologetic, he wrote about his methods in his first book, which he titled Mean Business. One of his favorite sayings was, “If you want a friend, get a dog.” The pleasure he seemed to take in firing people even inspired author Jon Ronson to interview Dunlap in 2010 while researching his book The Psychopath Test. Though Dunlap narrowly missed the mark for being a true psychopath by psychological standards, he showed many of the same ...