At every turn in his upward spiral, Dunlap heard Wall Street cheering. The more he cut, the higher the stock price would soar. Only after the stock price began to plummet at Sunbeam because of clear operational deficiencies did Dunlap meet his Waterloo. He succeeded for a time, at least, because he did things that authentic leaders, guided by a set of values and morals, would refuse to do .None of that seemed to matter to Wall Street, where greed has never gone out of style. The keyword here is authentic.
Authentic leadership is about leading mankind from the darkness to the light.
That wasn't an analogy for increasing production while at the same time decreasing costs. If an enlightened company gets into trouble, you can be sure it's the enlightenment that will be sacrificed, not the bottom line. Which brings me back to Chainsaw. When dismissed from his duties, Al Dunlap felt he was owed an explanation by the board of Sunbeam, which at the time, at least, was not afforded. I suspect the reason it wasn't was that the board knew, given the parameters of the job they had asked him to do, Al simply wouldn't understand why they were letting him go.