if he keels over, it's time to get out!
To see how out-of-control employees function as “canaries in the coal mine,” you don’t have to look further than Britain’s now-defunct News of the World. This chart, published by the New York Times, shows a web of interlocking executive dysfunction that brought down a thriving, 168-year-old institution.
In Managing the Unmanageable, we explain how a UE (unmanageable employee) can sometimes be reacting to toxic elements in an organization’s culture — just as canaries did in the old coal mining days. (Miners took caged birds below ground with them; if the bird keeled, over you could be pretty sure there wasn’t enough oxygen to sustain life and it was time to get out.)
Ironically, Rupert Murdoch might have been better off if one of his News of the World employees had keeled over into unmanageability. Maybe then he would have pumped some fresh air (and values) into his paper before it keeled over and died.
