In BusinessRoom at the top for one strong leader
Even in companies helmed by two symbolic heads, everyone knows who really is the boss
Predicting the future in the business world is basically a mug's game, but one prediction was easy to make: last year's much hyped "merger of equals" between the French Publicis and the American Omnicom advertising companies was doomed to failure.
Even my battered crystal ball managed this prediction, and now it has been vindicated.
The overwhelmingly simple reason why the merger failed is that there is no such thing as a merger of equals. Nor, generally speaking, is there such a thing as co-equal leadership of a big firm.
The best leaders are well aware of their limitations and listen as much as they speak
Even if we set aside the hardly minor issue of reconciling the large egos of Omnicom's John Wren and Publicis' Maurice Levy, we are still left with the improbability that a massive firm can be led in unison by two men on different sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
The fact of the matter is that companies are not democracies (this may explain the local business community's aversion to democracy in other spheres), and they just don't work without clear leadership in the shape of a single man or woman.
You must have heard all that guff about "teamwork" and being part of "one big happy family" or even "we're all equals here", but the truth is that companies are extraordinarily dependent on the dynamism and skill of a single person.
Most great companies have been built on the back of a single person's vision and sustained by his or her determination.
That is not to say that these individuals work alone or even that they can achieve their goals without competent colleagues. However, in business, the buck has to stop somewhere, and enterprises generally only work with just one person in the driving seat.