It’s All a Matter of How to Crack Whip

What does the UC Berkeley men’s basketball team have in common with Sunbeam-Oster Co., the venerable household appliance maker?

Both returned to prosperity under hard-driving, autocratic leaders who were given to outbursts of temper and used personal invective to control and motivate their troops.

And both bosses got fired.

In interviews with professionals who follow college sports as well as corporate management, another striking parallel turned up. At both Cal, under Head Coach Lou Campanelli, and Sunbeam, under Chief Executive Paul B. Kazarian, the chief’s behavior unexpectedly became an overriding issue because of changes in the organizational environment.

Despite acceptable--even superior--levels of performance at both organizations, once the leaders’ management styles got out of sync with the new reality, their days were numbered. Basketball is much on the minds of sports fans during the final days of the NCAA tournament, which will end with the women’s championship Sunday afternoon and men’s championship Monday night.

Management analysts say the Cal and Sunbeam examples provide insight into how leadership styles influence the way organizations succeed or fail.

Gerry Faust, who heads a San Diego-based management consulting agency, divides leadership styles into four categories: the Producer or Driver, an autocratic, intense type who dominates subordinates; the Administrator, an analyst who creates policies and procedures to organize the work and then carefully monitors the results; the Entrepreneur, a creative, sometimes unpredictable risk-taker who manages according to a personal vision, and the Integrator, a people-oriented type who solicits feedback and seeks consensus.

“Yelling and cursing at people may not be inappropriate in some situations,” said Doug Allen, a management professor at the University of Denver. “You may not want a commander on a bombing run to engage in high levels of participative decision-making while approaching the target.”

Over the long haul, experts say, the most successful managers are those who can adapt their styles when the situation calls for it.

There was uproar in the college coaching ranks in early February, when California abruptly dismissed Campanelli.

Campanelli, 54, in seven seasons had brought national attention to a Golden Bears basketball program that had eluded the limelight for decades. Its last national championship had come in 1960, under coaching legend Pete Newell.

At the time of Campanelli’s firing, Cal had a won-lost record of 10-7--not spectacular, but hardly the kind of result that usually gets a coach thrown out at mid-season, particularly at the college level.

As California Athletic Director Bob Bockrath explained it, he inadvertently overheard a screaming, profanity-laced tirade Campanelli was delivering to his players on Feb. 4, moments after the team lost to Arizona State University. He walked in on a similar explosion after another loss three days later.

Bockrath said he was approached afterward by a group of Cal players who complained of their treatment. He said he had already made up his mind to fire Campanelli by then, and the players’ appeal merely confirmed his decision.

Equally stunning in financial circles was the ouster a month earlier of Paul B. Kazarian, chief executive of Providence, R.I.-based Sunbeam.

Kazarian, 37, had rescued Sunbeam from bankruptcy, radically restructured it and in two years returned it to profitability, enriching himself and his fellow investors.

Kazarian was a brilliant financial analyst and a tireless worker. And, as detailed in an article in the Wall Street Journal, he was also a domineering boss who berated his staff and whose erratic behavior kept the office in turmoil.

Kazarian was dismissed after several of his key subordinates complained to the board of directors.

While Campanelli’s and Kazarian’s styles may have been well suited to their organizations during a turnaround or rebuilding phase, experts say, the conflicts came when the situation changed.

“There’s a time for the shark--when you’ve got a huge mess and you’ve got to strip out the bureaucracy and be fairly ruthless about it,” said Chuck Winslow, managing partner at Andersen Consulting in Chicago and a former Dartmouth basketball player.

That was the situation that Kazarian faced when he and partners brought debt-laden Sunbeam-Oster (formerly Allegheny International) out of bankruptcy in 1990. Within two years, Kazarian’s team had chopped away 40% of the work force, slashed overhead and brought the debt down to manageable levels.

After the crisis passes, however, a different approach may be due.

At Apple Computer, said management consultant Faust, co-founder Steve Jobs was a classic Entrepreneur type--the perfect leader for the innovative enterprise. But once the early development stage was past, Apple turned to marketing whiz John Sculley, whom Faust describes as a Driver/Administrator type.

Similarly, experts said, the high-pressure environment that Kazarian fostered at Sunbeam eventually had to give way to a cooler, more controlled style once the struggling company had been stabilized.

To be sure, the differences between a college coach’s job and a chief executive’s are as striking as the similarities. The coach faces a 25% turnover of his “work force” every season. Besides winning games, he must make sure his charges maintain academic eligibility and emotional stability amid the distractions of big-time athletics.

Notes David Falk, the Washington attorney who represents NBA star Michael Jordan and Georgetown University Head Coach John Thompson: “In corporate America, the manager isn’t responsible for nurturing the development to maturity of 18- or 19-year-olds.”

Still, there were changes in environment at Cal that called for the kinds of adjustment that corporate managers have to make.

Under Campanelli, Cal began aggressively recruiting talented high school athletes who ordinarily would have headed for traditional basketball powers such as North Carolina, Kentucky or UCLA.

Campanelli’s recruiting success resulted in a crop of freshmen and sophomores considered to be on a par with the elite players nationally. At the head of the class is freshman Jason Kidd, Cal’s most celebrated recruiting triumph and one of the country’s top guards.

Along with the promising players, however, have come vaulting expectations. Suddenly, it’s no longer enough for the Golden Bears to be competitive; they have to win.

In that environment, a 10-7 record doesn’t cut it, especially if the coach’s style so alienates players that it affects their performance on the court and even leads to talk of players transferring to other schools.

Campanelli himself gave the best description of his dilemma in a post-firing news conference: “I basically created a monster, folks. And the monster came back and bit my head off.”

Campanelli was succeeded by his 29-year-old assistant, Todd Bozeman, who has a close rapport with the players and is given much of the credit for Cal’s recruiting success.

But Can He Hit the Jump Shot?

Management theorists use various models to describe leadership styles. Consultant Gerry Faust, who favors the four models shown below, notes that most successful managers--be they in sports or business--display traits from more than one category. Based on interviews with management experts who are also college basketball fans, here is a sampling of prominent college basketball coaches and their counterparts in the corporate world.

*The Driver: Tough talking, intense, autocratic, result-oriented.

Robert L. Crandall, chairman, American Airlines

Bob Knight, men’s head coach, Indiana University

* The Administrator: Analytical, organized, process-oriented.

Daniel Burke, chief executive, Capital Cities/ABC

Dean Smith, men’s head coach, University of North Carolina

* The Entrepreneur: Flamboyant, innovative, risk-taking, visionary.

Jim Valvano, former men’s coach, North Carolina State University

Steve Jobs, co-founder, Apple Computer

* The Integrator: Communicative, empowering, people-oriented.

Herb Kelleher, chairman, Southwest Airlines

Mike Krzyzewski, men’s head coach, Duke University