ISO Books/Podcasts About Bad Leadership in Companies

September 23, 2024 4:11 PM

Can you point me towards books or podcast episodes about bad leadership or problematic corporate culture? Preferably things that are compelling stories/easily digestible, but really I just want to learn about businesses or companies that had bad culture or leadership and what happened to them. Thanks in advance!

Things I already know about: Ask a Manager, Behind the Bastards podcast. Would love to hear more suggestions!

posted by carlypennylane to Work & Money (11 answers total)

The Smartest Guys in the Room, about Enron, by McLean and Elkind.
posted by drossdragon at 4:19 PM on September 23 [2 favorites]

The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is great!
posted by ponie at 4:28 PM on September 23 [4 favorites]

You can listen to this happen in real time (if you can stomach it) via the podcast Elon, Inc.
posted by Depressed Obese Nightmare Man at 4:54 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]

I very much enjoyed Going Infinite, Bad Blood, and Super Pumped — all narratives about profoundly bad managers.
posted by moosetracks at 4:55 PM on September 23 [2 favorites]

Not a book, but a good article about what went wrong for Sears.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 5:01 PM on September 23 [1 favorite]

I always recommend Masters Of Doom, about id software and its founders, two incredibly creative and influential individuals, who happened also to be massive dickheads, who should never ever have been trusted to lead any kind of human organisation.

More recently there's Dan Davies' The Unaccountability Machine which is superb on why large firms (and large other kinds of organisations) make terrible decisions.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:18 PM on September 23 [2 favorites]

“On each episode of RIP Corp, we tell the story of one failed business, or a business failure. Join us in the dead mall of business history.”
posted by moonmilk at 8:14 PM on September 23 [2 favorites]

F'd Companies by pud (Philip J. Kaplan) is a book based on the old website fuckedcompany.com, a forum where the anonymous employees of failing startups would describe the implosion of their idiotic employers as it was happening.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:16 PM on September 23

I am half-thru Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed. It compares the airline and health industries but draws on many examples from business and politics. Key message is that some corporate cultures make it very difficult to admit error so there is no learning opportunity. Nobody likes to be wrong and we tend to double-down if errors are pointed out. If management mistakes are reframed as "shit happens" and "nothing to do with me" then the errors repeat. Syed has a BBC podcast Sideways which looks at whatever from different perspectives in 30m chunks. The book has the same breezy this is the conclusion style which makes for easy reading and makes you think . . . but requires also critical evaluation?
posted by BobTheScientist at 2:39 AM on September 24

If you can cope with Wondery's all-too-frequent advertising, their podcast series about WeWork should fit the bill nicely. It's a crazy story, full of lots of great examples of awful leadership.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:16 AM on September 24

besides what's already mentioned, the podcasts swindled (some episodes are based on individuals) and busted business bureau are what you're looking for.
posted by fizzix at 12:19 PM on September 26