Just one comment on the outside sonsulting company for the situation analysis, the executive sponsor for this should be the CEO or COO or the President of the BOD. It should be guaranteed anonymous, no e-mails, no URLs, no recordings. I worked in an IT department that was trying to get a feeling for the climate in the department. Everything was supposed to be handled via e-mail and URL sites. Needless to say the cooperation level was nil. We knew that there was no anonymity, and our actions could come back to haunt us. When the outside company started doing individual interviews they got lots of good information.

A new book covers just such business types:

"Snakes in Suites: When Psychopaths Go To Work"

The authors run a succession planning consultantcy, and they look for evidence of psychopathy in the candidates for upper level management. They cover a number of tactics for dealing with psychopathic executives, including handbooks of how employees treat each other. Psychopathic executives almost never get away with it in bureaucratic organizations, as the rules keep them in check. Only in freewheeling, entrepreneurial or chaotic (mergers, aquisitions) environments can they get away with breaking the rules. They also can only pull their manipulations one on one, so be sure to confront them in public where people can compare notes and they can't be "everone's best friend" at the same time.

"I have been thrust, willy-nilly, into a kind of business-consultant role for a large organization." Judging by the tone of the first paragraph "Strategizing" comes accross as someone whose time and effort could be better expended elsewhere.

His lack of knowledge or experience in such matters He confesses. Yet He through "several sources" and personal observations has come to the conclusion that the Organization would be better served without the "Mean Head of Operations" is this a just conclusion? I think not and I base it on the following:

1. How large an organization are we talking about? Is it 10 employees? 100 or maybe 1000.
"Large" Organizations have as a rule a Human Resource Department with trained personnel whose job it is to defuse bad situations.

2. Have you observed whether it is the same people, that you have identified as being dejected and pistol whipped, who have worned a path to her office? Some people just don't get it. They want to march to their own tune.

As far as your moving up the food chain to present the problem along with the solution - be very careful. The fact that she is being considered for a VP position might mean that her style of management is not a negative or she has an Orgaizational "Godfather." Think carefully what your next step will be. List the pros and cons and if it's worth putting your reputation and/or job on the line - then by all means - do it.

Good Luck!

As part of the organizational listening strategy require an exit interview, performed by the personnel office. Some people will be very clear about why they are leaving if they are speaking to a 3rd party.

"This VP, like all the employees at this organization, is unfireable."

Nonsense. There is no such thing as an unfireable employee, even in a family-owned business.

Carry a recording device (with appropriate legal disclosures) to all meetings with Ms deVille.

One other side suggestion: Assuming you might get called into a closed-door session with Cruella, carry a digital voice recorder with you in your shirt pocket and activate it before you go in. If she's truly as nasty as indications are, documenting this in discussions with higher-ups would be very useful ("No matter what kind of strategic changes you make, as long as senior management treats employees in this fashion, you will never have the kind of staff needed to carry out your long-term goals").

Nobody is "unfireable" (see Carly Fiorina, Patricia Dunn, and a long list of others). But even if she is, higher-ups can put her on a much shorter leash if they decide she's not helping the overall effort.

One point--does this manager produce? If she does, then it will be very difficult to get management above her to recognize a problem. If she doesn't produce--then can you document that in a way that management will be concerned enough to do something?

She may be unfireable, but she's not immovable. If management perceives her as a big enough problem, then they may simply put in her in a nice office, with her current salary, and not much to do. It's happened before.

Thanks to all commenters.

Marcia, you are right, and I hadn't thought of this. But this organization won a grant to conduct this strategizing process is sponsored by a grant. So it has sponsorship from the grantwriting person, who might be Cruella herself.

Lester, thank you for the reference. Theirs is definitely not a free-wheeling workplace. But there appears to be no rules against what she is doing to her employees. I have read a few books about sociopaths in a different context, and I know most of them never get caught.

JimmyV, it is true that this isn't my usual bag, but I was elected, twice, to successively higher levels of involvement. And people are apparently looking to me to help make a change happen. The "organization" not huge, but it is part of a much, much larger enterprise, over 1000 people. The personnel department doesn't appear to be a factor in this situation. It appears people cope by just leaving. I am not sure I understand your second comment. You are saying maybe these downtrodden people are not performing up to snuff, so that is why the boss is being mean to them? That is possible, but this boss is not being mean or negative about poor work. She is being abusive with a capitol A. Humiliating. Cruel. People from other departments and even the strategic planning consultant have noticed the poisonous, dysfunctional dynamic in the org.

John, the exit interview is a good idea, but the question for me is 1) how do you make it part of a strategic plan, and 2) how do you give the results of the interviews any consequences?

Biff, they truly are unfireable, barring some kind of public scandal or egregious criminal act.

Kevin and Anonymous, the recorder idea isn't a bad one. Nothing to do with strategic planning, but what the hey.

Charles, that is an excellent question, but it is hard to answer. Part of it is that I don't know, part of it is that the work her org does is inherently hard to quantify. And again, my job isn't so much to defang her as to prevent anybody, not just her, from doing such things, now or in the future, through the strategic planning process.

Thanks again, everybody.

We all work with difficult people. What you do, the processes you put in place, having discussions with this person - all bunk. You've heard the maxim - you cannot change somebody else, you can only change yourself. She can be Cruella de Ville, but if she's a performing person in this company, how much do you really expect her to change? Shame on the person who doesn't fire her - only if she's a non-performer. This is business. Would it run better if she got along better with others. Possibly. But if her boss isn't willing to do something about it, that tells you something - about that person or the organization that lets it happen.

Someone mentioned employee surveys. That sounds nice, but they are not always very good at measuring the leadership abilities of someone like Cruella. A more effective approach would be a 360-degree performance review. Instead of having reviews being done solely by a supervisor, everyone, including subordinates and peers, rates the person's performance. Most subordinates and peers are in better position to see someone's strong and weak points than a supervisor is.

Great comments on the board, additional comments on the suggestions:

360 reviews, surveys, exit interviews, etc. that were mentioned are useless without an action plan behind it that bears accountability. I'm in a Fortune 50 company that does a massive employee survey, we get the results nearly a year later, and at least in my division, execs are not given objectives to improve weaknesses uncovered in the survey. To Strategizing: make sure you cover both sides of the coin -- survey and objectives/accountability.

Exit interviews are usually a HR-standard to manage risk/liability. Shouldn't be hard to play that card w/ your HR dept

Recorder: I did this once at a previous employer in the mid-1990s w/ a Cruella, to document not only the nastiness, but also her requests relayed in meetings (this Cruella also frequently employed revisionist history ). This was invaluable for documenting both the pyschopathy & dishonesty, but it felt weird at the same time. It was sadly necessary to record because nobody would believe a manager -- let alone an adult -- would act that way. At the same time, recording felt weird (has it really come to this?) and fortunately, I've never had to record anything since.

The whole gist is that your strategic plan must establish the evidence trail -- the same as Dr. Bob advises for problem subordinates. However the plan must be general, not specifically focused on this Cruella. If the evidence mechanisms are in place, Cruella will start to leave tracks. Then its a matter of how much guts your execs have -- be advised that even with evidence, your execs may not take what you think is the logical path.

My experience is that management is well aware of the Cruellas in their organization and they don't care as long as they get results. Sometimes, when their opinion is that all employees are lazy and untrustworthy, management even prefers "hard nosed" managers.

I wouldn't hold out much hope of changing things. But good luck if you do decide to fight the good fight.

I agree with the comment that essentially says if, after thorough introspection, you're convinced that your position is right and righteous, then stand up to the miscreant whenever and wherever possible. Envision a big red "S" on your shirt.

Also, consider an appropriate union. The professional journalists and other staff at the Santa Barbara News-Press just did, and voted overwhelmingly for representation, despite a great amount of recent attrition and replacement by supposedly anti-union employees. As we used to chant in streets in the '60s and '70s, "The People, united, will never be defeated!"

I worked for an org. for 15 years as their employee relations manager and time and time again I heard the same question -- what good is your job...until someone would run into a problem like this. If you are consulting for a large company, they should have an hr office that is capable of handling this type of situation; however, they may not be aware of the problem. Make sure they are. If not, suggest that an arbitrator be appointed during certain types of meetings with certain personnel (Cruella). You can claim you are examining employee relations and taking account how management deals with general staff, etc. This will be necessary in order for the abusive behavior to be noted as a concrete observation and not heresay. You can follow up from there. ROI (return on investment) is also measurable with persons...if personnel is running away from this particular department or company you can point this out as being the reason. Good luck.

JimmyV wrote:
"1. How large an organization are we talking about? Is it 10 employees? 100 or maybe 1000.
"Large" Organizations have as a rule a Human Resource Department with trained personnel whose job it is to defuse bad situations."

Not always. In larger organizations that department has been outsourced to a company that does little else other than read the employee handbook and Policies to you over the phone.