You couldn’t tell who the bosses were

Tom Murphy is one of those guys that not enough people know about it. He ran Capital Cities Communications (which you also likely haven’t heard of) for years back in the 1960’s until it eventually acquired the ABC network in 1985, which was later purchased by Disney in 1986.

His story is fascinating, and a recent episode of the Founders podcast dug deep into it. While there were a lot of great stories in that show, and perhaps more posts to come, this one stood out the most. It’s a story of a bartender that purchased stock in Capital Cities in the 1970’s (which undoubtedly earned a massive return on investment) and why he did it:

He told me a story about a bartender at one of the management retreats who made a handsome return by buying capital city stock in the early 1970s.

When the bartender was later asked why he made the investment, he replied, “I’ve worked a lot of corporate events over the years, but capital cities was the only company where you couldn’t tell who the bosses were.”

The idea of “you couldn’t tell who the bosses were” is an interesting one. On the one hand, as the bartender shares, it can be a great thing. The bosses get along with their team, and everyone pushes forward.

On the other hand, we’ve all seen organizations where the leadership becomes great friends with the team and then is unable to make tough decisions. It’s a fine line, for sure.

Given all that Murphy and Capital Cities accomplished, not to mention the love that Warren Buffett had for Murphy’s style, I tend to think he did things the right way. Not being able to tell who the bosses were can indeed be a very good thing.