Paying The Pryce
The critically acclaimed period drama Mad Men centers around an ad agency and its employees adapting to a world transitioning through the 1960s. In season 5, episode 4 (entitled 'Signal 30'), two employees, Lane Pryce and Pete Campbell, have a series of miscommunication and disagreements that result in a fist fight in the middle of the office. The events are as follows.
Lane Pryce is the financial chief and a founding partner of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Originally from England, he has always found it difficult to woo clients the way that the American executives in the accounts department can. Suddenly finding himself with newfound confidence, he enlists expert account man and fellow partner Roger Sterling to train him on how to talk to a client. After Roger gives Lane a lengthy lesson on how to talk to potential costumers, Lane sets off to get dinner with a representative from Jaguar Cars.
Lane's dinner goes incredibly poorly. After attempting to use many of the tricks Roger taught him, Lane's lack of confidence causes the tricks to backfire and make for an awkward and uncomfortable dinner with the Jaguar rep. Lane returns without an offer from Jaguar and hoping to try again. He also resents Pete and other members of accounts for never providing him with assistance or support.
Pete Campbell, a young and ambitious account executive, has had a less than stellar relationship with Lane Pryce. Pete sees Lane as an intruder who has taken the position of SCDP partner that Pete feels was owed to him. As such, he has little respect for Lane. After hearing about the failed dinner with Jaguar, Pete condescendingly tells Lane to maintain a friendly but distant relationship with Jaguar, and that accounts will take over the client. Lane is disappointed, but remains composed.
Pete, along with Roger Sterling and a reluctant Don Draper, takes the Jaguar representative out for an apology dinner, only to find that he has already decided to do business with them, and his frustrations with Lane were only from the fact that Lane did not take him out for any "fun". The Jaguar executive then suggests they visit a brothel, and Pete gladly leads him there.
Later, as Pete, Roger, and Don celebrate the new relationship with Jaguar, Lane storms in and informs the men that Jaguar will no longer be working with SCDP, as the representative's wife discovered that they had taken him to a brothel. This leads to an argument in which Lane blames Pete for screwing up what turned out to be good business, and Pete airs all of his prior frustrations with Lane. This results in a fist fight in the middle of the office, in which Lane beats the crap out of Pete. Pete leaves the office on the verge of tears, and remarks that everyone at the office is supposed to be friends.
This is without a doubt an example of Boleman & Deal's Model I scenario. It follows almost every step that they give.
1. Assume that the problem is caused by the other side.
-Lane blames Pete (and other account men) for not giving him enough help before he meets his first ever client. Pete blames Lane for trying to meet the client without asking accounts.
2. Develop a private, unilateral diagnosis and solution.
-Pete decides on his own that it is time for him to intervene, so he takes the client from Lane and only informs Lane after he's already set up a new dinner with Jaguar.
3. Since the other person is the cause of the problem, get that person to change.
-Pete gives Lane direct critique that only account men should be meeting with clients, and that Lane should just stick with the finances, where he is competent.
5. Respond to resistance through some combination of intensifying pressure and protecting or rejecting the other person.
-Lane is disappointed that he has been kicked off the account, and Pete decides to completely keep him out of the loop. Lane never even found out that the Jaguar man just wanted to visit a prostitute, and Pete doubled down on the lie that Lane messed up the first dinner and that Pete had to come in and save it. Pete conspires with the other partners to box Lane out of the conversation.
6. If your efforts are less successful than hoped, it is the other person's fault.
-We are back to square one with nothing solved. Pete still believes Lane was in the wrong, and Lane still believes Pete was in the wrong. With no solutions and intense pressure exerted by the loss of business from Jaguar, Pete and Lane duke it in attempt to solve the conflict.
You are the second student to write about this show. Fortunately you wrote about a completely different scenario, so there was little overlap with the other posts. That said here are some questions for you.
ReplyDelete1. Do you think the writers of Mad Men have had some management/leadership training so wrote their scripts to highlight issues such as the one that B&D discuss?
2. Is this particular story too stereotypical to be useful for us? You may remember I sowed an image about complexity and chin up leadership where the arrows pointed in different directions. Here they all seem to point in the same direction. Or was there some mystery in this story that you didn't relate?
3. The single part of this that I wouldn't have anticipated from what you said is that the Jaguar reps were okay with the initial spiel by Lane. Since I haven't watched the show, I wonder if that seemed right to the audience or if the writers pulled a fast one there. Which was it?
Since I haven't watched the show, I didn't understand what Lane brought to the table that company would want. The idea that conflict emerges when the wrong person takes a position of responsibility is in an interesting hypothesis, but you don't go out to hire the wrong person. So there must have been some indicators that he'd do well in this work. For me, not having watched the show, it would have helped to understand what those indicators were.
1. I am certain they did. My dad worked for his father's ad agency around the same time period, and whenever I would watch Mad Men around my dad, he'd comment about how accurate the management style was to what he remembers. Given that the people behind the show go out of their way to make sure every aspect is as accurate as possible, I have no doubt that the writers at least read tons of literature on the subject, if not undergoing leadership training.
Delete2. Perhaps it was a bit too stereotypical, but I really wanted to write about Mad Men and this was the simplest example that came to mind, and even then it involves a complicated backstory and relationship between two characters. I just personally don't like Pete Campbell and perhaps my telling of the story portrayed him in a negative light.
3. Most of Lane's meeting with the Jaguar man was not actually shown. Part of why I think this is a good example is because almost everything we know about the conflict comes from Pete or Lane, who each tell the story in their own biased way, which leads to finger pointing. Lane has been full of self-doubt since he first appeared, so it is no surprise that he could be lead to believe he did a terrible job with a task when he actually didn't do too badly.
I enjoyed reading this. I was never too interested in watching this show, but now I might reconsider.
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