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All CEOs should be studying, as best as possible using third-hand reports, the conflict between Charlie Sheen and Chuck Lorre & Les Moonves. This battle has nothing to do with sex or drugs; those are distractions. Sheen showed up for work and did his job, which makes diagnosing him an addict in a strict clinical sense an iffy proposition.
What L’affaire Sheen is about is how CEOs need to study Talent management and know that standard rules do not apply. If you run a business and have a True Talent like Charlie Sheen on your payroll, be assured that he will be high maintenance at some point in time. Handled correctly, his acting-out will be no big deal. Handled in a ham-handed manner, you have yourself a Cool Hand Luke failure to communicate.
Do I know what I’m talking about with regard to Sheen and Talent? I hope so: I began my career as an alleged substance abuse “expert” after developing a model of how alcohol dependence can be caused by success (self-handicapping). My research into how to manage Talent began more recently; I have been counseling businesses about how to manage A Players for over a decade. This work makes me extremely confident that had Charlie Sheen been managed according to a special set of rules that apply exclusively to Super Talent, Two and a Half Men would be in production today. If you want to avoid the war of words Charlie Sheen is waging against his bosses, consider the following suggestions for the care & feeding of Talent:
1. Every True Talent is or was an insecure overachiever. You don’t push yourself the way Talent does –practicing to perfect your craft like Derek Jeter or Wynton Marsalis do— without some internal issue driving you. Talent do not become who they are by striving to out-do competitors. They embody the U.S. Army Slogan, “Be all that you can be.” The problem is, they must also be acknowledged as #1 and best-of-the-best. After that, everything else is icing on the cake.
2. In contrast to narcissists who are unmanageable, Talent will work with you if you realize that they want their insecurities, not bank accounts, attended to. Yes, they demand huge compensation packages, but only for the purpose of knowing how high they rank in your eyes. After they are #1 financially, they want to be #1 in the hearts-and-minds of their bosses. You cannot “bribe” Talent to perform; you can love them into doing so.
3. Talent are rejection sensitive when it comes to their craft. This frailty is made worse for someone like Charlie Sheen who cannot be certain he is Talent until he succeeds in a variety of contexts over long periods of time. In Sheen’s field, there is no question that Sir Anthony Hopkins and Robert De Niro are Talent: They’ve wowed audiences for years in widely diverse roles. But Sheen, despite the fact that Two and a Half Men is #1 for CBS today, knows he could be a 1-hit wonder.
When you are charged with the care and feeding of talent you must help them determine their contribution to group success if objective data are absent. Talent are operationally defined using the Pareto Principle—the 80/20 Rule—as the 20% responsible for 80% of the results. To comfort them, help them do the math needed to see they are pulling in the 80% they think they are. Yes, it is infuriating to feel you must wet nurse someone you are paying $2 million an episode. But if you want to manage Talent, either placate them or anticipate tantrums.
4. The acid test for determining if a person is Talent involves examining how he gets along with those he works with. [Bosses must recuse themselves from this analysis.] Some Talent are arrogant and completely self-possessed in dealings with those who can control them [bosses], but are not with teammates. While Talent do demand 100% from themselves and those around them, they also care about the feelings of those they work with.
Interspersed in Sheen’s public tirades of late, an attentive observer would have heard his concern that shutting-down Two and a Half Men would hurt the folks working to produce it. In addition, Sheen said he was willing to contribute to a fund that would compensate co-workers if management did the same. The fact that Sheen has never blamed his team for his problems, and has targeted his rants exclusively at bosses, tells me that despite suffering a boatload of problems, Charlie Sheen can be managed. A good place to start: Acknowledge his professed altruism and base any accommodations made in settlement negotiations on the fact that he is as caring about the needs of others as he claims.
Aristotle observed, “No great genius has existed without some touch of madness.” All Talent is quirky, at best, and outlandish, at worst. Sheen is an outlier: As insecure as he is charismatic. But if you think “nice guy” Talent is easier to manage than a sex-crazed man like Sheen, you’re a fool.
Recall Cal Ripken, Jr., formerly of the Baltimore Orioles, the super-nice-guy who surpassed Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played? A man who was as squeaky-clean as Sheen is soiled? If you believe press reports, the private Cal Jr. was anything but humble. To keep in peak condition it is said he received special accommodations when his team traveled, a private room so his sleep wouldn’t be disturbed, and a slew of personal trainers. Was he worth it? You bet, but don’t think that he was low-maintenance. Ripken gave the Orioles record attendance and invaluable press coverage, but en route to those gains demanded the star treatment anyone in their right mind knew he deserved.
I am not endorsing Sheen’s lifestyle. That said, I am 100% certain that porn stars and cocaine are not his major problem. The only way to “cure” Sheen of the “addictive high” that thrills him more than bacchanalian orgies is to deprive him of the most intoxicating “substance” he has ever abused: Press Coverage. If there were a Charlie Sheen News Blackout imposed immediately, he, Lorre, and Moonves, would achieve a rapprochement by the Ides of March. But if the sycophants on TV talk shows who fawn over him as though he was a Noble Laureate continue to stroke his ego, the kid on Two and a Half Men will have gray hair before Sheen calms down.
