The seemingly indestructible office protected species

When US President Donald Trump turns for advice on his war in Iran, it is sobering to consider who he finds.

There is his golfing friend Steve Witkoff, the spectacularly unqualified property developer who is Mr Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East.

And Ms Tulsi Gabbard, the spy chief who reassured Congress that intelligence experts believed Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon”, before backing Mr Trump three months later and claiming it could build one “within weeks”.

But then, in a league very much of his own, there is the Defence Secretary, Mr Pete Hegseth. The former Fox News host has denied allegations of sexual assault and alcohol abuse in his past, and continues to insist he did nothing wrong when he discussed plans for military strikes in a Signal chat that included a journalist in 2025.

Few other presidents or prime ministers share Mr Trump’s taste for such colourful courtiers. The same goes for top chief executives. It is hard to think of any leader of a global listed company who would choose to have a Hegseth by their side.

This does not, of course, mean that the business world is free from underperformance. Far from it. But such weaknesses are rarely exposed by anything as dramatic as a war in the Middle East.

If they were, it would be something to see what would happen to one of the most enduring, and infuriating, features of corporate life: the protected species.

I speak here of the office colleague who, year in, year out, gets away with behaviour that would spell dire trouble for anyone else.

The one who treats managers’ requests with disdain. Or never answers calls, or delivers woefully shabby work, when they do any work at all. How do they do it? Because they are deemed to be so favoured that they are untouchable.

I say “deemed” because the most fascinating members of the species may not even have that much support from above.

In other words, they are not golfing pals, nepo hires or sycophants, or indeed anyone their superiors think much about at all. Rather, they have mastered the art of making everyone around them believe they are hugely valued by the chief.

This typically involves frequent, tiresome mentions of what the boss privately thinks, likes and loathes.

When Mr Steve Jobs was developing the iPhone at Apple, he pitted two of his star executives against each other to see who would come up with the best product, wrote business journalist Fred Vogelstein in his 2013 book Dogfight.

One of the pair “drove his colleagues mad”, Mr Vogelstein reported, by telling them “Steve wouldn’t like that”, even though Steve was never in the room.

Sometimes, actions rather than words are deployed.

Feathers were much ruffled in the upper ranks of the Walt Disney Company in 1995 when then chairman Michael Eisner decided to make Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz Disney’s president.

Top executives who feared Mr Ovitz lacked the experience to run a big public company were reportedly taken aback by his behaviour once he arrived.

“One habit especially vexed Eisner’s inner circle,” according to an account of this ill-fated episode in Vanity Fair magazine. “Early on, the company’s new president developed the gesture of whispering in Eisner’s ear – both in meetings and at public events.”

Mr Ovitz was clearly doing this “to show he literally had the boss’ ear”, Mr Stephen Bollenbach, Disney’s chief financial officer at the time, told the magazine.

Even if this was the case, it did not work out – for either side. Disney ended up paying Mr Ovitz US$140 million to leave after less than 18 months in the job, in a move that resulted in years of litigation.

All this is a reminder that trying to build one’s protected status by invoking proximity to power can be risky.

A leader who does not know that their relationship with an underling is being misused to gain advantage can be peeved upon finding out. And even if that does not happen, alienating colleagues with irksome ruses can prove dangerously self-defeating.

I have always thought it smarter to work as most people do, by doing the best job they can and treating all around them as they would like to be treated themselves.

Tricks might work for a while, but they can also backfire so badly that tricksters end up becoming not so much protected, but a sadly endangered species. FINANCIAL TIMES