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Ozzy as Manager

By Rob Walker
Posted Wednesday, April 24, 2002, at 1:20 PM ET
Ozzy Osbourne

Time and again I have argued against facile comparisons of various non-business-world figures to CEOs. I'm getting nowhere. Just this weekend I saw a reference to George W. Bush as having the management style of "a big-picture CEO." Why bother pointing out that some CEOs are big-picture types and others are micromanagers? Why bother noting that the same variation occurs among any set of leaders, from politicians to baseball managers? So I give up. I'm joining the pack. I've decided that it's possible, after all, to consider any public figure through the lens of corporate leadership. Today, then, we will consider the management style of Ozzy Osbourne.

What style is that? Well, Ozzy can be said to operate like a big-picture CEO. Example? Consider last night's installment of The Osbournes, the MTV series about the heavy-metal icon's domestic life.

Ozzy was confronted with trouble: His son, Jack, had allowed into the house a buddy named Jason, who seemed to have no plan of leaving, ever. Ozzy identified this as a problem. Early in the episode, he spelled out his strategy: He would sit back and do nothing for a few days and see what happened. But if the kid continued to get on his nerves, he'd have to be downsized. Now, Ozzy has other responsibilities, such as working on elaborate pen-and-ink drawings and contemplating his vision (or just having visions), so he moved on; he didn't obsess about the details. In fact, Jason indicated at one point in the show that Ozzy didn't even seem to remember him. That's no surprise! The CEO of Osbournes Inc. was focused on the big picture, after all.

Anyway, Jason continued to have a negative impact. So he had to go. That's where Ozzy's wife Sharon comes in. She's effectively the chief operating officer of the family, taking care of day-to-day details—like Bob Pittman at AOL (Entertainment Weekly has suggested that Sharon might be "the most powerful woman in rock"). I didn't actually see Ozzy delegate authority to her on this, but that in and of itself might be evidence of his CEOlike efficiency: In a smoothly operating organization, there's an ingrained system in place that makes such orders unnecessary.

Sharon, a canny and no-nonsense COO, fixed responsibility on Jack: He was given the task of giving his slacker pal the heave-ho. He squirmed a bit about this, but Sharon held firm. And in a rather sniveling performance full of half-truths and apologies ("You don't mind?"), Jack managed to give Jason his walking papers. Problem solved.

The parallels between the Osbournes and an efficient corporation, then, are indisputable. Indeed, Ozzy's performance was exemplary—he articulated (albeit in a slurry voice laced with profanity) the goals and let others take care of the particulars without any further interference, or indeed awareness, on his part. We could all learn a lot from this CEOlike style. We can only hope that he'll share his "lessons" with us, perhaps in a book to go alongside the ones that promote management tips gleaned from Star Trek or the Founding Fathers or Jesus—maybe Diary of a Mad Manager: Leadership Secrets of Ozzy Osbourne. Believe me, someone would buy it. Sounds crazy, but that's how it goes.

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Photograph of Ozzy Osbourne by Fred Prouser/Reuters.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:

Moster says he assumes the piece was satire, but "maybe [Walker] hasn't worked in a family owned company." Kimberly Mundy's whole family watches the show and she says "we always compare problems of ours with the ones in Ozzy's family and we usually end up thinking that ours are not so bad." Mgr says "too bad Jason wasn't union, he'd still be there. If Jason could've only proven his slackerness was a medical condition or even better a condition caused by his Oz employment he'd still have his job or at least a good lawsuit."


Reader Comments From The Fray:

An excellent and humorous article by Mr. Walker but my wife would disagree with his "big-picture CEO" conclusion. Ozzy Osbourne, she would say, operates exactly like a typical husband/father (i.e. a man) in a typical marriage. He is vaguely aware that other people are in the house with him but largely chooses to ignore them unless one is bothering him. Note that the key is not whether the activity in question is immoral, illegal, or even sanitary. The objectionable quality is that the offender is making "a big deal out of something" that is causing husband/father to lose his focus of concentration on whatever activity it is that he is currently making a big deal out of. This causes him to make his displeasure/will known by generally bellowing around the family cave loudly but ineffectually. The "slurry voice laced with profanity" part would cause my wife to nod her head in particularly vigorous agreement.

At this point, wife/mother, the person on whom literally everything depends to actually get done within the family (i.e. a woman) steps in and takes whatever actions are necessary to placate her mate. This allows husband/father to cease his profane roaring, return to his Barca-Lounger and/or basement, and resume whatever he was doing in the satisfaction that he has once again achieved his desires without ever really having to bother himself over exactly how he accomplished it.

In complete honesty and credit to my wife, I fully concede that I can see the Ozzy Osbourne model operating within myself in our own marriage and family. It did leave out the part about how Sharon Osbourne, as wife/mother, brings up this incident--and their relative roles in resolving it--in every argument that she and Ozzy will have for the next fifteen years but perhaps that will be laid out in next week's episode. I would watch it but I cannot find my G_dd_mn channel clicker! HONEY!!!

--The Bell

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