In season 2, episode 3 of Succession, Logan Roy invents a new game, a humiliating game to express his dominance over those in his family and company. The Atlantic gives the canonical explanation here:
As usual, though, I want to take the conversation in another direction. What if, instead of asking why Logan’s tactics are so terrible, what if we ask why they are so effective?
The episode takes place at a hunting retreat in Hungary, and Logan makes the offhand comment before they head out that it will be good for “morale.” By the end of the show, his son Roman, who was previously going out doing his own thing, was searching his soul and recommitting to do whatever it took to get achieve Logan’s approval. And perhaps, in some twisted way, the retreat really did help to secure the morale of the top brass of the company.
Speaking of top brass, I think the reason the retreat may have been effective is similar to the reason why military units can sometimes achieve a high degree of unity and loyalty: they share extremely intense emotional experiences.
In the episode, Logan engineers an intense experience by taking people out of their comfort zone, humiliating them, and making them feel real fear. I am not sure whether he planned it all out or let it play out spontaneously. Either way, Logan Roy has a theatrical instinct that enables him to create intense emotional experiences for those around him. Sure, there are some negative consequences of his tactics. No one ever feels at peace around him, everyone takes a big hit to their self-esteem. But this doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from it.
Think about it. Watch this video and tell me the last time you ever exerienced this kind of emotional intensity at a company retreat:
Probably never. That’s probably a good thing. Especially if creating that kind of emotional theater requires the kind of insane and humiliating tactics employed by Logan Roy.
But does it? Are actual war and public humiliation the only ways to really create this kind of intensity? I don’t think so, but I also don’t think it is a trivial thing. Logan found a way to do it, and I may not like it, but I am a bit jealous of it.
So let me propose some potential factors that could be essential to reconstructing this kind of experience. First, people have to have a strong incentive to engage with the activity. In war, most participants don’t really have a choice, either they volunteer without knowing what they are getting into, they are conscripted, or the war comes to them. At the hunting retreat, it is mostly greed. People have a strong financial incentive to stay on Logan’s good side.
Then you have to feel like something is big is at stake. In war, anyone can die at any moment…so that is pretty big. At Logan’s party, he makes everyone feel like they could lose their job at any moment. Perhaps it is possible to engineer a situation where people feel like they are on the verge of creating something big together. Maybe you could create a feeling of importance with some kind of mind-altering drugs.
Finally, people have to engage in some kind of shared behavior. Marching together, cowering in a trench, sweating in a tank, chanting “Boar on the floor! Boar on the floor!” in a hunting lodge halfway across the world. These physical markers of the experience create shared physical associations with those around you, and help you tie the emotions to a specific time, a specific place and a specific group of people.
In many ways, Logan has created a battered and broken family. Every individual has extreme insecurities. But I think some aspects of what he has done have created powerful bonds that run beneath the surface between his children and his inner circle. Somehow these bonds (which are backed by a vast amount of money, of course) remain despite the betrayal, addiction and abuse.
