The games moguls play

Tribune head honcho Sam Zell obviously enjoys all the attention his outrageousness has been getting, but he's hardly the only billionaire mogul to behave badly. Fortune's Stanley Bing calls it The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Moguls, and in case you're not familiar with their MOs, it's important to keep some overriding principles in mind: I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I. All right, that's not really being fair. On occasion it's also me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me. And what about those habits? Here's a Bing sampler:

--They don't sleep. I know quite a few people who have received phone calls full of ideas, dyspepsia and wind, from their mogul who is at that moment on an exercise bicycle... at 3:00 AM. The mogul never acts like it's weird to be calling at that hour. They just get lit up about something and because their personal boundary mechanism is out-of-whack, they don't realize it's inappropriate for them to do anything at all, let alone put on their headsets and get cracking in the middle of the night. Many claim they get some of their best ideas at that hour. This remains to be seen. Many things look either too good or too bad in the small hours before dawn. Since moguls have NO bad ideas, they default to the former.

--They are in 24/7 electronic communications. I saw a mogul in the shallow end of the Four Seasons swimming pool in Beverly Hills last month, talking into thin air on his Bluetooth headset. That's what I'm talking about.

--They yell. Actually, I should add to that. He was YELLING into his Bluetooth headset. Moguls love to yell the way babies love to cry. It's one of their ways of expressing frustration, hunger, pique or rage when words fail them. It gets results faster than calm discussion or even a crusty memo. Also, the same way nobody civilized will yell back at a baby, nobody in their right minds yells back at a mogul, either.

--They love their hobby. Warren Buffett recently told CBS News that he is so passionate about bridge that he would prefer it to the sight of a naked woman. The exact quote was, "You know, if I'm playing bridge and a naked woman walks by, I don't ever see her." In short, they play as hard as they do other things.