Personal Growth

I'm not a dealer, I'm a mother who happens to distribute illegal products through a sham bakery set up by my ethically questionable CPA and his crooked lawyer friend.

Nancy Botwin on Weeds is left almost penniless by her husband's death; in the opening narratives of the first episode, a group of her friends say her insurance cheated her and that her husband died shortly after renovations to the kitchen that severely depleted their savings. Nancy quickly becomes the top dealer for her planned community of Agrestic, to the dismay of other dealers in the area. In the pilot, Doug Wilson's son Josh tells her that the other dealers all resent her for the speed with which she established herself as a dealer. When the show opens, she's a fledgling but promising name in marijuana distribution.

On the surface, she seems like she'd be a fun person to work for.  She's got potential, she appears to be going places, she is laid back, she doesn't seem to expect very much of her staff and the hours are flexible.

But Nancy is really a textbook study in terrible management. She is an often lovely person, but she can barely run a footrace, let alone a business or a family. She is deluded into thinking her children don't know she sells drugs to make money. She is disorganized and gets away with being a helpless female far too often. She does not study her competiton or consider the consequences of her actions. She does not think about how others might retaliate, or how they might go after her family instead of her. She is all over the place when it comes to making a decision. Half the time she issues an edict, it gets ignored and she doesn't do anything about it.  When you couple that with the fact that she is self-absorbed to the point that she disappears overnight without telling her kids, Silas and Shane,  where she is, and often has no idea what her kids are doing in her absence, it is a recipe for disaster.

Nancy: [talking to Silas and his girlfriend, Quinn] Nice, Shane goes on a paint rampage, gets suspended. The two of you ditch school to fuck in my guest room. I've got everything under control.
Quinn [points at the skylight]: But don't you see, technically we're not under your roof.

Nancy's reaction to this? She lets it go. Not exactly a force to be reckoned with. Obviously, since Silas' next girlfriend encounter ends like this:

Nancy: [about Megan being pregnant] How did this happen?
Silas: You don't wanna hear it.
Nancy: Oh, but I really do.
Silas: If I had to bet on it, I'd say it was three weeks ago in my room. Doggy style. When I pulled out the condom was gone. Megan has really strong muscles, must've sucked the thing right off.
Nancy: Ah-ahh. Stop, stop, stop.
Silas: You asked. You want to be the cool Mom.
Nancy: No. No, I don't. There are a million things in this world I want to be. 'Cool Mom,' nowhere on that list.
Silas: [Megan shows her the pregnancy test; positive] Well, I hope Grandma's on that list.

This is an interesting point of exploration. If you are a good parent, you can be a good manager. Most of the required skill sets are the same. Patience, attentiveness, organization, grooming individuals for advancement. Nancy's parenting skills and her managerial skills are pretty much in line with each other, though neither is to be commended.

She is a lousy judge of character. She marries a DEA agent; he turns out to be crooked and he winds up dead. She gets pregnant by and marries a Mexican politician/drug lord, whose adviser threatens murder of her family -- before getting clobbered in the head by Shane and landing in the pool. Her brother-in-law, Andy, is equal parts dipshit and lucky fucker, and yet she lets him hang around.

Silas: (Referring to the SideKick Andy just gave him) "Does it really work?"
Andy: "Yeah, for about another three weeks, then you'll want to scratch off the serial number and get a new service plan."

In short, she is constantly in over her head.

Heylia [Nancy's first drug contact]: Yeah, lookin’ in the dictionary the other day, saw your picture sittin’ up in there. Right next to “Dumb ass white bitch.”

Nancy does have two things going for her. One is that all her indecision makes her incredibly open to new ideas and opportunities. She discovers that Silas has a knack for botany and she lets him run with it. While this might be bad parenting, letting people follow their bliss and play to their strengths is an excellent managerial move.

The other thing she has going for her is a fierce devotion to those in her circle. Even her frenemy, Celia, benefits from Nancy's kindness. At one point Celia is inches from death but Nancy saves her, albeit with a pistol-whipping.

"Celia Hodes is sitting next to me in the car, all the way from Agrestic. How did she get here? I don't know, but when I hear the unbelievably stupid reason that comes out of her mouth, I'm gonna f---in' kill her, so there may be a dead body in the car when I get there. That's just a heads-up."

In sum, Nancy needs to get her shit together. She needs a mission statement. She needs a concrete goal and she needs to get her crew all heading toward that same goal, using the same line of approach. She needs to make more time for her people. It is very hard to be an effective manager if you can't hire good people, but it isn't impossible. What does make it impossible is if you take that staff and then refuse to assess their skills, education, assets and motivations.  (Nancy also often dresses like a high-priced skank, but we'll let that go.)