Let's not forget Hollander or Gast, either. All of them needed to be sat down with a copy of the Evil Overlord List, and a strong injunction to think very hard about "how could this go wrong; how wrong could it go; and what can we do to prevent it?"

(Plus, if the answers to the first two questions came back "no" and "not very", they should have been sent back to do some more thinking).