I was offered all kinds of deals which I turned down-by big vending companies. It would be beautiful for me. I walk away with a million many times over. So what? What about these poor devils? I"ll fire "em all? Huh?
To them, I"m Dave. I know the family. I know their troubles. "Dave, can you give me a dollar?" "Dave, how about some coffee?" I"ll go to the model maker and talk about our problem and we"ll have a shot of whisky. Ask him how his wife"s feeling. "Fine." He wants to put something for his home, can I make it? "Sure." They all call me Dave. When they call me Mr. Bender I don"t know who they"re talking to. (Laughs.) I love mechanics. All my fingernails are chopped off. I washed my hands before you came in. Grease. Absolutely. I get into things. You stick a ruler here or a measure here. I want this, I want that. "Frank, you chop this up. Put this in the mill. Cut that off." I got three, four things happening at one time.
I"m here at six in the morning. Five thirty I"ll leave. Sometimes I"ll come here on Sunday when everybody"s gone and I"ll putter around with the equipment. There isn"t a machine in this place I can"t run. There isn"t a thing I can"t do.
They tell me it don"t look nice for the workers for me to work on the machine. I couldn"t care less if I swept the floors, which I do. Yesterday some napkins fell on the floor from the napkin feeding machine. I said to the welder, "Pick up the napkins." He says, "No, you pick it up." I said, "If you"re tired, I"ll pick it up." So I"m pickin" "em up.
The workers say: "You"re the boss, you shouldn"t do this. It"s not nice. You"re supposed to tell us what to do, but not to do it yourself." I tell "em I love it. They want me more or less in the office. I don"t even come in here. If I do it"s just to get my shot of booze with my worker and we break bread, that"s all. When they call me Mr. Bender, I think they"re being sarcastic. I don"t feel like a boss to "em. I feel like a chum-buddy.
I know a lot of people with money and I have very little to do with them. They"re a little bit too high falutin" for me. I think they"re sn.o.bs. They"re spoiled rotten, their wealth. I won"t mention names. I was born and raised poor. I had zero. I"m a fortunate guy. Whatever I got I"m thankful for. That"s my life. I just like plain, ordinary people. I have a doctor friend, but outside of being a doctor, he"s my swear-buddy. We swear at each other. A guy who works in the liquor store is my friend. Some of the workers here are my friends.
You"re the boss of these people . . .
(Hurt) No, I just work here. They say, "Dave you should give us orders. You shouldn"t be pickin" up napkins." Oh, don"t misunderstand me. I"m not the easiest guy in the world. I swear at "em. I"m a stubborn son of a gun. When I finally get my idea straight, I"m rough. I know what I want, give me what I want. But I do have enough sense to know when to leave"em alone.
Don"t you feel you have status in being a boss?
Ooohhh, I hate that word! I tell people I don"t want to hear another word about who I am or what I am. I enjoy myself eleven hours a day. When I get home I take my shoes off, get comfortable, pinch my wife"s rear end, kiss her, of course, and ask her what she did today. I try not to take my problems home. I have problems, plenty, but I try to avoid it.
Sat.u.r.days and Sundays are the worst days of the week. It"s a long weekend because I"m not here. I b.u.m around, see movies, go to somebody"s house, but I"m always waiting for Monday. I go away on a vacation, it"s the worst thing in the world. (Laughs.) My wife got a heart attack in Majorca, Spain. She was in the hospital. I was there six weeks. It was the first real vacation I ever had. I finally went fishing. Here I am drinking wine, eating oranges and cheese, tearing the bread on the boat, had the time of my life. I told my wife it took her heart attack to get me to enjoy a vacation. (Laughs.) Retire? h.e.l.l no. I"d open up another shop and start all over again. What am I gonna do? Go crazy? I told you I love my work. I think it"s some form of being insecure. I"ve always worried about tomorrow. I worried and I fought for tomorrow. I don"t have to worry about tomorrow. But I still want to work. I need to.
Today I worked all day in the shop with the model maker, two tool makers, and a welder. I don"t have neat blueprints. I don"t have a d.a.m.n thing. All I have is this. (Taps at his temple.) I"ll take a piece of paper. I can"t even make drawings. I"m measuring, taking off three-eighths of an inch or put on two inches here. It"s the craziest piece of iron you ever saw. I never saw anything like this in my life. But I saw it working the other day.
When I get it fabricated it"ll be a packaging machine. You"ll see arms going up and down, gears working, things going, reelers and winders, automatic everything. I know it could be patented. There"s nothing like it. It"s unique. This is all in my mind, yes sir. And I can"t tell you my telephone number. (Laughs.) I never tell people I"m the boss. I get red and fl.u.s.tered. I"m ashamed of it. When they find out-frankly speaking, people are parasites. They treat you like a dirty dog one way, and as soon as they find out who you are it"s a different person. (Laughs.) When they come through the front door-"I want you to meet our president, Mr. Bender"-they"re really like peac.o.c.ks. I"d rather receive a man from the back door as a man. From the front door, he"s got all the table manners. Oh, all that phony air. He"s never down to earth. That"s why I don"t like to say who I am.
A man comes in and I"m working like a worker, he tells me everything. He talks from the bottom of his heart. You can break bread with him, you can swear. Anything that comes out of your heart. The minute he finds out you"re in charge, he looks up to you. Actually he hates you.
My wife"s got a friend and her husband"s got a job. If only they stopped climbing down my back. I do so many wrong things. Why don"t you tell me to go to h.e.l.l for the things I do? I deliberately see how far I can push them. And they won"t tell me to go to h.e.l.l, because I"m Dave Bender, the president. They look up to me as a man of distinction, a guy with brains. Actually I"m a stupid a.s.s, as stupid as anybody that walks the street.
Yet what the h.e.l.l did we fight for? A G.o.dd.a.m.n empty on top of nothing? A sand pile? King of the Hill means you stood there and you fought to get on top of an empty hill. But it did satisfy your ego, didn"t it? We do these crazy things. It doesn"t have to be a financial reward. Just the satisfaction.
I"m making a machine now. I do hope to have it ready in the next couple months. The machine has nothing to do with helping humanity in any size, shape, or form. It"s a personal satisfaction for me to see this piece of iron doing some work. It"s like a robot working. This is the reward itself for me, nothing else. My ego, that"s it.
Something last night was buggin" me. I took a sleeping pill to get it out of my mind. I was up half the night just bugging and bugging and bugging. I was down here about six o"clock this morning. I said, "Stop everything. We"re making a mistake." I pointed out where the mistake was and they said, "Holy h.e.l.l, we never thought of that." Today we"re rebuilding the whole thing. This kind of stuff gets me. Not only what was wrong, but how the devil do you fix it? I felt better. This problem, that"s over with. There"s no problem that can"t be solved if you use logic and reason the thing out. I don"t care what it is. Good horse sense is what it"s known as. With that you can do anything you want-determination, you can conquer the world.
ERNEST BRADSHAW.
"I work in a kind of bank, in the auditing department. I supervise about twenty people. We keep an eye on the other areas. We do a lot of paper checking to make sure n.o.body inside is stealing. It"s kind of internal security." The company is a large one-about five thousand employees.
He"s been at this job a year. He started there two and a half years ago as a clerk. "You always feel good about a promotion. It means more money and less work." (Laughs.) He is twenty-five, married. His wife is a teacher. There are two blacks aside from himself in the department.
You have control over people"s lives and livelihood. It"s good for a person who enjoys that kind of work, who can dominate somebody else"s life. I"m not too wrapped up in seeing a woman, fifty years old, get thrown off her job because she can"t cut it like the younger ones. They moved her off the job, where she was happy.
Some people can manage and some people can"t manage. I figure I can manage. But it"s this personal feeling-it just doesn"t seem right for me to say to this woman, "Okay, I"ll rate you below average." She has n.o.body to support her. If she got fired, where would a woman fifty years of age go to find a job? I"m a good supervisor. I write it up the way it"s supposed to be written up. My feeling can"t come into play. What I do is what I have to do. This doesn"t mean I won"t get gray hairs or feel kind of bad.
At first they doubted my word, being black and being young. The woman was white. They told me to doc.u.ment my feelings. They didn"t know if it was a personality prejudice or black against white. So I doc.u.mented it. I showed this point and that point . . . So they said okay. They knew I didn"t particularly care for doing it. They knew my feelings. I told them she was a good woman. They said, "You can"t let personal feelings come in. We"ll give her about five months to shape up or ship out." She was put on probation.
That"s the thing you get in any business. They never talk about personal feelings. They let you know that people are of no consequence. You take the job, you agree to work from eight thirty to five and no ifs, ands, or buts. Feelings are left out. I think some of the other supervisors are compa.s.sionate, as I think I am. But they take the easy way out. You take a person that"s minimal, you rate him as average. He"ll get a raise in six months. When you write a person as minimal, the person won"t get a raise and he"s subject to lose his job. Everybody takes the easy way out and just put down a person"s average. This takes away all the pressures. I felt it has to be one way: be truthful about a person "cause it"s gonna come up on "em sooner or later. I look at people as people, person to person. But when you"re on a job, you"re supposed to lose all this.
If it"s a small organization, you don"t need anything like that. You don"t need appraisals. Everybody knows everybody. In a larger company people become p.a.w.ns. These big corporations are gonna keep on growing and the people become less and less. The human being doesn"t count any more. In any large corporation it"s the buck that counts.
In this case, we could"ve moved her to an area in which the job wasn"t as demanding. Someplace where she"d never have to worry about firing and not worry about somebody like me watching her. Give her a job that she has a potential for, where she can do her optimum, where she could have a slower pace. Why put her where you have so much youth and speed?
I don"t see this job as status. Okay, I got twenty people under me. That"s not status to me. Status is being the man at the top. Not just to be another p.a.w.n. You"re not at the bottom level. You"re on the step right above it. But there are fifty more above you. So there"s really no status to this job.
But what does the guy at the top do? He"s chairman of the board. I don"t know if that"s a particularly nice feeling to have-five thousand people under you, two billion dollars in a.s.sets, and a handful of men watching it. What are they doing while you"re gone? Being up there is something I couldn"t ever envision.
After spending two years in the service he had worked in a neighborhood realty office. "Managed property, screened out people who were acceptable and who weren"t. The neighborhood changed to where it was pretty rough, so I decided it was advantageous to leave.
"I hadn"t planned on making this a permanent thing. Just stay here six months and go back to school full-time, accounting. But I got married, so I had to remain. I"m undecided now. I have a few business courses, but I stopped taking them and just work on the humanities. See if there"s anything there I"d prefer to business."
I"m usually at the desk by eight ", half an hour before work starts. Getting set up for the day, writing programs, a.s.signing different jobs to different people. When they come in we take a head count. You see who"s late and who"s not. You check around and make sure they start at eight thirty and not go in the washroom and powder their nose for fifteen minutes. You make sure when they go for breaks they take fifteen minutes not twenty. You check for lunch hours, making sure they take forty-five minutes and not an hour. And that they"re not supposed to make personal telephone calls on the bank"s phone. All you"re doing is checking on people. This goes on all day.
The job is boring. It"s a real repet.i.tious thing. I don"t notice the time. I could care less about the time. I don"t really know if it"s five " until I see somebody clean up their desk. At five I leave for school. It"s always the same. Nothing exciting ever happens.
It"s just this constant supervision of people. It"s more or less like you have a factory full of robots working the machinery. You"re there checking and making sure the machinery is constantly working. If it breaks down or something goes wrong, you"re there to straighten it out. You"re like a foreman on the a.s.sembly line. If they break down, replace them. You"re just like a man who sits and watches computers all day. Same thing.
Just like Big Brother"s watching you. Everybody"s watching somebody. It"s quite funny when you turn and start watching them. I do that quite a bit. They know I"m watching them. They become uneasy. (Laughs.) A man should be treated as a human, not as a million-dollar piece of machinery. People aren"t treated as good as an IBM machine is. Big corporations turn me off. I didn"t know it until I became a supervisor and I realized the games you have to play. When you were a clerk, you didn"t have no worries. You just had to do your job. You just had to worry about signing in on time and signing out on time. You just knew you had a job to do and to do it.
I won"t be there forever at the place. Working in a bank, there"s no thrill in that. I didn"t run home and say, "Ma, I"m working for a bank now. Isn"t that wonderful?" I"m still searching. I do move around. I never sit at the desk. That"s one thing I could never do is just sit. Maybe that"s what my next job will be, something where I can move around. Maybe a salesman . . .
Quite a few people stay after work. I look at "em every day when I walk out the door. (Laughs.) I"m not that way. They are the older generation. They stay there just to make sure the work is all caught up. I can"t see that. The older ones are much more dedicated than the younger ones. I can"t ever envision a time where we"ll go back to a period where when a man starts out in a business he"s dedicated to it for the rest of his life. I can"t envision a man staying with a company forty years. That"s over with.
A man can go to school for three years and change his profession any time he gets good and ready. He might be a clerk pushing papers all day, but he also goes to this computer school. And he"ll probably go to another corporation, where he"ll get better pay. A lot of men of the last generation are just content with their jobs. They never look for any other place.
I promised I"d never let myself get an ulcer. Money isn"t worth that. But that woman really bothered me. She was nice, gentle. But it was something I had to do and I told her it had to be done. I told her people had been carrying her all along and just marking her average. She sat about two desks away from me and I was helping her most of the time. Her pay wasn"t going up or anything. I think she appreciated me telling her.
PETER KEELEY.
"I sell draperies. I"ve done that for many years, In the past I"ve manufactured them. It was my business. It"s no longer my business. I sell the product I used to make. It was a come down when I went broke. I don"t believe it is today. I believe it is an adjustment to age. I think it"s a victory. There"s many men in the same condition, have given up and just rotted. Quite a few of my old friends. Not me."
He is sixty-five years old.
"Originally, I started selling in New England. Broad silks. Small stores, hardheaded New England Yankees. It was quite an education. If you can sell them, you can sell anybody. ln 1941 they moved me to Pittsburgh for forty dollars a week. I became branch manager. I was quite successful-until the present day."
The company I was running the business for sold out to a corporation on the west coast-a merger. I was dropped. It was company policy: no man older than forty-five. Everybody was merging. A lot of people got dropped by the wayside. I didn"t bounce. That hurt my ego. It hurt me in twenty directions. I got cold feet, scared. It was a year ago, November. I was sixty-four. Many friends drop you, many people don"t know you. You have to fight your own way-which I"ve done all my life. I"m d.a.m.n well adjusted now.
I brought this branch from about a hundred thousand dollars a year to a million and a half. There was no great shakes over that. I was frantically, insanely mad. (Laughs.) I spent four months going insane. Another month, I probably would burn the building down and kill myself. I blamed everything on everybody.
These days I"m drawing $128 a week for a company I"m handling inventory for. And purchasing. He has a seventy-thousand-dollar inventory, about a hundred thousand yards. No fabric can come in, be cut, go out without me knowing it. I work very hard until about noon.
I run a little business of my own and make about three hundred dollars a month-a decorating business, a tiny company. A few jobs here and there. I work on this a couple of hours in the afternoon. I very seldom go out to lunch.
I call my customers cold turkey. I look in the book and call ten people: "Do you want draperies or don"t you?" You"d be surprised. (Laughs.) It"s like the guy that said to twenty girls, "Would you go to bed with me?" Nineteen said no, but one said yes. (Laughs.) I use a telephone directory, I read the paper. Here"s a new office building. I"ll call the builder, the architect, or the company that"s gonna manage it. I get a lead off that. Usually I get nowhere. All of a sudden you get that one guy and you have him. General Electric, a nationwide corporation, right? They got my name out of the Yellow Pages: Kee of Pittsburgh. The head porter-they now call him superintendent of maintenance-this janitor called me up and said, "This is General Electric. We want to have our offices decorated." They didn"t know me from Adam. It was a lead out of a phonebook. That"s one way.
I say, "This is Kee of Pittsburgh. My name"s Pete Keeley. May I speak with the doctor?" You never talk to him, he"s busier than a dog with fleas. So you talk to the nurse. "How about your draperies? I want to make some money off you. I can make about forty bucks on it. But you"ll be satisfied." That"s a good pitch. Either she"ll think you"re crazy or she"ll say, "Okay, come on up." I never say I"m the cheapest. He can go to Penny"s, you can go to Sears and get it cheaper, but you won"t get me. I just cannot sell a cheap fabric. It always had to be the best. We"re talking now about very small stuff, very small business. (Laughs.) I can get the job, maybe one out of ten, one out of twenty. That"s enough. If I got "em all, I wouldn"t be talking to you. I"d own the building. I pick up about five a month. I"ve never used the stereotype approach. "My name is Pete Keeley. I"m Kee of Pittsburgh. I want to make some dough off you."
I try to pick carefully. I just feel it. I won"t take a dentist who"s been there forty-five years and cleans his drapes every five years. That"s not the guy to approach. When I hear of new buildings, I may drive by and get the list off the front.
All my life, everytime I make a cold call, I"ve had cold feet. Whether I call the president of General Motors-as I have in the past-or on a little mama-and-papa store, the same b.u.t.terfly, always. If you make enough calls and make the b.u.t.terfly fly away, you"re gonna hit. One out of ten, twenty. Like the old guy that sells doughnuts. If he makes enough calls, he"s gonna sell a doughnut.
They hang up on me many times. A baseball player doesn"t bat more than .300. When he hangs up on me, I say, "Look, Kee, what did you do wrong with this guy? Theoretically you"re a genius in selling." Then I"ll say to myself, "I did nothing wrong. I"m a genius. This guy"s a dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h."
I"ve never felt humiliated. I got into a fistfight once with the head buyer of a store in Boston. He was a very nasty son of a b.i.t.c.h. He told me I was overpriced and no d.a.m.n good. He and I resented back and forth, right there on the fifth floor. It ended in the elevator. The merchandise man separated us. The only time I got mad at a buyer. A lousy buyer is a buyer who won"t buy from you, but there"s no physical combat. We both got arrested. (Pause.) Maybe he did humiliate me. (A longer pause.) The more I think about it . . . It"s the only time of my life I ever resorted to violence-in selling.
It"s been a very bad year emotionally. I worried a lot, I sweat a lot of blood, and spent a lot of sleepless nights. Because of this let-out, this comedown. I felt it. I knew it was comin". I knew the policy of this coast company. I didn"t do anything about it. I should have. It"s a shock to an egotist. All of a sudden you find you"re not the smartest guy in the world. (Laughs.) It"s much easier to say, "Mr. Keeley resigned from X Company," than it is to say, "Mr. Keeley was dropped by X Company." (Pause.) Just like that, they dropped me. They handed me a couple of checks. "We regret this, Mr. Keeley, and thank you, good-by." That was it.
I should have made the change myself when I had the opportunity. When a man has a responsible position, there are many offerings open to him. When he"s out of it, these offerings disappear. They"re gone. To look for another job when you have a job is not too difficult. But when you haven"t got one, to look for a job-that was my mistake. I felt I failed bitterly. It came close to destroying me.
I have no regrets. I never met a man yet that didn"t make mistakes. I feel I"m a tremendous success-to a point. Monetarily I"m no success. But mentally I"m a tremendous success. At sixty-five I"m still selling. I can"t help it. You can"t give up something you love. I"m doing it to keep my mind awake and clear. I"m doing it to keep myself alive.
"The word sell is the key to my life. I was a scared boy. I couldn"t even talk on the phone. I"d sweat blood, I"d perspire, I"d fall down, I"d have to go to the bathroom. I"d walk around the building twenty times and smoke two packs of cigarettes. I never had the nerve to go in. I was a complete introvert. But the minute I found out people liked me and I liked them, I started selling. It"s the best thing that ever happened to me. You have to like every slob that ever was. There"s something in every guy."
I ran up against an unbeatable fact with a large corporation-age. Competence didn"t enter into it. Nothing entered into it. No, uh-uh. I don"t look forward to retirement. It would kill me. There is no such thing as retirement. It"s a slow death.
Maybe I"m still trying to prove something. I"ve had a very bad stock in life. I went to grammar school four years late. I finished high school at night eleven years late. I went two years to college, twelve years late. I was trying to catch up. I"ve had to prove a lot of things later than other people did. Every man has to have a victory in something. To me, my life"s a victory. Now at this moment I can sell you whatever I want to sell you. But I still have something to prove . . . and I"m not sure what it is.
LOIS KEELEY NOVAK.
Peter Keeley"s daughter. She is a schoolteacher. She has been seated nearby, listening to her father"s reflections.
My dad lost his business the year I was married. (To him) I remember you coming home and sitting on the bed. You had to fire all those people. He had to post a notice: their employment was terminated. It was the end of Kee of Pittsburgh. I"d never seen a man cry. That really frightened me. Nineteen fifty-six. I thought my father was the wisest man that ever lived. He was always telling me how I could do all these things. He used to help me with math. I used to dread those sessions at the kitchen table when my father would help me. Actually I resented it. I wondered, Could I ever be as intelligent, as successful as he was?
I was a soph.o.m.ore in college when everything went down the drain. I never thought it would happen. It was like the end of the world. We had those great plush years. I remember the house. The kid"s say, "Is that your house?" The schools we went to, Palm Springs, inviting your friends down for the weekends, swimming pools, fancy dresses. It was all tied up with my father. Finally I had to face my father being a real person.
And when it happened a year ago, his discharge, I knew it. My mother told me on the phone, "Please come home. Something"s wrong." I knew it, but it was a strange feeling. My father"s work was the key, my father"s success was the key to how we lived.
LARRY ROSS.
The corporation is a jungle. It"s exciting. You"re thrown in on your own and you"re constantly battling to survive. When you learn to survive, the game is to become the conqueror, the leader.
"I"ve been called a business consultant. Some say I"m a business psychiatrist. You can describe me as an advisor to top management in a corporation." He"s been at it since 1968.
I started in the corporate world, oh gosh-"42. After kicking around in the Depression, having all kinds of jobs and no formal education, I wasn"t equipped to become an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor. I gravitated to selling. Now they call it marketing. I grew up in various corporations. I became the executive vice president of a large corporation and then of an even larger one. Before I quit I became president and chief executive officer of another. All nationally known companies.
Sixty-eight, we sold out our corporation. There was enough money in the transaction where I didn"t have to go back in business. I decided that I wasn"t going to get involved in the corporate battle any more. It lost its excitement, its appeal. People often ask me, "Why weren"t you in your own business? You"d probably have made a lot of money." I often ask it myself, I can"t explain it, except . . .
Most corporations I"ve been in, they were on the New York Stock Exchange with thousands and thousands of stockholders. The last one-whereas, I was the president and chief executive, I was always subject to the board of directors, who had pressure from the stockholders. I owned a portion of the business, but I wasn"t in control. I don"t know of any situation in the corporate world where an executive is completely free and sure of his job from moment to moment.
Corporations always have to be right. That"s their face to the public. When things go bad, they have to protect themselves and fire somebody. "We had nothing to do with it. We had an executive that just screwed everything up." He"s never really ever been his own boss.
The danger starts as soon as you become a district manager. You have men working for you and you have a boss above. You"re caught in a squeeze. The squeeze progresses from sation to station. I"ll tell you what a squeeze is. You have the guys working for you that are shooting for your job. The guy you"re working for is scared stiff you"re gonna shove him out of his job. Everybody goes around and says, "The test of the true executive is that you have men working for you that can replace you, so you can move up." That"s a lot of boloney. The manager is afraid of the bright young guy coming up.
Fear is always prevalent in the corporate structure. Even if you"re a top man, even if you"re hard, even if you do your job-by the slight flick of a finger, your boss can fire you. There"s always the insecurity. You bungle a job. You"re fearful of losing a big customer. You"re fearful so many things will appear on your record, stand against you. You"re always fearful of the big mistake. You"ve got to be careful when you go to corporation parties. Your wife, your children have to behave properly. You"ve got to fit in the mold. You"ve got to be on guard.
When I was president of this big corporation, we lived in a small Ohio town, where the main plant was located. The corporation specified who you could socialize with, and on what level. (His wife interjects: "Who were the wives you could play bridge with.") The president"s wife could do what she wants, as long as it"s with dignity and grace. In a small town they didn"t have to keep check on you. Everybody knew. There are certain sets of rules.
Not every corporation has that. The older the corporation, the longer it"s been in a powerful position, the more rigid, the more conservative they are in their approach. Your swinging corporations are generally the new ones, the upstarts, the nouveau riche. But as they get older, like duPont, General Motors, General Electric, they became more rigid. I"d compare them to the old, old rich-the Rockefellers and the Mellons-that train their children how to handle money, how to conserve their money, and how to grow with their money. That"s what happened to the older corporations. It"s only when they get in trouble that they"ll have a young upstart of a president come in and try to shake things up.
The executive is a lonely animal in the jungle who doesn"t have a friend. Business is related to life. I think in our everyday living we"re lonely. I have only a wife to talk to, but beyond that . . . When I talked business to her, I don"t know whether she understood me. But that was unimportant. What"s important is that I was able to talk out loud and hear myself-which is the function I serve as a consultant.
The executive who calls me usually knows the answer to his problem. He just has to have somebody to talk to and hear his decision out loud. If it sounds good when he speaks it out loud, then it"s pretty good. As he"s talking, he may suddenly realize his errors and he corrects them out loud. That"s a great benefit wives provide for executives. She"s listening and you know she"s on your side. She"s not gonna hurt you.
Gossip and rumor are always prevalent in a corporation. There"s absolutely no secrets. I have always felt every office was wired. You come out of the board meeting and people in the office already know what"s happened. I"ve tried many times to track down a rumor, but never could. I think people have been there so many years and have developed an ability to read reactions. From these reactions they make a good, educated guess. Gossip actually develops into fact.
It used to be a ploy for many minor executives to gain some information. "I heard that the district manager of California is being transferred to Seattle." He knows there"s been talk going on about changing district managers. By using this ploy-"I know something"-he"s making it clear to the person he"s talking to that he"s been in on it all along. So it"s all right to tell him. Gossip is another way of building up importance within a person who starts the rumor. He"s in, he"s part of the inner circle. Again, we"re back in the jungle. Every ploy, every trick is used to survive.
When you"re gonna merge with a company or acquire another company, it"s supposed to be top secret. You have to do something to stem the rumors because it might screw up the deal. Talk of the merger, the whole place is in a turmoil. It"s like somebody saying there"s a bomb in the building and we don"t know where it is and when it"s going to go off. There"ve been so many mergers where top executives are laid off, the accounting department is cut by sixty percent, the manufacturing is cut by twenty percent. I have yet to find anybody in a corporation who was so secure to honestly believe it couldn"t happen to him.
They put on a front: "Oh, it can"t happen to me. I"m too important." But deep down, they"re scared stiff. The fear is there. You can smell it. You can see it on their faces. I"m not so sure you couldn"t see it on my face many, many times during my climb up.
I always used to say-rough, tough Larry-I always said, "If you do a good job, I"ll give you a great reward. You"ll keep your job." I"ll have a sales contest and the men who make their quota will win a prize-they"ll keep their jobs. I"m not saying there aren"t executives who instill fear in their people. He"s no different than anybody walking down the street. We"re all subject to the same d.a.m.n insecurities and neuroses-at every level. Compet.i.tiveness, that"s the basis of it.
Why didn"t I stay in the corporate structure? As a kid, living through the Depression, you always heard about the tyc.o.o.ns, the men of power, the men of industry. And you kind of dream that. Gee, these are supermen. These are the guys that have no feeling, aren"t subject to human emotions, the insecurities that everybody else has. You get in the corporate structure, you find they all b.u.t.ton their pants the same way everybody else does. They all got the same fears.
The corporation is made up of many, many people. I call "em the gray people and the black-or white-people. Blacks and white are definite colors, solid. Gray isn"t. The gray people come there from nine to five, do their job, aren"t particularly ambitious. There"s no fear there, sure. But they"re not subject to great demands. They"re only subject to dismissal when business goes bad and they cut off people. They go from corporation to corporation and get jobs. Then you have the black-or white-people. The ambitious people, the leaders, the ones who want to get ahead.
When the individual reaches the vice presidency or he"s general manager, you know he"s an ambitious, dedicated guy who wants to get to the top. He isn"t one of the gray people. He"s one of the black-and-white vicious people -the leaders, the ones who stick out in the crowd.
As he struggles in this jungle, every position he"s in, he"s terribly lonely. He can"t confide and talk with the guy working under him. He can"t confide and talk to the man he"s working for. To give vent to his feelings, his fears, and his insecurities, he"d expose himself. This goes all the way up the line until he gets to be president. The president really doesn"t have anybody to talk to, because the vice presidents are waiting for him to die or make a mistake and get knocked off so they can get his job.
He can"t talk to the board of directors, because to them he has to appear as a tower of strength, knowledge, and wisdom, and have the ability to walk on water. The board of directors, they"re cold, they"re hard. They don"t have any direct-line responsibilities. They sit in a staff capacity and they really play G.o.d. They"re interested in profits. They"re interested in progress. They"re interested in keeping a good face in the community-if it"s profitable. You have the tremendous infighting of man against man for survival and clawing to the top. Progress.
We always saw signs of physical afflictions because of the stress and strain. Ulcers, violent headaches. I remember one of the giant corporations I was in, the chief executive officer ate Gelusil by the minute. That"s for ulcers. Had a private dining room with his private chef. All he ever ate was well-done steak and well-done hamburgers.
There"s one corporation chief I had who worked, conservatively, nineteen, twenty hours a day. His whole life was his business. And he demanded the same of his executives. There was nothing sacred in life except the business. Meetings might be called on Christmas Eve or New Year"s Eve, Sat.u.r.days, Sundays. He was lonesome when he wasn"t involved with his business. He was always creating situations where he could be surrounded by his flunkies, regardless of what level they were, presidential, vice presidential . . . It was his life.
In the corporate structure, the buck keeps pa.s.sing up until it comes to the chief executive. Then there ain"t n.o.body to pa.s.s the buck to. You sit there in your lonely office and finally you have to make a decision. It could involve a million dollars or hundreds of jobs or moving people from Los Angeles, which they love, to Detroit or Winnipeg. So you"re sitting at the desk, playing G.o.d.
You say, "Money isn"t important. You can make some bad decisions about money, that"s not important. What is important is the decisions you make about people working for you, their livelihood, their lives." It isn"t true.
To the board of directors, the dollars are as important as human lives. There"s only yourself sitting there making the decision, and you hope it"s right. You"re always on guard. Did you ever see a jungle animal that wasn"t on guard? You"re always looking over your shoulder. You don"t know who"s following you.
The most stupid phrase anybody can use in business is loyalty. If a person is working for a corporation, he"s supposed to be loyal. This corporation is paying him less than he could get somewhere else at a comparable job. It"s stupid of him to hang around and say he"s loyal. The only loyal people are the people who can"t get a job anyplace else. Working in a corporation, in a business, isn"t a game. It isn"t a collegiate event. It"s a question of living or dying. It"s a question of eating or not eating. Who is he loyal to? It isn"t his country. It isn"t his religion. It isn"t his political party. He"s working for some company that"s paying him a salary for what he"s doing. The corporation is out to make money. The ambitious guy will say, "I"m doing my job. I"m not embarra.s.sed taking my money. I"ve got to progress and when I won"t progress, I won"t be here." The shnook is the loyal guy, because he can"t get a job anyplace else.
Many corporations will hang on to a guy or promote him to a place where he doesn"t belong. Suddenly, after the man"s been there twenty-five years, he"s outlived his usefulness. And he"s too old to start all over again. That"s part of the cruelty. You can"t only condemn the corporation for that. The man himself should be smart enough and intuitive enough to know he isn"t getting anyplace, to get the h.e.l.l out and start all over. It was much more difficult at first to lay off a guy. But if you live in a jungle, you become hard, unfortunately.
When a top executive is let go, the king is dead, long live the king. Suddenly he"s a persona non grata. When it happens, the shock is tremendous. Overnight. He doesn"t know what hit him. Suddenly everybody in the organization walks away and shuns him because they don"t want to be a.s.sociated with him. In corporations, if you back the wrong guy, you"re in his corner, and he"s fired, you"re guilty by a.s.sociation. So what a lot of corporations have done is when they call a guy in-sometimes they"ll call him in on a Friday night and say, "Go home now and come in tomorrow morning and clean out your desk and leave. We don"t want any farewells or anything. Just get up and get the h.e.l.l out." It"s done in nice language. We say, "Look, why cause any trouble? Why cause any unrest in the organization? It"s best that you just fade away." Immediately his Cadillac is taken away from him. His phone extension on the WATS line is taken away from him.60 All these things are done quietly and-bingo! he"s dead. His phone at home stops ringing because the fear of a.s.sociation continues after the severance. The smell of death is there.
We hired a vice president. He came highly recommended. He was with us about six months and he was completely inadequate. A complete misfit. Called him in the office, told him he was gonna go, gave him a nice severance pay. He broke down and cried. "What did I do wrong? I"ve done a marvelous job. Please don"t do this to me. My daughter"s getting married next month. How am I going to face the people?" He cried and cried and cried. But we couldn"t keep him around. We just had to let him go.
I was just involved with a gigantic corporation. They had a shake-up two Thursdays ago. It"s now known as Black Thursday. Fifteen of twenty guys were let go overnight. The intelligent corporations say, "Clear, leave tonight, even if it"s midweek. Come in Sat.u.r.day morning and clean your desk. That"s all. No good-bys or anything." They could be guys that have been there anywhere from a year to thirty years. If it"s a successful operation, they"re very generous. But then again, the human element creeps in. The boss might be vindictive and cut him off without anything. It may depend what the corporation wants to maintain as its image.
And what it does to the ego! A guy in a key position, everybody wants to talk to him. All his subordinates are trying to get an audience with him to build up their own positions. Customers are calling him, everybody is calling him. Now his phone"s dead. He"s sitting at home and n.o.body calls him. He goes out and starts visiting his friends, who are busy with their own business, who haven"t got time for him. Suddenly he"s a failure. Regardless what the reason was-regardless of the press release that said he resigned -he was fired.
The only time the guy isn"t considered a failure is when he resigns and announces his new job. That"s the tipoff. "John Smith resigned, future plans unknown" means he was fired. "John Smith resigned to accept the position of president of X Company"-then you know he resigned. This little nuance you recognize immediately when you"re in corporate life.
Changes since "42? Today the computer is taking over the world. The computer exposes all. There"s no more chance for shenanigans and phoniness. Generally the computer prints out the truth. Not a hundred percent, but enough. It"s eliminated a great deal of the jungle infighting. There"s more facts for the businessman to work from, if the computer gives him the right information. Sometimes it doesn"t. They have a saying at IBM: "If you put garbage in the computer, you"ll take garbage out." Business is becoming more scientific with regard to marketing, finance, investsments. And much more impersonal.