Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (80 page)

 

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 sophomore 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.

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 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 damn insecurities and neuroses—at every level. Competitiveness, 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 tycoons, 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 button 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 God. 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, Saturdays, 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 passing up until it comes to the chief executive. Then there ain’t nobody to pass 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 God.

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 embarrassed 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 hell 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.