A Way of Looking at Things No. 27: Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth, R.I.P.

A Way of Looking at Things – No. 27: Dr. Francis Xavier Pesuth, R.I.P.

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© 2001

We all die, that as they say is as certain as taxes. But some deaths affect us differently than others. Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard professor and prolific writer, died recently and I surprised myself by weeping real tears. I found he was as close to me as family, perhaps closer, because I am moved by his passion for life and ideas.

I know the evolutionist only through his books and articles (he wrote a monthly article for a quarter century in Nature). He’s one of that rare breed in science: a person who can think and write like an angel.

Gould’s gift for expression is matched by his passion, conviction, insight and daring. Last summer when my wife Betty and I took a long trip I exposed her to nine hours of tapes of his book Full House in which he presents the truth about progress, evolution and excellence from Plato to Darwin. She surprised herself by enjoying much of it. What is fascinating about Gould, among other things, is that he uses common metaphors, such as baseball and baseball statistics, to illustrate his points.

Two books of his that I consider “must” reading are The Mismeasure of Man (1981) and Wonderful Life (1989). In the first he takes I.Q. on with abandon and shows how scientists and charlatans have skewed their reading of intelligence to fit their preconceived biases. In the latter book he uses the burgess shale as his metaphor for the nature of history.

My eight-year-old grandson loves dinosaurs and has wanted to be a paleontologist since he was four. Not surprising, Gould had a similar interest at that age. Recently, I took Ryan to the Barnes & Noble Bookstore and put into his hands Gould’s last book, his magnum opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (2002). It is 1,433 pages of commentary (and always statistics) of Gould’s reading of the family tree of life. I am thinking of purchasing ($40) it for his next birthday and telling him to read it when he is ready.

Gould came from very common stock and climbed to prominence with casual ease. He dedicates Wonderful Life to Norman D. Newell with the caption, “Who was, and is, in the most noble word of all human speech, my teacher.” I can identify with this.

Francis Xavier Pesuth was my teacher. Son of immigrant Croatian parents, devout Roman Catholic, perspicacious psychologist, Honeywell executive, my mentor, counselor, coach and friend, I have a similar if more personal connection with him than of course Gould, albeit both are my teachers.

I am letting my soul surface here and letting the words follow, as they well in my reflections on this great man in the most sincere since of this expression.

One day at Honeywell Avionics (Clearwater, Florida) he was called for an emergency Pinellas County (Florida) School Board Meeting, where he was chairman, and found he was without a suit coat.

“Fisher, can I borrow your jacket?”

“Sure.”

So he puts my jacket on and it fits him like a dress, breaking at mid-knee. Francis being about five-eleven, looks at himself in a mirror and says,

“How can this be? You’re only about four or five inches taller than me!”

“Francis,” I laugh, “it’s because you have no shoulders.”

“It’s that is it?”

“Yep.”

A broad smile breaks across his face; he shakes his head, then that pleasant guttural laugh of his rises from his diaphragm. “No shoulders!” Then growing pensive, he adds,

“Maybe that explains why I was never a jock.” Still, with the jacket on, he leaves the office and heads for the parking lot, looking a whole lot like Charlie Chaplin sans the cane but with the same crooked knees.

It was that quality of self-enfacement, despite his considerable gifts, that made him special. He died earlier this year (as did Gould) at the age of 78.

I miss him. I don’t want to be maudlin about it, but he was important to me, and I find myself thinking often about him. He was a marvelous boss who guided me through some tough personal terrain while introducing me to my peculiar strengths and weaknesses.

His early assessment of me ran something like this: “You’re chaotic, compulsive, creative and conceptual. The first two piss me off, the last two save your ass.”

When I came to Honeywell, I was already a mature professional with all the success and baggage that goes with it. My recent history found me cynical, self-centered and narcissistic. I had the typical Irish complaint, which is that the world is against me. Francis cut through all that malarkey by being firm, fair, consistent and honest with me, something that I had not experienced before in a supervisor.

Francis not only walked the talk but also walked the life. He was a man of his word, but also a man of unabashed principles and beliefs and had no interest in being a proselytizer.

It is rare to find a man of both profound intelligence and marked humility, but he was such a man. Never one to punish you with his knowledge, he saw nothing unusual in his being a competent and dedicated employee without complaint. As Honeywell executive Ken LaPorte puts it, “No company ever had a more loyal employee.”

It is high praise, but Francis was key to LaPorte’s success as he was to such people as Dave Larson, Drs. Thomas Brown, Mick Sheppick, Mike Donovan, Ed Buck, Blondel Senior, many others, as well as myself.

It hurts me that in retirement he was largely ignored by the Honeywell contingent with the exception of Ken LaPorte. Often, you are not appreciated in your own shop the way you are esteemed in your profession. This was the case with Francis. Several of Honeywellers were like his sons, perhaps Prodigal sons that never found their way back home.

And it saddens me also that Honeywell didn’t avail itself of his expertise in retirement. He was years ahead of his time introducing quality circles, participative management, total employee involvement, psychometrics, assessment processes, organizational development interventions, employee-centered management, employee-assistant programs, while at the same time convincing management to staff his efforts with Ph.D.’s. All of this was being done as early as the 1970s, long before all of this became standard operating spin.

When I joined Honeywell in 1980, Francis was an adjunct professor at both the Pinellas County (Florida) campus of the University of South Florida and St. Petersburg Junior College (Florida), chairing the Pinellas County School Board, organizing Honeywell Avionic’s Management & Executive Development Center in Minneapolis with Dr. Thomas Brown, co-founding the Suncoast Management Institute (St. Petersburg Florida), supervising six Ph.D.’s in industrial psychology and management development at Honeywell Avionics (Clearwater Florida), while overseeing organizational development (OD) interventions through Ned Munger in Honeywell Avionics in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A man of 56 at the time, where he found the energy and enlightenment to do all this was beyond me.

That said, what I liked especially about Francis was his directness which I experienced in my first days as a Honeywell employee.

“Fisher,” he said, “I don’t know exactly what your role will be here, but if you don’t find it in the next six weeks you’re history.”

On another occasion, I was outlining a strategy I had devised for a major program management intervention, quipping, “Francis, I’m trying to think outside the box.”

He laughed heartedly, “Fisher that’s funny, very funny. You’ve never been inside the box.”

Shortly before he retired, with me just back from a stint with Honeywell Europe, he invited me into his office. “I don’t know what you’re going to do when I’m gone, and I’m not able to run interference for you.” Then with one of his typical mixed metaphors, he added, “I suspect the HR piranha will come out of the woodwork after you.” He was of course right, and another reason why he was so endearing to me.

One day, for some reason, I was particularly angst, and asked him boldly, “Why do you always call me ‘Fisher’? I have a given name you know, James Raymond. You can call me James, Raymond, Jim, Ray, or even Seamus (pronounced Shay – mus), Gaelic for James that I was called in college.”

He looked at me in amazement. “Fisher, you’re lucky that I call you at all.”

I rolled my shoulders. “I guess you’ve got a point.” My da referred to me as “your son,” when talking to my mother about me, never “Jimmy.” Yet speaking to me directly, I was always Jimmy to him. So there was precedence and somewhat of a bond between my father and surrogate father, Francis.

It may seem strange that I found Francis so engaging. Having gone through an expensive, traumatic and wrenching divorce, no longer sure of my direction, or myself, and joining Honeywell only after becoming totally disenchanted with consulting, I welcomed his no nonsense approach to me.

My whole executive career had been in industrial and international line management where I enjoyed an unencumbered hand to create essentially as I pleased. You sank or swam on the basis of results and only results.

To put this in perspective, I had never been confined in a box called a “plant” where the order of the day was “to compare and compete.” So, it was a new experience, to say the least, to run into immediate interference from other department Ph.D.’s. It never occurred to me that I might be imposing myself on the turf and constituency of others. Even their sandbagging and sabotaging was a new experience. Francis recognized this and also knew I had an inclination to underestimate my colleagues and their impact on my efforts, and therefore he managed me accordingly.

“Fisher,” he said one day, “do you believe in team effort?”

“Francis, is this a trick question?”

“No.”

“Do you want spin or what I think?”

“I know what you think, humor me. Give me spin so I can get through the rest of the day.” And so I did.

Then there was the Human Resources (HR) department. I marveled at its ineptness, while appearing to be proficient. It gave new meaning to duplicity, chicanery, deception and legerdemain. Having been trained in line management, I marveled at its existence. In fairness I had encountered HR in my consulting work but mainly as the contact, not the client. If HR didn’t invent spin, it certainly perfected it. Its principle role seemed to be endorsing senior management’s peccadilloes rather than clearing the table of them. I’ve written several books and articles on this amazing entity of organization.

The career of Francis rose out of HR but he was the delightful exception, a learner and not a knower, a listener, not a teller, a student, not a pontificator, and in addition, a devoted husband, father, and humble servant of his church, school, community and company. He was a man’s man, and a tough one at that, not in any way Mr. Milquetoast, a beautiful man, a kind person and a man of dimension.

I miss you, Francis. I’m glad I had an opportunity and the courage to tell you I love you, and I’m glad that we had a chance to talk nearly every month after your retirement in 1989.

One day he hit me with this salvo, “Fisher, I’m taking chemo, got an inoperable tumor on the brain. May not make it. Good chance I won’t.”

“How do you feel about that Francis?” I asked stupidly, forgetting how calloused the remark must sound.

“Fisher, you’re something else.”

“The reason I said that,” trying to cover my idiocy, “is that I don’t know anyone more prepared to meet his Maker than you. We’re all going to die, Francis, but few of us have lived our lives in a way that puts a smile on God’s face as yours surely must.”

Silence. Then, “The reason why I tell you this is because I would like for you to be one of my pallbearers.”

“Francis, please,” I said with a catch in my voice.

“Fisher, I’m serious.”

“Of course. I’d be devotedly honored.”

“Well, skip the ‘devotedly’ if you would.”

“Okay,” I said, hoping, “any chance of beating this thing?”

Instead of answering directly, he confessed, “This chemotherapy knocks my socks off. Soon as I complete the series I’m visiting my sister and our family home in Illinois, retracing the steps of my youth, and attempting to get closure on my life.”

“Closure is important to you.”

“Fisher now why do you say that?”

“Well, never known you to tolerate incomplete staff work. So it follows.”

“Never thought of it that way.” He laughed. “Never applied to you though, did it?”

“Now Francis be nice.” But nothing could be truer. (I once advised one of his administrators. “If he tells you to do something, ignore it. If he repeats it, keep it in mind. If he puts it in writing, do it.” He came back to me later with rage in his eyes, after this lady explained that I was the cause of her being dilatory in an oral assignment. Remarkably, when I admitted my deception, he simply turned and went about what he was doing. We both understood each other’s weaknesses.)

“Okay,” he laughed again. With that, we ended the conversation.

We talked several times in the last months of his life, with him being especially animated sharing with me the joy of his trip home to Illinois. Up to then, little travel was devoted to personal interests, being primarily a business-oriented traveler.

So, Francis, up there with St. Peter, Michael the Archangel, and all the others, pray for me and keep guiding me through this maelstrom of hell on earth. God bless and keep you forever. You are in my heart and will remain so until I join you, hopefully, in the same Paradise where you can give me a performance appraisal without disturbing your ulcers.
Amen.

PS Even in Paradise, you can still call me “Fisher.”

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See Dr. Fisher’s website: www.peripateticphilosopher.com