IS THIS OUR SPUTNIK MOMENT? AN EXCHANGE OF VIEWS

IS THIS OUR SPUTNIK MOMENT?  AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN A READER AND THE AUTHOR

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 27, 2011

REFERENCE:

This missive was bound to generate immediate response.  It represents an appendage or epilogue to what I published twenty years ago, WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS: A VIEW FROM THE TRENCHES (1991). 

It was reviewed on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” The Wall Street Journal, Industry Week, and the Business Book Review Journal, among other publications.  The Delta Group Florida published it after a British firm vacillated and then decided not to take the gamble. 

It was decades ahead of its time as events have proven.  And as pointed out in this missive, a series of books were published in the same genre including THE WORKER, ALONE! GOING AGAINST THE GRAIN (1995), SIX SILENT KILLER: MANAGEMENT’S GREATEST CHALLENGE (1998), CORPORATE SIN: LEADERLESS LEADERS & DISSONANT WORKERS (2000), and A LOOK BACK TO SEE AHEAD (2007). 

It is difficult to get the attention of either management or professionals, as the workforce has evolved, but I have tried.  Moreover, it is easy to misconstrue the message of my works in that I don’t see the situation as an either/or proposition, or a zero sum game. 

There are no villains in this scenario, only inept, misinformed, misguided, and entrenched forces on both sides of the equation, that is, labor and management. 

We have reached the point in our history when it is futile and pusillanimous to take sides and to suggest one side is good and the other evil.  Labor needs management and management needs labor.  The irony is that the designations, labor and management, have become essentially meaningless. 

We are in a climate and culture when intellectual property is far more valuable than physical property, when knowledge is not only power but also no longer the domain of either labor or management.  Seemingly, long ago now, Steven Jobs and Stephen Wozniak of Apple fame embarrassed Xerox and IBM by making their dominance one for the history books. 

Creative thinking is not replacing critical thinking but complementing it, as we are finally realizing that we cannot solve the problems with the same thinking that created them.  Likewise, we cannot stereotype either labor or management as the culprit in this affair, but must attempt to look deeper into the problem, which involves each of us to some extent looking at where we are and how we got there.

This can be a Sputnik moment, as President Barak Obama suggested, or it can mark the end of the American Empire, as certainly as World War Two marked the end of the British Empire.  Anachronistic wars, terrorist plots, and senseless carnage are still with us, but the war raging around the world as never before is the “War of Ideas,” and that war will gain no resolution by pointing fingers.

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A READER WRITES:

THE KEY THOUGHT (reference to this missive) IS: WILL GOVERNMENT TAKE CARE OF THE PEOPLE OR WILL IT TAKE CARE OF CORPORATIONS? (Upper case the reader’s)

There is class warfare going on (150 years) and the 2%ers have been winning big time.

Wealth is fine, rich greed is evil.

America groans with violence, poverty, death from lack of health care, wars, and the filthy rich rape our country with the help of politicians.

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Just to set the record straight, throughout human history, not just in the last 150 years, more than 90 percent of the wealth was and remains to this day in the hands of 10 percent or less.  Now, why is that?

Books have for generations disputed why and no scholar or set of scholars has reached unanimity as to the “why.”  This has been the case with tribal authorities, monarchies, dictatorships, socialist and communist states, and democratic republics, including the United States of America.

Capitalistic society has made it more transparent if not totally so.  There was a time when the wealthy were less inclined to be so ostentatious about displaying their wealth.  Baseball player Derek Jeter has built a $7 million home here in Tampa, after holding out for a 2011 contract of more than $15 million when his best years in baseball are behind him, because he can. 

Jeter is in this alleged 2 percent of which you refer but because he is an icon of entertainment he is given a pass.  Yet, he doesn’t create jobs, doesn’t create wealth but absorbs it from people often who are the least able to afford such extravagance.  I’ve known people who have purchased NFL season tickets that cost thousands of dollars who otherwise live in relative modest circumstances.  No attention is given this profligate misuse of income, or the creation of icons who often behave in public as if they are a law unto themselves. 

Early in my career, still in my mid-thirties, I was making a living abroad without needing to pay United States taxes close to this upper 2 percent.  Yet, I lived modestly with little sign that I was of such circumstance.  I was not the exception but the rule.  Executives of my early years would find it inconceivable to earn 500 to a thousand times as much as the hourly worker.  That morality ended after World War Two.  Why?

Again, sociologists and psychologists, as well as historians, have taken a stab at explaining this.  Management guru, Peter Drucker, was appalled at this departure from good sense, but even he couldn’t explain it although he tried.

My explanation is somewhat ambivalent.  I think most wealth creators are honest, legitimate, hard working, ethical, and dedicated to the enhancement of this Republic. 

I worked for such a man, and I write about him in my new novel, GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA (not yet published).  It is about my time in South Africa.  Even then in my company the seeds of the evil you describe were apparent.  Some executives would take any advantage they could protected by it being legal rather than worrying about it being ethical. 

I would say they were only ten percent of the members of top management in that company, but they exploited their power.  My boss didn’t, and I hope that I was seen as being of the same character.  So, your point, corporate evil does exists, but I don’t think it is the culprit nor as prevalent as you may believe it to be.

We saw it in Enron and other corporations where men went to jail.  In my company, the 90 percent in top management of good character went along to get along when malfeasance was apparent, and said and did nothing.  I instead retired at thirty-five and came to Florida. 

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Wealth creators such as Steven Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft are the rule rather than the exception, in my experience, as no one works harder and smarter with more focus and dedication than people of this ilk. 

I’ve often thought that had I stayed in the corporation I would have long since been dead.  Instead, I took a two-year sabbatical, then went back to school, and finally reentered the corporation as a paid observer as an organizational development psychologist.  I didn’t have the headaches, the heartaches, the tough decision, the incredibly long hours, the sleepless nights, the lack of time for just hanging out that are part and parcel of running things.  No one ever knew, not even top management that I served, that I had once worn an executive's uniform. 

The corporation became my laboratory, and I have been writing about it ever since.  So, I feel your anger and I know my words will not dissuade it, but I do hope they give you a little perspective.

Finally, and this makes me particularly sad, people have confused rights with privileges.  They nail themselves into a box by not studying in school, not practicing the work ethic on the job no matter how mundane or boring the work, not living within their means, not developing their own legitimacy by being the center of their own lives rather than looking to American Idol, or Hollywood, or the NFL, NBA, NHL or MLB for their ego ideal.

Life has become surreal.  Our electronic wonders, as much as they have broken down the barriers between borders and people, have failed to restore our moral compass, and as a result we have lost our way.  Our institutions have failed us because we have failed our institutions.  We have been a little like those good executives in my company that went along to get along rather than demanding and contributing to the change that sustains us. 

A president or a CEO or member of our family or a friend cannot carry us because they cannot be us.  When they attempt to carry us, it weakens us and our resolve to carry ourselves. 

Yes, there are the homeless, those not able to take care of themselves due to illness or circumstance, and we need to provide a safety net for them.  But what has happened before, is happening now, and will happen again, and that is that people will seek that safety net when they are able bodied.  They will point fingers and avoid discussing relevant issues, as they are bent on escaping shouldering their own burden. 

That is why I say I am ambivalent.  You may throw the baby out with the bathwater, but you can’t blame the water provider if you do. 

Government employees, educators, and the religious, do not create jobs nor do malcontents and protesters. 

Jobs are created by people with ideas with the courage and stamina and the risk taking inclination to see such ideas to fruition.  Ideas are the province essentially of the young, the untried, the naïve, the daring and the gambler, people who are unimpeded with the heavy baggage of the naysayer, of the old, of the experienced, of the tired, of those set in their ways, of the know it alls, the righteous, the moralists, and the protectors of the status quo. 

One reason, and it is implicit in your comments, is that what is happening at the top may be a manifestation of the fact that we are an older society even though not long in years, a society of an increasingly senior population not adequately replaced with youth, of a possible dying national character, and therefore of declining social and economic world dominance. 

Time will tell, but extreme behavior is an unconscious manifestation of unknown terror that the conscious mind has not yet understood as the reason it behaves as it does. 

Think, express your anger, be not afraid of being misunderstood or of your views being rejected, but continue to contribute to the cultural dialogue because I see that as our only salvation.  Thank you for your comments.

And be always well,

Jim

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