A TOP EXECUTIVE RESPONDS TO “MAD AS HELL!”

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

© February 20, 2014

REFERENCE:

As preface to these remarks this executive, from a Fortune 100 company, said in an aside that he remembered another young man who came to me for help decades ago.  “You told him,” he continued, “that he was all screwed up, and you were right, but he got better.”

Indeed, he did as this response illustrates.

He adds, “I’m glad your books are taking off, and more importantly, that you’re around to see it.”

 

*    *    *   

AN EXECUTIVE WRITES:

Dr. Fisher,

If you don’t mind, I’d like to respond to the reader below from the perspective of an executive who’s hired a fair number of people over a long career.  My intent is to “drop the pants,” so to speak, on the system in a way I wish someone had done for me when I was young.

Prelude:  The following are just my opinions.  I may state them directly because I believe them to be true, but in the end they are just my opinions.  Take them as no more than that.

Humans are unique in that we’re the only species that live in two domains, the theoretical and the empirical.  The theoretical is between our ears where anything is possible, and the empirical is the material world where life plays out.  Theoretical has the ideal, empirical is what it is at the moment. All codes of ethics, value systems, etc. come from the theoretical domain and are subjective.  They feel concrete to us, but they too are just opinions. Some help us in the empirical domain, some do not.  There is no “should be” in the empirical domain. Citizens of the theoretical domain view the empirical as a disaster; citizens of the empirical domain say, “Disaster or not, I have to deal with it”.

These domains operate on different foundation premises.  While it’s true that every man-made item in the empirical world started as an idea in the theoretical, it’s also true that 99% of the ideas trying to migrate from the theoretical to empirical fail because they violate the foundation premises of the empirical domain.

Until WW2, most Americans were solid residents of the empirical domain, endowed with what my parents called “common sense”, earned through experience.  Starting with us boomers after WW2, formal education replaced experience and we became solid citizens of the theoretical domain, only to hit a brick wall upon entry into the empirical.  The young man below has hit that wall in his job quest.  So, here’s how the empirical domain works with regards to hiring:

As a leader, my success comes from my people.  I can make mistakes and drive the whole car into the ditch, but my success only comes from my people.  Hiring someone is like marriage, easy to get into and sticky to get out of.  Consequently, it pays to spend considerable effort on the hiring end thus to avoid the necessity of the other end to the extent possible.  When it comes to hiring, there are two processes in play, mine and HR’s.  Frankly, I will take a candidate from HR only as a last resort.  Why?  Because my agendas are business success and HR’s are everything but.  Once I buy it, I own it, and all sales are final. One learns quickly to buy carefully.  I've found that the key is to get the best people I can, set the ground rules clearly and get out of their way. If I treat them as adults, they will behave as adults.  If they make honest mistakes, that’s no problem.  If I detect treachery, I lose confidence in them and replace them with someone I do have confidence in. How they hire their people is their business, I hold them responsible for performance and meeting their objectives.  Most copy my approach eventually, learning the same lessons I did the same way I did.

 I’m watching the workforce and talking to people all the time, keeping track of who’s talented and who is not.  I have a backup person(s) in my head for every member of my core team.  When a slot comes open, I will fill it from my back up list or with someone recommended by someone I know.  The organization says I have to play ball with HR, so I let them go through their machinations, and they eventually bring some resumes that sit on my desk.  I may look at them, I may not.  If someone is obviously from Nazareth, then I may mark that for future consideration, but it’s been decades since I've taken an HR candidate. HR doesn't seem to care. They get paid to go through their process.  When you throw a resume into a company, you’re throwing it into the HR process, subject to all the issues you've outlined below.

Do not despair!  My process is workable, and once past your initial trepidation, it’s actually enjoyable. It’s also less competitive; the majority never figure it out.  The objective is to be the guy in my mind toward the day an opening arises.  Lead the target.  Think several career moves ahead and start today to find the paths that let the people who would fill those positions get to know you.  That needs to be worked within your organization and also outside of it.  Join as many organizations in your industry as possible and participate.  Don’t just hand cards to everyone, but specifically look for and target the kind of people who can help you downstream. Look for small ways to help them to maintain contact. If you can recruit them as a mentor, that’s priceless and sometimes it’s a simple as just asking.  It’s really hard to judge someone from a resume, and letting them get to know you takes a lot of their downside fears off the table.  If you’re unemployed, that’s especially true.  People assume you’re unemployed for a reason, probably bad.  Everybody has a story, so yours gets immediately discounted even if true.  If you’re long term unemployed, people figure a hundred guys have already looked at you and written you off, ergo, why bother. Personal contact is the only way around this.  It’s not fair, but fair is a concept of the theoretical domain; in the empirical domain, fair is defined differently. Every executive I know, operates the same way.  You can’t afford not to. If you take what HR gives you, you end up with a dysfunctional mess.  Welcome to evolutionary de-selection from the executive ranks.

With respect to embellishing your resume, I strongly recommend against it.  First of all, if you’re doing your networking well, the resume becomes a non-issue.  Secondly, it will catch up with you.  True, one can gain a short-term competitive advantage through dishonesty, but the long term punishment can be severe.  Those of us who are older have all seen people fall from spectacular heights because they falsified their resume at some point.  I have personally known colleagues who went on to be executives in other companies that were fired because their embellishments were accidentally exposed.  This isn't a right or wrong issue, it’s a smart or stupid issue.   The same applies to politics.  Be politically astute, but not overly political.  One can rise quickly beyond one’s capabilities via politics, but some day somewhere, if you’re wearing the black belt, someone’s going to expect you to perform as a black belt.  If you haven’t done the homework along the way, you’re Wiley Coyote.

The front door is heavily guarded, but the back door is usually wide open.  It’s worth the effort to find the back door.

Think long term.

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Yes, I remember that first time you came to see me, as if it were yesterday.  I sat at my desk a long time after you left, and thought about how common greatness is, and how you in all your "fucked upness" were its embodiment.  I often talk about you with my Betty, and am glad Betty has met you, and knows of you.  Betty has taught me about something more important, love, which my uncle first expressed in words to me that had little meaning at the time. 

A long time ago, my uncle escaped the narrow confines of Irish bigotry to become a prominent professor at the University of Detroit.  He represented a window of opportunity out of those narrow confines of Irish bigotry that encapsulated me. 

One time after coming home from a business trip to Europe for Nalco Chemical Company -- I was even younger than this young man profiled here – I had dinner with my uncle, a widower, in Detroit, and then stayed the night. 

He listened to me through dinner, and then we returned to his home.  He retired to his bedroom and then returned in his pajamas.  He found me reading in his study.  He picked up a book and started to read to me.  I stopped and listened.  His voice as quiet as a breeze, his back to me, then he turned around with tears in his eyes.

I'll never forget those tears -- and said, "Jimmy, it is not about that (meaning the things I was pontificating with great gusto all evening long), it is only about love." 

He turned and went to bed without another word.  It was as if he slapped me silly with his gentle voice and words.  I was married and the father of four children and knew nothing about love. 

Somehow after you left that first time we were together, my mind turned from thinking about greatness to how much love that young man (meaning you) had in his heart.  I think love bridges the gap between the theoretical and empirical. 

This has been fortified in life as I went through a spell when I read about saints, many, many saints, and came to the conclusion that although many of them confessed a love of God, which I didn't dispute, I didn't sense always a consistent love of man, in fact, I often felt palpable evidence of quite the contrary feeling. 

I have not been too enamored of saints ever since, and it shows in A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA, the most honest thing I have ever written.  My sense is that honesty is not enough in this sick world of ours at the moment.  But as long as there are people like you, we have a chance of surviving as a species.

Love, for me, is the key no matter what your ethnicity or sexual orientation. That is the theoretical in conversation with the empirical.  

One final thought, Josiah in my GREEN ISLAND novel was real.  He was murdered on my estate, a Bantu (black man) with whom I would have conversations such as this.  He was 27 when he was murdered.  The crime was handled by the Afrikaner government as if a dog had been run over in the street.  

I've always had tremendous respect for you, and I'm not surprised by your dichotomous paradigm of theoretical/empirical or subjective/objective or feeling/thinking differentiation. 

It is your opinion, but it has a solid and rational foundation, a basis.  I must add, however, that in my executive-consulting-counseling-coaching career it has often been found to be missing. 

Were it to exist as an operational model in the macrocosm, in my view, there would be no need for my efforts through my many books and articles. 

With these efforts, I’m trying to reach ordinary people who happen to rise to uncommon heights such as yourself, or ordinary souls who have never managed to get beyond living paycheck to paycheck.  They can be of any ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, sexual orientation, or occupation as I see them simply as the different faces of humanity.

I don’t write for scholars or academics, for any vested interest or constituency.  I am not for “winning friends and influencing people,” if it means compromising my good sense.  With my template, I can be equally critical of the good guys as I can be of the bad guys because I see them pretty much the same – meaning I see bad in the good guys, and good in the bad guys -- only they wear different uniforms, live in different neighborhoods with different incomes and lifestyles. 

As you are older than this young man, I am senior to you.  And as you take a detached and reasonable perspective, I take a somewhat heated one.  Like you, I was trained in science and have made my coin in the empirical world, but always the theoretical world has had almost a magnetic attraction to my disposition. 

My da wanted me to be a New York City cop (empirical) and my mother wanted me to be a Jesuit priest (theoretical), and I have somehow, or I might say, inevitably, come to combine these orientations in a career that now spans more than 50 years. 

Everything you say about Human Resources (HR) I concur with, everything! 

In my writing, I call HR management's union.  I have seldom seen HR demonstrated the courage to put executives in the frame of the selection process.  HR gravitated towards this, I believe, by default as most executives have not been interested in the time consuming process of creative involvement which the selection of people demands.

It is reassuring to have you express your commitment to the process with your grace and eloquence on these pages.  Thank you.

That is my subjective theoretical side speaking, but it is based upon my empirical experience.  Emerson is a constant presence in my writing, and I feel his smile as I read your words. 

As long as life generates such a spirit as yours, there is hope as your words are an expression of courage.  Should this young man read your words, my sincere desire is that he weighs each sentence with the wisdom it contains. 

We don't know anything new when it comes to the theoretical.  Alas, who can improve on Shakespeare's "To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst be false to any man"?

Dr. Fisher