James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© May 1, 2020
A READER COMMENTS
Thank you, Jim, for your generous wallop of education in your essay, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff!”
Your bringing together what you learned from many authors and what you got out of personal experiences gives us (well, I mean me) something to reflect on, think about, evaluate from my own point of view of the world (what it is, what it should strive for to be).
It came to me at an opportune moment, when I am trying to examine the line between society and the individual, or between social thinking and conduct vs. selfishness/social Darwinism.
Just a relevant comment I ran into scanning BBC news, by a medical doctor who faults the fact that healthcare has turned into a business, which he said was not the case not so long ago. I might add to this the delivery of news about the world, our fellow men that is.
Ok, it can be argued that medicine and news have always been a business, but then there is a spectrum between extremes or simplifications.
And soon ....
Best,
Henry
JIM RESPONDS
There are several levels with which I would like to respond to your generous and perceptive remarks: (1) excerpt from Devlin, a novel (2018); (2) excerpt from Confident Selling (1971), my first book; (3) the devastating myopic view of the world from a business perspective; and (4) talking to senior high school students at a high end private school.
Excerpt from DEVLIN, A Psychological Novel (2019):
I would like to share a passage from DEVLIN, my biographical novel that takes place in South Africa. Devlin is young, an American executive with a big job, and he is constantly associated with very wealthy young Brits, in this instance, it is in attending the Gold Cup Races in Durban. Tom Devoushire is 32, a horse breeder and active in his father’s import/export business. This is Devlin's first meeting with him where he is being entertained at the palatial estate of the host's after the races. A big fellow with a large paw, Tom Devoushire greets Devlin with a flaccid handshake and then commences to lecture him.
“Your country is having a nervous breakdown. Know what the cure is?”
“Before you enlighten me, tell me what your country is experiencing.” Devlin waited.
Devoushire ignored the question. “The cure is to let businessmen take over the world and stability would be restored immediately if you catch my drift.”
“Businessmen who inherited the business from their parents?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Businessmen who have never done a single day’s work in their lives; or haven’t had to worry about how to make a house or car payment, or to worry about being on the short list to being surplused; businessmen who know nothing about business. That is what it is supposed to mean.”
“It’s pretty clear you don’t respect me, yet you’re a guest in my house.”
“I don’t know you. But I can tell you this. I don’t buy this crap that colonial lords in the land of apartheid have the magic formula on how to make the world a more equitable place in which to live. You say the United States is having a nervous breakdown. How would you describe South Africa today?”
“You don’t give a shit what I think, do you?” Devoushire said. “I like that. I’m not used to that. Obviously, you don’t agree business has the answers. Is it you don’t equate the sizzle with the steak?” He laughed hilariously again.
Oh my God! He’s quoting Elmer Wheeler’s selling strategy as his source. Mother of Mercy, save me! Taking a deep breath, Devlin said evenly, “I equate equity with reality. As I’m sure you know with your Wharton MBA, that it was business that caused the Long Depression of 1873 to 1893, which peaked in 1879 fed by the panic of businessmen of 1873. This caused the continuous contraction until 1893, the longest in western economic history.
“Low business growth and general deflation found Great Britain losing its industrial leadership that it would never regain. The recession and economic decline continued in the United States until 1901. Then we had the business boom of the Roaring Twenties, only to suffer the Great Depression of 1929. Businessmen in bed with politicians every inch of the way were architects of that sequence of disasters.”
Devoushire smiled. “When you complete your assignment here, look me up. Ever thought of staying in South Africa?”
DEVLIN, the novel (2018, pp. 570-571)
It is obvious that Devlin doesn’t subscribe to Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (1936), which was the rage for six decades in the United States. Devlin has two gauges: silence which he employs as if it were a stiletto cutting through the dissonant noise, or being “in your face” when he encounters pomposity imagining the scarlet letters of “insincerity” written across the brow.
All my adult life working across the globe, I have never run into a businessman who could think much less talk on any subject other than money. In Nalco Chemical Company, I was known as the company’s token intellectual because I read books not about money, business or power, but about ideas expressed in art, music, literature and philosophy.
CONFIDENT SELLING (an excerpt)
CONQUERING FEAR OF FAILURE
When I was in industry, we had a policy in my firm of holding quarterly seminars composed of four districts. It fell to one district manager to be the host, once per year. Each manager, of course, tried to outdo his peers. After one such meeting, which had been a particular success, everyone was congratulating the host. He took this praise well enough, but then turned the focus back on his would be adulators with this question: “Why do you think I worked so hard on this meeting, anyway?” Surprised by this remark, there followed dead silence matched only by many puzzled expressions.
He continued, “I’ll tell you why. It was simply a matter of fear – fear of failure, period.”
This candid admission cracked open the silence to some frank exchanges. They all followed the fear line and were summed up in this comment: “I guess you could say that the shoe fits me as well. No one likes to get hammered.”
Finally, as if an afterthought, I was asked my view. I had the great temptation to concur with the others – to fit snugly into their fear syndrome. But I had thought too much about this subject, fear, and had worked too hard to conquer fear to con myself now. “I suppose what drives me to do my best more than anything else,” I said seriously, “is the effective utilization of my inherent ability.”
The reaction quite predictably was immediate. It was echoed around the room with this needling phrase. “How did we ever get a guy like you in this outfit?”
Once the laughter subsided, I smiled and offered my own brand of levity. “Gentlemen, isn’t it a matter of chemistry – opposite charges attracting?”
Yet, even in this jesting, there was a grain of truth. What I was actually expressing was the positive counterpart to the negative fear.
Confident Selling, 1971 (pp. 168 – 169)
MYOPIC BUSINESS LEADERSHIP
The irony of my working life is that I worked at all levels of the complex organization from laborer in a specialty chemical plant during five summers while attending university, as a chemist in R&D, then sales engineer, field sales manager and corporate executive for a specialty chemical company working on four continents as well as spending two years on active duty in the Mediterranean on the US Flagship of the Sixth Fleet, then consulting after acquiring a Ph.D. in the social & behavioral sciences, after previously being trained and working in the field of science and engineering. Subsequent to this, there was another departure from line authority to staff function as I became an in-house OD corporate psychologist, and later corporate executive in a high tech firm, completing a tour to what has become known as the complex organization.
In all this activity, I never joined the club, that is, I never identified with the business of business because, at every level, and that includes academia, profits, status, prestige and clout were always put above people.
It is a strange experience for me now with the Coronavirus Pandemic to see people from whom I have come, poor people, uneducated or undereducated people suffering at the hands of the State. While I am not hurting at all, people today in the equivalent circumstances of my parents, find the State of Florida cannot get them the financial relief that they qualify for because the previous governor, Rick Scott, now Senator Rick Scott, cut the safety net for the poor into sheds. Nothing but incompetence is demonstrated by those processing the data for these struggling people. Journalist Craig Patrick has been tracking this with painful reporting.
Previously, like President Donald Trump, when he was in business, Scott developed the myopia to exploit the system to his benefit, taking that skill set to the public sector as governor and senator.
What the business community has never understood is that most Americans either work or are supported by the public sector, not the private sector, and so when the public sector has businessmen such as President Trump and Senator Scott to show the public sector “how it should get done,” we have the current situation exaggerated by the pandemic.
CLASSROOM DEBACLE
My grandson, Ryan, invited me to address his small class on any subject I would like. He told his teacher that I wrote books on stuff. The class was only about 12 students in this private school that costs many more times than my college education. It was clear the students were smug and somewhat bored that they had to listen to this old man that was Ryan’s grandfather. I felt this as I entered the room. There was a star athlete, an African American, who slept without either his teacher or fellow students minding, except me. I interrupted his sleep when I wrote this on the white board and asked him for a comment on what is your thoughts on:
WHAT IS LEGAL …………WHAT IS ETHICAL?
Obviously, a bright young man, he straightened up, rubbed his eyes to get the sleep out of them and asked, “Define the terms?”
This brought a chuckle across the room, and a smile on my face. He smiled back, as if to say, 'I’ve gotcha!' He waited for me to answer and I said, “It is not how I define these terms that is important, but how you define them.’’
“Legal,” he said instantly, “is what you can get away with, and ethical is what you want people to think you’re about.” This brought another chuckle.
It was clear the air in this classroom was filled with cynicism. My sense was that they were used to their parents speaking out of both sides of their mouths with the concepts of “what is legal, and what is ethical” being interchangeable.
I asked, “How many of you have driven a car before acquiring your learner’s permit?” All hands went up. “Was that either legal or ethical?” I asked. Somebody said, perhaps from remembering a bad movie, “It was necessary.” More laughter.
It was clear I wasn’t getting anywhere with them as the 50 minute period ended. I would have liked to have had them answer 1-10 questions without giving their names on blank pieces of paper: (1) ever cheated on a test; (2) ever lied to your parents or teachers; (3) drank alcoholic beverages; (4) smoked; (5) stolen anything in a store; (6) stolen someone else’s phone; (7) told a lie about someone you disliked; (8) snuck into a movie house, concert; (9) used someone else’s work as your own; and (10) stolen money from parents or classmates?
These questions have been asked on national surveys and 80 percent of respondents admitted to at least four of these questions. This suggests the "morality of the times" is quite flexible regarding your concerns, Henry, about social thinking and ethical conduct. But of course, as we know, when it comes to what is "legal" or what is "ethical," honesty has had an uneven history.
That said, what I would like to leave with you is this. I found these young people far more honest and confident than I remember my generation being. They don't kowtow to authority as we once did; nor are they inclined to mass hysterical movements as previous generations have been. They are into "personhood," and yes, they are cynical, if that term is appropriate, because they recognize these are counterfeit times and trust is the precious casualty.
Be always safe,
Jim
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