On Being a Managerial Misfit

Every Venturesome American Male, I suppose, likes to think that he could be a successful corporate executive if he bothered to try. The captain of industry in our society commands the open or secret envy of most of us; and if you watch him for a day you may gain the impression that you might, with a little practice, be able to take his place credibly.

I watched such executives for more than two years before preparing my recent book The Pyramid Climbers. In the course of my watching and researching, I confess, it often occurred to me to wonder if I, too, could be one of those executives who gets his name on the door of a teak-paneled office, with a smiling secretary to guard that door. I even took a battery of tests, in the company of several aspiring managers, that were designed to lay bare my strengths and weaknesses as a potential executive.

What I concluded about my own executive capacity might amuse if not enlighten those readers of Playboy who have entertained similar secret speculations about themselves -- or have indeed already made the grade as successful corporate executives. I prepared what follows especially for such readers.

The rules and requirements for getting near the top of a sizable corporate pyramid, I learned, are trickier and far more excluding than might at first seem apparent.

Even so, I had grounds for dreaming. I have never met a payroll, beyond paying my children's allowances; but for that matter, most executives of sizable corporations have never met one either. And I do have some of the surface characteristics that might give me the impression that I could reach a position where I would have rank after rank of respectful subordinates hastening to do my bidding.

One authority I encountered, John Hite, director of The Institute of Management, Johnson & Johnson, stressed that, "One must be a bit half-assed to be a good manager." This is technically known as having a tolerance for ambiguity. Certainly many people have credited me with being fully qualified in this respect. Many men, especially scientists and engineers, break up when given executive jobs simply because they don't have this tolerance. It pains them to take an important action when they don't have all the facts. An executive often can't wait for, or can't possibly know, all the facts. His responsibility at times is bound to extend further than his personal knowledge. There are times when he must shine as a hunch player.

I might also be optimistic about my executive potentialities because I could breeze through most of the preliminary screening usually performed on executive candidates. I'm safe on the most common knockout factors that prevent a great many talented people from even being considered seriously for important management jobs.

Unlike many people more talented than myself, I am not handicapped for an executive position by accidents of birth or heredity or religion, to cite some obvious knockout factors. First of all, I happen to be a male. When companies talk about their executive man power they usually mean just that. There are exceptions, but generally females are not thought of as executive material.

By accident of birth I am also what sociologists call a WASP. I'm a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Most of the big companies, wittingly or unwittingly, favor the WASP out of long habit, and while barriers gradually are being eased, most managements of large business institutions still think of their executive suites as social clubs where WASPs are given preference. The non-WASPs -- especially those who are non-Christian or nonwhite or have east- or south-European ancestors -- still encounter considerable difficulties in attaining high executive positions in most of the nation's larger business enterprises. The large corporations have lagged far behind public institutions and universities in drawing from the whole spectrum of American society in filling their management ranks.

Another of the common knockout factors that would still leave me in the running is the standard query about education. The corporate screeners now as a matter of routine usually want evidence that a candidate possesses a college diploma. This is especially so of the larger companies. Some technical jobs in companies obviously require a college education. But it is also true that many of the most spectacular private entrepreneurs of our day -- those who have made more than $10,000,000 in the past two decades despite (continued on page 130) Managerial Misfit (continued from page 114) income taxes -- have never been near a college. But they did it mainly by pioneering new fields or starting with small companies. The settled, large corporation usually demands a college diploma whether the job reasonably requires it or not. One of the frankest explanations for this requirement was offered by a president participating in a round table on executive potential sponsored by the McKinsey Foundation for Management Research. He said: "We desperately need a means of screening. Education is one quick means of preliminary screening without having to think too much about it."

My diplomas were mislaid many years ago, but at any rate I could probably prove I had received them; and further more, one of them was from Columbia, which technically is an Ivy League institution, though not as closely identified in the business mind with Ivy League as Harvard, Princeton and Yale. In the minds of most corporate screeners, an Ivy League diploma looms as a solid plus factor (and for some it is a must).

So much for the preliminary screening. These facts cited -- that I happen to be a male, college-diplomaed WASP -- leave me still in the running, although they would knock out 97 percent of the adult population of the United States, or at least create great difficulty for them at many major corporations.

Appearances also count a great deal in executive selection and here, too, I could probably get by. In physical appearance I lack the taut look that is prized, but my physical dimensions are at least acceptable. At 5'9" and 182 pounds (in my shorts before breakfast), I'm a bit on the short, robust side for executives. The streamlined six-footers are frequently preferred, and often specified, especially in marketing positions. However, I'm not so short or plump that I would be positively handicapped.

Still, despite all these surface assets working in my favor, I know that if I found myself inside a good-size corporation as an aspiring manager, my prospects of getting ahead would be dim indeed. I would be classified No Go rather than Go on the colored organization charts the consultants like to draw up to show at a glance whether a man should be upgraded, viewed with caution or downgraded. I would not be considered a "successful package," to use one of the favorite phrases of appraisal specialists. I would not be an "earmaked man," to use another phrase.

One piece of evidence is that I flunked the battery of psychological tests designed to screen executive potential. They were comparable to the tests most young aspiring executives must now take at some point before or after employment. As a polite gesture, the testers told me that they would assume from my record as an author that I was acceptably bright and so would excuse me from the usual speed tests in skill with words, fluency in handling ideas and reasoning via arithmetic, etc.

I have had reservations even about the usefulness of intelligence tests since my own early experience in finding that two I.Q. soundings made on me within a five-year period were 34 points apart. The fact is, however, that the aspiring executive today must love to take psychological tests of all kinds, or at least learn to be highly facile at taking them and not freeze during test-taking. (I used to develop bladder pains during test-taking.)

The tests I took were primarily to see if I had an executive-type, personality, and several were of the projective type. Perschologist John Dollard of Yale commented this past year: "There may be exceptions unknown to me but, generally speaking, projective tests, trait scales, interest inventories or depth interviews are not proved to be useful in selecting executives, or salesmen, or potential delinquents or superior college students."

In any case, one test of my executive personality was a request that I draw a picture of a woman. Perhaps I should not confess this, but I had not attempted to draw a picture of a woman (or almost anything else) for at least 25 years. I approached the challenge most cautiously and ended up with a dumpy looking matron. The lines of my drawing were not aggressively rendered, which (I learned later) suggested I probably was not responding as a true executive should. It is possible that I also lost ground by putting clothes on my woman. Some psychological testers believe that a real executive-to-be will, when asked to draw a woman, draw a nude girl.

I was asked in another question what I would do if I were in the basement of a theater and found that a fire had broken out. There were four actions to choose from. I checked, "Endeavor to extinguish it." I should have checked, "Notify the management." It did not say how big the fire was, which exasperated me at the time, because I had once had a small fire in the kitchen curtains of a rented apartment that might have gotten clear out of control if I had rushed out to search for the superintendent instead of tearing down the curtains and stamping out the fire. But my response to the question, I gathered, was one more indication that I might be too individualistic in my responses to be classified as executive material.

In the tests I was being appraised for a specific opening as a marketing executive with a cosmetics company. One question on my sales judgment was based on this situation: "You've made a presentation and your man is ready to buy. How big an order should you ask for?" I responded by checking "Just enough not to scare him off." It was such responses -- instead of the "correct" solution, "Twice what you expect to get" -- that put me in the bottom 20 percent on sales judgment.

One of my most serious shortcomings, I gathered, was that I scribbled my answers rather untidily, which apparently indicated to the assessors that I was not as orderly in my habits as an ideal executive is assumed to be.

The probers sought to find if I was dangerously neurotic by inviting me to check from a long list things that bothered me. Presumably I would have been viewed as a most dubious risk if I had checked either "germs" or "my enemies" as things that bothered me.

In another test I was invited to project my personality by explaining what I saw in a vague, murky picture printed on the form. Successful marketers, I understand, will usually see such pictures -- common in psychological testing -- in upbeat terms. They will see a man looking at smokestacks as a man visualizing opportunity rather than as a man gloomily contemplating a disturbing problem.

I was also invited to check from a long list of occupations the roles that would particularly appeal to me. This is sometimes called an interest inventory. The good executive type sees these as a chance to indicate his love for running things and to follow practical pursuits rather than artistic or idealistic ones. I checked "Be a U.S. Senator," which I assumed was a reasonable, if ambiguous, response. At any rate, it was an honest, if unrealistic, one.

As aspiring executives are exposed to more and more testing and come to sense the appropriate responses, the testers seek more ingenious ways to make their testing at least cheatproof. This explains the recent effort to attain more "depth" in probing, which can be dangerously unfair to aspirants, especially if the results are scored by people who are not fully qualified clinical psychologists. One effort at achieving a cheatproof test is to confront the testee with a so-called forced-choice test. The two alternatives could be equally reasonable in some situations, but your response supposedly reveals patterns that are assumed to be significant for the job in question. In one such test an applicant for an advertising job had little trouble guessing what the correct answer should be. The testee was forced to choose between these two possibilities:

1. I like to keep my desk neat and clean.

2. I like to kiss members of the oppo- (continued on page 208) Managerial Misfit (continued from page 130) site sex.

Presumably, only an applicant for a secretarial job or for mail clerk would score higher by choosing number one.

In the assessing of potential executives, another phase of the scrutiny is the examination of the man's background for clues. The assessors cannot get together on what kind of early background is ideal for an executive, but still each assessors is likely to have his own pet ideas; and most of their ideas would result in my being downgraded.

One theorist contends that the real executive can be spotted in kindergarten. He is the lad whose hand shoots up when the teacher asks for volunteers to distribute milk. I never volunteered for anything. Others argue that the leader is the lad who is always a peer-group leader through his school years.

I was generally regarded by my classmates -- as my high-school yearbook would reveal -- as an amusing oddball. When I practiced the half mile in track I wore a red skullcap with a ribbon attached and drew comment from my exhibitionism in trying to run fast enough to keep the ribbon fluttering horizontally. A future executive would never do that.

Another of the widely held notions about the right background for a wouldbe executive is that he must reveal in his comments and test results and case history that he has broken any apronstring ties to his mother but that he has had a warm relationship with his father -- or at least with father substitutes -- as a young man. Some assessors, in fact, consider this crucial. It indicates that the man as a corporate team player will readily prove an admiring, dutiful son to father figures in the corporation (i.e., his superiors). I had a father who took the stern view that a son needed fairly regular thrashings if he was ever successfully to negotiate the difficult passage over what he called Fool's Hill. It was only after I passed the age of consent that he and I started developing the warm father-son relationship so esteemed by the corporation.

The man destined to get to the top of a sizable corporation must not only be nicely oriented to father figures while he is climbing the corporate pyramid, but will need to prove that he himself is a credible father figure once he arrives near the top. This, of course, requires some ability to shift roles. However, this is not too difficult for the real corporate comer. He has spent much of his life shifting roles and proving his flexibility. In my own case I have never managed to be a very impressive authoritarian, even in my own household. My dog looks at me skeptically when I shout "Heel!" during our walks.

Those who assess potential executives -- whether they do it by testing or interviewing or running a quiet check on you -- are generally worried by evidence of certain characteristics and habits, and favorably impressed by other evidence. Here are some of the things that will worry them:

Evidence that you've had trouble getting along with previous associates (no matter whose fault it was). Many corporations are so frightened by possible troublemakers that they tend to fill their ranks with men who clearly are tame team players.

Evidence that you are more than politely interested in cultural matters. This might suggest a lack of no-nonsense practicality, conventionality and materialism that are more highly esteemed in most corporations.

Evidence that you have in recent years gotten yourself overextended in debt.

Evidence that you -- or your wife, if you are married -- cannot hold your liquor.

Evidence that you may have a harem problem.

Evidence that you are vague about dates of past employment, which might indicate you were trying to cover up an unfortunate job experience. (My own loss of a couple of early jobs back in the 1930s would take, for example, some careful explaining.)

On the other hand, the assessors tend to be favorably impressed by:

Evidence that you are in robust health. Life at the higher levels of management can be exhausting and brutal.

Evidence that you have a proven ability in an organizational structure to get along well with people both above and below you, and are a good cooperator.

Evidence that you get your main life satisfaction by proving yourself through achievement and by taking on responsibilities.

Evidence that you are an enthusiastic, friendly, optimistic kind of person.

Evidence that you are a self-starter and seem to have a good knack for making things happen.

Evidence that you are vigorous, purposeful and persistent.

Evidence that you are flexible and can accept criticism like a good trooper.

Evidence that you have a capacity to make associates feel challenged.

On such a pro-and-con assessment of habits and characteristics I might get by with a C-minus.

One aspect of the inner world of the top-level executive would be particularly oppressive to me. That is the passion he has developed for orderliness. Quite possibly the corporate environment nurtures this passion.

I like to think I have an underlying orderliness of mind, even if I don't know what day of the month it is and even if I have never mastered the art of keeping a checkbook in balance. I usually do know where things are, though I usually cannot tell anyone else. Interviewers and photographers who have visited my home often have been visibly appalled that my office does not look like the kind even an author is assumed to have (not to mention an executive). There is no spacious walnut desk, no pipestand, no leather swivel chair, no walls lined with leather-bound books or decorated with photos of famous friends. I have no desk, only piles of research material on a number of tables and on the floor and on shelves, so that I usually must approach my typewriter through a maze. It has been months since I have been to the bottom of my In basket. As a matter of fact, I keep adding In baskets.

Another aspect of my inner world that would make me suspect as an executive candidate is that I have no special dread of either illness or failure. Some researchers have concluded that both dreads characterize many highly successful executives. An even more serious handicap is that I have difficulty taking our society seriously. I feel our society is becoming increasingly preposterous in many of its manifestations. And to me much that takes place in the management ranks of corporations is hilariously preposterous, such as the solemn assigning of status symbols (number of windows, kind of bookcase, kind of wall decorations) on the basis of five or more levels of rank. The true executive-to-be is likely to take both himself and his corporate environment quite seriously, if not solemnly, and to maintain fairly constantly, on and off the job, a mien of dignity.

If we turn to the specific skills that are generally regarded as important in potential executives, I suspect I could fare a little better but still would be viewed as a long shot at best. Most of the knowledgeable investigators who draw up lists of the really essential executive abilities stress drive above all others. The real comer, it seems, is restlessly on the go most of the time and is likely to feel unhappy when on a vacation (unless he is striving to outscore someone in golf or bridge). On the job these men are wound up and full of nervous energy pushing them relentlessly toward their goals. This drive conveys a sense of dominance and helps them give push to their projects.

I like to think I have plenty of drive. At least I follow a pretty rigorous schedule of work and travel most of the year. But apparently my drive is not the relentless sort that impresses the executive appraisers. My drive is the floating kind, rather than the anxious, pressing kind.

Presumably I should rate high in another trait that is greatly esteemed in executives, the ability to communicate, since I've spent most of my life trying to communicate verbally or on paper. But as an executive I would get into trouble by my apparently incurable habit of communicating occasional impudent thoughts and by being constitutionally unable to observe the crisp, stylized form of address that seems to be de rigueur in most managerial memo and report writing. One evidence is that I've never in my life been able to dictate a complete letter, even though I once was an editor and had a secretary-assistant. I found myself feeling embarrassingly stuffy whenever I started dictating (even to a tape recorder), and so usually suggested in a few words to the secretary the gist of my thoughts for the letter and left it up to her to handle the details and amenities. More commonly now I write the letters myself, by the thousands. To an executive assessor this would suggest hopeless inefficiency.

A good executive is supposed to be able to be objective (detached) in dealing with old associates and friends in the company and to be able to deal roughly with them if the higher needs of the corporation demand. This would be a real problem because, while I rather relish kicking the shins of institutions that seem to deserve kicking, it distresses me to appear unkind to an individual. This alone would probably disqualify me as executive material.

As for my habitual modes of behavior, I would be fairly constantly in trouble because of loose observance of the rules of the corporate game. I do not enjoy team playing of any kind. My record in serving on committees reveals all too clearly a pattern in which I became in rapid succession bewildered, demoralized, bored and delinquent. Even in literary collaboration my only effort at team playing proved to be exasperating to me and completely fruitless. In short, I do not qualify as the creative conformist who, a survey conducted by Nation's Business revealed, is viewed as the number-one candidate for being a good manager in today's world of corporate giants.

Another problem is that I am not predictable in my behavior, and a good executive is expected to be predictable. He is like the giggers that the Bryn Mawr girls speak of in discussing their dates. Their world of men is said to be divided into giggers and goons. The giggers can be counted upon to do the expected. The goons cannot. In one survey of executive attitudes two thirds of all high-level executives questioned agreed with the statement that "even during most relaxed and social occasions they should avoid deviating from generally accepted behavior." It is not generally accepted behavior to go off and take a nap or stroll around the neighborhood during parties, but I do this fairly frequently.

Certainly I would fail when it came to the inspection of my home life, and most large companies give more than passing thought to this when hiring a man for, or promoting a man into, an important position.

First there is the probable inspection of the wife, either in a disguised interview at the office or in a visit to the home or in an invitation to a dinner with a few superiors and their wives. My wife, I fear, would not pass as the nice helpmate most companies look for.

One major executive-recruiting firm checks the wife out on talking. Its operatives would get an earful in talking with my wife. She talks too bluntly to be an executive's wife, and often chats at length on subjects that may be of no interest to anyone but herself, such as Japanese sumi painting.

Then there is the question of whether my wife and I could qualify as good corporate citizens in our community. First of all -- and this alone would set a limit on my promotability at many companies -- there is the known fact that both of us are Democrats. At many companies the furthest left a man dare be politically is an Independent, and in the upper ranks of some giant companies even this is not considered tolerable. Furthermore, we do not now plunge into community affairs as a good hustling executive and his wife should. Such activity is considered necessary to help the corporation maintain a public-spirited image. And it also helps the ambitious man attain more visibility before the eyes of his superiors.

Years ago my wife served her term as P.T.A. president, and I served on a town committee and a school-evaluation committee. But we both found ourselves so surrounded by hoards of young executive hustlers and their wives straining to gain visibility in and for their companies (or by retired executives) that we are more likely to espouse causes that do not appeal to, or are overlooked by, aspiring executives.

Finally, if there were even a shred of hope that I might be considered executive material, that shred would be eliminated by the fact that I am 48 years old. I still naively think of myself as a young man; but to the corporation I'm about as attractive, agewise, as a 40-year-old pugilist would be to a fight promoter. Corporations generally are wary of taking on managers beyond the age of 45 unless they already have a proven and attractive record in general management somewhere else.

So there you are. The corporate way of life is an increasingly exacting one. Many of those who have succeeded in getting near the top of a pyramid seem to enjoy the life they lead. They like the power and the perks and the prestige and even the pressures. But frankly, I've reconciled myself without too much grief to the knowledge that as far as corporate eligibility is concerned, I had better stick to my typewriter.