The Myth of the Organization Man

I Imagine that almost everyone is familiar with the age-old, perennially popular game "Bait the Businessman." But for the benefit of those who, by some freak of fate, have remained ignorant of the game, permit me to describe its rudimentary form.

Any number---from one to millions---can play. There are no rules---or, rather, as long as the player remembers to derogate businessmen for selfishness, misdeeds and effronteries, the player can make his own rules. Beginners may improve their technique by studying the effusions of professional coaches, such as the German socialist August Bebel, whose 19th Century handbook recommends such classic opening gambits as: "The nature of all business is swindling."

I do not intend to topple the towers of Bebel or to battle other aficionados of the game. My immediate concern is with a much-refined version of the original sport that has gained favor in recent years. Unlike the parent pastime, the objective of this variant is not to tar and feather businessmen but to dress them in the drab cloak of conformity. There are two ways to score points. One is by maintaining that a business career is a deadly bore, a rat-race or a soul destroyer (select one or coin your own). The other is by steadfastly averring that businessmen are dull, achromatic creatures devoid of initiative, creativity and courage.

Bonus points are awarded for negative characterizations couched in the heliotrope prose of the dead gray-flannel-suit days. For example, a player would be assured of an upper-division rating if he declared, "Businessmen are faceless automatons plodding seriatim through the deepest grooves of organization, constantly glancing over their shoulders in fear, unfeelingly trampling the bodies of their fellows who fall by the wayside."

Of course, I reject the contention that business is boring. For those who enthusiastically decide to make it their career, business offers challenge, excitement and risks galore---as much of each as any man could desire or handle. "Business is an adventure," John Brooks has written, and the emphasis is his.

Take, for example, the romance of the oil business---which is the business I know best. Its romance is reflected even in the normally dry-as-dust legal precedents that govern the industry. Many years ago, American courts established the legal concept of the "law of capture," ruling that oil is like the wild animal in the jungle: It belongs to the man who finds and captures it. The analogy between oil and jungle beast can be carried considerably further. Both are elusive, unpredictable---and frequently dangerous. Although it is possible on rare occasions to stumble across either unwittingly, in the vast majority of instances, both must be hunted down with patience, brought to bay with caution and subdued swiftly. Furthermore, both oilmen and big-game hunters are likely to range over remote and forbidding regions in search of their prey, facing great hardships in the process.

Excitement in business? I remember one incident---by no means unique in my experience---when, in 1923, my father's Nordstrom well, located (continued on page 164)Organization Man(continued from page 131) in a Southern California field, blew out. For days, every effort had to be concentrated on extinguishing the roaring blaze---which melted structural steel as though it were butter---before the flames spread to adjacent wells and storage tanks. This could have caused a major disaster. Believe me, once you fight a few conflagrations like that, you have tasted high adventure.

Parenthetically, there's an amusing side light to this story. The Nordstrom well was situated only 150 yards or so from the Santa Fe railroad tracks. When the well blew and it became obvious that we had a serious fire on our hands, I hastened to telephone the traffic superintendent of the Santa Fe in Los Angeles. I told him what had happened and warned him to stop all rail traffic along the line. Any trains passing through would be in grave danger.

The Santa Fe official---possibly thinking I was some sort of crank---got his hackles up and refused to halt or reroute traffic on my say-so. Fortunately, however, he decided to make an independent check. One of the railroad's employees made a quick visit to the scene. I called the superintendent back a little while later---for the fire was getting worse---and repeated my urgent request.

"Yeah, I know," he growled dourly. "You really do have a fire---traffic's been stopped all along the line." With that, he hung up---a very unhappy traffic superintendent.

There may or may not be close parallels to emergencies such as oil-well fires in other industrial and commercial spheres; nonetheless, the drama of business extends across a very broad spectrum. I shall have more to say on this later; but for the moment, let us turn our attention to the businessman and seek to determine whether he is as drab as some hold him to be.

Now, I do not deny that there are archconformists, yes men and Caspar Milquetoasts to be found in the business community. You will find these types in any community. Such men do not require others to dress them in the 1969 equivalent of a gray-flannel suit; they don the cloak of conformity voluntarily, as camouflage, hoping to blend into a background of mediocrity, because they are insecure, incompetent---and in the wrong field. Decades of observation and experience have led me to believe they are the persons least likely to succeed in the business world.

Interviewed not long ago by Nation's Business, Walter E. Heller, head of the large commercial finance company that bears his name, was asked: "What do you think are the major skills and qualities that today's manager needs?"

"The two things he has to have or he doesn't make the grade are courage and vision," Heller replied. "Those are the sheer essentials."

Who will get the promotions and the best jobs? According to Paul H. Kiernan, managing director of the international recruiting firm of Kiernan & Company, it will not be the bland conformist but "the man with vision and enough guts to change things."

These are only two samplings from the vast number of similar assessments made by individuals who, having readied the summit the hard way, are in an excellent position to speak. Clearly and unanimously, the qualities they cite as "musts" for success are the absolute antitheses of those implied by the Milquetoast cliché. And the higher the individual climbs up the slopes of the business world's Anna-punas, the headier is the atmosphere---and the greater the attendant risks and the concomitant needs for creativity and individuality.

In their incisive and valuable study The Managers, Roy Lewis and Rosemary Stewart argue that "the man who founds a successful business is still likely to be ... aggressive" and will see "his company as a tangible projection of himself. He seldom wears the mask of modesty that is standard for the corporation man."

Dissecting successful businessmen in his book The Multimillionaires, Goronwy Rees contends that the man who passes the magic million mark, "in addition to being a calculator, patient, thorough and scrupulous in his regard for fact, however distasteful, [is] a gambler on a colossal scale."

Rees continues: "It is the willingness to accept ... huge risks that psychologically distinguishes the multimillionaire, in his classical form as an individual entrepreneur backing his judgment with his own resources, from his fellow men and even from those very rich men whose abilities are employed within the framework of great joint-stock companies and corporations."

Rees provides many illustrative examples to support his theorems, including an anecdote about my good friend and recent headline maker Aristotle Onassis. "When Mr. Onassis first proposed to build a tanker of 60,000 tons, he was regarded by the banks ... as a dreamer of the most impractical kind; and, indeed, he says he was able to do it only by concealing from everyone the size of the giant he proposed to build."

Of course, Ari's dream has long since proved thoroughly practical. Oil tankers much larger than 60,000 tons are now sliding down the ways of shipyards all over the world. Nevertheless, Rees renders Ari Onassis a well-deserved salute by commenting: "Such actions might not provoke surprise if carried out by huge corporations; [but] on the part of an individual, they involve a degree of risk that can affect his entire fortune."

I myself am hardly a stranger to such risks. Like many other businessmen, I have frequently found it advisable to take them during the course of my career. Such was the case when I began my campaign to gain control of the Tide Water Associated Oil Company in the Depression years of the 1930s. It was unquestionably a gamble and, by my standards, it was an enormous one. I was then a relatively small wildcatting operator setting my sights on one of the nation's major oil companies. My stock purchases were financed by every dollar I possessed and every cent of credit I could obtain. Had I lost the campaign (and I was defeated in several preliminary skirmishes and came within heart-stopping hairbreadths of total failure on several occasions), I would have been left personally penniless and very deeply in debt. However, the campaign was a success. By 1940, Getty interests held 1,734,577 shares of Tide Water---about one fourth of the voting stock. The company was recently merged into the Getty Oil Company. The market value of this holding is now well over one billion dollars.

At least an equal degree of risk was involved when I authorized the purchase of a Middle Eastern oil concession for $12,500,000---cash in advance---before anyone was certain there was a drop of oil to be found anywhere in the area covered by the concession. Years would pass and many more millions of dollars would be invested before the first producing well would come in. Had there not been oil in the area---well, I'd just as soon not even think about that possibility.

All in all, it is my opinion that the Dullsville image of the businessman fits only a very small, notably unsuccessful segment of the business community. I have observed that the suave, super-conformist éminence grise of the executive suite is mainly a mythical creature. As I noted, I will grant that the species does exist, but its members are few and they seldom attain suiteworthy rank. If they enter the board room at all, the chances are it is only to set out the writing pads or to empty the ashtrays.

I contend that the individualist---the man who risks unmarked roads and takes a great many hard knocks en route---possesses an immense advantage over any conformist, organization type. My views on this subject began to form as far back as 1914, when I started my own career as a businessman in the oil fields of Oklahoma.

In those days, I lived at the Cordova Hotel in Tulsa (rent: six dollars per week) and took my meals at a boarding-house close by (weekly board bill: another six dollars). Several men destined to become millionaires shared the table at the boardinghouse. Among them was my close friend R. A. Josey, whose nature and personality were the opposite of what would be considered standard for the typical organization man. "Josie," as he was predictably nicknamed, was a complete individualist; and, although he later became a very wealthy man, he remained the same person---good-natured, self-reliant and -resilient, as far a cry as one could imagine from the achromatic stereotype.

Many other friends and acquaintances of that period preveniently refuted the myth of the bland businessman and, in fact, seemed to demonstrate that the more multihued an individual's character, the better his chances for achieving success. Certainly, their careers proved that imagination, initiative and resiliency are infinitely more valuable assets than the ability to fit into a mold, to move with the crowd or to allow the judgment of others to influence one's own actions.

For instance, I am sure that many people would have insisted that R. M. McFarlin was finished when he failed in the cattle business; they would have doubtless advised him to seek safe and steady employment and to forget about trying to make a fortune. But, undaunted by failure, McFarlin went to Oklahoma and started over---and became the multimillionaire part owner of the McMan Oil Company, one of the country's most successful oil-producing enterprises.

Then there was Bill Roeser, who, though then not yet 30, had made---and lost---two or three fortunes. In 1914, he was in the process of making yet another fortune. He habitually sported a $10,000 bill as a boutonniere, to advertise that he was on his way up again. Marion L. Travis, then only 28, had started on the slenderest shoestring only a few years before and made millions. John Markham, ignoring the advice of the "experts," followed his own instincts and took what the consensus held to be a sure step to bankruptcy by buying the unproved Sarah Rector Lease on the northern edge of the Cushing Field in Oklahoma. John knew it was a gamble, but he won. After the first well was drilled---it came in a gusher---the property proved to be one of the richest in the state. It made John Markham a multimillionaire.

Oddly enough, I had an experience almost identical to Markham's a short time later. Throughout Oklahoma, it was virtually an article of faith that no oil could exist in the so-called red-beds area. Without exception, geologists, major oil-company experts and wildcatting operators agreed that the region was bone-dry. I wasn't so sure. In fact, I had a strong hunch that the unanimous opinion was based on nothing more than superstition and guesswork. The hunch was bolstered by the information that only the most haphazard and desultory exploration had been carried out in the red beds. I therefore decided to take a very big risk. I obtained a lease in the region, began drilling and opened up a new producing area. Thenceforth---to put it mildly---I no longer needed to live at the Cordova or to eat at the boarding-house.

The roster of colorful, individualistic---and notably successful---businessmen I have known throughout the years could be extended far beyond the space of this article. Suffice it to say that these men achieved their successes in many different spheres of industry and commerce and that all had traits that set them apart from the herd. Foremost among these qualities was that each was a distinctive personality---each was fearlessly himself, not what he thought others might want him to be. Almost all had taken many hard knocks on their way to the top---and each and every one possessed the courage and vision that Walter Heller called the sheer essentials for success.

Notwithstanding cant and claptrap to the contrary, the operative human factors haven't changed. The same characteristics that proved decisive in the past are still adding that extra thrust that distinguish a moderate achievement from an outstanding business success.

There is more challenge, adventure and opportunity than ever before in the business world for young men who have courage and vision, who are able to roll with the punches and recover from them quickly---and who are willing to disregard all they have ever heard about the organization-man myth. One needs only to glance over published reports to sense the climate of unparalleled opportunity and to realize the exhilaration (to say nothing of the financial rewards) that accrues to those who seize their chances.

Last year, the Internal Revenue Service estimated that there were 100,000 millionaires in the United States---an astounding 150-percent increase over 1958, when there were 40,000 in the millionaire category. (A millionaire, of course, is a person whose possessions would realize $1,000,000 or more if they were sold.) However one studies the IRS figures, they are phenomenal---and extremely heartening to anyone who argues, as I have been doing for decades, that the American free-enterprise system is neither dying nor ailing and that its future is more promising than its past or its present. What I find especially encouraging about the multiplication of millionaires is that a very considerable percentage of the new arrivals is comprised of young men.

The successes achieved by individuals in their early 40s, their 30s or even their 20s has been widely publicized. For example, when Time devoted a cover story to the younger generation of millionaires in America, it profiled several men who began with little or no capital but managed to become millionaires before they reached 40. These successful businessmen of the 1960s had amassed their fortunes in a wide range of enterprises---from real estate and electronics to show business and presqueezed orange juice. All, said Time, "built productive wealth by creating jobs, purchasing power and useful ideas....[They] realize that even a million-dollar idea is useless unless the man who has it knows how to put it to work and has the courage to take risks."

There are hundreds, even thousands, of such young men among America's 60,000 new millionaires.

How did they do it? The answer is simple: in precisely the same way as their predecessors. They had the vision to recognize the commercial potential for certain products or services and, having the courage of their convictions, addressed themselves to the task of realizing that potential.

A definitive summation can be found in the published statement of youthful entrepreneur Robert K. Lifton, who, speaking of businessmen and their drive to succeed, declared: "This is our form of creating. If artists give up the world's pleasures to pursue their calling, people understand it. What they don't understand is that many businessmen have the same creative drives and derive the same satisfactions as artists---but what they are doing is translated into dollars and cents. When I come up with a good deal, that's creative. Successfully merchandising a product is creative. Taking a business idea and making it work is creative."

Young men who want to make a career of business will find nothing drab or boring about industry and commerce. They will find their work as invigorating and as exhilarating as any they could imagine. They will confront the challenge of the market place and feel the thrill and the satisfaction that come from business creativity.

Despite all the efforts of their detractors, it is simply not possible to color such men gray or any other shade of drabness. Exceptionally successful businessmen are not men who have been fitted in standardized slots; each is a man unique unto himself. The dowdy vestments of conformity and mediocrity can never be tailored to fit such men or their philosophies, no matter how their critics may tug in their efforts to shape the cloth.

I anticipate---indeed, I confidently prophesy---that there will be an even greater multiplication of young millionaires in the next few years. And it would not surprise me in the least if, as their number increases, their average age decreases.

Yes, by all means: Let him who---for whatever reason---scorns a business career go in peace to find his rightful place wherever else he wishes. I most sincerely wish him good fortune in whatever field lie chooses. On the other hand, if he wants to be a businessman, he should not permit the businessman baiters to discourage him. He should take his priceless assets of vision and courage---and head for the peak.