WORK IN AMERICA: Do Entrepreneurs Have More Fun?
Lessard, Suzannah
WORK IN AMERICA: Do Entrepreneurs Have More Fun? by Suzannah Lessard Richard Safford’s enthusiasm in the pursuit of his ambition is contagious even if you don’t care much about the ambition...
...The outside standards, mystical hierarchies, personal metaphors, and drives to prove something to the world (the kids back home, mom and dad, all the people who didn’t recognize you as special) are the factors which get between people and their work, drawing them apart from themselves and undermining their sense of autonomy and well-being...
...I’m in every line...
...Kelly has attached an elusive significance to money: somehow, without it, he feels inadequate against his dreams...
...The brutal vacuity of assembly-line work has held the most attention: there the possibilities of infusing “meaningfulness” would seem, by the built-in limitations of the work, to be restricted to making mass-produc tion sys tems bearable...
...These are the elements Kelly wants to bring to his noblesse...
...The entrepreneur is a person who breaks from this formation to make an end run on *his own...
...It’s very challenging and there’s a chance to make a lot of money...
...He might even make that pot of money in the process...
...All I had to do, it seemed, was prove myself...
...The extreme nervousness that his comments might, if published, rile the all-powerful lion padding around him is a version of the situation in which one is enslaved trying to please someone who has the power to reward...
...and the assistant editor here is about one eighth of a person...
...He is, first of all, shamelessly romantic about the oil business...
...Nicholas Compton gives the impression of being a person who did not always have an irrepressible appetite for responsibility but for whom the recent taste of autonomy has led to addiction...
...Far from a process of self-test and discovery, this is an eradication of self...
...He definitely wants to go into politics full time, and he has for quite a while...
...Perhaps because he feels his hold on responsibility is tentative (because it’s so new and because his company is in financial trouble), Compton was on the whole cagey, rather than enthusiastic, during the interview...
...A group of engineers perceives a possibility which is not being pursued but which would solve one part of a conundrum weighing heavily on the country’s mind-pollution and the prohibitive cost of reducing it...
...I’m not sure my boss was even aware of what was happening...
...The concept is on target, but sometimes the application perverts the end, particularly when combined with the concept of reward...
...Meanwhile, JBB is licking its chops at the prospect of gobbling up Thermex and its tasty little patent...
...It’s tremendous fun, and it’s agony...
...Like a poet, he makes little distinction between work and leisure, not because he’s always thinking shop but because he engages with the challenge in some way at all apparent levels of his personality...
...And since at the moment, the quality which makes the device most saleable is its fuel-saving property (in the absence of legislation, buyers are not so enticed by the anti-pollution aspect), somehow he feels he can’t claim credit for having a hand in making cleaner air possible...
...Searching for what I wanted to hear, he concluded that it must be how socially responsible he and his company are, which made him at once startled, flattered, and suspicious...
...Common sense dictated that I try to figure out what my superior would like, which is a horrible way to think about what you are doing...
...He had run as a Democrat in a solidly Republican town of 15,000 on issues like the Vietnam war...
...The ideals are strong, but so is the fascination with performance-that old “I think I can do this better” which spurred him out of his company job...
...Kelly has gotten past that and wants to pull it together on the inside rather than on the outside, which means he has a tremendous potential...
...Why it made him anxious to talk about pollution, however, is baffling...
...That sort of thing holds no sway with me any more...
...I have just been appointed to the board of directors of my business school (from which he failed to graduate...
...A Chance for the Big Time I experienced an analogous and in some ways eerier situation in the white-collar world of publishing...
...Meanwhile, the one thing he demands of his occupation-that he learn from his work, that it be a process of selftesting and self-discovery-has evaporated...
...Of course we must have a guaranteed income,” and then imply that business is a vulgar activity and is for people interested only in personal gain, having no relation to reform other than being an object for reproval...
...Oil men are men’s men...
...If there are five assistants and one associateship, the quotient of those assistants will be downgraded according to their chances, something you can probably calculate by shades of difference in salary...
...The town is a microcosm of the country...
...But the assumption that businessmen who reduce pollution in the interest of profits must be the same creatures who polluted the air in order to make profits in effect tells Compton that he can’t take moral satisfaction in being part of an accomplishment because the accomplishment would only be morally prideworthy if the Ford Foundation were responsible for it...
...However, they attached so many requirements to the investment that Thermex cannot avoid trespassing on the agreement without having the notes, which they could not possibly meet, called...
...Yet, at least in the presence of someone whom he has decided is a social idealist, he doesn’t feel free to express satisfaction at being part of an effort which has solved a social problem...
...Twisting for Cosmo In the end, the situation became so bad that I involuntarily sabotaged myself by doing so poorly in the secretarial work that I was fired...
...Understandably, his primary concern seemed to be how my article would affect his and the company’s images...
...The formation he makes an end run around is, among other things, one of income gradations...
...In other words, you are incapable of being the judge of your own worth: that is a matter for superiors...
...First he told how objections to the anti-personnel equipment JBB produced had persuaded them not only to stop prbduction but also to extend this new consciousness into all fields of development...
...Perhaps he should go into politics full time someday...
...It works...
...I’m free to concentrate on decisions...
...Drilling for Freedom The truly sustaining adventure of Safford’s career, howevef, is the freedom to succeed or fail on his own that autonomy affords...
...When incompetent management drove the company into bankruptcy, the temptation was too great for Compton...
...The paternalism implicit in prescribing responsibility and rewarding it, in carefully measured doses, is not just condescending, but reinforces a kind of hierarchical control which, in the end, could only tourniquet the flow of interest more tightly...
...Riling the Lion Compton, the emotional force of his fear coming out in the form of lavish praise of his predator, is the picture of a man in the grips of another will...
...These issues should be brought down to the local level...
...Otherwise all information presented as fact is undoctored...
...Far less logically, spokesmen of the non-business culture say, “Of course we must have a national health program...
...So I twisted myself one way for what I thought the Village Voice would like, another for the New Yorker, another for Cosmopolitan, not just in the sense of trying to choose appropriate subjects, which is sensible, but in the sense that the formation of every sentence, every idea, was nagged and cluttered by guesses at what would appeal...
...He half-heartedly tries to achieve the goal which once galvanized him-but is still short of the dispensation, the power of money, which would free him to exercise the best in himself...
...There’s no relief...
...There is still something to prove to “them” as opposed to himself...
...Capital Can Set You Free When an entrepreneur decides to wing it on his own, he is breaking loose from the escalator of $15,000, $18,000, $25,000, $30,000 for an unscaled amount...
...Presumably, the promotions are based on ability-the “best” workers should get them, but since there are far more than six qualified workers-dozens of potential foremen-the decision is made “intuitively,” on some mystical basis beyond the track records and ability of the aspirants...
...The syndrome is not just destructive of people, it is wasteful as well-a dead loss for everyone...
...Whatever else Safford may associate with responsibility, the key ingredient in its attraction to him is that it frees him from an artificial system of rewards, so he can rely on his own judgment and let his performance stand or fall on its merits...
...Like many entrepreneurs, he started out as a salesman, saw ways he could do the same kind of business more profitably, and bailed out...
...Political Nobility Kelly is also blocked by the culture which tells him that politics indeed is the proving ground of the noble-the place where you “give back”-while business is for the common, selfinterested man...
...He seems to think that I want him to say he would market anti-pollution equipment whether it would sell or not, and that once he has admitted a keen interest in profits, he cannot credibly claim any satisfaction in the gismo’s social benefits without sounding like James Roche lauding Ralph Nader, or Maurice Stans deploring the behavior of the Committee for the Reelection of the President...
...Richard Safford is an entrepreneur...
...His admiration is not simple idolatry...
...Because the stockholders wouldn’t get a decent return on their money if he sold now, and he’d be betraying the risk they took for him...
...He gives an idea of how he has learned and discovered himself in his descriptions of the demise of one set of motivations...
...In any event, once you have operated within a specific metaphor, it’s difficult to replace it with another without undergoing a profound transformation...
...For a year Compton flew hundreds of miles regularly to meet with his friends and give advice...
...The Thermex gismo is a dream come true: a device which not only reduces pollution but saves money...
...Income versus capital is a natural if you have found yourself slotted in an income-status system, especially since the entire culture subscribes to the metaphor and since it has some validity-if you have capital you are in a very real sense, free...
...He went on in this vein, but without really appearing to have his heart in it...
...Because he was constantly analogizing between problems in the company and those in government (he is mayor of his small suburban town), I switched the conversation to his political life and instantly knew that was what he cared about...
...I suppose in the back of my head was the thought that once I got the blessing of publication I would be able to work by my own standards...
...Someone who has embraced the metaphor of artist for instance, is not likely to find her need to be divinely chosen gratified by being given a million dollars...
...Why doesn’t he sell it and go into politics...
...You could not compensate for what the president of a fledgling company does...
...Then he could decide whether or not he wanted to go into politics, and not whether he needed to prove something...
...So William Kelly sits at his empty desk, stealing as much time as he can for his mayoralty, which he is in grave danger of outgrowing just as he outgrew his interest in his company...
...The snatch of work was usually much too slim, and the chance too rare for me to risk reliance on my own judgment...
...I took a job which, I was led to believe, would involve a certain amount of nitty-gritty secretarial work but would also include more “interesting responsibilities,” “chances” to do some editing, and “possibilities” of advancement...
...As he readily admits, his stoclcholders are not the only factor which holds him back from getting out now...
...Kelly Data has plateaued...
...As a result, “interesting responsibilities” were at a high premium, and as I was the only one who labored under the stigma of a secretarial title, my disadvantages in the competition were severe...
...I might have done better had I simply stuck to my own sense of values...
...First, he believes he can’t launch a political career without capital...
...As a result of this, his genuine feelings weaved elusively in and out of various fronts...
...The secretary is the lowest common denominator, one of the pennies if you are working on the dollar...
...There are plenty of examples of the public interest being trampled under the profit-making drive...
...Capital is extraordinary, income is ordinary...
...It’s a fascinating life, much more so than Wall Street...
...Income is a key factor in the impatience or intolerance which spurs the end run because it is the marker of status...
...mtblication was a “reward” related far less to writing something of innate worth, which I myself could judge, than it was to writing something which would be approved by someone else...
...Then, even more vibrantly, he told how JBB had helped Thermex by making a big investment with no strings attached, just to give the company a boost...
...Trying to launch myself as a free-lance writer (which is in many respects like being an entrepreneur), I wrote everything with an eye to what I thought would please...
...For instance, creating things of quality is one of the fundamental human satisfactions, yet as we become richer and more able technologically, quality products become rarer...
...Behind this theory, which certainly has some foundation, is a foggier set of reasons, having to do with his self-esteem...
...There is something intolerable about being measured on a scale of any sort, because inevitably it’s like saying: Here’s the editor, he’s a whole person...
...Capital is mysterious, income is a known quantity...
...But I took the habit with me...
...He says, “I feel I have to give it back”-noblesse oblige-but to reach the stage of oblige he must first obtain noblesse...
...The invention fills such a potentially hot demand that the appetite of a company like JBB is aroused-the only point at which the system breaks down is when it threatens the chances of their reaping the reward...
...Now it’s strictly achievement-I don’t need others to think well of me, I want to do things I myself know are worthwhile...
...He doesn’t mean the rinky-dink dogma like birth control, or latter-day fixations like abortion, but the principles, one of the possibilities the JFK-Pope John era momentarily intimated...
...The Noble Consultants I would speculate that there are two causes behind this assumption...
...In Kelly’s case, the fixation is especially compelling because it has some basis in realityindeed, it would be di?ficult for an honest man to go into politics with any reasonable hope of success if he lacked a healthy bank account...
...When I asked him exactly what political offices-federal, state, or local-would interest him, however, he shied...
...On the rare occasions when I did get hold of a scrap of jacket copy to work on, the business of “proving myself” was bizarrely distorted...
...others have a muddier sense of involvement...
...Entrepreneurs provide useful foils for the amorphous afflictions of the white-collar world because they are unusually engaged in what they do, they attach great significance or 66 meaning” to their endeavors, and most often their dissatisfaction with work in conventional structures has been an important factor in their choice to go out on their own...
...It’s a masculine world...
...I like oil...
...This is not the system which holds the working class and poor under a ceiling, but a system which takes its educated middle-class members and slots them into structures in which their future is predetermined with very little leeway, and in which accomplishment is rewarded in predictable advancements marked by changing titles on the door...
...A few years ago that would have meant a great deal to me in many senses-in the sense, for instance, of proving something to people I went to school with who might have been better scholastically than I was...
...Safford is exceptionally clear-hearted about his work...
...Maybe what you say is true of a lot of them,” he said, “but there are some exceptions.’’ He then launched into an impassioned eulogy of JBB, one of the largest appliedelectronics firms...
...The assumption, reflected by Compton, is that the profit motive automatically excludes all non-profit motives (with the exception of power), or at the very least, that the profit motive debases any other aim which might be entwined with it...
...The business runs itself...
...Early in the conversation he had pointed to his bare desk with pride: “I have delegated everything...
...There is another kind of waste in the William Kellys, who have the guts to break out of the formal syndromes only to get caught up in others of their own making-the mental blocks which keep them from seeing the work before them as a challenge to the best in themselves...
...The business of pleasing higher-ups in order to get good marks, on the other hand, is the kind of working format which gradually causes the people in it to lose their power to distinguish between their own judgment and someone else’s...
...He conceives of politics as a way to educate people and make them see the best in themselves...
...I just have to have it...
...I don’t know why,” he says after trying out several explanations and rejecting them...
...Acceptance is expressed in phrases like “they must have their good reasons,” as though the superiors “know more about you than you do yourself...
...Behind the entrepreneurial drive is often a desire to beat the system...
...But perhaps, too, if he does get there he will discover other blocks which he will deem impossible to transcend until the day when he is President or Pope...
...I later learned that about a year ago, when Thermex needed to make a crucial expansion, JBB had come forward with the urgently desired sum...
...The dream is to make a lot of money...
...If he pitched himself into that challenge he probably wouldn’t sigh, as he does now, “Time is the problem...
...He can do the same thing in business as well...
...Everyone wants to see himself as divinely chosen, whatever the metaphor they select may be...
...I’m in my forties now...
...You can point to modern economics as the reason, but you also have to point to what the organizations which produce goods are doing to a fundamental human instinct...
...The reasons behind this conviction come in layers...
...If Richard Safford succeeds, for instance, he will not plateau inside the way Kelly has but will go on to more of the same: capital will give him the freedom to play with capital and achieve what he perceives as a form of perfection...
...He is talking about declassifying himself, making himself unmeasureable, which is like being royalty, or a priest, or an artist-no t “common...
...If he succeeds, he will be returned to himself, whereas if I had succeeded I would in many ways have been delivered deeper into an enslavement...
...he is also blocked by the conviction that he must first make a lot of money...
...I like the rigs and the machinery...
...Perhaps he has an invaluable contribution to make there...
...The system of rewards which depend on someone else’s unaccountable judgment is discussed, as it operates at the blue-collar level, in The Hidden Injuries of Class by Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb...
...Names, places, and business particulars have been changed to protect the subjects...
...Yet the businessman will, if successful, create jobs and wealth, in all likelihood contributing more to the country (by helping make possible the liberal reforms dependent on wealth) than your average foundation man...
...He’s looking for something in himself, a kind of integrity, which Kennedy made him see...
...For instance, the formula which prescribes giving a person more responsibility and then rewarding her if she fulfills it, could be interpreted in a positive way, but is loaded with a counterproductive notion...
...The integrity he seeks has a lot to do with bringing principles of Christianity right into the ball game...
...In other words, he’s going for capital instead of income...
...The second is the culture of liberal idealism which automatically characterizes someone who goes into an urbanrenewal consultantship as idealistic and classifies the person who decides to become a contractor as comparatively base...
...So when William Kelly says he must have a lot of money, he is talking about more than just security or the size of house he wants to live in...
...For some who choose the capitalincome metaphor, capital itself is enough...
...They believe strongly enough in the value and feasibility of their idea to cut loose from all the benefits and protection of successful careers in established organizations and spend two valuable years developing the idea...
...Comp tort’s uneasiness and consequently distorted statements about JBB, are completely understandable...
...And the people fascinate me-some of the strongest personalities I have ever met...
...The apparent reason is that in his mind the first function of the gismo is to make money...
...Now he looks at the desk a bit wistfully, and it comes out...
...They describe a situation in which there are six foremen’s jobs with 150 workers aspiring to them...
...Noblesse, to Kelly-beyond the legitimacy bestowed by capital-is a matter of liberating his potential (which is cramped by the lack of capital...
...by Suzannah Lessard Richard Safford’s enthusiasm in the pursuit of his ambition is contagious even if you don’t care much about the ambition itself...
...As work life in America becomes an issue of study and concern, the annoying and useless catchword “meaningful” is relied on more and more heavily to express what work ought to be...
...For example, he is a deeply believing Catholic...
...Proving something to the world is a powerful motive to all of us, and probably especially strong in the entrepreneur...
...William Kelly is locked between two forces...
...It’s a man’s business...
...Capital makes you free, income is a kind of slavery...
...here’s the associate editor, she’s half a person...
...In other words, entrepreneurship is no guarantee against helplessness in the grips of another will, although there is one crucial difference between Compton’s situation and mine...
...Achieving his dream is of paramount importance to him, but he clearly loves the chase for its own sake as well, and that is what makes him contagious...
...Now the white-collar world, where work actually can be an asset in people’s lives, is also becoming a cause for concern, as ennui, aimlessness, timidity, loss of pride, listlessness, a sense of entrapment, and any number of other desiccations of the spirit Suzannah Lessard is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...mine was to please and be accepted...
...Logically, when a decision about where to direct th’e company must be made, he will not take such satisfactions into account, since only non-profi t-making idealists deserve them...
...In other words, Compton shouldn’t be made to feel that the profit-making aspect of his work undercuts the value of his contribution, he should feel that the wealth and job-producing aspects add to the contribution...
...He is one of those people for whom John Kennedy provided an electrifying glimpse of the inspirational power of an individual, and the possibilities which one person can open...
...His real effort is to outwit and escape...
...The first is his fear, which makes him generally unsure of himself...
...If ever there was a blissful instance of the free-enterprise system working in the interests of everyone-the customer, the manufacturer, and the non-buying public-this is it...
...His involvement is emotional...
...But the three very different personalities portrayed here all tell something about what the significance of work can be to people...
...When I asked him how much capital he needed, he was reluctant to tell-to demystify it-but finally did say he wanted a quarter of a million dollars (an interesting sum, not yielding the kind of income you can live on, but over the border from the “nest egg” category...
...If the businessman does that and in addition markets a product like Thermex’s which is a social contribution, his equal in terms of actual input towards a better world would be hard to find in the world of professional idealists...
...The anxiety constantly blocked the conversation, breaking out in awkward remarks presumably designed to give an impression of credibility like, “Of course I don’t want to pretend that the only reason I’m in business is to battle pollution.’’ Compton perked up in response to a rather general and stereotyped remark about the unresponsiveness of big industry...
...Your importance quotient, especially to those in the know, tends to be further refined by what sort of option you have on a slot above...
...Meanwhile, he has no eyes for the potential under his nose...
...And no less than these are his hard-earned, managerial, decision-making skills, which, as he has successfully applied them to his tiny municipality, have already afforded him so much satisfaction...
...In any event, the results of my efforts were masterpieces of mediocrity, quite deserving of the rejection slips they earned...
...The representation was accurate enough, except that there were three other people cruising around the same “chances...
...Well into middle age, he left his job at Gordon Chemical and took over the presidency of Thermex...
...He is bored...
...He worked in the Kennedy campaign in Manhattan, but subsequently dropped out of politics, and he gives the strong impression that he must recover something from the other side of the time gap, a yearning a great many people share...
...It was only when, on the brink of giving up, I wrote a piece for no one in particular-and hence could rely only on my own judgment-that the closeout broke...
...The device was conceived by three friends of Compton’s who left their jobs and formed their own company to develop it...
...He is president of a small corporation, Thermex, which manufactures an electronic device to regulate oil burning so that it not only gives out more heat per gallon but also cuts the polluting waste by more than half...
...It’s the kind of urge which grows most strongly out of rebellion at being classified-gradeclassified, income-classified, or classclassified...
...Oddly, this effort doesn’t burn him out, but on the whole it seems to rejuvenate him, just as his ambition seems not only to endure but actually to become more compelling in defeat...
...The terms he uses to describe the exercise of this freedom-“pursuing my convictions,” “creativity,” “reaching for excellence,” and, most often, “responsibility”may seem an inflated way of describing the promotion of drilling rights, but they tell more, I think, about the symbolic scope Safford attaches to his endeavors than they do about his limitations...
...This is why people in this country are often identified by their income: “My friend Pete, he’s a $40,000-a-year man...
...Responsibility is also considered the antidote to “meaninglessness’ in white-collar world...
...Kelly’s Plateau When I first met William Kelly he was sitting behind a bare desk in his office at four-year-old Kelly Data Services, a leasing company in Stamford, Connecticut...
...Admittedly, in its present form his company isn’t much of a challenge, but he seems to have little doubt that it has a great potential for growth if he would only apply himself...
...These are the things which are disturbing people and this is where you can educate.’’ Does he want to go further in politics, or is this just a sideline...
...In all fairness to my old boss, it was the structure of the situation, not the boss, which pressured me into the pattern of trying to please, and which, with the inevitable failures to “be noticed,” further undermined whatever instinct I had to rely on my own judgment...
...This is a kind of self-testing, and along with it, selfdiscovery...
...permeate work life, particufarly in the mega-bureaucracies of both government and its doppelganger, big business...
...The causes of the trouble are more obscure than in the mass-production world, and so the search for that elusive “meaningfulness” is even less defined...
...Though Safford’s playing field, oil exploration rights, is one of the semirarified zones of capitalism, he is not out of the slick, whiz-kid mold...
...He remains blocked, however, by his own metaphor (capital equals noblesse), and, I think, by the old fear of being scaled as well...
...Compton, also an engineer, loves the gismo, even though he didn’t develop it, and takes pride, as anyone would, in its function of ingeniously turning the laws of physics to a double and previously contradictory use...
...He will not be classified small potatoes/big time, an indication that politics, too, is a metaphor which must not be demystified, rather than something he simply wants to do, in which case classification would hold no threat...
...For Kelly, however, capital is something which will knight him, giving him the internal dispensation to go on to his knighthood in politics...
...quite probably he was preoccupied with the same thing on a higher level...
...The system often incites anger in those with good, solid records who are passed over, but ultimately they accept the wisdom of the employer...
...If he could see in that potential the possibility of applying his idealism to, for instance, the problem of work-organization-if he decided to expand the company in directions which were particularly suited to that challenge and tried to make it profitable-it’s a very good bet that his old appetite for entrepreneurship would come back with a bang...
...What about Kelly Data and all that agonizing fun...
Vol. 4 • December 1972 • No. 10
