Recently, David Brooks wrote an opinion piece bemoaning the disappearance of the organization man. His point was that there are a lot of things that can be accomplished only by large organizations:
A few generations ago, people grew up in and were comfortable with big organizations — the army, corporations and agencies. They organized huge construction projects in the 1930s, gigantic industrial mobilization during World War II, highway construction and corporate growth during the 1950s. Institutional stewardship, the care and reform of big organizations, was more prestigious.
Now nobody wants to be an Organization Man. We like start-ups, disrupters and rebels. Creativity is honored more than the administrative execution. Post-Internet, many people assume that big problems can be solved by swarms of small, loosely networked nonprofits and social entrepreneurs. Big hierarchical organizations are dinosaurs.
It is for this reason, Brooks argues, that we are less able to handle crises such as Ebola or ISIS than we would have been in the past.
In making this argument, Brooks reminded me of William H. Whyte, Jr.’s book The Organization Man, published in 1956, and read by me in the early 1970s. It is perhaps a little dated now, for the reason that Brooks gives, but it is still worth reading nevertheless. In any event, several years after I first read it, I found myself working for a large corporation. My position in the firm was rather lowly, for I had arrived there circuitously and somewhat by accident, inasmuch as my major in college had been philosophy.
For the first few years, I was content. If my wages were modest, so too were my expenses, for I was a confirmed bachelor. My job never required any overtime, and so I would put in my forty hours and go home. My interest in philosophy and the other arts and sciences had now become an avocation, and thus I led a quiet, contemplative life.
And then one day I found out that a woman who worked in my department was making over twice what I was making. She was not so crude as to actually brag about her income, but a casual remark about how much was taken out of her paycheck for the payroll tax, combined with some elementary arithmetic, told me all I needed to know. I was more than just envious. I was devastated. She worked no harder than I did, nor did she put in more hours. While her job description was different from mine, her ability to do her job effectively often depended on my assistance. It wasn’t fair!
I went home and sulked, and for weeks I was miserable. Finally, I decided to do something about it. The company I worked for had a policy of promoting from within, and in particular, they had a training program for those who wanted to rise to the upper levels of management. I talked to the man in personnel, and he told me that tests were given every few weeks for that purpose, consisting of an intelligence test and a personality test. I signed up.
When I got home, I dug out my copy of The Organization Man, and went to the chapter on personality tests. According to Whyte, it is standard to tell people taking such tests that there are no right or wrong answers, but that is a lie. Not only were there right or wrong answers, Whyte went on to say, but anyone given such a test by an organization should cheat.
Whyte admitted that trying to cheat on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory test would probably fail. But most personality tests given by organizations were short and obvious enough for one to successfully fake it. For this purpose, Whyte laid down two principles:
(1) When asked for word associations or comments about the world, give the most conventional, run-of-the-mill, pedestrian answer possible.
(2) When in doubt about the most beneficial answer to any question, repeat to yourself:
I loved my father and my mother, but my father a little bit more.
I like things pretty much the way they are.
I never worry much about anything.
I don’t care for books or music much.
I love my wife and my children.
I don’t let them get in the way of company work.
Referring to this list of personality traits, Whyte says, “If you were this kind of person you wouldn’t get very far, but unfortunately, you won’t get very far unless you can seem to be this kind.”
The philosophy underlying these desirable traits is easy to grasp. For example, a man who loves his father a little more than his mother probably has a good attitude toward authority figures, and will do as he is told. The last one on the list makes me smile even now. For anyone who wants to rise in a corporation, it should be clear that taking paternity leave will put one’s career in jeopardy. They will not fire a man that takes a few weeks off to help care for a newborn, but it will likely be a permanent mark against his character. When the time comes for someone to be promoted to a higher level of management, his superiors will recall that this loving and caring dad was not at work when they needed him.
Whyte gives an example of a personality test, and then discusses the way to answer the questions in the appendix. He advises being consistent in how you answer the questions, so you won't get caught faking it; trying to appear extroverted and conservative, but only moderately so; taking into consideration the type of company you want to work for, as well as the position for which you are applying; and so on.
One of my favorite questions on the sample test is one of the word-association questions, asking you to underline the word that best goes with the one in capitals. It is “GRASS (green, mow, lawn, court).” Because I am lazy, the word that jumped out at me in association with the word “grass” was “mow.” Not wanting to have to mow the lawn was reason number seventeen why I lived in an apartment instead of a house. But thanks to Whyte, I knew that the correct answer was “green.” Another question asks whether you agree or disagree with the statement, “Good supervisors are born, not made.” As Whyte points out in the appendix, the whole idea behind the training programs (such as the one I was applying for) is that people can learn to be good supervisors, and so the correct answer is “disagree.”
The big day finally arrived, and I went to the personnel office to take the tests. I remember one question asked whether I preferred to work alone or to be part of a team, and another asked if I preferred to read a book or have guests over for dinner. Well, I knew that I should say I preferred to be part of a team, and that I preferred to have guests over for dinner, but I just could not do it. I answered that I preferred to work alone, and that I would prefer to read a book, and so on for the rest of the test. I handed it in, but with no intention of pursuing the matter any further. I went back to my desk, sat down and went to work, content with my little job and no longer asking for more. For the first time in weeks I felt good again. What a fool I was to let my happiness be spoiled because someone else was a little better off than I was.
Sometimes a book cannot change your life, even if you think you want it to.