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| - Beliefs and values, mission and objectives, attitudes, hierarchy, discipline, freedom, systems, skills, material things, coordination, integration, and harmony are all essential for sustained success in business. But what about the most important of all organizational resources—the individual? What is the significance of the individual in the life of a corporation? Edison's well-known remark sums it up best: "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
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| abstract
| - Beliefs and values, mission and objectives, attitudes, hierarchy, discipline, freedom, systems, skills, material things, coordination, integration, and harmony are all essential for sustained success in business. But what about the most important of all organizational resources—the individual? What is the significance of the individual in the life of a corporation? Historically, the most significant individual in the life of a company has been the founder or an outstanding CEO who came later. Such people have imparted the values and formulated the mission that set the company's direction. They have molded the corporate character and invested all their energies to make the organization come alive. Leaders like Rosenwald and Wood, Vail and Sloan, Woolman and Woodruff, Bata and Marriott and their descendants have created organizations as extensions of their own personalities and given them an independent existence. These people identified themselves so closely with the life of the organizations that, as it was observed of Tom Watson, it is difficult to say where the personality of one ends and the personality of the other begins. It was not money or position that made these leaders significant. It was attitude and effort—a willingness to give themselves to the organization and to work hard. Work was their religion. With characteristic humor and understatement, Woodruff once remarked: "It was not so difficult. It was mostly a matter of working all the time." Watson almost made it sound easy: "It isn't a hard thing to build up a business if you are willing to do a reasonable amount of work." Make no mistake about it, Watson's idea of "reasonable" was not 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Nor was Bill Marriott, Sr.'s. He said, "No one can get very far in this life on a forty-hour week." It is easy to attribute the accomplishments of these leaders to some rare talents or genius, but nearly all of them have frankly denied anything of the kind. Woodruff was quite notably ordinary. "Bob has no particular talents," as one of his dearest admirers and successors at Coca-Cola said. Woolman was a lovable workaholic, but hardly extraordinary except in that regard. James Buchanan Duke, the founder of the American Tobacco Company, was quite explicit about it: I have succeeded in business not because I have more natural ability than those who have not succeeded, but because I have applied myself harder and stuck to it longer. I know plenty of people who have failed to succeed in anything who have more brains than I had, but they lacked application and determination. Edison's well-known remark sums it up best: "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." Despite the understandable tendency of those around them to admire these leaders and even deify them, it was more an extraordinary effort than an exceptional talent, more a right attitude than a brilliant intellect, that led to their success. The attitude, like the effort, was total and unwavering, a decision to act, a determination to achieve, and an enthusiasm for the challenge. As Duke explained shortly before his death: I resolved from the time I was a mere boy to do a big business. I loved business better than anything else. I worked from early morning until late at night. I was sorry to have to leave off at night and glad when morning came so I could set at it again. Admittedly, these individuals did share one characteristic in greater than normal measure, and that was energy. But where did their energy come from? It was itself a product of a decision, a determination, and an enthusiasm. Effort and commitment are the twin keys that release the energy stored up within the human personality. The effort and commitment are the result of a decision. The decision is the expression of an idea. The idea is an idealistic value or a high, distant goal. The idea fixes the direction, the decision sets it in motion, the effort and commitment carry it forward, and the enthusiasm lifts it to success. A high idea, a clear decision, a firm commitment, and an overflowing enthusiasm released the energy of these individuals and transformed it into intensity.
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