The Organization Man

CHAPTER 13 Checkers

1.56 THE ORGANIZATION MAN that he is cast for-the calm eye that never strays from the other's gaze, the easy, controlled laughter, the whole demeanor that tells onlookers that here certainly is a man without neurosis and inner rumblings. Yet again the drive, the fierce desire to control one's own destiny, cannot help but produce the inner conflicts that the demeanor would deny. "The ideal," one company president recently advised a group of young men, "is to be an individualist privately and a conformist publicly." Presidents appear considerably less disturbed by the pressure to conformity than those just beneath them. Yet the latter entertain few illusions that, even if there were not one rung higher-a board chairman, perhaps a not-too-friendly board of directors-things will ever get much easier. For now they must conform downward, just as much as upward. Less than before can they afford the luxury of an inadvertent frown, for their position now means that it will be transmitted all down the line, and eventually come back and smite them. An executive cannot have it said ·about him that he is an authoritarian; he must, above all, be permissive. Or, as is more customary, make a good show of it. Democracy, as many executives learn, is a lot more fun when you're going up than when you get there. Some could interpret this attitude on conformity as proof that top executives are conformists. I interpret it otherwise. To be aware of one's conformity is to be aware that there is some antithesis between oneself and the demands of the system. This does not itself stimulate independence, but it is a necessary condition of it; and contrasted with the wishful vision of total harmony now being touted, it demonstrates a pretty tough-minded grasp of reality. cHAPTER 13 Checkers Now, FINALLY, THE MATTER OF AMBITION-FOR HERE IS WHERE WE see most clearly the collision between the Social Ethic and the needs of the organization man. So far I have been arguing that the older Checkers 157 executive is .far more suspicious of organization than the professional manager who is the model of the next generation of management . I have further argued that this is not simply a difference in age but a portent of a long-range shift to the professional manager of men. I would now like to buttress my charge that the harmony it promises is a delusion. The young men speak of "the plateau." If they were to find this haven they would prove that the Social Ethic is personally fulfilling. For the goal of the plateau is in complete consonance with it; one's ambition is not a personal thing that craves achievement for achievement's sake or an ego that demands self-expression. It is an ambition directed outward, to the satisfactions of making others happy. Competitive struggle loses its meaning; in the harmonious organization one has most of the material rewards necessary for the good life, and none of the gnawing pains of the old kind of striving. As rationalization for the man who isn't going anywhere and doesn't much care, this goal has some utility. For others, however, the plateau has a fatal Haw. During the initial years the vision is proof against the facts of organization life. When he is on the lower rungs of The Organization the young man feels himself wafted upward so pleasantly that he does not think high-pressure competition really necessary, and even the comparatively ambitious tend to cherish the idea of settling in some comfortable little Eden somewhere short of the summit. As the potential executive starts going ahead of his contemporaries, however, the possibility of a top position becomes increasingly provocative. After all, he got this far by being a little quicker on the uptake. Perhaps . . . maybe . . . and why not? The apple has fallen into the garden. He will never be the same. No longer can he console himself with the thought that hard work never hurt anybody and that neuroses don't come from anything but worry. He knows that he has committed himself to a long and perhaps bitter battle. Psychologically he can never go back or stand still, and he senses well that the climb .from here on is going to involve him in increasing tensions. Just when a man becomes an executive is impossible to determine , and some men never know just when the moment of selfrealization...