和平石村徑聘公亭
匾語「石村徑」
石噴清泉雀舌龍牙供客飲;
村環綠柳鶯嗁燕語笑人忙。
匾語「聘公亭」
聘問往來此地當郵亭驛站;
公私忙碌暫坐且解渴消煩。
Tuesday, February 1, 2022
徐傅霖對聯，和平縣城徐氏宗祠
和平縣城徐氏宗祠
嶽降崧生正氣萃紫雲烏虎;
左昭右穆前程看飛鳳躍龍。 回業
(註)紫雲、山名,烏虎、龔名,係和平徐氏世居之地。飛鳳、躍龍均係橋名,一在和平縣城東 門,一在和平縣城南門。
Monday, January 31, 2022
徐傅霖文，我們攜手重逢的時候快到了
徐傅霖文，我們携手重逢的時候快到了
元旦對大陸「民主人士」廣播詞,
我是中國民主社會黨主席徐傅霖,我想趁着春回大地,萬物欣欣向榮,一切都將呈現新生的時節,對大陸上一些久別難忘的老朋友講幾句話。
今天是中華民國四十六年元旦,也是中華民國開國四十六年紀念日,爲了推翻滿清專制,爲了建立民主共和,你們有許多人,曾經不惜犧牲,奔走革命。對於創造中華民國,頗多可歌可泣的偉烈事蹟,都有或多或少的功績勳勞.現在,你們却在毀棄中華民國的共產黨統治之下,扛着「民主黨派」的招牌,希望和共產黨「長期共存」「互相監督」,面臨中華民國開國紀念的今日,你們内心裡一定蘊藏者難以告人的隱痛,我對你們這些老朋友,了解最深,關懷最切,所以,時時刻刻都在惦念着,尤其在今天,想到你們孤懷鬱抑,深心苦痛,眞是令人感慨萬千!
最近我在中共手下的「光明日報」上,看到「民革廣東省委會主委」陳汝棠先生發表的一篇文章,他透露一些「民主黨派」的苦痛處境,而很哀怨的說:「中共基層組織對民主黨派採取敬而遠之的態度,甚至連民主黨派的成員,也不作爲骨幹使用,個別共產黨員對民主黨派,還有歧視的態度」。他又說:「中共沒有從憲法賦予的權利義務内,給予民主黨派以政治自由和組織獨立,我們甚麽事情非經過他們同意就不能做。甚至民主黨派要發展某一個成員,儘管這個人政治面目清楚, 也得徵求中共的同意」。就陳汝棠先生所說的這一段話,我敢相信是你們一般「民主黨派」共同的呼聲。從這片呼聲裡,也透露了你們內心的隱痛和哀怨。
沒有政治自由,組織也不能獨立,甚麽事情非經中共同意就不能做,請問:這樣還成甚麽政黨 !還談甚麽民主?其實,僅替中共獨裁辯護,爲中共兇殘掩飾,做做傀儡而已!所謂「長期共存」 只是夢想,你們能夠存在多久,這是你們自己可以决定的吧?所謂「互相監督」,實乃戲言,你們能夠監督中共的一切措施嗎?你們的一舉一動,全部必須徵求中共的同意,又是怎樣監督中共呢?你們是被中共監督的人,却不是監督中共的黨派。幾年來,你們忍氣吞聲,委曲求全,逆來順受的結果,是身受的苦難,是內心的悲痛,這種種苦痛與悲痛,可以說是有血有淚, 構成人世間最哀怨,最悲慘的畫面,當我看了陳汝棠先生的那篇文章,感念過去我們爲自由民主而奮鬥的往事,想到現在你們身困鐵幕,俯仰由人的景況,不禁滿懷憂鬱,深深的替你們嘆了一口氣。
我和你們是志同道合的老朋友,心目中都會描有一幅美麗的遠景,然而,曾幾何時,各散西東而今却是雲天遠隨,音訊斷絕,但是基於情義,我不能不懷念你們,現在,我只能從空中對你們苦痛的處境,表示殷切的關懷,同時,促請你們注意:現在春風吹遍了大地,物類滋長新生,一切都在蛻變,看吧!波蘭,匈牙利先後暴發革命,尤其是匈牙利人民,爲求自由獨立,不惜以血肉之 ,全國揭竿而起,抗暴反俄,其他附庸國也在蠢蠢欲動,甚至蘇聯的大學生,對於政府所探的政策 ,都表不滿,工農階級因生活緊迫,生產萎縮,造成整個經濟政策的失敗,而統治階層又互相爭權奪利,鈎心鬥角,整個共產政權,已在搖搖欲墮。加以衛星國家,接連發生革命抗暴事變,蘇聯確已至土崩魚爛,勢將潰敗,中共是死心依附蘇聯的,要是蘇聯自身發生變亂,還會支援中共嗎?若果中共失去蘇聯的支援,它還能獨自撑持殘局嗎?現在匈牙利尚在暴發革命,我們大陸同胞愛國抗暴的精神,還趕不上匈牙利嗎?
我和你們雖然是久別了,但我相信一定會重逢的,而且這個日子也不會很遠了,請你們記住: 在中共統治的大陸之外,還有許許多多同情你們,願意帮助你們的朋友,我不過是其中的一個而已。希望你們好好的珍重,多多奮勵,我們携手重逢的時候快到了。最後,敬祝你們健康快樂!
徐傅霖文，五項主張
徐傅霖文。
民主中國半月刊，一向支持政府反共抗俄的國策，自民國三十九年九月發刊以來，迄四十四年一月都能依期出版，從未間斷，政府所補助之反共抗俄宣傳費，早於四十三年四月被凍結，促成本黨的分裂，經費發生因難，以致有一個時期，迫得暫時停刑，此誠一極可痛惜之事，吾人對於愛護本刋的讀者，尤其深致歉仄之意。今由於同仁之努力，及愛護本刋讀者之珍護，本刋得以復版，殊堪欣慰。吾人當貫澈向來主張，支持政府反共抗俄的國策，知無不言，言無不盡，希望對國家社會能有所貢献，以副愛護本刋各位讀者的期望。
反共抗俄乃空前艱鉅的事業,人所共知,無須多說。 年來盱衡大勢, 默察時機,以爲欲求反共抗俄之成功,因素雖多,然就耳目之所及,心慮之所得,舉其認爲迫切之要圖者犖犖五端:一曰厲行政黨政治;二曰致良知以反共;三曰爭取海外華僑;四曰採取主動外交;五曰及時反攻大陸。請次第言之。
一、政黨政治
民主政治爲反共抗俄之利器,而政黨政治乃推行民主的不二法門,無政黨政治卽無民主政治,故政黨政治乃測驗民主政治之試金石,若民主政治不上軌道,別外蒙民主之名,充其量亦不過較爲開明之一黨專政而已,重去民主之鵠的,尚不知幾許由旬也。既無眞正之民主政治,究何所恃以收反共抗俄之效乎?自行憲以來,忽忽已八年於茲矣。政黨政治究已上軌道否乎?曰未也。行政機構,無論中央之行政院,或省政府,有無非執政黨之人參加乎?曰無有也。以言立法機構,則執政黨席位亦佔百份之九十以上,尚有何其他各黨發言之餘地?曰姑舍是。以言若干職位較高之行政人員,爲政務委員及省政府委員之類,其名額本應爲在野黨所提名者,亦因未經執政黨之中常會通過而不能發表,此與行憲前一黨專政時代之辦法,何以異?日姑舍是。以言一般之公教人員,其稍有獨立性之單位主管,非執政黨黨員不能任,固矣,卽其他職位,倘知其爲民青兩黨黨員担任者,亦必千方百計,使之脫黨,否則不能安於其位,際此人事凍結之時,幸而有職位者,尚遭排擠,而況其欲求一職位者,其難甚於登天,則更無論矣。凡此者皆屬實情,欲舉其例,指不勝屈。然此當非當局之 意,或爲若干辦黨人員之錯覺,以爲如此可以希意承旨,獲得上級之嘉獎也。此種錯覺,必須糾正 。盖此種錯覺之行動,實違反政黨政治之原則。夫政黨政治之功用,在於公平競賽,以生推陳出新之效,在於互相監督,以收彼此制衡之功。夫如是,故必須兩個以上勢力不甚懸殊之政黨,方克有制。行憲以前,國民黨一黨專政二十餘年,不容許其他黨派之存在,以致今日之民青兩黨,其勢力與國民黨相較,太過懸殊,寶不能勝任政黨政治之重要角色,當局如欲眞正實行民主政治,亟宜力加扶植,使之逐漸滋長繁榮。否則民主政治無由推進,實有害於反共事業之成功,且使一般人之內心,以爲反共抗俄之國策,係由國民黨獨任,而採取袖手旁觀之消極態度,甚至發生一種以暴易暴 ,不知其非之反感心理,則試問果何所恃以收反共抗俄之效乎!吾人既不能掩耳以盜鈴,更不應諱疾而忌醫,此宜請當局注意者一。
二、致良知以反共
吾人反共之任務達成,不只限於軍事經濟及政治上之成功,尤須根本剷除共產主義思想及其所用之陰毒宣傳,洗腦改造及一切心理戰術之遺毒,庶幾可以一勞永逸,長治久安,否則即使一時將之打倒,亦將如燒之不盡野草,春風吹而又生耳。而況共黨所用之陰毒宣傳,洗腦改造與夫各種心理戰術,確能麻醉一部份之心理,而聽其驅使,勝之爲不易乎?基此,吾人爲針對共產黨之所長與其所短,而爲克敵制勝之道,則以爲致良知之反共戰術尚矣。何謂致良知?孟子曰:人之所不學而聽者,其良能也。所不慮而知者,其良知也。寒則衣,饑則食,此其良能也。對父母則知孝,對朋友則知信,此其良知也。所謂致良知之反共戰術者,使人人有反共之天性,自然流露,而成爲反共之行動而已。在昔歐洲中世紀時之宗教戰爭,人民之所以赴湯蹈火,視死爲歸者,則宗教狂熱驅使之使然也。倘吾人今日能盡量發揮致良知之反共戰術,則不但可使舉國一致,同仇敵愾,以大無畏大犧牲之精神,共赴義戰而不辭,而且可以癰瘓敵人之作戰精神,瓦解敵人之作戰組織,使之倒戈 而向順,棄暗而投明,此兵法之所謂不戰而屈人之兵,孟子之所謂王者之師無敵於天下者也。至於致良知之反共戰術,其內容則古之聖哲早已爲吾人提示,質言之,即仁、義、忠、恕、信、愛，中庸與和平諸美德及民族之正氣,與人類之自由而已。尚使人人能激發民族之正氣,珍惜人類之自由,實行仁,義、忠、恕、信,愛、中庸與和平諸美德,以針對共黨之偏激、殘暴、陰險、欺詐、卑鄙、出賣國家民族之利益,剝奪人類之自由,則人們對於共黨,尚須先加考慮而後反對之乎?其反共之行動,有不成爲天性者鮮矣!雖然吾人如欲盡量發揮致良知之反共戰術,非徒多製幾條標語, 多呼幾句口號,空言提倡所能一蹴而幾也。必也執政當局及士大夫階級,切切實實,絲毫不苟,身體而力行之,然後可以蔚爲風氣,成爲習尙,不旋踵而此至大至剛之氣,將充乎兩大之間,沛然莫之能禦也。若徒托空言而不實行,或行之而不力,則縱或此愈於彼,然亦五十步與百步之比,究無多大裨補於反共之戰爭也?此宜請當局注意者二。
三、爭取海外華僑
華僑爲革命之母,在昔已然,時在今日之反共鬥爭中,華僑更爲必須爭取之對象,盖以人數言, 自由中國人口不逾千萬,而海外僑胞,則人口逾一千二百餘萬。華僑人心之背向,不但對祖國之經濟有莫大之影響,而且對於國民外交,爭取與國之同情與援助,尤關重要,而萬不容忽視。共黨之極權暴政,本已遭致華僑甚大之反感,反共情緒,原甚激昂,而希望國軍之反攻大陸,亦殊迫切。 但近年以來,反共情緒,已漸趨於平淡,此爲無可爲諱之事實,此實反共前途之隱憂。夫華僑之愛國心之所以特重者,以身處海外,備受當地政府之歧視排擠,壓迫、欺侮、故渴望祖國之強盛,以保護其身家財產,湔雪其恥辱,而抬高其地位耳。今中共既竊據大陸,而自由中國又久不反攻,其對祖國渴望之情,轉而爲觀望,本亦事理之常,加以年來反共國家如菲律賓與泰國,排華措施,層出不窮,而政府又不能從外交方面,與所謂反共之友邦,順利交涉以保障其利益,而解除其痛苦, 益使華僑失望,其對政府情緒之低落,更屬事理之常,華僑資金原樂向政府投資,以振興祖國之實業,充裕祖國之財源,政府對華僑之投資,亦表歡迎,但只有動聽的口號,而無妥善的辦法,手續則有重重的困難,外滙則有種種的限制,以致既投資設廠者,不堪虧累而怨聲載道,欲投資者亦裹足不前,互相告語,望望然去之,故華僑對祖國之觀感遂日壞,此吾人之所深爲痛惜者也。吾人以爲爭取華僑之道,在社會上宜有充分之宣傳,在文化上宜有密切之接觸,在經濟上宜善用其游資, 在外交上切實迅速保障其利益。夫如是,庶幾海外僑胞,可以傾心内向,而不致爲共產黨之惡毒宣傳威迫利誘所動搖也。此宜請當局注意者三。
四、採取主動外交
自由中國爲亞洲反共之中堅,然在亞洲國家中,竟不能發生領導反共之作用,則缺乏主動之外交故也。其他國家不必論,菲律賓與泰國,號稱所謂反共之國家也,然而排華指施,時有所聞。夫排華之舉,增加自由中國之困難,減低自由中國之威望,不啼爲中共張目,在道義上殊非反共國家所應爲,而且使中共對於當地之華僑,有滲透挑撥之機會,對於當地國家,殊爲不利,茲爲本國之利害計,亦不應出此。彼等既爲反共之國家,我政府如有主動外交,而在亞洲反共國家中,能起領導之作用,則此類事件,斷不致發生,即此發生,若曉以利害,亦易以解决。吾人今後對於亞洲國家,尤其是隣近自由中國之若干反共國家,應與之發生較爲密切的接觸與聯繫,庶幾可以互相了解 ,團結一致,爲反共事業而共同努力。是故今後吾人之外交目光,應移其一部份之集中力於遠東方 面,促成區域性之集體安全制度,甚或軍事同盟之組織。而對於俄帝集團,宜設法驅之於聯合國大門之外。盖爲聯合國本身利益計,爲世界之和平計,不能不將此人類之蟊賊,與天下共棄之。此雖非一時所能辦到,然見義勇爲锲而不舍,終有成功之一日, 且與其國際壇站上爲人所攻擊,所排擠終日徨恐如俎上之肉,侷促爲階下之囚,曷若以攻爲守,義正詞嚴,以播俄帝之惡於衆乎!抑俄帝集團在國際間之倒行逆施,罄竹難書,數其罪狀,不患無詞也。數年以前,吾人嘗主張成立一三黨之外交研究機構,近年來政府己有七人外交小組之設,其意甚善,獨惜舍執政黨外,無其他黨派人士之參加耳。遷台以來,政府在外交上雖屬平穩,然求其能如上次用否决權以阻止外蒙入聯合國之主動措施,尙不多見。倘政府能採取積極的主動外交,則不惟獲得國際的重視,且可振奮國內之士氣,而增强華僑之信心也。此宜請當局注意者四。
五、反攻須及時
大陸同胞日處於共黨極權暴政之下,如水益深,如火益熱,求生不能,求死不得,渴望國軍之反攻,如大旱之望雲霓,而海外僑胞,亦皆以何時反攻爲問,大有急不及待之概。中共之竊據大陸,實爲亞洲一切動亂之源泉,政府如能早日反攻大陸,摧毁中共政權,實爲舉世愛好和平之人士所樂於觀成,而將予吾人以道義上甚或物質上之援助、亦在意料之中。基於內在及外在的各項因素, 均屬於我有利,故反攻必勝,反共必成,乃吾人一致之信念。 ( 關於反共之意見另見之於我對反攻大陸的感想一文)總之吾人以爲反攻的準備,到了相當程度時,即宜把握時機,迅速反攻,必能如秋風之掃落葉,利斧之破枯竹,義旗所指,傳檄而定,近據國防部兪部長大維之報告,反攻的軍事準備已告完成,然則吾人尚復何待!夫難逢此機會,機會之來如不把握,稍縱即逝耳。兵法所謂發者制人,後發者爲人所制。反攻須及時,宜先發以制人,幸毋爲人所制也。倘若遲遲不反攻,不但沮士氣,而且失人心。此宜請當局注意者五。
以上所舉五項主張,皆本知無不言,言無不盡之旨,提供以備當局蒭蕘之採,及請國人予以指敎。語曰:愚者千慮,必有一得,倘所言者能不失愚者之一得,而有補於時局於萬一,則爲幸不已多乎!
Sunday, March 3, 2013
US follow Europe?
Europe is in big trouble. Big government. People just want handouts. Students just want to study and work for the government for benefits and easy jobs.
In US, there is still entrepreneurship. We need to keep that.
If a politician wants to cut handouts (cut deficit), he is not elected. So the spending goes on.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
河北，遵化，張家。
東西横贯遵化全境的古長城，東起洪山口，西至東陵縣，绵延80多公里。現在的遵化很繁華了，但是清末民初時期大部分還是以農田為主。
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張春華也是其中的農人之一。家裡環境不壞，請了長工，短工，煮飯，和做衣縫鞋的。後來為了走私鹽，坐了兩年牢，出獄後家庭生活更富裕了。
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第一任的太太只生了兩個女兒，若干年之後，他又討了姚氏，姚氏頭胎生了個女兒，叫玉文，張玉文。這大蓋是 1921 年中秋節左右。從此以後，姚氏就開始生男孩子了。
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這個時侯，倆位大女兒因為和後母相處不好就早早嫁了人，遠走高飛，老大她夫家很好所以從來也不回娘家。老二嫁給勞國莊，生活很苦，所以有事沒事倒還往娘家裡跑。老二和張玉文倒是常見面，由於年歲差不多，也常談談話甚麼的。
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張玉文
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張玉文很聰明，也喜歡讀書學習，在學校的成績也很好。可是讀了幾年老爸就不給念了，請了位老學究在家裡有時候教一點。玉文每次都背下文章，連＂之乎者也＂都不會錯。她在五年級的時候又回去學校念了一段時間，成績還是很好。但是由於上學時上時不上, 以及連年兵慌馬亂，小學和中學都沒有畢業，十分遺憾。（1937 日本侵華，發動盧溝橋事變。）
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玉文好像在北京念過一個叫＂美以美＂ 的美過學校，也沒有畢業。她在高中的時候，數學很好，每次考試尚未交卷兒的時候，老師都會看看她的答案，若她有疑問的，老師會提醒大家小心。
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她一生最崇拜＂戴帽字＂的男人。也一輩子都很想嫁給軍人或警察。那時在北京遇到了一位軍人，交往了一陣子。可惜軍隊開拔，只好作罷。她嫁給徐炳堃大蓋是1951 年，她常說他是個公子哥兒，但是公子哥兒卻對她很適合，她是老大，喜歡做事，也習慣了幫助人，一看他甚麼都不會做，打心底歡喜，婚姻生活剛開始很相配。每個週末都請客，上座的都是雙方的老友。
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那時後大弟夢徵已經認視了日後的妻子＂王桂珍＂和她姐姐王桂瑛。桂瑛當時以在北京協和醫院當護士長。
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1949年逃難逃到上海，母親姚氏病倒了，是肝癌。開了刀，也好不了，在上海去逝。父親還把她的肝留下來以備日後化驗（？）。 不久她，她爸，四弟夢麟，和好友呂庭芳坐＂上海物資局＂的船到台灣。二弟夢周在物資局工作 ，夢周和妻子王淑秀住在艙裡面好位子，她們四人住在甲板上，不過二弟夢周有送食物來。船在新竹上岸，她和呂庭芳坐火車上台北，身上實在太癢就晚上在台北車站外噴水池擦了個澡。
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不久有個機會，在內江街一號護校開始上課，讀助產士。是她唯一畢業的學校。之後在陽明山衛生所工作，也在士林一家診所工作過，那時候經人介紹，已經認識了徐炳堃先生。每次徐先生去看她都會帶花，水果，和寫些甜蜜的話語。
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她和徐炳堃先生的交往愈來愈深，她漸漸知道徐的為人以及家世淵源，常常追問他有沒有結過婚以及有沒有孩子，徐總是顧左右而言它。徐當時和他爸爸傅霖在新生南路同住，有一次帶玉文回去吃飯，她是北方人，食量大，看見廣東人的小菜碟兒，說可以一個人全都打發了，只好稍微吃一點，出去再吃宵夜。
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結婚之後，都住在，但是因為民社黨部在隔壁，有些的人相處不來，有時候心裡很煩惱。兩人帶著大寶和二寶搬去木柵溝子口住了一段時間。最後傅霖去逝，粱朝威和楊郁英吧黨產刮乾了。米缸裡面連一粒米也沒有剩下。
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新生南路的家不是自己買的，所以傅霖去逝之後，只好開始搬家，先搬到和平東路三段，那一間是那一區最低的房子，後面有田，倒是個住家的好地方，可惜來了個大颱風，淹水太高，很多留下的字畫都泡爛了，只好再搬。回到台大後面的和平東路二段96巷26弄4號。再過了年，公教人員配給到廉價住宅，搬到民生東路，是自己買的第一間。
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她對衛生很注意。自己說自己有潔癖。小孩小時候非常小心。打預防針都自己動手，所以小孩沒有感染肝炎甚麼的。記得巷口有個賣麺的，她就是不准買，說那人有肺結核病。理髮自己來，怕孩子染上什麼皮膚病之類的。水都要煮開所以沒有細菌，很多時吃的東西都是由她做比較乾淨，因而小孩子沒有長寄生蟲等等。
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Mindset
http://mindsetonline.com/howmindsetaffects/parentsteacherscoaches/index.html#container
I have a changeable ability. It gets better as I learn.
Couple with growth mindset:
See my weakness, encourage me to learn and become better.
There is no perfect future; it keeps changing.
Girls were praised much more so they are sensitive to praise. Boys are opposite; they are critisized 8 times more so they are not affected much.
Enron- many people with talents but fixed mindset. If not doing well, not willing to work on improvement. They will keep up the facade and lie to stock holders.
Nine-year-old Elizabeth was on her way to her first gymnastics meet. Lanky, flexible, and energetic, she was just right for gymnastics, and she loved it. Of course, she was a little nervous about competing, but she was good at gymnastics and felt confident of doing well. She had even thought about the perfect place in her room to hang the ribbon she would win.
In the first event, the floor exercises, Elizabeth went first. Although she did a nice job, the scoring changed after the first few girls and she lost. Elizabeth also did well in the other events, but not well enough to win. By the end of the evening, she had received no ribbons and was devastated.
What would you do if you were Elizabeth’s parents?
Tell Elizabeth you thought she was the best.
Tell her she was robbed of a ribbon that was rightfully hers.
Reassure her that gymnastics is not that important
Tell her she has the ability and will surely win next time.
Tell her she didn’t deserve to win.
There is a strong message in our society about how to boost children’s self-esteem, and a main part of that message is: Protect them from failure ! While this may help with the immediate problem of a child’s disappointment, it can be harmful in the long run. Why?
Let’s look at the five possible reactions from a mindset point of view [and listen to the messages:]
The first (you thought she was the best) is basically insincere. She was not the best – you know it, and she does too. This offers her no recipe for how to recover or how to improve.
The second (she was robbed) places blame on others, when in fact the problem was mostly with her performance, not the judges. Do you want her to grow up blaming others for her deficiencies?
The third (reassure her that gymnastics doesn’t really matter) teaches her to devalue something if she doesn’t do well in it right away. Is this really the message you want to send?
The fourth (she has the ability) may be the most dangerous message of all. Does ability automatically take you where you want to go? If Elizabeth didn’t win this meet, why should she win the next one?
The last option (tell her she didn’t deserve to win) seems hardhearted under the circumstances. And of course you wouldn’t say it quite that way. But that’s pretty much what her growth-minded father told her.
Chapter 7 tells you what he told her and what happened.
You can use messages to help your children cultivate a growth mindset. You can also have them use the Brainology® online program to develop a growth mindset through their learning about the malleability of the brain and how to gain control over their own brain development.
July 22, 2002
DEPT. OF HUMAN RESOURCES
Are smart people overrated?
1.
Five years ago, several executives at McKinsey & Company, America's largest and most prestigious management-consulting firm, launched what they called the War for Talent. Thousands of questionnaires were sent to managers across the country. Eighteen companies were singled out for special attention, and the consultants spent up to three days at each firm, interviewing everyone from the C.E.O. down to the human-resources staff. McKinsey wanted to document how the top-performing companies in America differed from other firms in the way they handle matters like hiring and promotion. But, as the consultants sifted through the piles of reports and questionnaires and interview transcripts, they grew convinced that the difference between winners and losers was more profound than they had realized. "We looked at one another and suddenly the light bulb blinked on," the three consultants who headed the project--Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod--write in their new book, also called "The War for Talent." The very best companies, they concluded, had leaders who were obsessed with the talent issue. They recruited ceaselessly, finding and hiring as many top performers as possible. They singled out and segregated their stars, rewarding them disproportionately, and pushing them into ever more senior positions. "Bet on the natural athletes, the ones with the strongest intrinsic skills," the authors approvingly quote one senior General Electric executive as saying. "Don't be afraid to promote stars without specifically relevant experience, seemingly over their heads." Success in the modern economy, according to Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, requires "the talent mind-set": the "deep-seated belief that having better talent at all levels is how you outperform your competitors."
This "talent mind-set" is the new orthodoxy of American management. It is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees from first-tier business schools, and why the compensation packages for top executives have become so lavish. In the modern corporation, the system is considered only as strong as its stars, and, in the past few years, this message has been preached by consultants and management gurus all over the world. None, however, have spread the word quite so ardently as McKinsey, and, of all its clients, one firm took the talent mind-set closest to heart. It was a company where McKinsey conducted twenty separate projects, where McKinsey's billings topped ten million dollars a year, where a McKinsey director regularly attended board meetings, and where the C.E.O. himself was a former McKinsey partner. The company, of course, was Enron.
The Enron scandal is now almost a year old. The reputations of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, the company's two top executives, have been destroyed. Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditor, has been driven out of business, and now investigators have turned their attention to Enron's investment bankers. The one Enron partner that has escaped largely unscathed is McKinsey, which is odd, given that it essentially created the blueprint for the Enron culture. Enron was the ultimate "talent" company. When Skilling started the corporate division known as Enron Capital and Trade, in 1990, he "decided to bring in a steady stream of the very best college and M.B.A. graduates he could find to stock the company with talent," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod tell us. During the nineties, Enron was bringing in two hundred and fifty newly minted M.B.A.s a year. "We had these things called Super Saturdays," one former Enron manager recalls. "I'd interview some of these guys who were fresh out of Harvard, and these kids could blow me out of the water. They knew things I'd never heard of." Once at Enron, the top performers were rewarded inordinately, and promoted without regard for seniority or experience. Enron was a star system. "The only thing that differentiates Enron from our competitors is our people, our talent," Lay, Enron's former chairman and C.E.O., told the McKinsey consultants when they came to the company's headquarters, in Houston. Or, as another senior Enron executive put it to Richard Foster, a McKinsey partner who celebrated Enron in his 2001 book, "Creative Destruction," "We hire very smart people and we pay them more than they think they are worth."
The management of Enron, in other words, did exactly what the consultants at McKinsey said that companies ought to do in order to succeed in the modern economy. It hired and rewarded the very best and the very brightest--and it is now in bankruptcy. The reasons for its collapse are complex, needless to say. But what if Enron failed not in spite of its talent mind-set but because of it? What if smart people are overrated?
2.
At the heart of the McKinsey vision is a process that the War for Talent advocates refer to as "differentiation and affirmation." Employers, they argue, need to sit down once or twice a year and hold a "candid, probing, no-holds-barred debate about each individual," sorting employees into A, B, and C groups. The A's must be challenged and disproportionately rewarded. The B's need to be encouraged and affirmed. The C's need to shape up or be shipped out. Enron followed this advice almost to the letter, setting up internal Performance Review Committees. The members got together twice a year, and graded each person in their section on ten separate criteria, using a scale of one to five. The process was called "rank and yank." Those graded at the top of their unit received bonuses two-thirds higher than those in the next thirty per cent; those who ranked at the bottom received no bonuses and no extra stock options--and in some cases were pushed out.
How should that ranking be done? Unfortunately, the McKinsey consultants spend very little time discussing the matter. One possibility is simply to hire and reward the smartest people. But the link between, say, I.Q. and job performance is distinctly underwhelming. On a scale where 0.1 or below means virtually no correlation and 0.7 or above implies a strong correlation (your height, for example, has a 0.7 correlation with your parents' height), the correlation between I.Q. and occupational success is between 0.2 and 0.3. "What I.Q. doesn't pick up is effectiveness at common-sense sorts of things, especially working with people," Richard Wagner, a psychologist at Florida State University, says. "In terms of how we evaluate schooling, everything is about working by yourself. If you work with someone else, it's called cheating. Once you get out in the real world, everything you do involves working with other people."
Wagner and Robert Sternberg, a psychologist at Yale University, have developed tests of this practical component, which they call "tacit knowledge." Tacit knowledge involves things like knowing how to manage yourself and others, and how to navigate complicated social situations. Here is a question from one of their tests:
You have just been promoted to head of an important department in your organization. The previous head has been transferred to an equivalent position in a less important department. Your understanding of the reason for the move is that the performance of the department as a whole has been mediocre. There have not been any glaring deficiencies, just a perception of the department as so-so rather than very good. Your charge is to shape up the department. Results are expected quickly. Rate the quality of the following strategies for succeeding at your new position.
a) Always delegate to the most junior person who can be trusted with the task.
b) Give your superiors frequent progress reports.
c) Announce a major reorganization of the department that includes getting rid of whomever you believe to be "dead wood."
d) Concentrate more on your people than on the tasks to be done.
e) Make people feel completely responsible for their work.
Wagner finds that how well people do on a test like this predicts how well they will do in the workplace: good managers pick (b) and (e); bad managers tend to pick (c). Yet there's no clear connection between such tacit knowledge and other forms of knowledge and experience. The process of assessing ability in the workplace is a lot messier than it appears.
An employer really wants to assess not potential but performance. Yet that's just as tricky. In "The War for Talent," the authors talk about how the Royal Air Force used the A, B, and C ranking system for its pilots during the Battle of Britain. But ranking fighter pilots--for whom there are a limited and relatively objective set of performance criteria (enemy kills, for example, and the ability to get their formations safely home)--is a lot easier than assessing how the manager of a new unit is doing at, say, marketing or business development. And whom do you ask to rate the manager's performance? Studies show that there is very little correlation between how someone's peers rate him and how his boss rates him. The only rigorous way to assess performance, according to human-resources specialists, is to use criteria that are as specific as possible. Managers are supposed to take detailed notes on their employees throughout the year, in order to remove subjective personal reactions from the process of assessment. You can grade someone's performance only if you know their performance. And, in the freewheeling culture of Enron, this was all but impossible. People deemed "talented" were constantly being pushed into new jobs and given new challenges. Annual turnover from promotions was close to twenty per cent. Lynda Clemmons, the so-called "weather babe" who started Enron's weather derivatives business, jumped, in seven quick years, from trader to associate to manager to director and, finally, to head of her own business unit. How do you evaluate someone's performance in a system where no one is in a job long enough to allow such evaluation?
The answer is that you end up doing performance evaluations that aren't based on performance. Among the many glowing books about Enron written before its fall was the best-seller "Leading the Revolution," by the management consultant Gary Hamel, which tells the story of Lou Pai, who launched Enron's power-trading business. Pai's group began with a disaster: it lost tens of millions of dollars trying to sell electricity to residential consumers in newly deregulated markets. The problem, Hamel explains, is that the markets weren't truly deregulated: "The states that were opening their markets to competition were still setting rules designed to give their traditional utilities big advantages." It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that Pai ought to have looked into those rules more carefully before risking millions of dollars. He was promptly given the chance to build the commercial electricity-outsourcing business, where he ran up several more years of heavy losses before cashing out of Enron last year with two hundred and seventy million dollars. Because Pai had "talent," he was given new opportunities, and when he failed at those new opportunities he was given still more opportunities . . . because he had "talent." "At Enron, failure--even of the type that ends up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal--doesn't necessarily sink a career," Hamel writes, as if that were a good thing. Presumably, companies that want to encourage risk-taking must be willing to tolerate mistakes. Yet if talent is defined as something separate from an employee's actual performance, what use is it, exactly?
3.
What the War for Talent amounts to is an argument for indulging A employees, for fawning over them. "You need to do everything you can to keep them engaged and satisfied--even delighted," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write. "Find out what they would most like to be doing, and shape their career and responsibilities in that direction. Solve any issues that might be pushing them out the door, such as a boss that frustrates them or travel demands that burden them." No company was better at this than Enron. In one oft-told story, Louise Kitchin, a twenty-nine-year-old gas trader in Europe, became convinced that the company ought to develop an online-trading business. She told her boss, and she began working in her spare time on the project, until she had two hundred and fifty people throughout Enron helping her. After six months, Skilling was finally informed. "I was never asked for any capital," Skilling said later. "I was never asked for any people. They had already purchased the servers. They had already started ripping apart the building. They had started legal reviews in twenty-two countries by the time I heard about it." It was, Skilling went on approvingly, "exactly the kind of behavior that will continue to drive this company forward."
Kitchin's qualification for running EnronOnline, it should be pointed out, was not that she was good at it. It was that she wanted to do it, and Enron was a place where stars did whatever they wanted. "Fluid movement is absolutely necessary in our company. And the type of people we hire enforces that," Skilling told the team from McKinsey. "Not only does this system help the excitement level for each manager, it shapes Enron's business in the direction that its managers find most exciting." Here is Skilling again: "If lots of [employees] are flocking to a new business unit, that's a good sign that the opportunity is a good one. . . . If a business unit can't attract people very easily, that's a good sign that it's a business Enron shouldn't be in." You might expect a C.E.O. to say that if a business unit can't attract customers very easily that's a good sign it's a business the company shouldn't be in. A company's business is supposed to be shaped in the direction that its managers find most profitable. But at Enron the needs of the customers and the shareholders were secondary to the needs of its stars.
A dozen years ago, the psychologists Robert Hogan, Robert Raskin, and Dan Fazzini wrote a brilliant essay called "The Dark Side of Charisma." It argued that flawed managers fall into three types. One is the High Likability Floater, who rises effortlessly in an organization because he never takes any difficult decisions or makes any enemies. Another is the Homme de Ressentiment, who seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. The most interesting of the three is the Narcissist, whose energy and self-confidence and charm lead him inexorably up the corporate ladder. Narcissists are terrible managers. They resist accepting suggestions, thinking it will make them appear weak, and they don't believe that others have anything useful to tell them. "Narcissists are biased to take more credit for success than is legitimate," Hogan and his co-authors write, and "biased to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their failures and shortcomings for the same reasons that they claim more success than is their due." Moreover:
Narcissists typically make judgments with greater confidence than other people . . . and, because their judgments are rendered with such conviction, other people tend to believe them and the narcissists become disproportionately more influential in group situations. Finally, because of their self-confidence and strong need for recognition, narcissists tend to "self-nominate"; consequently, when a leadership gap appears in a group or organization, the narcissists rush to fill it.
Tyco Corporation and WorldCom were the Greedy Corporations: they were purely interested in short-term financial gain. Enron was the Narcissistic Corporation--a company that took more credit for success than was legitimate, that did not acknowledge responsibility for its failures, that shrewdly sold the rest of us on its genius, and that substituted self-nomination for disciplined management. At one point in "Leading the Revolution," Hamel tracks down a senior Enron executive, and what he breathlessly recounts--the braggadocio, the self-satisfaction--could be an epitaph for the talent mind-set:
"You cannot control the atoms within a nuclear fusion reaction," said Ken Rice when he was head of Enron Capital and Trade Resources (ECT), America's largest marketer of natural gas and largest buyer and seller of electricity. Adorned in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, Rice drew a box on an office whiteboard that pictured his business unit as a nuclear reactor. Little circles in the box represented its "contract originators," the gunslingers charged with doing deals and creating new businesses. Attached to each circle was an arrow. In Rice's diagram the arrows were pointing in all different directions. "We allow people to go in whichever direction that they want to go."
The distinction between the Greedy Corporation and the Narcissistic Corporation matters, because the way we conceive our attainments helps determine how we behave. Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Columbia University, has found that people generally hold one of two fairly firm beliefs about their intelligence: they consider it either a fixed trait or something that is malleable and can be developed over time. Five years ago, Dweck did a study at the University of Hong Kong, where all classes are conducted in English. She and her colleagues approached a large group of social-sciences students, told them their English-proficiency scores, and asked them if they wanted to take a course to improve their language skills. One would expect all those who scored poorly to sign up for the remedial course. The University of Hong Kong is a demanding institution, and it is hard to do well in the social sciences without strong English skills. Curiously, however, only the ones who believed in malleable intelligence expressed interest in the class. The students who believed that their intelligence was a fixed trait were so concerned about appearing to be deficient that they preferred to stay home. "Students who hold a fixed view of their intelligence care so much about looking smart that they act dumb," Dweck writes, "for what could be dumber than giving up a chance to learn something that is essential for your own success?"
In a similar experiment, Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group was praised for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer. Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable: forty per cent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward. They weren't naturally deceptive people, and they weren't any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate "talent." They begin to define themselves by that description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened they have difficulty with the consequences. They will not take the remedial course. They will not stand up to investors and the public and admit that they were wrong. They'd sooner lie.
4.
The broader failing of McKinsey and its acolytes at Enron is their assumption that an organization's intelligence is simply a function of the intelligence of its employees. They believe in stars, because they don't believe in systems. In a way, that's understandable, because our lives are so obviously enriched by individual brilliance. Groups don't write great novels, and a committee didn't come up with the theory of relativity. But companies work by different rules. They don't just create; they execute and compete and coördinate the efforts of many different people, and the organizations that are most successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star.
There is a wonderful example of this in the story of the so-called Eastern Pearl Harbor, of the Second World War. During the first nine months of 1942, the United States Navy suffered a catastrophe. German U-boats, operating just off the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean, were sinking our merchant ships almost at will. U-boat captains marvelled at their good fortune. "Before this sea of light, against this footlight glare of a carefree new world were passing the silhouettes of ships recognizable in every detail and sharp as the outlines in a sales catalogue," one U-boat commander wrote. "All we had to do was press the button."
What made this such a puzzle is that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the British had much less trouble defending their ships against U-boat attacks. The British, furthermore, eagerly passed on to the Americans everything they knew about sonar and depth-charge throwers and the construction of destroyers. And still the Germans managed to paralyze America's coastal zones.
You can imagine what the consultants at McKinsey would have concluded: they would have said that the Navy did not have a talent mind-set, that President Roosevelt needed to recruit and promote top performers into key positions in the Atlantic command. In fact, he had already done that. At the beginning of the war, he had pushed out the solid and unspectacular Admiral Harold R. Stark as Chief of Naval Operations and replaced him with the legendary Ernest Joseph King. "He was a supreme realist with the arrogance of genius," Ladislas Farago writes in "The Tenth Fleet," a history of the Navy's U-boat battles in the Second World War. "He had unbounded faith in himself, in his vast knowledge of naval matters and in the soundness of his ideas. Unlike Stark, who tolerated incompetence all around him, King had no patience with fools."
The Navy had plenty of talent at the top, in other words. What it didn't have was the right kind of organization. As Eliot A. Cohen, a scholar of military strategy at Johns Hopkins, writes in his brilliant book "Military Misfortunes in the Atlantic":
To wage the antisubmarine war well, analysts had to bring together fragments of information, direction-finding fixes, visual sightings, decrypts, and the "flaming datum" of a U-boat attack--for use by a commander to coordinate the efforts of warships, aircraft, and convoy commanders. Such synthesis had to occur in near "real time"--within hours, even minutes in some cases.
The British excelled at the task because they had a centralized operational system. The controllers moved the British ships around the Atlantic like chess pieces, in order to outsmart U-boat "wolf packs." By contrast, Admiral King believed strongly in a decentralized management structure: he held that managers should never tell their subordinates " 'how' as well as what to 'do.' " In today's jargon, we would say he was a believer in "loose-tight" management, of the kind celebrated by the McKinsey consultants Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman in their 1982 best-seller, "In Search of Excellence." But "loose-tight" doesn't help you find U-boats. Throughout most of 1942, the Navy kept trying to act smart by relying on technical know-how, and stubbornly refused to take operational lessons from the British. The Navy also lacked the organizational structure necessary to apply the technical knowledge it did have to the field. Only when the Navy set up the Tenth Fleet--a single unit to coördinate all anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic--did the situation change. In the year and a half before the Tenth Fleet was formed, in May of 1943, the Navy sank thirty-six U-boats. In the six months afterward, it sank seventy-five. "The creation of the Tenth Fleet did not bring more talented individuals into the field of ASW"--anti-submarine warfare--"than had previous organizations," Cohen writes. "What Tenth Fleet did allow, by virtue of its organization and mandate, was for these individuals to become far more effective than previously." The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around.
5.
There is ample evidence of this principle among America's most successful companies. Southwest Airlines hires very few M.B.A.s, pays its managers modestly, and gives raises according to seniority, not "rank and yank." Yet it is by far the most successful of all United States airlines, because it has created a vastly more efficient organization than its competitors have. At Southwest, the time it takes to get a plane that has just landed ready for takeoff--a key index of productivity--is, on average, twenty minutes, and requires a ground crew of four, and two people at the gate. (At United Airlines, by contrast, turnaround time is closer to thirty-five minutes, and requires a ground crew of twelve and three agents at the gate.)
In the case of the giant retailer Wal-Mart, one of the most critical periods in its history came in 1976, when Sam Walton "unretired," pushing out his handpicked successor, Ron Mayer. Mayer was just over forty. He was ambitious. He was charismatic. He was, in the words of one Walton biographer, "the boy-genius financial officer." But Walton was convinced that Mayer was, as people at McKinsey would say, "differentiating and affirming" in the corporate suite, in defiance of Wal-Mart's inclusive culture. Mayer left, and Wal-Mart survived. After all, Wal-Mart is an organization, not an all-star team. Walton brought in David Glass, late of the Army and Southern Missouri State University, as C.E.O.; the company is now ranked No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list.
Procter & Gamble doesn't have a star system, either. How could it? Would the top M.B.A. graduates of Harvard and Stanford move to Cincinnati to work on detergent when they could make three times as much reinventing the world in Houston? Procter & Gamble isn't glamorous. Its C.E.O. is a lifer--a former Navy officer who began his corporate career as an assistant brand manager for Joy dishwashing liquid--and, if Procter & Gamble's best played Enron's best at Trivial Pursuit, no doubt the team from Houston would win handily. But Procter & Gamble has dominated the consumer-products field for close to a century, because it has a carefully conceived managerial system, and a rigorous marketing methodology that has allowed it to win battles for brands like Crest and Tide decade after decade. In Procter & Gamble's Navy, Admiral Stark would have stayed. But a cross-divisional management committee would have set the Tenth Fleet in place before the war ever started.
6.
Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an "open market" for hiring. In the open-market system--McKinsey's assault on the very idea of a fixed organization--anyone could apply for any job that he or she wanted, and no manager was allowed to hold anyone back. Poaching was encouraged. When an Enron executive named Kevin Hannon started the company's global broadband unit, he launched what he called Project Quick Hire. A hundred top performers from around the company were invited to the Houston Hyatt to hear Hannon give his pitch. Recruiting booths were set up outside the meeting room. "Hannon had his fifty top performers for the broadband unit by the end of the week," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write, "and his peers had fifty holes to fill." Nobody, not even the consultants who were paid to think about the Enron culture, seemed worried that those fifty holes might disrupt the functioning of the affected departments, that stability in a firm's existing businesses might be a good thing, that the self-fulfillment of Enron's star employees might possibly be in conflict with the best interests of the firm as a whole.
These are the sort of concerns that management consultants ought to raise. But Enron's management consultant was McKinsey, and McKinsey was as much a prisoner of the talent myth as its clients were. In 1998, Enron hired ten Wharton M.B.A.s; that same year, McKinsey hired forty. In 1999, Enron hired twelve from Wharton; McKinsey hired sixty-one. The consultants at McKinsey were preaching at Enron what they believed about themselves. "When we would hire them, it wouldn't just be for a week," one former Enron manager recalls, of the brilliant young men and women from McKinsey who wandered the hallways at the company's headquarters. "It would be for two to four months. They were always around." They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.
HOMETHE NEW YORKER ARCHIVETOP
I have a changeable ability. It gets better as I learn.
Couple with growth mindset:
See my weakness, encourage me to learn and become better.
There is no perfect future; it keeps changing.
Girls were praised much more so they are sensitive to praise. Boys are opposite; they are critisized 8 times more so they are not affected much.
Enron- many people with talents but fixed mindset. If not doing well, not willing to work on improvement. They will keep up the facade and lie to stock holders.
Nine-year-old Elizabeth was on her way to her first gymnastics meet. Lanky, flexible, and energetic, she was just right for gymnastics, and she loved it. Of course, she was a little nervous about competing, but she was good at gymnastics and felt confident of doing well. She had even thought about the perfect place in her room to hang the ribbon she would win.
In the first event, the floor exercises, Elizabeth went first. Although she did a nice job, the scoring changed after the first few girls and she lost. Elizabeth also did well in the other events, but not well enough to win. By the end of the evening, she had received no ribbons and was devastated.
What would you do if you were Elizabeth’s parents?
Tell Elizabeth you thought she was the best.
Tell her she was robbed of a ribbon that was rightfully hers.
Reassure her that gymnastics is not that important
Tell her she has the ability and will surely win next time.
Tell her she didn’t deserve to win.
There is a strong message in our society about how to boost children’s self-esteem, and a main part of that message is: Protect them from failure ! While this may help with the immediate problem of a child’s disappointment, it can be harmful in the long run. Why?
Let’s look at the five possible reactions from a mindset point of view [and listen to the messages:]
The first (you thought she was the best) is basically insincere. She was not the best – you know it, and she does too. This offers her no recipe for how to recover or how to improve.
The second (she was robbed) places blame on others, when in fact the problem was mostly with her performance, not the judges. Do you want her to grow up blaming others for her deficiencies?
The third (reassure her that gymnastics doesn’t really matter) teaches her to devalue something if she doesn’t do well in it right away. Is this really the message you want to send?
The fourth (she has the ability) may be the most dangerous message of all. Does ability automatically take you where you want to go? If Elizabeth didn’t win this meet, why should she win the next one?
The last option (tell her she didn’t deserve to win) seems hardhearted under the circumstances. And of course you wouldn’t say it quite that way. But that’s pretty much what her growth-minded father told her.
Chapter 7 tells you what he told her and what happened.
You can use messages to help your children cultivate a growth mindset. You can also have them use the Brainology® online program to develop a growth mindset through their learning about the malleability of the brain and how to gain control over their own brain development.
July 22, 2002
DEPT. OF HUMAN RESOURCES
Are smart people overrated?
1.
Five years ago, several executives at McKinsey & Company, America's largest and most prestigious management-consulting firm, launched what they called the War for Talent. Thousands of questionnaires were sent to managers across the country. Eighteen companies were singled out for special attention, and the consultants spent up to three days at each firm, interviewing everyone from the C.E.O. down to the human-resources staff. McKinsey wanted to document how the top-performing companies in America differed from other firms in the way they handle matters like hiring and promotion. But, as the consultants sifted through the piles of reports and questionnaires and interview transcripts, they grew convinced that the difference between winners and losers was more profound than they had realized. "We looked at one another and suddenly the light bulb blinked on," the three consultants who headed the project--Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones, and Beth Axelrod--write in their new book, also called "The War for Talent." The very best companies, they concluded, had leaders who were obsessed with the talent issue. They recruited ceaselessly, finding and hiring as many top performers as possible. They singled out and segregated their stars, rewarding them disproportionately, and pushing them into ever more senior positions. "Bet on the natural athletes, the ones with the strongest intrinsic skills," the authors approvingly quote one senior General Electric executive as saying. "Don't be afraid to promote stars without specifically relevant experience, seemingly over their heads." Success in the modern economy, according to Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod, requires "the talent mind-set": the "deep-seated belief that having better talent at all levels is how you outperform your competitors."
This "talent mind-set" is the new orthodoxy of American management. It is the intellectual justification for why such a high premium is placed on degrees from first-tier business schools, and why the compensation packages for top executives have become so lavish. In the modern corporation, the system is considered only as strong as its stars, and, in the past few years, this message has been preached by consultants and management gurus all over the world. None, however, have spread the word quite so ardently as McKinsey, and, of all its clients, one firm took the talent mind-set closest to heart. It was a company where McKinsey conducted twenty separate projects, where McKinsey's billings topped ten million dollars a year, where a McKinsey director regularly attended board meetings, and where the C.E.O. himself was a former McKinsey partner. The company, of course, was Enron.
The Enron scandal is now almost a year old. The reputations of Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay, the company's two top executives, have been destroyed. Arthur Andersen, Enron's auditor, has been driven out of business, and now investigators have turned their attention to Enron's investment bankers. The one Enron partner that has escaped largely unscathed is McKinsey, which is odd, given that it essentially created the blueprint for the Enron culture. Enron was the ultimate "talent" company. When Skilling started the corporate division known as Enron Capital and Trade, in 1990, he "decided to bring in a steady stream of the very best college and M.B.A. graduates he could find to stock the company with talent," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod tell us. During the nineties, Enron was bringing in two hundred and fifty newly minted M.B.A.s a year. "We had these things called Super Saturdays," one former Enron manager recalls. "I'd interview some of these guys who were fresh out of Harvard, and these kids could blow me out of the water. They knew things I'd never heard of." Once at Enron, the top performers were rewarded inordinately, and promoted without regard for seniority or experience. Enron was a star system. "The only thing that differentiates Enron from our competitors is our people, our talent," Lay, Enron's former chairman and C.E.O., told the McKinsey consultants when they came to the company's headquarters, in Houston. Or, as another senior Enron executive put it to Richard Foster, a McKinsey partner who celebrated Enron in his 2001 book, "Creative Destruction," "We hire very smart people and we pay them more than they think they are worth."
The management of Enron, in other words, did exactly what the consultants at McKinsey said that companies ought to do in order to succeed in the modern economy. It hired and rewarded the very best and the very brightest--and it is now in bankruptcy. The reasons for its collapse are complex, needless to say. But what if Enron failed not in spite of its talent mind-set but because of it? What if smart people are overrated?
2.
At the heart of the McKinsey vision is a process that the War for Talent advocates refer to as "differentiation and affirmation." Employers, they argue, need to sit down once or twice a year and hold a "candid, probing, no-holds-barred debate about each individual," sorting employees into A, B, and C groups. The A's must be challenged and disproportionately rewarded. The B's need to be encouraged and affirmed. The C's need to shape up or be shipped out. Enron followed this advice almost to the letter, setting up internal Performance Review Committees. The members got together twice a year, and graded each person in their section on ten separate criteria, using a scale of one to five. The process was called "rank and yank." Those graded at the top of their unit received bonuses two-thirds higher than those in the next thirty per cent; those who ranked at the bottom received no bonuses and no extra stock options--and in some cases were pushed out.
How should that ranking be done? Unfortunately, the McKinsey consultants spend very little time discussing the matter. One possibility is simply to hire and reward the smartest people. But the link between, say, I.Q. and job performance is distinctly underwhelming. On a scale where 0.1 or below means virtually no correlation and 0.7 or above implies a strong correlation (your height, for example, has a 0.7 correlation with your parents' height), the correlation between I.Q. and occupational success is between 0.2 and 0.3. "What I.Q. doesn't pick up is effectiveness at common-sense sorts of things, especially working with people," Richard Wagner, a psychologist at Florida State University, says. "In terms of how we evaluate schooling, everything is about working by yourself. If you work with someone else, it's called cheating. Once you get out in the real world, everything you do involves working with other people."
Wagner and Robert Sternberg, a psychologist at Yale University, have developed tests of this practical component, which they call "tacit knowledge." Tacit knowledge involves things like knowing how to manage yourself and others, and how to navigate complicated social situations. Here is a question from one of their tests:
You have just been promoted to head of an important department in your organization. The previous head has been transferred to an equivalent position in a less important department. Your understanding of the reason for the move is that the performance of the department as a whole has been mediocre. There have not been any glaring deficiencies, just a perception of the department as so-so rather than very good. Your charge is to shape up the department. Results are expected quickly. Rate the quality of the following strategies for succeeding at your new position.
a) Always delegate to the most junior person who can be trusted with the task.
b) Give your superiors frequent progress reports.
c) Announce a major reorganization of the department that includes getting rid of whomever you believe to be "dead wood."
d) Concentrate more on your people than on the tasks to be done.
e) Make people feel completely responsible for their work.
Wagner finds that how well people do on a test like this predicts how well they will do in the workplace: good managers pick (b) and (e); bad managers tend to pick (c). Yet there's no clear connection between such tacit knowledge and other forms of knowledge and experience. The process of assessing ability in the workplace is a lot messier than it appears.
An employer really wants to assess not potential but performance. Yet that's just as tricky. In "The War for Talent," the authors talk about how the Royal Air Force used the A, B, and C ranking system for its pilots during the Battle of Britain. But ranking fighter pilots--for whom there are a limited and relatively objective set of performance criteria (enemy kills, for example, and the ability to get their formations safely home)--is a lot easier than assessing how the manager of a new unit is doing at, say, marketing or business development. And whom do you ask to rate the manager's performance? Studies show that there is very little correlation between how someone's peers rate him and how his boss rates him. The only rigorous way to assess performance, according to human-resources specialists, is to use criteria that are as specific as possible. Managers are supposed to take detailed notes on their employees throughout the year, in order to remove subjective personal reactions from the process of assessment. You can grade someone's performance only if you know their performance. And, in the freewheeling culture of Enron, this was all but impossible. People deemed "talented" were constantly being pushed into new jobs and given new challenges. Annual turnover from promotions was close to twenty per cent. Lynda Clemmons, the so-called "weather babe" who started Enron's weather derivatives business, jumped, in seven quick years, from trader to associate to manager to director and, finally, to head of her own business unit. How do you evaluate someone's performance in a system where no one is in a job long enough to allow such evaluation?
The answer is that you end up doing performance evaluations that aren't based on performance. Among the many glowing books about Enron written before its fall was the best-seller "Leading the Revolution," by the management consultant Gary Hamel, which tells the story of Lou Pai, who launched Enron's power-trading business. Pai's group began with a disaster: it lost tens of millions of dollars trying to sell electricity to residential consumers in newly deregulated markets. The problem, Hamel explains, is that the markets weren't truly deregulated: "The states that were opening their markets to competition were still setting rules designed to give their traditional utilities big advantages." It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that Pai ought to have looked into those rules more carefully before risking millions of dollars. He was promptly given the chance to build the commercial electricity-outsourcing business, where he ran up several more years of heavy losses before cashing out of Enron last year with two hundred and seventy million dollars. Because Pai had "talent," he was given new opportunities, and when he failed at those new opportunities he was given still more opportunities . . . because he had "talent." "At Enron, failure--even of the type that ends up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal--doesn't necessarily sink a career," Hamel writes, as if that were a good thing. Presumably, companies that want to encourage risk-taking must be willing to tolerate mistakes. Yet if talent is defined as something separate from an employee's actual performance, what use is it, exactly?
3.
What the War for Talent amounts to is an argument for indulging A employees, for fawning over them. "You need to do everything you can to keep them engaged and satisfied--even delighted," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write. "Find out what they would most like to be doing, and shape their career and responsibilities in that direction. Solve any issues that might be pushing them out the door, such as a boss that frustrates them or travel demands that burden them." No company was better at this than Enron. In one oft-told story, Louise Kitchin, a twenty-nine-year-old gas trader in Europe, became convinced that the company ought to develop an online-trading business. She told her boss, and she began working in her spare time on the project, until she had two hundred and fifty people throughout Enron helping her. After six months, Skilling was finally informed. "I was never asked for any capital," Skilling said later. "I was never asked for any people. They had already purchased the servers. They had already started ripping apart the building. They had started legal reviews in twenty-two countries by the time I heard about it." It was, Skilling went on approvingly, "exactly the kind of behavior that will continue to drive this company forward."
Kitchin's qualification for running EnronOnline, it should be pointed out, was not that she was good at it. It was that she wanted to do it, and Enron was a place where stars did whatever they wanted. "Fluid movement is absolutely necessary in our company. And the type of people we hire enforces that," Skilling told the team from McKinsey. "Not only does this system help the excitement level for each manager, it shapes Enron's business in the direction that its managers find most exciting." Here is Skilling again: "If lots of [employees] are flocking to a new business unit, that's a good sign that the opportunity is a good one. . . . If a business unit can't attract people very easily, that's a good sign that it's a business Enron shouldn't be in." You might expect a C.E.O. to say that if a business unit can't attract customers very easily that's a good sign it's a business the company shouldn't be in. A company's business is supposed to be shaped in the direction that its managers find most profitable. But at Enron the needs of the customers and the shareholders were secondary to the needs of its stars.
A dozen years ago, the psychologists Robert Hogan, Robert Raskin, and Dan Fazzini wrote a brilliant essay called "The Dark Side of Charisma." It argued that flawed managers fall into three types. One is the High Likability Floater, who rises effortlessly in an organization because he never takes any difficult decisions or makes any enemies. Another is the Homme de Ressentiment, who seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. The most interesting of the three is the Narcissist, whose energy and self-confidence and charm lead him inexorably up the corporate ladder. Narcissists are terrible managers. They resist accepting suggestions, thinking it will make them appear weak, and they don't believe that others have anything useful to tell them. "Narcissists are biased to take more credit for success than is legitimate," Hogan and his co-authors write, and "biased to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their failures and shortcomings for the same reasons that they claim more success than is their due." Moreover:
Narcissists typically make judgments with greater confidence than other people . . . and, because their judgments are rendered with such conviction, other people tend to believe them and the narcissists become disproportionately more influential in group situations. Finally, because of their self-confidence and strong need for recognition, narcissists tend to "self-nominate"; consequently, when a leadership gap appears in a group or organization, the narcissists rush to fill it.
Tyco Corporation and WorldCom were the Greedy Corporations: they were purely interested in short-term financial gain. Enron was the Narcissistic Corporation--a company that took more credit for success than was legitimate, that did not acknowledge responsibility for its failures, that shrewdly sold the rest of us on its genius, and that substituted self-nomination for disciplined management. At one point in "Leading the Revolution," Hamel tracks down a senior Enron executive, and what he breathlessly recounts--the braggadocio, the self-satisfaction--could be an epitaph for the talent mind-set:
"You cannot control the atoms within a nuclear fusion reaction," said Ken Rice when he was head of Enron Capital and Trade Resources (ECT), America's largest marketer of natural gas and largest buyer and seller of electricity. Adorned in a black T-shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, Rice drew a box on an office whiteboard that pictured his business unit as a nuclear reactor. Little circles in the box represented its "contract originators," the gunslingers charged with doing deals and creating new businesses. Attached to each circle was an arrow. In Rice's diagram the arrows were pointing in all different directions. "We allow people to go in whichever direction that they want to go."
The distinction between the Greedy Corporation and the Narcissistic Corporation matters, because the way we conceive our attainments helps determine how we behave. Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Columbia University, has found that people generally hold one of two fairly firm beliefs about their intelligence: they consider it either a fixed trait or something that is malleable and can be developed over time. Five years ago, Dweck did a study at the University of Hong Kong, where all classes are conducted in English. She and her colleagues approached a large group of social-sciences students, told them their English-proficiency scores, and asked them if they wanted to take a course to improve their language skills. One would expect all those who scored poorly to sign up for the remedial course. The University of Hong Kong is a demanding institution, and it is hard to do well in the social sciences without strong English skills. Curiously, however, only the ones who believed in malleable intelligence expressed interest in the class. The students who believed that their intelligence was a fixed trait were so concerned about appearing to be deficient that they preferred to stay home. "Students who hold a fixed view of their intelligence care so much about looking smart that they act dumb," Dweck writes, "for what could be dumber than giving up a chance to learn something that is essential for your own success?"
In a similar experiment, Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group was praised for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer. Then Dweck asked the children to write a letter to students at another school, describing their experience in the study. She discovered something remarkable: forty per cent of those students who were praised for their intelligence lied about how they had scored on the test, adjusting their grade upward. They weren't naturally deceptive people, and they weren't any less intelligent or self-confident than anyone else. They simply did what people do when they are immersed in an environment that celebrates them solely for their innate "talent." They begin to define themselves by that description, and when times get tough and that self-image is threatened they have difficulty with the consequences. They will not take the remedial course. They will not stand up to investors and the public and admit that they were wrong. They'd sooner lie.
4.
The broader failing of McKinsey and its acolytes at Enron is their assumption that an organization's intelligence is simply a function of the intelligence of its employees. They believe in stars, because they don't believe in systems. In a way, that's understandable, because our lives are so obviously enriched by individual brilliance. Groups don't write great novels, and a committee didn't come up with the theory of relativity. But companies work by different rules. They don't just create; they execute and compete and coördinate the efforts of many different people, and the organizations that are most successful at that task are the ones where the system is the star.
There is a wonderful example of this in the story of the so-called Eastern Pearl Harbor, of the Second World War. During the first nine months of 1942, the United States Navy suffered a catastrophe. German U-boats, operating just off the Atlantic coast and in the Caribbean, were sinking our merchant ships almost at will. U-boat captains marvelled at their good fortune. "Before this sea of light, against this footlight glare of a carefree new world were passing the silhouettes of ships recognizable in every detail and sharp as the outlines in a sales catalogue," one U-boat commander wrote. "All we had to do was press the button."
What made this such a puzzle is that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the British had much less trouble defending their ships against U-boat attacks. The British, furthermore, eagerly passed on to the Americans everything they knew about sonar and depth-charge throwers and the construction of destroyers. And still the Germans managed to paralyze America's coastal zones.
You can imagine what the consultants at McKinsey would have concluded: they would have said that the Navy did not have a talent mind-set, that President Roosevelt needed to recruit and promote top performers into key positions in the Atlantic command. In fact, he had already done that. At the beginning of the war, he had pushed out the solid and unspectacular Admiral Harold R. Stark as Chief of Naval Operations and replaced him with the legendary Ernest Joseph King. "He was a supreme realist with the arrogance of genius," Ladislas Farago writes in "The Tenth Fleet," a history of the Navy's U-boat battles in the Second World War. "He had unbounded faith in himself, in his vast knowledge of naval matters and in the soundness of his ideas. Unlike Stark, who tolerated incompetence all around him, King had no patience with fools."
The Navy had plenty of talent at the top, in other words. What it didn't have was the right kind of organization. As Eliot A. Cohen, a scholar of military strategy at Johns Hopkins, writes in his brilliant book "Military Misfortunes in the Atlantic":
To wage the antisubmarine war well, analysts had to bring together fragments of information, direction-finding fixes, visual sightings, decrypts, and the "flaming datum" of a U-boat attack--for use by a commander to coordinate the efforts of warships, aircraft, and convoy commanders. Such synthesis had to occur in near "real time"--within hours, even minutes in some cases.
The British excelled at the task because they had a centralized operational system. The controllers moved the British ships around the Atlantic like chess pieces, in order to outsmart U-boat "wolf packs." By contrast, Admiral King believed strongly in a decentralized management structure: he held that managers should never tell their subordinates " 'how' as well as what to 'do.' " In today's jargon, we would say he was a believer in "loose-tight" management, of the kind celebrated by the McKinsey consultants Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman in their 1982 best-seller, "In Search of Excellence." But "loose-tight" doesn't help you find U-boats. Throughout most of 1942, the Navy kept trying to act smart by relying on technical know-how, and stubbornly refused to take operational lessons from the British. The Navy also lacked the organizational structure necessary to apply the technical knowledge it did have to the field. Only when the Navy set up the Tenth Fleet--a single unit to coördinate all anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic--did the situation change. In the year and a half before the Tenth Fleet was formed, in May of 1943, the Navy sank thirty-six U-boats. In the six months afterward, it sank seventy-five. "The creation of the Tenth Fleet did not bring more talented individuals into the field of ASW"--anti-submarine warfare--"than had previous organizations," Cohen writes. "What Tenth Fleet did allow, by virtue of its organization and mandate, was for these individuals to become far more effective than previously." The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it's the other way around.
5.
There is ample evidence of this principle among America's most successful companies. Southwest Airlines hires very few M.B.A.s, pays its managers modestly, and gives raises according to seniority, not "rank and yank." Yet it is by far the most successful of all United States airlines, because it has created a vastly more efficient organization than its competitors have. At Southwest, the time it takes to get a plane that has just landed ready for takeoff--a key index of productivity--is, on average, twenty minutes, and requires a ground crew of four, and two people at the gate. (At United Airlines, by contrast, turnaround time is closer to thirty-five minutes, and requires a ground crew of twelve and three agents at the gate.)
In the case of the giant retailer Wal-Mart, one of the most critical periods in its history came in 1976, when Sam Walton "unretired," pushing out his handpicked successor, Ron Mayer. Mayer was just over forty. He was ambitious. He was charismatic. He was, in the words of one Walton biographer, "the boy-genius financial officer." But Walton was convinced that Mayer was, as people at McKinsey would say, "differentiating and affirming" in the corporate suite, in defiance of Wal-Mart's inclusive culture. Mayer left, and Wal-Mart survived. After all, Wal-Mart is an organization, not an all-star team. Walton brought in David Glass, late of the Army and Southern Missouri State University, as C.E.O.; the company is now ranked No. 1 on the Fortune 500 list.
Procter & Gamble doesn't have a star system, either. How could it? Would the top M.B.A. graduates of Harvard and Stanford move to Cincinnati to work on detergent when they could make three times as much reinventing the world in Houston? Procter & Gamble isn't glamorous. Its C.E.O. is a lifer--a former Navy officer who began his corporate career as an assistant brand manager for Joy dishwashing liquid--and, if Procter & Gamble's best played Enron's best at Trivial Pursuit, no doubt the team from Houston would win handily. But Procter & Gamble has dominated the consumer-products field for close to a century, because it has a carefully conceived managerial system, and a rigorous marketing methodology that has allowed it to win battles for brands like Crest and Tide decade after decade. In Procter & Gamble's Navy, Admiral Stark would have stayed. But a cross-divisional management committee would have set the Tenth Fleet in place before the war ever started.
6.
Among the most damning facts about Enron, in the end, was something its managers were proudest of. They had what, in McKinsey terminology, is called an "open market" for hiring. In the open-market system--McKinsey's assault on the very idea of a fixed organization--anyone could apply for any job that he or she wanted, and no manager was allowed to hold anyone back. Poaching was encouraged. When an Enron executive named Kevin Hannon started the company's global broadband unit, he launched what he called Project Quick Hire. A hundred top performers from around the company were invited to the Houston Hyatt to hear Hannon give his pitch. Recruiting booths were set up outside the meeting room. "Hannon had his fifty top performers for the broadband unit by the end of the week," Michaels, Handfield-Jones, and Axelrod write, "and his peers had fifty holes to fill." Nobody, not even the consultants who were paid to think about the Enron culture, seemed worried that those fifty holes might disrupt the functioning of the affected departments, that stability in a firm's existing businesses might be a good thing, that the self-fulfillment of Enron's star employees might possibly be in conflict with the best interests of the firm as a whole.
These are the sort of concerns that management consultants ought to raise. But Enron's management consultant was McKinsey, and McKinsey was as much a prisoner of the talent myth as its clients were. In 1998, Enron hired ten Wharton M.B.A.s; that same year, McKinsey hired forty. In 1999, Enron hired twelve from Wharton; McKinsey hired sixty-one. The consultants at McKinsey were preaching at Enron what they believed about themselves. "When we would hire them, it wouldn't just be for a week," one former Enron manager recalls, of the brilliant young men and women from McKinsey who wandered the hallways at the company's headquarters. "It would be for two to four months. They were always around." They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing.
HOMETHE NEW YORKER ARCHIVETOP
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