The Next Management Revolution

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"Having a meal is not the same thing as simply eating something."

You could probably call me the One-Hour Manager. I waste a lot of time on needless conviviality, playing hostess in my office, where I keep an electric kettle, along with the other accouterments of tea, not the least of which is a comfortable sofa. Whenever someone walks into my office with a knitted brow and an open mouth, I say, preemptively, "Would you like a cup of tea?"

Whatever the answer, this creates a pause and sets the tone for the discussion to follow. If, as is often the case, the employee came in to bitch about someone or something, then the offer of tea turns the focus subtly away from the expression of aggression and toward the expression of the employee's own feelings. He or she ends up venting rather than attacking. This usually results in a bright, "Gee, I feel better now," without my having had to say much of anything. And while it often feels like an intrusion on my valuable time, I'm convinced it's ultimately less time-consuming than letting hostilities escalate to the point where I end up following the fire-breathing dragon around the village with a bucket of water.

"Avoid walking around with knives."

Mendelson doesn't actually advise against running with scissors, but only because she doesn't really approve of walking with them, or especially with knives. "You are more likely to cut yourself if your blade is either extremely keen or extremely dull," she says. "In the former case, a mere touch will rend the skin; in the latter you may press so hard that the blade slides into your hand with great force."

The same could be said for any kind of technology, from telephones and copiers to software: Push yourself too close to the cutting edge and you risk being distracted by bloody nicks and scrapes on a daily basis, but allow yourself to grow too dull and you will eventually inflict upon yourself a serious wound. I made this mistake when I found the advertising department and the editorial staff constantly quarreling over the use of the newspaper's single digital camera. First I bought three very cheap digital cameras, which were outdated by the time they were shipped and consequently were never put to use. Then I decided to buy a high-end camera with lots of complicated bells and whistles, and this one turned out to be hard to use. The upshot? Everyone continued to use the old camera. I should have just split the difference and bought a second camera exactly like the one everyone liked so much.

"The best kinds of domesticity are self-sustaining."

To some extent, we all outsource, whether it's just for processing payroll and having the wastebaskets emptied or having people in Third World countries answer a tech support line. In a chapter on household help, Mendelson warns against outgrowing one's own abilities: "Households of a size and nature that can be kept up by those who live in them are the most homelike, and housework in itself is physically and emotionally pleasant and restorative."

This cleared up a great mystery for me: The question of why the company I work for seemed to have little soul or identity. It had started as a family business; later it was bought by an individual; then suddenly it grew, first with the purchase of a second small paper, then with the launching of a third and fourth. This rapid growth meant that a lot of people were being hired to act as servants rather than to participate as family members. They certainly didn't feel their work to be "physically and emotionally pleasant and restorative."

From this I inferred that small companies ought not to grow faster than a family can grow, allowing time for courtships, honeymoons, gestation periods, adoptions, and the occasional Brady Bunch kind of merger. On the micro level, I now "date" prospective employees for several weeks by giving them several freelance assignments before even hinting at the possibility of a staff position.

"But is it homey?"

Hominess, Mendelson explains, has nothing to do with tidiness or even cleanliness, but rather with appropriateness, which is created "by knowing the habits of the members of the household -- a hook where this person wants to hang his cap, a basket where that one tends to leave keys and odds and ends from her pockets." She warns against too much emphasis on order, which can lead to vinyl-covered sofas, excessive grandeur, or drop-dead coolness, all of which are uncomfortable to live with. How many offices have you seen in which there was much striving to create an impression, through decor, yes, but also through management's particular brand of dictatorial bluster? A lot of energy seems to be spent on making sure that workers inhabit a "professional" environment, or worse yet, a "competitive" one. That never made sense to me. If you want workers to invest as much energy in putting out a product as they do in raising their children, you need to foster a sense of home. This discussion of hominess led me to contemplate the matter of, to use the simplest possible word, niceness.

Creating a nice office, to me, meant that everyone was held to a high standard of behavior -- I required not only mutual courtesy, but also genuine caring. Several independent contractors with whom I did business threw tantrums early on. Their contracts were swiftly rescinded. This sent a message to all that there would be no gratuitous bad behavior in this household.

Nine years ago The Economist ran an article called "The Male Dodo," which announced the coming obsolescence of testosterone and the decline of maleness as the dominant gender style in human culture. "In the grand sweep of things," the anonymous author, a zoologist, declared, "the human race may before long have completed its evolution from a warring collection of romantic, male-dominated tribes to a peaceable, cool-headed sisterhood devoted to shopping and household management -- those most feminine of arts known nowadays as economics."

In a masculine, militant culture where competition decides survival, the weak will always perish, and that is probably a good thing. But will those individuals who make it to the top really be the best qualified, and will those companies that survive in the marketplace really be the best at what they do? Or will they just be the brashest and meanest among the marginally qualified and competent? This crude sorting method may be good enough for military operations, but it won't fly in the complicated, subtle business of designing and running a unified global economy. For this, Mother Earth and Mother Nature are going to need help from Mother Economy. And the only male whose assistance will be required is Father Time.

Hillary Johnson lives and works in California.

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