If you’ve been following my musings, you know I’ve got a healthy appetite for readin’ and writin’ (not as big of a fan of ‘rithmetic). I particularly appreciate off-beat books that look at business or the world from a unique perspective. That would be a good way to describe Saving Adam Smith: A Tale of Wealth, Transformation, and Virtue, written by doctoral student Jonathan Wight a few years ago. Quite often, the Gordon Geccos (remember Michael Douglas in the movie WALL STREET) of the world use Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of capitalism to describe the benefits of laissez-faire capitalism. There’s an underlying message that is somehow attributed to Smith – who many see as the father of capitalism: “greed is good” and selfishness helps everyone live up to their true potential and get what they need.
Well, Jonathan Wight did his doctoral studies on Adam Smith and found him to be much more Maslovian in his world view. Consider this passage: “Smith’s model is based upon notions that are intuitive to any parent – that children are driven first by the basic instinct for survival, and beyond that, the basic instinct for approval. Smith takes this one step further, arguing that adults as well as children desire not only pats of encouragement and approval, they desire to be worthy of that approval. People want to be virtuous.” In other words, Wight suggests that Smith believed markets and morals go hand-in-hand and he uses a first person narrator – a fictional economics grad student – who travels across the country with Adam Smith to get his points across.
Here’s an example of a verbal exchange from the book as these two characters meet a third person who describes life in Silicon Valley (while overlooking Big Sur cliffs):
1. “No question, people work hard when their contributions are recognized and rewarded. Stock options are important. But you’ll miss something momentous if you stop there…The secret is this: People work harder when they appreciate themselves for what they have done. When the goal of the enterprise is worthy of their highest aspirations…when you touch someplace deep inside, by having them buy into a dream bigger than themselves. That unleashes the creative spirit, and the mind and heart are integrated. So the company becomes, in a sense, the vehicle for the aspirations of the workers as integrated human beings.”
2. “I thought the company was a vehicle for making profit,” I said remembering Milton Friedman’s and Adam Smith’s injunctions against “do-goodism.”
3. “It has potential for much more than that…when people accept a bigger dream, there’s a remarkable transformation. The workplace becomes alive, dynamic, charged with energy. Profit is the by-product of achieving that higher aspiration.”
So, according to Jonathan Wight, Adam Smith was a “conscious capitalist” just like Abe Maslow. Having written a book about applying Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” to the workplace and distilling down his five levels of the pyramid to three (survival, success, and transformation), I find it fascinating to read these because #1 basically suggests that employees have base compensation needs (survival) which then move on to their social/esteem needs of recognition (success). But, it’s the meaning/aspirational needs at the top of the pyramid (transformation) that create what Adam Smith might have called an “integrated human being” and what Maslow called a “self-actualized person.”
The next time someone cites Adam Smith as their foundation for why they believe capitalism is based upon the positive virtues of selfishness, please direct them to Saving Adam Smith as Wight passionately pleads for a more compassionate and aspirational perspective on human nature, one that corresponds well with the theories I’ve espoused in PEAK.
August 12th, 2007
I long to be anti-social. It’s not that I don’t enjoy people. Next to dogs, people are just about the best species ever created. Certainly better than toads. No, my anti-social longing comes from people overload. Being a hospitality honcho means lots of pressing the flesh, not in that vacant politician sort of way….more in that smiling, nodding, empathizing, problem solving kind of way. There’s no doubt I get great meaning out of my connection to other humans. But, it can be a little like eating that second banana split. It felt so good until it felt so bad.
So, I retreat. Rather than calling it anti-social behavior, let’s just call it pro-cocooning. After a long week of having my external antennae maxed out, it’s such a relief to get in touch with my internal antennae to understand what kind of weather is occurring on planet Chip. Most of us are a little intimidated by writing - especially if it’s in a personal journal - as if we’re being asked to communicate in a foreign language. But, it’s really quite a simple equation. Take a brain, add a heart, and a willingness to slow down enough to observe life - subtract out that voice of your 2nd grade brutally critical school teacher - and you might just write a few lines that could strike a chord (maybe a truly out of key chord, but at least some kind of chord).
Most of us are willing to live chord-less lives. Or we think we need to read before we can write. There are lots of great books about writing out there in the world. Some of my favorites are Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones , Brenda Ueland’s If You Want To Write , and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird . But, let’s be honest, all these books basically say the same thing. Write as if no one’s watching and, by the way, do it naked…or at least expose yourself to yourself in all your glory. I find that I write my best passages (in whose opinion my internal critic asks?) when I have no idea where I’m going….when I’m scriptless and full of curiosity. Sort of like the carefree driving my partner Donald and I did in the English Cotswolds countryside last week….even better, we were driving on the wrong side of the road. My best writing happens when I’m thinking on the wrong side of the road.
I guess it helps that as a kid I was an introvert and wanted to be a writer when I grew up (an idea that was rather blasphemous to my sensible father). Well, now I’m grown up and I am a writer. The reality is I always was one but I had to try out a few odd identities along the way like real estate developer, political activist, philanthropist, and hotelier. Those clothes fit fine, but when I’m home alone, I’ve got to tell ya that I love being the naked writer. (I suppose the fact I’m sharing this with you makes me a bit of an exhibitionist.)
OK, let me clean this up and tell you how I got on this stream of consciousness. I was interviewed by a journalist this week who asked me how I could juggle being a very public hospitality CEO with being a very private “prolific writer” (his words). Out of nowhere, I said something like “most ambitious real estate execs are awfully focused on the here and now - not in a zen sort of way, but more as a form of instant gratification - yet winning a transaction-driven negotiation to buy a property gives you a high that lasts a few days. Strong earnings or profits might last a few quarters and make you a few bucks, but that’s awfully transitory. Bricks and mortar - the legacy that an evolved real estate developer creates for a community - lasts a few generations. Strangely enough, it’s words and thoughts that have the potential to last a few eternities.” I’m a big Thoreau fan - he died nearly 150 years ago - and I also pull out my Marcus Aurelius when I’m looking for a little insight (he left the planet more than 1,800 years ago).
I write. Birds fly. We do it to transport ourselves. My hope is that my form of flying just might make a difference for someone else out there - maybe even 100 years from now. If I write with that kind of forced posterity, it will be stale from the moment that synapse of inspiration flows straight through this keyboard. So, instead, I just fly and hope like hell I have a good time and don’t have to flap too hard. That’s what it was like writing PEAK . Sure, it was grueling working a 60-hour CEO Monday through Friday existence bookended by marathon writing sessions on weekends. No sane human would do this if they didn’t enjoy it. Writing PEAK was my form of self-actualization. I lost track of time. I lost track of eating. I lost track of me. I lost my mind, yet I found my spirit…that enduring spirit that felt like it was channeling old Abe Maslow more than 35 years after his death.
I write to connect…to connect with myself as well as to connect with some sort of ethereal consciousness (as if I’m grasping inspiration out of thin air). But, strangely enough, I write to connect with others. To connect with like-minded souls who will resonate with my moments of clarity and my moments of darkness. To connect with leaders who will feel emboldened to influence their workplace in a new way.
Maybe I’m not so anti-social after all.
August 4th, 2007
