Neverisms

strength,

but what is, in reality, a weakness.KARL ROVE, in Courage and Consequence:

My Life As a Conservative (2010)

Rove used this strategy in many campaigns, most famously against Al Gore, John Kerry, and Ann Richards. About Gore, he wrote: “Al Gore thinks he’s strong because he’s smarter than most people. Fine; depict him as someone who looks down on voters.”

Never forget that television is a visual medium.HERB SCHMERTZ

This is stock advice that Schmertz and other PR consultants give to politicians about how to approach television appearances. Schmertz added:The person sitting out there is a passive viewer who’s going to go away with an impression of you. You might be making a brilliant argument, but what the viewer will remember is whether your necklace jangled every time you turned your head, or whether the shape of your mustache made you look like a shifty character.

Never ask poets about politics or politicians about poetry.SHAUNA SORENSON

Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.HARRY S TRUMAN

Biographer Merle Miller contrasted Truman and LBJ in his book on President Johnson. LBJ had a coarse, often profane sense of humor, while Truman was “very prim.” Miller wrote: “I never heard Truman utter a sexual joke, but I did hear him make many scatological remarks. Once someone asked him what his philosophy of life was. I’ll never forget his answer: ‘Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.’”

In a political struggle,

never get personal else the dagger digs too deep.

Your enemy today may need to be your ally tomorrow.JACK VALENTI, in a 1996 address

to the Federal Communications Bar Association

Valenti reprinted the full speech—which he delivered completely without notes—in Speak Up with Confidence: How to Prepare, Learn, and Deliver Effective Speeches (1982). In his classic book on public speaking, Valenti also offered these thoughts:

Never try to speak merely from notes unless you know your subject cold.

As you construct your speech,

never forget that this is not an exercise in personal indulgence;

you are striving to make contact with your audience.

Never rise to your feet without having given thought to what you are going to say.

Whatever happens,

never forget that people would rather be led to perdition by a man,

than to victory by a woman.REBECCA WEST, said just prior to Margaret

Thatcher’s election victory in 1979

Never murder a man who is committing suicide.WOODROW WILSON

This observation is almost always attributed to Wilson, but in a 1916 letter to Bernard Baruch, a personal friend and political adviser, he cited an unnamed friend as the author. A similar observation, attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, may be found in the classic neverisms chapter.

thirteen

Never Coddle a Malcontent

Business & Management

People today usually describe Peter Drucker as “the father of modern management,” but I have come to believe that Erwin H. Schell may be more deserving of the title. Sadly, though, outside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is not well known. I first learned of Schell several years ago when I stumbled across an admonition he had offered to managers:

Never be unreceptive to facts,

however discouraging, disappointing, or injurious

to your personal welfare they may appear to be.

I was immediately taken by this wise and beautifully phrased advice from a man I’d never heard of. I immediately went to Wikipedia, where I found only a one-sentence biographical entry: “Erwin Schell was a Dean of the MIT Department of Business and Engineering from 1930 through 1951.” I then checked The Forbes Book of Business Quotations, a massive compilation of 14,173 quotations. Nope, not a single entry from Erwin Schell. I decided to do a bit more digging.

In the early 1900s, an increasing number of graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were enjoying great success in the business world. The American economy was expanding at a rapid rate, and the demand for new products and improved manufacturing methods greatly enhanced the prospects of highly trained engineers. As many MIT graduates became business owners and factory managers, however, they began to vent a common frustration when they got together at alumni gatherings. While their alma mater had provided them with exceptional technical training, it had inadequately prepared them for the issues that now kept them awake at night, particularly the complex management decisions and thorny personnel issues. In 1913, an ad hoc committee of the MIT Alumni Council was formed to study the problem. Later that year, they formally recommended that the university create a new program “specifically designed to train men to be competent managers of businesses that have much to do with engineering problems.”

The next year, in 1914, faculty members from several MIT departments began to lay the groundwork for a new program of study. Following the university’s longstanding tradition of designating programs by numbers instead of names, they began designing Course XV, a planned concentration in what they were calling “Engineering Administration.” After a few initial courses were filled up by eager students, it became apparent that a more substantial effort was going to be required. In 1916, three new faculty members were hired. In 1917, Erwin H. Schell, an MIT alum from the Class of 1912, was hired as the first formal head of Course XV, formally renamed “Business Management.”

Almost immediately, Schell began to prove the truth of Emerson’s famous observation that “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.” Under his leadership, the program flourished, and he became one of the college’s most popular and respected instructors.

When Schell came out with The Technique of Executive Control in 1924, he almost singlehandedly formulated the concept of the modern manager, a major step up from the factory boss mentality that was common at the time. Schell’s book was revised and updated many, many times over the decades. I have a copy of the 1950 edition, and it contains one of the best management quotations of all time: