Neverisms

Remember that when an employee enters your office he is in a strange land.

He feels the atmosphere of authority; he is constrained and hesitant.

Make him feel at ease.

The book is also filled with many very helpful neverisms, all of them ringing as true today as when they were written so many decades ago:

Never let personal pride stand in the way of getting the right answer.

Never use underhanded methods in retaliation for covert opposition.

Never upbraid an employee in an emotional manner;

under no circumstances should you direct profanity at a workman.

Never make a man obey you against his will,

unless the act you require is to compensate for a wrong

which he knowingly committed.

Never ride roughshod over the feelings of another.

Such acts are not constructive; they arouse harmful resentment.

Never hold a man back on the basis that he otherwise

will outgrow his job and find a better position elsewhere.

Make it a rule never to say anything about any individual

that you would not say to him personally.

Never treat a new employee as a suspicious character

who requires watching until he has proved his honesty and worth.

In 1930, Schell was approached by Alfred P. Sloan, an 1895 graduate of MIT who had recently become president of General Motors. Sloan felt that many of GM’s highly trained engineers were lacking in management skills, and he wondered if Schell could help. Sensing a major opportunity, Schell began designing the world’s first university-based executive education program for mid-career engineers. The next year, “Sloan Fellows” from GM were sitting alongside regular MIT students, and within a few years, business schools around the country were attempting to replicate the model.

In 1952, a year after Schell retired as dean, a grant from The Sloan Foundation formally established the MIT School of Industrial Management. It was later renamed the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, but there are many who think it might have been more fitting to name the school after Erwin Schell.

If the topic of managing people is the most popular topic in business literature, then the subject of investing would probably come in at second place. Many of the best investment quotations have been expressed neveristically, with many cited as examples of “Wall Street Wisdom”:

Never invest on impulse.

Never trade to pay your bills.

Never fall in love with a stock.

Never confuse brains with a bull market.

Never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Never invest on the basis of recommendations from friends.

Never invest on the basis of information

from chat rooms or Internet sources.

Some of history’s best-known investors have also weighed in with stern cautionary warnings:

Never invest in a business you cannot understand.WARREN BUFFETT

Never invest in any idea you can’t illustrate with a crayon.PETER LYNCH, offering “Peter’s Principle #3” in

his 1993 investment classic Beating the Street

Never invest on sentiment. Never invest solely on a tip.JOHN TEMPLETON

My all-time favorite investment quotation, though, comes not from a famous investor or money-managing wizard, but from one of the great names in show-business history. The theatrical impresario Billy Rose once famously advised:

Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting.

In the remainder of the chapter, you’ll find many more management and investment admonitions, but you’ll also find warnings about a variety of other things you should never do if you want to achieve success and avoid failure in the business arena.

Never rest on your laurels.

Nothing wilts faster than a laurel sat upon.MARY KAY ASH

Resting on one’s laurels is a saying that can be traced to the ancient Olympic games, when a laurel wreath was placed on the head of a victorious athlete. The saying has now become a cliche, but Ash’s clever tweaking of it sidesteps that problem and earns her extra points for being a CEO with a sense of humor. “The Mary Kay Way,” as it is commonly called, also includes these other straight-talking neverisms, which she refers to as “Timeless Principles” in her books and lectures:

Never Give Criticism in Front of Others.

Never Give Criticism Without Praise.

Never Make a Promise You Can’t Keep.

Never Hide Behind Policy or Pomposity.

Never coddle a malcontent.PETER BAIDA, from a “Manager’s Journal” column

in the Wall Street Journal in the early 1980s

Never pay the slightest attention to

what a company president ever says about his stock.BERNARD M. BARUCH,