On being the boss, part 2

I've been looking through the blog history for somewhere else that I have talked about Father's struggles with authority. I'm sure I must have written about these things before but I can't find them. Have they been all in my head?

So in this post I talk about how hard it was for him to be a Boss, how genuinely terrible he was at it. And at one point I remember reflecting on Peter Drucker's observation that Thinkers and Deciders are two different kinds of people. Those who are good at thinking are in general bad at deciding; and those who are good at deciding are bad at thinking. I noticed that this certainly applied to me: it took me years to learn how to make basic decisions. And then I looked at my dad's long history of disastrous business decisions ... and realized ... you know? When he was just spinning out his own ideas -- not playing conversational games, and not playing a role, but just (too rarely) actually thinking on his own ... he was really good at it. For all the other things I have told you about my dad, I forget if I ever mentioned that he was really smart ... even though sometimes he talked himself into supporting (or pretending to support) some foolish opinions. I remember years ago, when the news was obsessed by the tryst between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, that there were thousands of editorials around the country churning out what seemed to be the exact same talking points: it was as if there were really only two editorial positions -- Democratic and Republican -- and everybody who had something to say picked one side or the other and rehashed the same old points in new words. Except my dad. He sent me an email that he asked me not to share with anyone else because his thoughts were still evolving -- and it was clear, insightful, and (above all!) totally original. He agreed with the Democrats on one or two points, and with the Republicans on one or two points, and thought each of them was spouting nonsense equally often.

The consequence of Drucker's point, though, is that Thinkers should be employees, not bosses. The Boss has to decide. He should have an intellectual working on staff who thinks through all the possibilities and organizes them for him, but then he has to pick one. And while I have sometimes held a managerial role in my own career, I have always wanted to work for somebody else, for a company that could handle all the entrepreneurship and all the paperwork and leave me to do what I'm good at. At least this far, I have aligned my career with Drucker's insight.

Not my dad. After ten disastrous years pretending to be a businessman, he dropped into and out of a lot of other ventures. But always he had to be The Guy In Charge. And of course they never worked out, partly because he was terrible at being The Guy In Charge.

Why did he do it? I think it's because he hated and feared Authority. Partly that meant that he couldn't bear to be an Authority in his own right; but also it meant that he was (I think) afraid of having a Boss. He was afraid of being in a dependent or subordinate position. And so he put himself, time and again, into a position where he was sure to fail, because it called upon his weaknesses and not his strengths.

I asked Mother about this at one point, whether she saw things the same way and she strongly agreed. She said that back when he was a college professor he was almost a philosopher -- he could think profoundly and creatively about the subject and find new insights in it that lit up the room. But the first time he got an actual three-year contract, it was at a department that didn't want that. They wanted something else out of their professors, a kind of belligerent aggressiveness (that would put this new university on the map) rather than deep and dreamy insight. She said at one point someone actually came up to him in the hallway (maybe it was a Dean, or somebody) and told him "We don't want your kind here." And when his first tenure review came up after three years they dropped him as fast as they could. He never held another teaching job, and never ... now I think about it ... worked for Anybody Else again, after that. 

Except that, as an actor, he would always listen to his Director and do what the Director said. But nobody else.

It's sad. Of course he really wanted a career as an actor. But if that wasn't going to work out -- and it only ever kind of worked out -- I think he would have had more success doing what I do, working for someone else so that he could have spent his time Thinking and not Deciding. In some ways he would have been a lot happier.

But he hated and feared Authority. He hated and feared Bosses. That always got in his way.

It's sad.