NewWork Reviews

NewWork Reviews

NewWork Reviews

Reviewed by Gary Johnson

Shortly after entering the small St. Paul, Minnesota coffee shop, I suspected that author and veteran corporate consultant John Cowan and I might be kindred spirits. After all, he spent his youth studying for the priesthood and serving as a young parish priest. I spent my youth as a disk jockey, saloon singer, and comic, hanging out with a lot of show biz types whom you might not want your children to go near. While John was studying the classics, I was majoring in radio and rock & roll, with a minor in country & western records and hard sell commercials.

John seems to live for sailing and cannot bear to be away from the lakes very long. I was a North Dakota kid, and, for generations, Dakota kids didn't see water that wasn't in a glass until they were sixteen. I think it was a state law, or something.

Moreover, John has been both athlete and athletic enthusiast all his life, encouraging his sons to learn about life through vigorous sports, and using sports metaphors a lot in his writing. I can barely tell a golf ball from a football. In fact, I still don't understand American football at all. Not only how; mostly why.

So, how on earth did our greatly differing paths over so many years bring us to this little coffee shop for a two or three hour conversation one recent spring morning?

Among other things, we share a concern for people at work, and, despite their different early points of origin, our paths have passed through similar locations along the way. Both of us have spent a great deal of time in college and university classrooms, much time in corporate training and seminar rooms, much time in a variety of private and public sector work settings.

As John talked, I thought about Fred Rogers. I mean, American public TV's Mr. Rogers, who is also Pastor Rogers. Fred is a Presbyterian minister on active duty, but most of his TV fans don't know this, because he doesn't "preach" and doesn't rely on familiar religious vocabulary in his teaching. He entertains and helps to shape the lives of very young people in ways that aren't likely to offend even parents who are indifferent to Christianity or even opposed to it. Fred's work with children is his ministry, and he conducts his work through television because he was trained in the early commercial industry and knows the medium inside out.

John is a businessman and corporate human resources expert. After a lengthy career within major corporations, he became an independent consultant, and his services are in high demand. He is also an Episcopal priest, and his corporate work is also his official ministry. Like Fred Rogers, he is on active duty as a clergyman. Also, like Rogers, John does not beat you about the head and shoulders with the Bible or any other ancient document. He doesn't harangue you. You might never suspect that he is clergy, except that, while he doesn't flaunt it or allow his roles or titles to define him, he doesn't hide these things either.

His writings should appeal as much to Jews, Buddhists, Moslems, atheists, agnostics, and people who are persistently bored by conventional religious arguments, as to Christians in the work world. Many of the good people in all these largely arbitrary categories have a good deal more in common than they might like to imagine, so long as they value the quality of human life and like to look at things within large contexts from broad perspectives. As a member of the self-ordained clergy in the Common Denomination, I must say that John's approach, and Fred's, certainly appeal to me.

Cowan's assertion that religion is most fundamentally a language caught my eye. I'm willing to let him explain more specifically what he means by that, but I did resonate to it, because this is about what I've been thinking for years. I have suspected that the various world religious traditions and mythologies (the word "myth" does not necessarily imply falsity), past and present, have been varying ways of trying to think and talk about some of the deepest truths, most subtle mysteries, and most fundamental concerns in life. It's like expressing some of the same concerns in Russian or English or Japanese or Hindi. Languages are fundamental, because thought and expression are inherently merged.

I think it was the Protestant theologian, Karl Barth, who said that the concept of "God" is so abstract that human beings cannot speak of it directly. We can only talk about God indirectly; we must circle around the idea in various ways, which helps explain the voluminous religious literature over so many centuries, and why to reify concepts or insist on literal interpretations usually results in a great loss.

As I walked into the St. Paul coffee shop, I immediately noted that, despite so many years in corporate settings, John was not wearing the business uniform, nor was I. This was a good sign, I thought. Bystanders might have assumed that we were a couple of rumpled old guys from the maintenance crew at the elementary school up the street.

I suspect that John has been effective as a leader and "change agent" (to use horrible 1960's jargon) in the corporate community, in part, because of what he is. That is, he is not simply MBA number 6,327. He doesn't fit into any of the conventional categories by which people in the pressured work world tend to think. If he did, they wouldn't have to move out of their familiar patterns of thought and action in order to relate to him or his ideas. Nothing would be different as a consequence of his visiting for a while.

Change and creativity, including growth, require some degree of disorder (see Tom Peters' book, Thriving on Chaos). Introduce a little chaos or, at least, discomfort ("dissonance," as the social psychologists call it), and it makes it more difficult for things to return to their habitual state. Try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, as John discusses in one chapter. Try to push toothpaste back into a tube. Thank God for the devil's advocates (and maybe we can thank the devil for God's advocates), the irreverent, the mildly rude, the unpredictable, the irrepressible. It's why psychotherapists sometimes cross their fingers and secretly hope for a crisis. People are more amenable to change or growth when they're feeling an acute situation than when they're simply drifting along and suffering gradual erosion.

Of course, advocates of change or growth won't want to atomize the existing social system. There is such a thing as too much disorder, and it takes a long time to rebuild from the ground up. Genuine revolutions usually don't turn out very well.

But, if you expect to have any real effect, for heaven's sake don't dress, talk, think, move, believe like everybody else. If others are flaunting their titles or degrees or awards, don't claim any; in fact, disavow them. If everybody else is wearing the same color tie to your seminar, don't wear any at all, and be sure to wear your cowboy hat.

Of course, it's much easier for outsiders to be different, and that's one of the reasons independent consultants invented themselves. To be independent, at the very least, you must be, well, independent. Also, of course, eccentricity or brashness won't be enough by themselves. After stirring the kettle a bit, you'll need to add your own ingredients. You'll need to have some ideas. Unpredictability won't make up for lack of experience or sophistication.

Actually, I have no idea how John Cowan conducts his consulting practice, just as I know almost nothing about how my colleagues at various colleges and universities over the years have conducted their classes. I've not attended their classes, and I've not followed John into a corporation. I have only my long conversation with him, some knowledge of his background, and my reading of his books on which to base my rambling imaginings.

At the very least, Cowan is different. He surely isn't what people in most corporations will expect, because, for a businessman, his experience has been so varied and unconventional. As a consequence, his presence alone in a typical business setting must be at least mildly disturbing to habitual patterns of thought and action, and that's the point. How can this guy be so savvy about what's going on around this place and still be, well, him?

However, John has other attributes as well. He already had a lot of good mileage on him by the time he left the Catholic priesthood and entered corporate life, and that was many years ago. He looks back over a lot of good road. His corporate experience since has been vast, and he seems equally familiar with the voluminous professional organization development literature. His mind and talent are large, but his heart seems larger still, all informed by rich and varied experience.

John has three books. The first, The Self-Reliant Manager, was published by a division of the American Management Association in 1977 while he was a consultant in human resource development in what was then Control Data Corporation.

It's a good book, a mostly conventional treatment of good management principles for first-line supervisors. As John says in his introduction, these are the persons "who, because of excellent technical work, have vaulted to the responsibility of managing a group of people." This may sound like the Peter Principle all over again, but it's very common in organizations. To reward someone who has demonstrated high competence in a technical area, put him/her in a totally unfamiliar role that requires entirely different gifts and for which s/he has no preparation whatever.

Sadly, the 1977 book is no longer in print, but you will find it in most major academic or business libraries, and it's still worth a look. I would like to see a new edition for the new economy, in particular because John's emphasis on self-reliant employees, managers, groups, and organizations seems even more relevant today. Also, because, toward the end of the book, he seems to anticipate some of the main outlines of the new work world we're faced with now.

While we could fill the Roman coliseum with management books, I don't think there's anything else quite like John's more recent works: Small Decencies: Reflections and Meditations on Being Human at Work and The Common Table: Reflections and Meditations on Community and Spirituality in the Workplace, published in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Both are available from HarperBusiness and can be found in the business section of most major bookstores in the United States. I would like to see them available in other countries as well, and in multiple languages.

These are brief paperbacks, about 160 pages each. The chapters are small essays-homilies, really-and average no more than three or four pages. These are quite personal statements, and many have clearly been inspired while engaged in his beloved sailing. It appears that some have been written on the spot. Writing is mostly thinking, and quality thinking is not necessarily best done with one's fingers grafted to a keyboard.

John gets around to a large number of basic human concerns. For instance, he tells why he distrusts the word "love," in large part because of the way it is commonly abused in daily life. But, then, he discusses his concept of "pragmatic love" in a way that is thought-provoking, at the very least. No one has to be perfect to live in our house either, John, something for which we're all greatly thankful. Perfection is not required in this life, for survival or success, including great success. I remember talking with Jerry Willenbring sometime ago about the respective merits of "wholeness" vs. "perfection" as ideals, a related notion.

Make no mistake: these are business books. Sooner or later, John gets around to most of the things that are eating at you on the job and the reasons that so many organizations don't work very well. Don't let his concern with living distract you, let alone his apparent allergy to jargon and bureaucratic perversions of language. These are books for humans at work; persons, not personnel, as they say, and the whole person goes to work, after all. John seems strong enough to be gentle; sophisticated enough to speak simply, and it all comes through in these sweet, wise little books.

These are very smart little books from a marketing standpoint too; they know their audience and they know about the situations in which they will be read. They're brief, so as not to intimidate all but the addicted, and they take up very little space. They're great airplane books. They should be available in all of the world's major airport gift shops and newsstands. Take them with you on your next business trip. Stuff them in your carry-on.

John is funny, he's clear, he's readable, he's thought-provoking, and you don't even have to read the chapters in the order presented. When you have five minutes, read a chapter, and you'll have something to think about for the rest of the day.

HarperBusiness originally published Small Decencies and The Common Table. After a good run of several years in national distribution, both are now published and distributed by their author:

John Cowan
1498 Goodrich
St. Paul, MN 55105
612-698-4760
E-mail: johnedie@aol.com

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