Interview with the President of a Giant Corporation and Consultant
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Note: Reader discretion is advised. Some mild swearing is quoted.
What exactly does the president of a giant corporation do? How do you become one? And, what does it feel like once you’re there? Was it all worth it?
Studs Terkel found out when he interviewed such a man for his book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974).
Larry Ross got in on the ground floor, worked his way all the way to the very top of the corporate ladder, and then decided to walk away from it all to become a consultant to help other executives do exactly what he did for so many years.
THE PRESIDENT OF A GIANT CORPORATION
Ross explained how he started up the corporate ladder at the sales level without any education: “I started in the corporate world, oh, gosh—’42. After kicking around in the Depression, having all kinds of jobs and no formal education, I wasn’t equipped to become an engineer, a lawyer, or a doctor. I gravitated to selling. Now they call it marketing. I grew up in various corporations. I become the executive vice-president of a large corporation and then of an even larger one. Before I quit, I became president and chief executive officer of another. All nationally known companies.”
Executives are the opposite of entrepreneurs: “Most corporations I’ve been in, they were on the New York Stock Exchange with thousands and thousands of stockholders. The last one where I was the president and chief executive, I was always subject to the board of directors, who had pressure from the stockholders. I owned a portion of the business, but I wasn’t in control. I don’t know of any situation in the corporate world where an executive is completely free and sure of his job from moment to moment.”
He talks about the constant fear: “Corporations always have to be right. That’s their face to the public. When things go bad, they have to protect themselves and fire somebody. ‘We had nothing to do with it. We had an executive that just screwed everything up.’ He’s never really ever been his own boss.
“The danger starts as soon as you become a district manager. You have men working for you and you have a boss above. You’re caught in a squeeze. The squeeze progresses from station to station. I’ll tell you what a squeeze is. You have the guys working for you that are shooting for your job. The guy you’re working for is scared stiff you’re gonna shove him out of his job. Everybody goes around and says, ‘The test of the true executive is that you have men working for you that can replace you, so you can move up.’ That’s a lot of baloney. The manager is afraid of the bright young guy coming up. [¶] Fear is always prevalent in the corporate structure. Even if you’re a top man, even if you’re hard, even if you do your job—by the slight flick of a finger, your boss can fire you. There’s always the insecurity. You bungle a job. You’re fearful of losing a big customer. You’re fearful so many things will appear on your record, stand against you. You’re always fearful of the big mistake. You’ve got to be careful when you go to corporation parties. Your wife, your children have to behave properly. You’ve got to fit in the mold. You’ve got to be on guard.”
Corporate life also controls social life: “When I was president of this big corporation, we lived in a small Ohio town, where the main plant was located. The corporation specified who you could socialize with, and on what level. (His wife adds: Who were the wives we could play bridge with.) The President’s wife could do what she wants, as long as it’s with dignity and grace. In a small town they didn’t have to keep check on you. Everybody knew. There are certain sets of rules. [¶] Not every corporation has that. The older the corporation, the longer it’s been in a powerful position, the more rigid, the more conservative they are in their approach. Your swinging corporations are generally the new ones, the upstarts, the nouveau riche. But, as they get older, like DuPont, General Motors, General Electric, they became more rigid. I’d compare them to the old, old rich—the Rockefellers and the Mellons—that train their children how to handle money, how to conserve their money, and how to grow with their money. That’s what happened to the older corporations. It’s only when they get in trouble that they’ll have a young upstart of a president come in and try to shake things up.”
He compares success in the corporate world to survival in the jungle: “The corporation is a jungle. It’s exciting. You’re thrown in on your own, and you’re constantly battling to survive. When you learn to survive, the game is to become the conqueror, the leader. [¶] The executive is a lonely animal in the jungle who doesn’t have a friend. Business is related to life. I think in our everyday living we’re lonely. I have only a wife to talk to, but beyond that … When I talked business to her, I don’t know whether she understood me. But, that was unimportant. What’s important is that I was able to talk out loud and hear myself—which is the function I serve as a consultant.”
He talks about the lack of privacy and the constant rumors: “Gossip and rumors are always prevalent in a corporation. There’s absolutely no secrets. I have always felt every office was wired. You come out of the board meeting, and people in the office already know what’s happened. I’ve tried many times to track down a rumor, but never could. I think people have been there so many years and have developed an ability to read reactions. From these reactions, they make a good, educated guess. Gossip actually develops into fact. [¶] It used to be a ploy for many minor executives to gain some information. ‘I heard that the district manager of California is being transferred to Seattle.’ He knows there’s been talk going on about changing district managers. By using this ploy—‘I know something’—he’s making it clear to the person he’s talking to that he’s been in on it all along. So, it’s all right to tell him. Gossip is another way of building up importance within a person who starts the rumor. He’s in, he’s part of the inner circle. Again, we’re back in the jungle. Every ploy, every trick is used to survive.
“When you’re gonna merge with a company or acquire another company, it’s supposed to be top secret. You have to do something to stem the rumors because it might screw up the deal. Talk of the merger, the whole place is in a turmoil. It’s like somebody saying there’ a bomb in the building, and we don’t know where it is, and when it’s going to go off. There’ve been so many mergers where top executives are laid off, the accounting department is cut by sixty percent, the manufacturing is cut by twenty percent. I have yet to find anybody in a corporation who was so secure to honestly believe it couldn’t happen to him. [¶] They put on a front: ‘Oh, it can’t happen to me. I’m too important.’ But, deep down, they’re scared stiff. The fear is there. You can smell it. You can see it on their faces. I’m not so sure you couldn’t see it on my face many, many times during my climb up.
“I always used to say—rough, tough Larry—I always said, ‘If you do a good job, I’ll give you a great reward. You’ll keep your job.’ I’ll have a sales contest and the men who make their quota will win a prize—they’ll keep their jobs. I’m not saying there aren’t executives who instill fear in their people. He’s no different than anybody walking down the street. We’re all subject to the same damn insecurities and neuroses—at every level. Competitiveness, that’s the basis of it.”
He talks about why he quit: “Why didn’t I stay in the corporate structure? As a kid, living through the Depression, you always heard about the tycoons, the men of power, the men of industry. And you kind of dream that. Gee, these are supermen. These are the guys that have no feeling, aren’t subject to human emotions, the insecurities that everybody else has. You get in the corporate structure, you find they all button their pants the same way everybody else does. They all got the same fears.
“The corporation is made up of many, many people. I call ‘em the gray people and the black—or white—people. Blacks and white are definite colors, solid. Gray isn’t. The gray people come there from nine to five, do their job, aren’t particularly ambitious. There’s no fear there, sure. But, they’re not subject to great demands. They’re only subject to dismissal when business goes bad and they cut off people. They go from corporation to corporation and get jobs. Then you have the black—or white—people. The ambitious people, the leaders, the ones who want to get ahead. [¶] When the individual reaches the vice presidency, or he’s general manager, you know he’s an ambitious, dedicated guy who wants to get to the top. He isn’t one of the gray people. He’s one of the black-and-white vicious people—the leaders, the ones who stick out in the crowd. [¶] As he struggles in this jungle, every position he’s in, he’s terribly lonely. He can’t confide and talk with the guys working under him. He can’t confide and talk to the guy he’s working for. To give vent to his feelings, his fears, and his insecurities, he’d expose himself. This goes all the way up the line until he gets to be president. The president REALLY doesn’t have anybody to talk to, because the vice presidents are waiting for him to die or make a mistake and get knocked off so they can get his job.
“He can’t talk to the board of directors, because to them he has to appear as the tower of strength, knowledge, and wisdom, and have the ability to walk on water. The board of directors, they’re cold, they’re hard. They don’t have any direct-line responsibilities. They sit in a staff capacity, and they really play God. They’re interested in profits. They’re interested in progress. They’re interested in keeping a good face in the community—if it’s profitable. You have the tremendous infighting of man against man for survival and clawing to the top. Progress.”
He talks about the toll all of this takes on the executives’ health: “We always saw signs of physical afflictions because of the stress and strain. Ulcers, violent headaches. I remember one of the giant corporations I was in, the chief executive officer ate Gelusil by the minute. That’s for ulcers. Had a private dining room with his private chef. All he ever ate was well-done steak and well-done hamburgers.”
The hours and responsibilities are unbelievable. “There’s one corporation chief I had who worked, conservatively, nineteen, twenty hours a day. His whole life was his business. And, he demanded the same of his executives. There was nothing sacred in life except the business. Meetings might be called on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve, Saturdays, Sundays. He was lonesome when he wasn’t involved with his business. He was always creating situations where he could be surrounded by his flunkies, regardless of what level they were, presidential, vice presidential … It was his life. [¶] In the corporate structure, the buck keeps passing up until it comes to the chief executive. Then, there ain’t nobody to pass the buck to. You sit there in your lonely office and finally you have to make a decision. It could involve a million dollars or hundreds of jobs or moving people from Los Angeles, which they love, to Detroit or Winnipeg. So, you’re sitting at the desk, playing God.
“You say, ‘Money isn’t important. You can make some bad decisions about money, that’s not important. What is important is the decisions you make about people working for you, their lives, their livelihood.’ It isn’t true. [¶] To the board of directors, the dollars are as important as human lives. There’s only yourself sitting there, making the decision, and you hope it’s right. You’re always on guard. Did you ever see a jungle animal that wasn’t on guard? You’re always looking over your shoulder. You don’t know who’s following you.”
He talks about the myth of loyalty in corporations: “The most stupid phrase anybody can use in business is loyalty. If a person is working for a corporation, he’s supposed to be loyal. This corporation is paying him less than he could get somewhere else at a comparable job. It’s stupid of him to hang around and say he’s loyal. The only loyal people are the people who can’t get a job anyplace else. Working in a corporation, in a business, isn’t a game. It isn’t a collegiate event. It’s a question of living or dying. It’s a question of eating or not eating. Who is he loyal to? It isn’t his country. It isn’t his religion. It isn’t his political party. He’s working for some company that’s paying him a salary for what he’s doing. The corporation is out to make money. The ambitious guy will say, ‘I’m doing my job. I’m not embarrassed taking my money. I’ve got to progress; and, when I won’t progress, I won’t be here.’ The schnook is the loyal guy because he can’t a job anyplace else.
“Many corporations will hang on to a guy or promote him to a place where he doesn’t belong. Suddenly, after a man’s been there twenty-five years, he’s outlived his usefulness. And, he’s too old to start all over again. That’s part of the cruelty. You can’t only condemn the corporation for that. The man himself should be smart enough and intuitive enough to know he isn’t getting anyplace, to get the hell out, and start all over. It was much more difficult at first to lay off a guy. But, if you live in a jungle, you become hard, unfortunately.
“When a top executive is let go, the king is dead, long live the king. Suddenly, he’s a persona non grata. When it happens, the shock is tremendous. Overnight. He doesn’t know what hit him. Suddenly, everybody in the organization walks away and shuns him because they don’t want to be associated with him. In corporations, if you back the wrong guy, you’re in his corner, and he’s fired, you’re guilty by association. So, what a lot of corporations have done is, when they call a guy in—sometimes, they’ll call him in on a Friday night and say, ‘Go home now and come in tomorrow morning and clean out your desk and leave. We don’t want any farewells or anything. Just get up and get the hell out.’ It’s done in nice language. We say, ‘Look, why cause any trouble? Why cause any unrest in the organization? It’s best that you just fade away.’ Immediately his Cadillac is taken away from him. His phone extension on the WATS [Wide Area Telecommunications Service] line taken away from him. All these things are done quietly and—bingo!—he’s dead. His phone at home stops ringing because the fear of association continues after the severance. The smell of death is there.
“We hired a vice president. He came highly recommended. He was with us about six months; and, he was completely inadequate. A complete misfit. Called him in the office, told him he was gonna go, gave him a nice severance pay. He broke down and cried. ‘What did I do wrong? I’ve done a marvelous job. Please don’t do this to me. My daughter’s getting married next month. How am I going to face the people?’ He cried and cried and cried. But, we couldn’t keep him around. We just had to let him go.
“I was just involved with a gigantic corporation. They had a shake-up two Thursdays ago. It’s now known as Black Thursday. Fifteen of twenty guys were let go overnight. The intelligent corporations say, ‘Clear, leave tonight,’ even if it’s midweek. ‘Come in Saturday morning and clean your desk. That’s all. No goodbyes or anything.’ They could be guys that have been there anywhere from a year to thirty years. If it’s a successful operation, they’re very generous. But, then again, the human element creeps in. The boss might be vindictive and cut him off without anything. It may depend on what the corporation wants to maintain as its image. [¶] And what it does to the ego! A guy in a key position, everybody wants to talk to him. All his subordinates are trying to get an audience with him to build up their own positions. Customers are calling him. Everybody is calling him. Now, his phone’s dead. He’s sitting at home; and, nobody calls him. He goes out and starts visiting his friends, who are busy with their own business, who haven’t got time for him. Suddenly, he’s a failure. Regardless what the reason was—regardless of the press release that said he resigned—he was fired.
“The only time the guy isn’t considered a failure is when he resigns and announces his new job. That’s the tip-off. ‘John Smith resigned, future plans unknown’ means he was fired. ‘John Smith resigned to accept the position of president at X Company.’ then you know he resigned. This little nuance you recognize immediately when you’re in corporate life.”
He talks about the changes in corporate life over the years: “Changes since ’42? Today the computer is taking over the world. The computer exposes all. There’s no more chance for shenanigans and phoniness. Generally, the computer prints out the truth. Not a hundred percent, but enough. It’s eliminated a great deal of the jungle infighting. There’s more facts for the businessman to work from, if the computer gives him the right information. Sometimes it doesn’t. They have a saying at IBM: ‘If you put garbage in the computer, you’ll take garbage out.’ Business is becoming more scientific with regard to marketing, finance, investments. And much more impersonal. [¶] But, the warm personal touch NEVER existed in corporations. That was just a sham. In the last analysis, you’ve got to make a profit. There’s a lot of family-held corporations that truly felt they were part of a legend. They had responsibilities to their people. They carried on as best they could. And, then, they went broke. The loyalty to their people, their patriarchy, dragged ‘em all down. Whatever few of ‘em are left are being forced to sell and are being taken over by the cold hand of the corporation.
“My guess is that twenty corporations will control about twenty percent of the consumer goods market. How much room is there left for the small guy? There’s the supermarket in the grocery business. In our time, there were little mama-and-papa stores, thousands and thousands, throughout the country. How many are there today? Unless you’re National Tea or A&P, there’s just no room. The small chains will be taken over by the bigger chains, and they themselves will be taken over … The fish swallows the smaller fish, and he’s swallowed by a bigger one, until the biggest swallows ‘em all. I have a feeling there’ll always be room for the small entrepreneur, but he’ll be rare. It’ll be very difficult for him.
“The top man is more of a general manager than he is an entrepreneur. There’s less gambling than there was. He won’t make as many mistakes as he did before in finance and marketing. It’s a cold science. But, when it comes to dealing with people, he still has to have that feel; and, he still has to do his own thinking. The computer can’t do that for him.
“When I broke in, no man could become an executive until he was thirty-five, thirty-six years old. During the past ten years, there’ve been real top executives of twenty-six, twenty-seven. Lately, there’s been a reversal. These young ones climbed to the top when things were good; but, during the last couple of years, we’ve had some rough times. Companies have been clobbered, and some have gone back to older men. But, that’s not gonna last.
“Business is looking for the highly trained, highly skilled YOUNG executive, who has the knowledge and the education in a highly specialized field. It’s happened in all professions; and, it’s happening in business. You have your comptroller who’s highly specialized. You have your treasurer who has to know finance, a heavily involved thing because of the taxation and the SEC. You have the manufacturing area. He has to be highly specialized in warehouse and in shipping—the ability to move merchandise cheaply and quickly. Shipping has become a horrendous problem because costs have become tremendous. You have to know marketing, the studies, the effects of advertising. A world of specialists. The man at the top has to have a general knowledge. And he has to have the knack of finding the right man to head these divisions. That’s the difficulty.
“You have a nice, plush lovely office to go to. You have a private secretary. You walk down the corridor, and everybody bows and says, ‘Good morning, Mr. Ross. How are you today?’ As you go up the line, the executives will say, ‘How is Mrs. Ross?’ Until you get to the higher executives. They’ll say, ‘How is Nancy?’ Here you socialize, you know each other. Everybody plays the game.”
He talks about why the executives are willing to go through it all. “A man wants to get to the top of the corporation, not for the money involved. After a certain point, how much more money can you make? In my climb, I’ll be honest, money was secondary. Unless you have tremendous demands, yachts, private airplanes—you get to a certain point, money isn’t that important. It’s the power, the status, the prestige. Frankly, it’s delightful to be on top and have everybody calling you Mr. Ross and have a plane at your disposal, and a car and a driver at your disposal. When you come to town, there’s people to take care of you. When you walk into a board meeting, everybody gets up and says hello. I don’t think there’s any human being that doesn’t love that. It’s a nice feeling. But, the ultimate power is in the board of directors. I don’t know anybody who’s free. You read in the paper about stockholders’ meetings, the annual report. It all sounds so glowing. But, behind the scenes, a jungle.”
THE CONSULTANT
In 1968, Ross got out of the corporate game and began coaching from the sidelines. “I’ve been called a business consultant. Some say I’m a business psychologist. You can describe me as an advisor to top management in a corporation.
“The executive who calls me usually knows the answer to his problem. He just has to have somebody to talk to and hear his decision out loud. If it sounds good when he speaks it out loud, then it’s pretty good. As he’s talking, he may suddenly realize his errors and he corrects them out loud. That’s a great benefit wives provide for executives. She’s listening and you know she’s on your side. She’s not gonna hurt you.
“I work on a yearly retainer with a corporation. I spend, oh, two, three days a month in various corporate structures. The key executives can talk to me and bounce things off me. The president may have a specific problem that I will investigate and come back to him with my ideas. The reason I came into this work is that, all my corporate life, I was looking for someone like me, somebody who’s been there. Because there’s no new problems in business today. There’s just a different name for different problems that have been going on for years and years and years. Nobody’s come up yet with a problem that isn’t familiar. I’ve been there. [¶] Example: The chief executive isn’t happy with the marketing structure. He raises many questions which I may not know specifically. I’ll find out and come back with a proposal. He might be thinking of promoting one of his executives. It’s narrowed down to two or three. Let’s say two young guys who’ve been moved to a new city. It’s a toss up. I notice one has bought a new house, invested heavily in it. The other rented. I’d recommend the second. He’s more realistic.
“If he comes before his board of directors, there’s always the vise. The poor sonofabitch is caught in the squeeze from the people below and the people above. When he comes to the board, he’s got to come with a firm hand. I can help him because I’m completely objective. I’m out of the jungle. I don’t have the trauma that I used to have when I had to fire somebody. What is it gonna do to this guy? I can give it to him cold and hard and logical. I’m not involved.”
He reflects on his career change: “I left that world because suddenly the power and the status were empty. I’d been there; and, when I got there, it was nothing. Suddenly, you have a feeling of little boys playing at business. Suddenly, you have a feeling—so what? It started to happen to me, this feeling, oh, in ’67, ’68. So, when the corporation was sold, my share of the sale was such … I didn’t have to go to back into the jungle. I don’t have to fight to the top. I’ve been to the mountain top. (Laughs.) It isn’t worth it.
“It was very difficult, the transition of retiring from the status position, where there’s people on the phone all day trying to talk to you. Suddenly, nobody calls you. This is a psychological … (long pause) I don’t want to get into that. Why didn’t I retire completely? I really don’t know. In the last four, five years, people have come to me with tempting offers. Suddenly, I realized what I’m doing is much more fun than going into that jungle again. So, I turned them down.”
Finally, he ends his interview with what he would like to do next: “I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to give back the knowledge I gained in corporate life. People have always told me I’d always been a great sales manager. In every sales group, you always have two or three young men with stars in their eyes. They always sat at the edge of the chair. I knew they were comers. I always felt I could take ‘em, develop ‘em, and build ‘em. A lot of old fogies like me—I can point out this guy, that guy who worked for me, and now he’s the head of this, the head of that. [¶] Yeah, I always wanted to teach. But, I had no formal education, and no university would touch me. I was willing to teach for nothing. But, there, also, they have their jungle. They don’t want a businessman. They only want people in the academic world, who have a formalized, and, I think, empty training. This is what I’d really like to do. I’d like to get involved with the young people and give my knowledge to them before it’s buried with me. Not that what I have is so great; but, there’s a certain understanding, a certain feeling …”
CONCLUSION
It seems Ross did it all and had it all when it comes to living the life of a successful top executive. Now that you know some of the sacrifices required to get to the top and what the view looks like from up there, it’s up to you to decide whether the rewards will be worth it for you. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a lot of money, status, and power. But, the crazy hours and constant fear and loneliness that Ross describes are serious drawbacks to this career choice. Whatever you decide, be awesome! Be your own hero!
Learn more intimate details about other U.S. occupations from people who worked in them for years from the other articles in the “Interviews With” series.
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