A man was speaking to a room full of his subordinates, extolling the benefits to be derived from his company’s customers’ purchases of some of the products offered by the department store he represented. I was one of the subordinates in that room, the representative of a crew of artists tasked with the presentation of the company’s wares in newspaper and magazine advertising. The man who was speaking was high in the hierarchy of the advertising department; I was far below him in that same organization.
It bothers me when people in “subordinate” positions defer to the “leader” when questions of accuracy or propriety or — decency — are posed to them. I’ve been lucky in that regard: I have not been paid so much money that it clogged my mouth and kept me from speaking. But when I was a highly-paid employee — even by 2020 standards — it did not keep me from pointing out the Emperor’s bare buttocks. In that meeting where people sat in silence or regurgitated statistics when called upon, I listened, and then, tried to set fire to my career. I said to the speaker, “Wow: That came out of your mouth so smoothly, just like you believed it.” My boss was in that meeting, and after I had spoken, she gave me a look that told me that I was going to be spending some quality time in her office.
I started writing this column before most of us in this country were made aware of the dangers of COVID-19, and before I had finished reading the novel, The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane, which dealt in part, with the 1918 flu pandemic that has been estimated to have killed about 675,000 people in the United States. (Provided that the COVID-19 virus does not “disappear, like magic,” there are some projections that 240,00 people in this country will die from the current pandemic.) I wonder if the potential for death could possibly have been lowered if one person in a position of responsibility — and with access to the ear of a decision-maker — had spoken “truth to power,” when the truth was known. I have been a manager of other people for most of my working career, but I embraced, early on, the theory of “listening and guidance.” I “womanaged” many artists with skills superior to mine, and when they proposed concepts that were new to me, my ego did not prevent me from giving them a forum. Some of the best ideas that came from the group of people who reported to me were the result of individual creativity being given the freedom of expression.
One day, I overheard one of the artists who reported to me muttering a concern, and after an inquiry, made me aware of a practice that was unknown to me. I went to my boss — the creative director — and told her that I was going to challenge that practice, which came from the Senior Vice-President. My boss sighed, made efforts to deter me, but as I told her, “I am advising you, not asking for permission.” She probably sighed again as I left her office. My conversation with the SVP ultimately resulted in the cessation of the practice. I was not a physician with credentials as a director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, nor a physician with the National Institutes of Health. I was an assistant creative director with a highly tuned sense of fairness and equity, and no fear of speaking truth to power.
Would that there were more of us in this time of need.
cjon3acd@att.net