This opinion piece elicited a number of letters from colleagues, of the “I’ve had the same thoughts but was afraid to utter them” variety, when published 14 years ago in the Family Firm Institute newsletter. I’m reprinting it now because so much in the news has made me feel exactly the same way.
Does high and mighty rhetoric about the virtuousness of our work and our clients make other FFI members as uncomfortable as it does me? Do others feel as I do, that it’s pretentious and sycophantic to portray entrepreneurs as the backbones our society, by virtue of nothing more than their business success?
I hasten to say that helping entrepreneurs does serve society in certain ways. Maintaining incentives to capital and to labor is valuable to the economy. And helping to maintain trade and employment in communities is praiseworthy, in those few cases where the alternative to succession is really closing up shop. Releasing people from pain and frustration, opening systems to better teamwork, and facilitating innovation in the face of chagne are all missions to be proud of.
My problem is that the rhetoric seems to ignore some of those clients’ antisocial activities. The zealous consultant sometimes echoes principles that are based less on what benefits society than on what benefits the rich or, to quote an early 20th century steel magnate, “the worthy men to whom God in his wisdom had entrusted the industrial life of the country.”
When we speak and vote in the interests of the well-to-do, let us remember that we do so only because we are (relatively) well-to-do — not because we have a corner on virtue.
Is it for the sake of philanthropy that we fight to preserve private wealth? I don’t think so. Not all my clients believe in philanthropy. Furthermore, philanthropy isn’t inherently virtuous; it involves choices, like any other investment, based on principles that are always subjective and often self-serving. How can I say that my three ducat gift to the Art Institute benefits society more than my recirculating two ducats throuh my local economy and paying the other ducat in taxes to support state services and reduce the federal deficit?
Sycophancy is worse than self-righteousness. It can bind us to dysfunction in clients’ systems, when we ought to be helping them see:
- discrimination in employment and promotion. Those few family firms that are leaders in creating workplace cultures of fairness and diversity receive disproportionate media attention. Many others are decades behind corporate America; some are institutional perpetuators of prejudice and intolerance;
- tax avoidance games based not just on loopholes but on lying. When lying is part of my clients’ culture (family and business), it adversely affects everything I try to help them do;
- cheating, not just the IRS, but also the company’s employees and minor shareholders;
- silencing dissent or diversity among family members.
The point is not that entrepreneurs as a class are any more corrupt, self-righteous, or pigheaded than the rest of us. My point is that they are no less so. As individuals, they range from scrupulous to unscrupulous, from socially conscientious to sociopathic. Should we ignore those dimensions?
I wonder if my own profession (psychology) might take a useful role model from those lawyers and accountants who neither judge nor interfere with their clients’ sins–but who don’t turn a blind eye to them, either. They at least counsel clients on the risks inherent in any lawbreaking they become aware of. It is certainly not a psychologist’s job to sit in moral judgment. But is it not the responsibility of family therapists and organizational consultants to force discussion of the emotional, relational, developmental risks and costs of some of our clients’ practices? If so, then perhaps we need to stop buttering them up.