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About this
time last year, we received an e-mail from a reader who
asked if we believed America’s competitive success was
linked to its relative lack of corruption.
Having
just spent two weeks in
Latin America, where we heard countless stories of systemic governmental
misbehavior, we replied that we agreed. Yes, the
United
States has its share of corruption, largely in
public-works projects, but, we wrote: “Virtually no one
starting a company in the
United States
today has to worry about covering the hidden costs of
bribes, payoffs and kickbacks.”
The notion
seemed so self-evident to us that, as we sent the column
to our editors, one of us commented, “This ought to be a
quiet week.”
Talk about
being blindsided! That column was one of our most
controversial of the year, enflaming slews of readers who
accused us of everything from ignorance to collusion.
“Stop it!
It is a known fact that private enterprise owns the
government, paid for with bribes in the form of campaign
contributions,” one typical letter read.
“The whole
American system is rigged and you’re either idiotic or
blind not to know that,” said another.
And that
was just in January.
As 2007
unfolded, we were to write four more columns that sparked
particular sound and fury. Now, most of our columns
receive a hefty response with general commentary on our
point of view. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
We’re talking about columns that generated an avalanche of
mail with...well, let’s call it “heightened emotions.”
Take our
March column decrying the Employee Free Choice Act. That
bill would have allowed organizers to start unions by
getting 50 percent of employees, plus one person, to sign
union cards—instead of the current procedure that involves
a federally supervised secret ballot. If our column on
corruption set off a firestorm, this one unleashed a
conflagration. This time, however, we weren’t surprised.
We knew
that organized labor loved the legislation. Why wouldn’t
they? By removing the secret ballot, it would make
unionization much easier. We also knew many businesspeople
feared it to their bones, feeling, as we did, that if the
act was made into law, it would be a real blow to American
competitiveness. We considered it the “Unemployment Act.”
Ultimately, the act did pass in the US House of
Representatives, but stalled in the US Senate. Regardless,
for weeks after our column was published, we received
torrents of e-mails. Tallying them up now, it’s amazing to
see they actually ran 2 to 1 in favor of our
position—perhaps a reflection of our readership more than
anything else.
But
without a doubt, the negative responses were the most
colorful of the year, our favorite still being the letter
that read, “Jack, We’ve got you scheduled to run sewing
machine #13 when you get to hell. By the way, that’s a
non-union shop.”
A similar
level of passion greeted our column about Joe Torre, the
manager of the New York Yankees baseball team, whose
contract with the team became a cause celebre in November.
For the record, our purpose with the column was to
illustrate the importance of keeping contract talks quick
and private. But by a margin of 3 to 1, readers told us
that our Torre example was, pardon us, off-base.
“If you
want to write about how to back a beloved employee into a
corner and out the window of a high-rise so you don’t look
like the bad guy, then use Torre,” as one put it. “You
missed the point. Joe deserved better.”
By
contrast, our most popular column this year was the love
letter that we wrote to Gen Y. This is a group of young
people who—despite their negative press—we have
consistently found to be engaged, worldly, entrepreneurial
and hungry to win.
Apparently, our view struck a chord, as that column
elicited a rush of letters from grateful 20-somethings, as
well as their employers, professors...and even some of
their parents.
“Thank
you!” one mother wrote us, “At last someone has the guts
to see these kids as we see our daughter and her
friends—the hope of the future.”
Finally, a
July column on bosses who get it all wrong didn’t spark
controversy as much as inspire a boatload of advice to
us...about what we failed to mention in our list of the
top five boss dysfunctions. One reader even sent us a list
of 15 bad behaviors we left out.
But we
were perhaps most taken aback by the e-mail we received
from a reader who hung the column in her cubicle. A few
days later, a manager told her to take it down and stop
“pushing the envelope.”
We’d say,
never stop that! Especially, keep pushing back at us. We
look forward to opening a whole new envelope of hot topics
in 2008.
*****
Jack and
Suzy Welch are the authors of the international bestseller
Winning
(Collins). Their latest book is Winning: The Answers:
Confronting 74 of the Toughest Questions in Business Today
(Collins). They are eager to hear about your career
dilemmas and challenges at work and look forward to
answering your questions in future columns. You can e-mail
them questions at winning@nytimes.com. Please include your
name, occupation, city and country |
