Napoleon Hill Encomium

"Think and Grow Rich" - Enlightened Management Before Its Time

2009-11-10T22:35:00.000-08:00

My first Ezine article about Napoleon's ahead-of-his-time management theories. Call he and I naive but I believe we have come to a point of change. Most management is fuelled by power, control, and fear. Most management theory is a disguised version of how to manipulate your people. And it all prospers on a culture of controlling information.
The great transparency that the web is enabling will hopefully expose and ridicule the egoism we constantly read about in business magazines about the sheikh of this industry, the guru of that, the incredible money of the other. And hopefully the covert greed and intimidation that is so much a cause of the current recession will no longer fester in darkness and Napoleon's vision of mature adults managing the business and caring for the customer will be realized.

Stoicism, Fear, and Over 40

2009-11-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

I created my second Squid about Napoleon today. That is the title above. I told you I would get more creative. Anyhow, click here to look at it and please leave a comment.
Thanks - Po

Getting without Giving Caused This Recession and the Great Depression

2009-10-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

Napoleon knew what caused the Great Depression - getting without giving and the continuous drive to be the one getting more and giving less. It is pretty much the same thing that has caused this latest recession. Everyone has a role in this, at least everyone that has or had money or a job.

The pre-Depression method of doing business was through power and fear with capital and labor representing themselves as foes in a battle. This was the approach that "has taken the soul out of men", "driven men as if they were pieces of cold machinery" as quoted from "Think and Grow Rich". There are plenty of examples of disgraceful behavior on all sides but the output was a Great Depression where everyone lost out and no one won.

After the Great Depression Napoleon envisioned a future of cooperation between labor and management. He saw that business was in need of reform, everyone in it was trying to get without giving. He thought the shock of the Depression marked the end of one age of doing business exploitatively and the beginning of a more enlightened one of cooperation and sharing. His faith in men was great.

Unfortunately for us all he was wrong then, but not incorrect. His ideas are still valid, just not yet applied in any large scale. Maybe after seeing (again) what the approach of greed and fear does we can move on to a more intelligent approach to business. Maybe now we can remember the sickness hidden behind sycophantic articles in newspapers and business magazines drooling over huge remuneration or riches.

There is no way one person can take a billion dollars or a hundred million dollars out of a company without depriving others of their share in some way. It was not possible 70 years ago, it was not possible in the last 15 years either

There are some companies trying to take a more enlightened approach. I will examine a couple of them in the next post.
- Po

New Napoleon Squid

2009-10-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

I just created my first Squid today - about Napoleon naturally. It's called "Napoleon Hill Tribute". I will get more creative as I get used to the medium.
Click here to see it.

Why a blog about Napoleon Hill?

2009-10-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

Because he's generous, humane, cant-free, and just weird enough to make you feel you are dealing with another flawed soul and not an advertisement.
I was a mid-level manager in corporate America whose particular gifts were no longer needed when the company decided that building for the future was less important than impressing Wall St. with stringent cost cutting. (Sorry for the incipient rant, I will not get into the pros and cons of this here but will address it in another forum.).
Anyway, in the summer of 2009 I was out of a job and looking for another. I had become a manager 10 years ago, discovered I was good at it and enjoyed it. But when the manager gig ends and prospective employers start asking about your special skills... you realize your ability has become enabling other people rather than doing something yourself.
I pursued job searching fruitlessly for a couple of months until I realized I didn't like this way of doing things, it was enervating, demotivating, and made me feel tawdry. So I started looking for other ways to make enough money to support my family (wife and four children).
During this time I went through many negative feelings about myself - lack of skills, abundance of age (mid 40s), no longer relevant, etc and so on. I am sure the path is familiar to many. I read and looked into life coaches, self-development programs, re-training until I was pretty overwhelmed and none the happier.
Then I came across Napoleon's book "Think and Grow Rich". It is a cheesy title and if I hadn't been able to download a free copy I probably would not have read it. But I did and his down-to-earth approach to great ideas struck a chord in me that spurred me to revitalize, re-think and reorganize my search for money to support my family.
This is not a story, it is a work in progress. I am still in the middle of things. I have a plan and I am working it. But I have had so many thoughts about Napoleon and his book that I wanted to share them as some kind of payback for the help his book has been to me, (although whether he would see it as that is another question).