Missed Their Calling

From time to time I will encounter a story wherein one of the principals has clearly chosen the wrong profession; however proficient he or she may have become, it is clear from the nature of the account, if not from the subject’s own remarks or actions, that he or she would be far more successful in another endeavor. This isn’t really surprising, when you think about it; most people grow and change as their careers develop, and very few of us are fortunate enough to have a true vocation that will occupy us for all of our lives. Where this becomes tragic is when an individual has spent decades in a career that does not suit them, and has been miserable the whole time, or where an individual is attempting to influence others with his or her expertise while failing to grasp that said expertise is inferior to that of an ordinary schoolchild…

The recent comments of some of the Tea Party operatives calling for small businesses in America to refuse to hire anyone in order to harm President Obama’s job creation initiatives (and his chances for re-election next year) struck me as falling into this category. I don’t pretend to know that much about politics, and no one would describe me as a demagogue, capable of swaying the masses or leading even a very small percentage of the electorate to the opinion I want them to have. But I know a fair amount about starting, developing, and managing a small business, and it struck me that Melissa Brookstone of the Tea Party Nation should probably stick to politics, because this whole idea is just silly from a business standpoint…

Consider, for a moment that no paid position in any business should exist unless the company has an active need for whatever function the employee is supposed to fulfill. If a given business has no need for a groundskeeper or a wine steward, for example, then it shouldn’t employ one. By the same token, if a given company has a need for a specific position, that means that it is losing money for every day that position is open – either because that position is not generating revenue through production, or because that position is not preventing the loss of revenue through efficient operations. If we remove all extraneous considerations and simply consider the business implications, then the suggestion that a business leave any position open, or fail to create new positions that are needed, is preposterous. Taken to its logical conclusion, such a suggestion will ultimately destroy the company in order to achieve the goals of the person or persons making it…

Now, I don’t mean to suggest that the Tea Party Nation (or the larger Tea Party movement that it alleges to speak for) are hostile to small business in America and want to see it destroyed; such a suggestion would be inflammatory as well as unsupported by the evidence. On the strength of the Chicago Tribune story from which I learned of this call to action it would appear that Ms. Brookstone simply regards the removal from public office of the current President, the majority of both houses of Congress, and indeed, everyone else with whom she disagrees as being more important than the lives and livelihood of everyone associated with small business in America. And, indeed, from her political and ideological point of view, this may seem reasonable; I am no expert on political viewpoints, let alone far-right extremist viewpoints. I merely observe that from the standpoint of a business teacher and management consultant, this is lunacy, plain and simple…

The American author and humorist James Thurber once noted, as the moral to one of his modernistic fables, that “You can’t be King of the Beasts if there aren’t any.” Even if we accept, for the sake of argument, that everything advanced by the Tea Party about the current administration is correct, that still does not explain how crippling every small business in America and thereby destroying our economy and bringing about the personal ruin of tens of millions of people will save us from the horrors of socialism and/or communism – assuming that socialism and/or communism have horrors associated with them in the first place. I can only suggest that Ms. Brookstone and the Tea Party stick to politics – because they would appear to be terrible business consultants…