Neverisms Read online

  Never meet anybody after two for lunch.

  Meet in the morning because you’re sharper.JOSEPH P. KENNEDY

  The patriarch of the Kennedy clan went on to add: “Never have long lunches. They’re not only boring, but dangerous because of the martinis.”

  Never take a job that has no “in” box.HENRY KISSINGER, on ceremonial appointments

  A job that has no “in” box is a position that never receives requests for help or is never relied on for getting things done—and is, according to Kissinger, a job to be shunned.

  Never hire a friend.JOE KITA, in Guy Q: 1,305 Totally Essential Secrets

  You Either Know, or You Don’t (2003)

  Kita added: “There’s an old adage: It’s better to make friends of your employees than employees of your friends.” That adage was, in fact, authored by the oil tycoon and real estate speculator, Henry Flagler, and later made popular by John D. Rockefeller, Sr.: “A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.” Kita’s book also included this old saw: “Never let a friendship interfere with business.”

  Never try to imitate what the boys do.CHRISTINE LAGARDE

  Lagarde said this in 1999, shortly after becoming the first woman to head up Baker & McKenzie, the world’s second-largest law firm at the time. Her complete remark—when she was asked what advice she would give to an aspiring female lawyer—was: “Grit your teeth, because it is a matter of resilience, stamina, and energy. And never try to imitate what the boys do.” In 2007, Lagarde became France’s minister of economic affairs, industry, and employment, the first woman to hold such a position in a major industrialized country. In 2008, Forbes ranked her as the fourteenth-most powerful woman in the world.

  Never let an inventor run a company.

  You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market.ROYAL LITTLE, founder of Textron

  Never buy at the bottom, and always sell too soon.JESSE L. LIVERMORE, legendary Wall Street trader

  Never leave well enough alone.RAYMOND LOEWY

  Loewy was one of history’s most famous industrial designers, responsible for such iconic images as the Greyhound bus, the Lucky Strike package, the Shell logo, and the Studebaker Avanti. By tweaking the popular saying Leave well enough alone, he expressed his philosophy of design in a most creative way. The saying, which Loewy chose as the title of his 1951 autobiography, has been adopted as a motto by many entrepreneurs and other professionals committed to finding new and better ways to do things.

  Never learn anything about your men except from themselves.GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

  The longtime editor-in-chief of the Saturday Evening Post added: “A good manager needs no detectives, and the fellow who can’t read human nature can’t manage it.”

  Never be your own hatchet man.HARVEY B. MACKAY, in Swim with the Sharks

  Without Being Eaten Alive (1988)

  When Mackay came out with Swim with the Sharks, he was the relatively little-known CEO of the Mackay Envelope Company, a Minnesota company he had founded thirty years earlier. A year later, he was an American celebrity. His book had been at the top of the New York Times bestseller list for an entire year, and he was rapidly becoming one of America’s most popular business speakers. He went on to write four more bestsellers, including Beware the Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt and Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty, all generously filled with anecdotes and personal observations (often called “Mackay’s Maxims”). Tom Peters said that “Harvey Mackay is a master of brief, biting, and brilliant business wit and wisdom,” and many of Mackay’s best bits of wisdom have been expressed neveristically:

  My rule is, never make the same mistake three times.

  (on allowing himself one repeat mistake, but no more)

  Never accept any proposal immediately, no matter how good it sounds.

  Never let anyone, particularly a superstar, pick his or her own successor.

  Never make a major decision off the top of your head

  or from the bottom of your heart.

  Never travel without a tape recorder at your side

  so you can “write notes” to yourself while you’re driving.

  Never pick up someone else’s ringing phone

  (unless you’re prepared to pick up someone else’s headache).MARK H. MCCORMACK, from his 2002 book

  Never Wrestle with a Pig

  Never take a problem to your boss without some solutions.

  You are getting paid to think, not to whine.RICHARD A. MORAN, in his 1993 book

  Never Confuse a Memo with Reality

  Subtitled And Other Business Lessons Too Simple Not to Know, the book contained 355 aphorisms on aspects of work life that are often overlooked. Here are a half dozen more:

  Never let vacation time expire.

  Never wear a tie with a stain on it.

  Never in your life say, “It’s not my job.”

  Never go to a meeting without your calendar.

  Never correct a co-worker in front of a customer or client . . . or anyone else.

  Never let your guard down among superiors—even when traveling or socializing.

  Never sit in the dunk tank at the company picnic.RICHARD A. MORAN, in his 2006 book

  Nuts, Bolts, and Jolts: Fundamental Business

  and Life Lessons You Must Know

  In this sequel to Never Confuse a Memo with Reality, Moran offered 2,000 “prescriptive bullet points” on the nuts and bolts of business life, including the following:

  Never babysit the children of your boss.

  Never answer your cell phone while in the bathroom.

  Never be the last to leave a company going downhill.

  Never expect the employees to be truly honest in front of their boss.

  Never give a bad reference.

  Simply decline to comment if there’s nothing to say.

  Never settle for a job,

  but be realistic about the kind of jobs for which you are qualified.

  Never hesitate to steal a good idea.AL NEUHARTH, in Confessions of an S.O.B. (1989)

  Never write an advertisement

  which you wouldn’t want your own family to read.DAVID M. OGILVY

  This comes from Confessions of an Advertising Man, a 1963 bestseller from one of the most influential figures in advertising history. He added: “You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.” He also offered these thoughts:

  Never hire your client’s children.

  Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.

  Never pick a man because he slobbers all over you with kind words.GEORGE S. PATTON

  This quotation appeared in Patton on Leadership (1999) by Alan Axelrod. Patton continued: “Too many commanders pick dummies to serve on their staff. Such dummies don’t know how to do anything except say, ‘Yes.’ ” This is the only Patton neverism in the book, but in attempting to capture Patton’s views on a whole host of topics, Axelrod used a number of neverisms to describe what the military leader believed:

  Never confuse decisive decision-making with hasty guesswork.

  Never close yourself to suggestion and insight from others,

  including from the most junior members of the team.

  Never exploit those on whom you depend,

  and never give them even the inkling of a feeling that they are

  being exploited, cheated, or in any other way treated shabbily.

  Never do business with anybody you don’t like.HARRY QUADRACCI, founder of Quad/Graphics

  Quadracci called this one of his “ironclad rules,” adding, “If you don’t like somebody, there’s a reason. Chances are it’s because you don’t trust him, and you’re probably right.” The rule served Quadracci well. His company specialized in high-quality and high-volume printing, with customers that included Time, Sports Illustrated¸ and Playboy. When Quadracci died in 2001, his company was one of the world’s largest printing companies, with annual s
ales of more than $2 billion and 14,000 employees.

  Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon.CÉSAR RITZ

  Ritz added, “You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.” After Ritz opened his first hotel in Paris in 1898—and shortly thereafter hotels in London, Madrid, and New York City—his Ritz Hotels became synonymous with luxurious accommodations and exceptional service. Shortly after Ritz’s death in 1918, the eponym ritzy emerged as a term for upscale elegance.

  Never invest in a one-man gang.HOWARD RUFF, in Safely Prosperous or Real Rich?

  Choosing Your Personal Financial Heaven (2004)

  This was the third of Ruff’s “Seven Never-Do’s of Investing.” He explained:Although most start-ups are the result of the drive and leadership skills of one intrepid entrepreneur, successful new companies have a well-balanced, talented support team to provide all the necessary skills and experience the entrepreneur doesn’t have.

  Other Ruff “never-do’s” included:

  Never invest without an exit strategy.

  Never invest in a “good idea” that is for everyone.

  If it’s for everyone, it’s usually for no one.

  Never inject a man into the top, if it can be avoided.ALFRED P. SLOAN, in Adventures of a White Collar Man (1941)

  This advice is now routinely ignored, but a half-century ago it was considered bad form to bring in a CEO from another company, and especially another industry. Sloan began his advice by writing: “In an organization men should move from the bottom to the top. That develops loyalty, ambition, and talent, because there is a chance for promotion.”

  If you are male, never forget that

  ties are the number one accessory for a guy in business.BRAD TONINI, in The New Rules

  of the Game for Entrepreneurs (2006)

  Tonini, an Australian business consultant, also offered ten “Keys for thinking like an entrepreneur.” One of them was: “Never assume anything.”

  Never accept the first offer, no matter how good it sounds.

  Never reject an offer out of hand,

  no matter how unacceptable it sounds when you first hear it.BRIAN TRACY, in his 2000 book The 100 Absolutely

  Unbreakable Rules of Business Success

  These contrasting principles were offered as corollaries to “The Law of Terms.” In his book, Tracy offered scores more laws and rules of business success, including:

  Never make excuses or blame anyone else for anything.

  Resolve never to be caught not having done your homework in advance.

  Never allow yourself to wish, hope, or trust

  that anyone else will do it for you.

  Never trust to luck or hope that something unexpected

  will turn up to solve a problem or save a situation.

  Never let yourself be rushed into parting with money.

  You have worked too hard to earn it and taken too long to accumulate it.

  Never dump a good idea on a conference table.

  It will belong to the conference.JANE TRAHEY, American advertising executive,

  quoted in 1977 in the New York Times

  Never allow anyone to get between

  you and your customers or your suppliers.JACK WELCH, calling this “a cardinal rule of business”

  in Jack: Straight from the Gut (2001)

  Never instruct, correct, or reprimand employees in a sarcastic manner.WESLEY WIKSELL, in Do They Understand You? (1960)

  fourteen

  Never Have Your Dog Stuffed

  Book, Song & Movie Titles

  In 1943, seven-year-old Alan Alda was diagnosed with polio. At the time, polio was one of the world’s most dreaded diseases, viewed by many people as a kind of modern-day plague. When a case of polio was diagnosed in a community, it was common for frightened parents to keep their children away from swimming pools, movie theaters, and other public places where the odds of contracting the viral infection would be increased. There was no cure for the disease, and there would be none for more than a decade, when Jonas Salk’s first effective polio vaccine became available in 1955.

  Alda’s father was Robert Alda, a singer and actor who eight years later would win a Tony Award for his role in Guys and Dolls, and his mother was Joan Brown, a former Miss New York. After the diagnosis, the anxious parents did everything they could to find medical care for their only child. From their son’s perspective, though, the method they chose felt more like torture than treatment.

  More than a half century later, as Alda began to write his autobiography, he recalled an excruciatingly painful treatment regimen—originally developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny—that involved the application of steaming hot woolen blankets to his legs and a stretching of the leg muscles that caused the young lad to feel as if his limbs were being ripped off.

  Within a year, Alda was polio-free. And even though Alda’s parents were assured that their son was no longer contagious, the boy was declared off-limits by the parents of almost all of his former friends. In an attempt to raise the spirits of their increasingly lonely child, Mr. and Mrs. Alda one day surprised Alan with a large black cocker spaniel. There was an instant connection between boy and dog, who was soon named Rhapsody (the name chosen because Alda’s father had just landed his first movie role, playing the composer George Gershwin in a film biography titled Rhapsody in Blue).

  At age eight, when Alda’s spirits had improved enormously, fate delivered another crushing blow. His beloved Rhapsody died suddenly—and painfully—after eating chicken bones that had been discarded with some leftover Chinese food. The next day, Mr. Alda and his son wrapped the dog in a blanket and carried him to a dry riverbed near their house. As they started to dig a grave, tears began streaming down Alan’s cheeks, and by the time the hole was finished, he was crying uncontrollably. The distraught father, not sure what to say, ultimately proffered the first thought that occurred to him: “Maybe we should have the dog stuffed?” Alan, who couldn’t bear the idea of seeing Rhapsody tossed in a hole and covered with dirt, agreed: “Okay, let’s stuff him!”

  Later in the day, Alan and his father found themselves in a local taxidermy shop, trying to describe their dog’s personality and explain his favorite expressions. Six weeks later, the dog finally arrived—but it was far from the Rhapsody that Alan remembered. The stuffed animal was totally unrecognizable, now looking almost like a rabid dog about to lunge. Visitors to the house began to avoid the living room, where the dog had been placed. And when the dog was banished to the front porch, postal workers and delivery people refused to go anywhere near the house. Alda was only eight, but he was learning his first major life lesson:Losing the dog wasn’t as bad as getting him back. Now that he was stuffed, he was just a hollow parody of himself. Like a bad nose job or a pair of eyes surgically set in eternal surprise, he was a reminder that things would never again be the way they were.

  As the years passed, the notion of stuffing a pet dog became a kind of metaphor for Alda, reminding him that it was a mistake to cling to the past, no matter how much he wanted to, and that he must accept the changes that life presented, no matter how difficult. Alda shared the story—and the life lesson—in his 2005 autobiography, appropriately titled:

  Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I’ve Learned

  Book titles that begin with the word never have been very popular over the years and, in at least one case, quite influential in changing some longstanding human perceptions. In 1948, the Canadian Wildlife Service assigned Farley Mowat, a well-known Canadian naturalist, the task of investigating the reason behind the declining caribou population in northern Manitoba. At the time, most officials suspected the local wolf population, and this belief was the rationale for a proposed plan to greatly reduce, and possibly even eradicate, wolves from the region. After spending two summers and one winter in the frozen tundra, Mowat made a discovery that would forever change his life. The wolves, instead of dev
astating the caribou herds with their marauding ways, subsisted primarily on small mammals, especially rodents. In a report of his findings, he concluded:We have doomed the wolf not for what it is but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be: the mythological epitome of a savage, ruthless killer—which is, in reality, not more than the reflected image of ourselves. We have made it the scapegoat for our own sins.

  More than a decade after his discovery, Mowat chronicled his experiences in a 1963 book that was subtitled The Amazing True Story of Life Among the Arctic Wolves. The book’s title was perfectly suited as well:

  Never Cry Wolf

  The title was borrowed from a centuries-old saying that has long communicated an important life message: never lie, for if you do, people will not believe you when you are telling the truth. The saying, and the story behind it, is based on Aesop’s famous fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Shortly after Mowat’s book was published, the Canadian Wildlife Service was overwhelmed with letters from concerned citizens voicing opposition to the slaughtering of wolves. Even though the Wildlife Service denied any plans for such an eradication, and despite the many critics who disputed Mowat’s findings, this single book substantially changed the way people viewed Canis lupus. In a 2001 article in The Canadian Historical Review, historian Karen Jones hailed the book as “an important chapter in the history of Canadian environmentalism.” In 1983, Mowat’s book was adapted into the popular Disney film Never Cry Wolf, with actor Charles Martin Smith giving an unforgettable performance as the Canadian naturalist.