Modern Business: Flintstone or Jetson

Imagine getting off the train and lugging your suitcase without rollers. You are also lugging a locking latch briefcase with your monogram on it. It weighs about twenty pounds since it contains a field manual, your last project binder, a three-hole punch, box of colored pencils, case containing protractor and drafting tools, a sheaf of carbon paper, half a ream of lined paper, another half of white paper, a heavy duty stapler and staples, and reference material you have been toting along because you haven’t been home in three weeks.

You are looking for a payphone so you can “drop a dime” and make a three minute call to your office and you are lugging the newest and baddest gadget that transforms how you do your business as a traveling management consultant – the all new Remington Rand, full key-board electric adding machine. For $169.50 plus tax, this baby means you do not have to use your client’s equipment. It weighs a little, but the convenience is worth it. Your carry your portable manual typewriter in your suitcase for ease. You manually produce your spread sheets, pie charts and graphs.

The year is 1960. The average annual income is $5,600, according to the US Commerce Department, and you are making almost $10K after taxes. You travel by train because costs a lot less than air travel. For example, a round trip airline ticket cost about $75 to fly from Cleveland to Washington, D.C. That would be around $400 today. Your client got invoiced for it but they sure liked your electric machine.

In a world without apps, business had been expanding over the previous decade and saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average climb from just under 200 to knock at 700’s door, briefly. People, not programs, made investment decisions. Modern business was like passenger train service – 1960’s improvements to 1940’s technology.

People like George S. May realized that business was composed of algorithms. Ratios and percentages ruled decision making. That meant that newer and better technology was interesting but only in so far as it added convenience and expedience to decision making. The idea that business is business prevailed. Business did not care about anything except making and protecting profit. It is not that people were not important, they were. It is just that profit motive dominated business thinking.

Liberal minded humanists tended to resent the focus of the business community on profit over people. In every era they have raised their voices in objection to the perception that business exists only for profit and, in fact, they are correct. Successful business tends to be myopic because, as I say, business is business. That brings us to the latest breed of technical minded social networkers who see themselves as the new humanists and seek to transform the business community in modern ways.

So let’s consider Fred Flintstone and George Jetson. Brilliant creations of Hanna-Barbara, the characters are enamored of gadgetry in their respective gadget centric societies. They do their jobs working for companies run by bosses whose sole interest in making a profit. Business does not care about fads or gadgets. Just ask Fred or George.

Article first published as Modern Business: Fred Flintstone or George Jetson on Blogcritics.

Requiem for the May Company

Here was my Tweet. “After 85+ years, George S. May Company is no longer in business. Perhaps the consulting company should have hired outside consultants.” I could have left it at that, but in the last ten years of its existence, this once great company churned and burned so many consultants and small companies, either you or someone you know has been touched by it. It touched me. Now it is no more.

George S. May identified business as a set of algorithms and began his management consulting business in 1925 with a consulting project for a company that would become Sunbeam, the blender maker. His new Chicago based company did so well that it opened offices in New York and San Francisco. Despite the Great Depression, May Company history includes its posting revenue of $1 million in 1937, more than $15 million today.

May himself became best known for getting golf televised, among other things. Post war America was good for his company, which advertised “Business Engineering” in leading business magazines and journals. He died in 1962 leaving the company stock to his family. In 1966 the May Company left downtown Chicago for the suburb of Park Ridge, where the 41-thousand square-foot world headquarters is now closed and for sale, price $4 million. More about the “Ridge” in a moment.

In the ‘90s the May company hit the $100 million revenue mark and by 2000 it began operations in Mexico, under Donald J. Fletcher, its third President. In 2002, Israel Kushnir replaced Fletcher. According to one of the companies last press releases, “The company’s former president Israel Kushnir has left his post to pursue his own ventures, but the company is in the best of hands as Mrs. Kerry Sam Jacobs, George S May’s granddaughter is overseeing the transition to ensure prosperity as the company moves forward.”

That expression, “. . . left his post to pursue his own ventures,” is usually a ubiquitous way of saying, “You’re fired.” The company’s Managing Director, Paul Rouseau, a frequent Fox Business News personality, is also pursuing his own ventures as are many other former top executives who presided over the May Company’s financial collapse inherited by Jacobs and the May family lawyers in 2010.

As one of the replacement senior executives put it to me, in an email confirming the company’s demise, “I left at the beginning of the year, but it was a slow, painful end to a once great company. 2010 was like sitting on the deck of the Titanic watching people rearrange the deck chairs while the band played on.”

The Ridge building has a cornerstone: “1960.” Eisenhower, a golf enthusiast, was leaving office. Cadillacs were 22 feet long. Gasoline cost pennies. Business had boomed. Inside the conservative office building, a photo mural of golf’s greats inspired awe. I never knew whether to genuflect or salute when I entered and breathed in that 1960’s air.

It has been said that the Kushnir-Rouseau regime monitored every phone call and every email. Yelling was the preferred mode of communication. The way they saw it, clients needed to be controlled by analysts and consultants. Intimidation meant control.

Israel Kushnir made an impression on me in an awkward moment at the Ridge, as I stood outside the training building on a cigarette break during a conference with a colleague. The dapper and bald gent strode across the parking lot and pointed at me.

“Stop smoking,” he declared, briskly.

“Grow hair,” I exhaled.

He passed me, smiled and entered the building. My colleague bit his lip, trying not to laugh. “Do you know who that is?” he choked. “That’s the president of the company.”

Paul Rouseau convinced me to pursue my own interests that Christmas.

There were others who worked alongside Kushnir and Rouseau who got sacked, albeit too late for new management to save May. Apart from a large headquarters staff of executives and support personnel, there is a telemarketing staff, a field sales staff, a field survey service [analyst] staff, a field consulting staff and a smaller client service staff that is now looking for work around Park Ridge, Illinois.

The Better Business Bureau gave the George S. May International Company an F before the company shut down. The company had previously boasted the Bureau’s Excellence in Ethics Award. The BBB also gives an F to May company rival International Profit Associates and its alphabet named clone companies. IPA is also the target of litigation by the Illinois State Attorney General's Office, but that is another story for some other time.

Rippoff.com and many similar consumer rating sites have been on the May company’s case for years. At a client meeting in Sitka, Alaska, a May analyst, a consultant and I, as Project Director, were met by police, given a cease-and-desist order and individual property restraining orders after our client had gone online and read Rippoff. The office in Park Ridge did not appreciate my report, I can assure you.

Evidently, what had been called “the May way” quit working. But, you know that your business is in the wind when Wikipedia deletes your page. It is really kind of sad. Business Engineering failed. One can only wonder what the May family will do with 85+ years’ worth of project binders filled with meticulous documentation. It is a Titanic load of American small business history.

Article first published as Requiem for the May Company on Blogcritics.