In this modern day, businesses typically seek candidates that are trained primarily in technology to be the bulk of their work force. As modern day stands, technology appears to be the future, so why bother with people that keep their noses in a book instead of an Excel workbook? There is a great deal that the adamant study of literature and philosophy provides a mind with, as opposed to simply focusing on a hard skill. Hard skills are wonderful and very valuable; however, they are not all that makes a candidate valuable. The ideal business hires a person not just for their skills in front of Excel, but also their values and reliability. What business can thrive with unethical employees with no regard to the business or its success? Are not the best candidates the ones that have developed ethics and thinking – people that can solve challenges that other cannot; the candidates that no how to take a part a problem and see a solution – in short the people that can do what the business team is weak in? Imagine an organization built upon only engineers with no regards to ethical behavior – they wouldn’t be likely to contribute to society, their employees, or the economy; would they? Unethical behavior does not lead to good consequences, and since a business is a non-living entity that serves to fulfill some need of the people through its workforce – should not that work force be built of intelligent, well-rounded individuals that turn the economy and maintain the ethical standards of their society?
Literature is more than just books and reading. Through literature, a person is educated in different life scenarios. In fact, such texts as Sun Tzu's Art of War have even been utilized to train successful business strategists. It is education on how to think and understand values, other people and their perspectives in addition to the preservation of knowledge. The student of literature learns what it is like to make a tragic error (hamartia) that devastates the word around them as well as themselves. In Shakespeare’s King Lear, an excellent tragedy within leadership, the audience learns first-hand how pride and corruption of power can cost a leader everything value to them as well as to the people around them. Since business leaders must make decisions like this on a regular basis – it stands to reason that they should be educated in the effects of good and bad leadership. A few years ago, many hugely important laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act were placed in to effect after terrible unethical behavior. Business leaders had falsified information while cheating numerous parties out of tremendous sums of money. Power has often corrupted leaders; however, far too often it is the people around them that pay the true price. Enron will be a name that forever lives in infamy after corroding the trust of the people and businesses. Some of the most successful business people are trained in literature. For example, T.S. Eliot was more than a superb poet; he was also a successful banker and business man. IN addition to this, many lawyers begin their career by studying literature as an undergrad in order to gain the necessary skills to enter law school and become a Jurist Doctorate. Literature is one of the greatest tools to learn how to think. It can be said that a man who lacks the capacity to think can do no good for himself or the world around him, and thus: he is a failure.
Imagine if the leaders of Enron had read King Lear and come across the following speech:
“Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.”
What if those leaders had not focused on how to make more money than any person needs, and instead focused on providing for those that have less? History remembers men not by wealth, but by their works. King Lear, a character based on the legend of King Leir, is not remembered for his great works, but instead for allowing his kingdom to succeed to an heir who prioritized humbleness and fair treatment; instead, he is remembered for allowing pride to swoon his better judgment and allowing his kingdom to be torn apart and nearly destroyed by pride and disrespect. In fact – although the original story depicts Leir as re-claiming his throne and overcoming his pride – Shakespeare’s Lear is not so fortunate. Why did Shakespeare end his play this way? My interpretation is to show just how awful of an effect comes from the cause of allowing pride and apathy to couple. Business leaders and employees taking this lesson from Shakespeare and wielding their power and responsibility justly and without unconscionable behavior would allow a culture built upon ethical and righteous principles to thrive. After all, if a person is not interested in helping others, then what good are they to the society that has allowed them to be nurtured and participate? It would be best if such a person were not a part of society at all, and instead takes the advice of Socrates (from Crito) and leaves the society, for being a part of a society and culture means a mutual contribution for the sake of the good towards the society as a whole. Since business serves the good of the people through a product or service, it is only just that business adheres to such a principle.
In addition to providing ethical insight and training, literature offers other attributes that hard-skills alone may not provide. As noted earlier, business interview a candidate based on their hard skills, but are prudent to hire them based on hard skills in conjunction with soft skills. To put this more simply, a business hires a thinking person, not a just skill set.
“Business academics are promoted based on the mathematical rigor of their research rather than on the relevance of it. What students get in class, therefore, are highly trained academics steeped in mathematics who are teaching formalized management tools. These tools work well enough if you’re studying techniques for financial valuation, but they are less useful when you’re studying leadership and organizational behavior. Students could learn a lot more about these subjects, Bennis and O’Toole argued, if they took a course in literature. Fiction can be as instructive about leadership and organizational behavior as any business textbook.” (Coutu)
Employment is more than just mathematics and models – it is critical thinking, communication (both verbal and non-verbal), organization, and leadership. Literature provides a foundation in all of these soft skills. Literature requires a person to view the world through a new mind set. Businesses need innovation, and what better way to achieve it then by seeing something through new eyes. For example thinking about a shoe as a symbol rather than just an object leads a person to new thoughts. If a shoe is a symbol of status, then perhaps the business will focus on a higher-quality product directed toward those that seek the highest quality. Or, perhaps the shoe is a symbol of comfort to the foot; the product will reflect such an idea through padding and other various means. Finally, if a person wants to view a shoe in terms of what is wrong with it to customers in order to improve it, then they will have to understand how their customers perceive the shoe and how it affects their lives. A shoe that constantly scuffs does not make for a high-quality shoe despite whatever brand it is; the customer is seeking reliability, not just a brand. Identifying targets like this is important to business as a business in order to ensure customer success; however, a second component of leadership is necessary to achieve such a goal.
Companies have a certain culture to them which is shaped by the company leadership and its agents. Both the CEO & the manager of the simple assembly-line represents the goals of the company as well as its beliefs in al that they do. The laborers will perceive a company based on its leadership. For example, in the case of NUMMI (based on the cited podcast of “This American Life”) the workers were terrified of their company culture. Management would not allow workers to drop the lines – even to fix a defect – in addition to participating in lewd behavior such as drinking on the job and more. NUMMI suffered for this, and as a result the company culture became lewd. When the Leadership of GM sent the plant over to Toyota, a company that thrived based on values and company culture, they created a workforce of legend in automotive history. Toyota’s employees aligned themselves to the values of “lean enterprise” which stress the importance of human capital. This is what a business hires when they accept a candidate into their workforce. Toyota encouraged and rewarded employees to solve problems and think of ways to work more thoroughly or efficiently. For perhaps the first time, the NUMMI workers were able to stop the production line in order to fix a mistake in a car body.
This type of leadership allowed Toyota to create culture with a set of principle that its workers could align themselves to. Companies have mission statements and values for this reason; it gives their employees – from CEO to line-worker – a direction for their behavior and thinking. Because Toyota advocated the importance of human capital and active mentorship, they were able to jump ahead of their competition in a direction that is still being emulated and studied today. Literature provides a means for leadership to develop such a culture and mentality. Henry David Thoreau notes the following on the subject of Classic Literature, “For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave.” These noble thoughts contribute to creating a culture like Toyota’s which was based on the values of the Japanese culture familiar to them.
Students of Literature are trained in culture and values such as these – in addition to understanding the way which they are used within cultures. Reading Romeo & Juliet teaches a student how the a culture that de-values others poisons their youth – the successors of the culture! Othello demonstrates how a person must be aware of the way that rhetoric shapes the world around them; fact-checking and healthy skepticism saves lives as opposed to being easily agitated and believing hearsay without substantial evidence. Macbeth teaches how unethical behavior always catches up with the perpetrator. The good business man does not act rashly, does not build a team on deceit and prejudice. The good business man works for a culture of fairness. They check-facts an utilize healthy communication. If they have a problem with a co-worker, they do not sabotage the co-worker and by extension the business. All of these lessons are shortened versions of what I learned reading Shakespeare, which allowed me to learn as close to first-hand as humanly possible what bad leadership and communication can do to stop a business from being a leader in the community around it as well as fostering such a community amongst its workforce.
Finally, literature develops proficiency in communication as well as organization. Writing literary papers requires the scholar to seek good sources that can lend credibility to their opinions. This activity requires great organization. In my own pursuits, I have learned how to research something through credible sources and organize them for content, pertinent quotes, and information in order to best utilize them in my rhetorical communication. Communication is essential in business. This is how a culture is created. This is how the labor force interacts with itself as well as other entities. Communication allows sales to occur, culture to thrive, customers to be satisfied, and so much more. Communication is what created a need for business in the first place! Had a part not identified a need to be fulfilled, nothing would have ever known such a need existed. Communication is the tool of choice for leaders, salespeople, the marketing department, the finance department (how else will a business get paid!), project managers, etc… Communication is what creates revenue and profit. It only makes good sense and good practice to utilize those trained in such an integral discipline! Shakespeare teaches how communication bolsters a team with the example of Marc Antony’s famous speech from The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. His speech aligns the people of Rome to realize that their good ruler was the victim of treachery. The Romans then work as a team to bring justice to their country. Teamwork requires motivation, and motivation is taken from the communicated direction of leaders. Once again, the workforce of a company is aligned to how the company presents itself through its communication.
Literature is a premium teacher of ethics, communication, critical thinking, leadership, and organization for its students. It demonstrates how a person’s mode of thinking and view of an object or concept will influence their decision-making process. Shakespeare and other authors provide a means to observe and study this phenomenon through the body of work that they provide to humanity. Those who are trained in literature understand how culture and communication influence a business’s workforce and customers. Shakespeare teaches how rhetoric can inspire superb effects if utilized ethically rather than unethically. The student of literature is thus trained to be mindful of their actions and outcomes within a company since they devote so much effort to the understanding of cause and effect. They understand the importance of acting ethically as well as communicating both thoroughly and efficiently both within and outside the company. Education in literature and other soft skills is perhaps best surmised by C.S. Lewis when he said, “Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
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Works Cited
"403: NUMMI." This American Life. 26 Mar. 2010. Web. 22 Aug. 2016.
Coutu, Dinae. "Leadership in Literature." Harvard Business Review (2006). Web. 22 Aug. 2016.
Shakespeare, William, and Stephen Orgel. King Lear. New York, N.Y: Penguin Books, 1999. Print.
"C. S. Lewis." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2016. 22 August 2016. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/c/cslewis133904.html
Thoreau, Henry D. Hampden-Sydney College. N.p., Mar. 2006. Web. 22 Aug. 2016.
Shakespeare, William. "King Lear." The Works of William Shakespeare. Roslyn, NY: Walter J. Black, INC., 1944. 1033. Print.
