My Visit to Harvard
If you happen to be a gambler, if you happen to prefer hedged bets to random chance, and if you’re likely to wager on anything having to do with Harvard Business Review (HBR), here’s a tip: Anything for which HBR takes up the charge is likely to go the way of the hula hoop, eight-track tapes, slot cars, love beads, and the Thighmaster. Case in point: empathy.
In December, HBR published a post — “The Secret to Leading Organizational Change Is Empathy” — that purported to be about organizational change management. It was, in fact, a slice of self-promotional, pseudo-intellectual, absurdly complicated corporate speak that went almost immediately off the rails with this:
If you want to lead a successful transformation, communicating empathetically is critical … create personas of various audiences.
Assuming, as I did (perhaps naïvely), that if anyone desired to change any actual organization, the kind, for example, that had actual people working in it, the creation of personae would be equal parts ridiculous, inefficient, unnecessary, and self-defeating, I composed and sent a missive to HBR’s editorial staff. Surprising me with their graciousness, the editors responded with an invitation to join them for a meeting in their offices on Guest Street in Brighton, a quaint neighborhood in the northwestern corner of Boston. More on that in a moment.
Historical Interlude
In 1634, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made the executive decision to transfer ownership of everything on the south side of the Charles River from Watertown to Cambridge, at which point Brighton was a part of Cambridge as noted by its creative and not at all pejorative nickname, “Little Cambridge”. The arrangement lasted until 1807, at which time Brighton seceded from Cambridge following a bridge dispute.
It seems the gentleman who was mayor of Cambridge at the time, Sir Wellington Smythe-Smythe, and his wife Penelope, had been invited by the Lord Overseer of Brighton, Sir Alistair Branscombe-Cornishe, and his wife, Agrona, to play a few hands of duplicate bridge in the parlor of the Branscombe-Cornishe residence. Each of the married couples comprised a team, the husbands and wives sitting opposite each other. During the game, a dispute ensued, the telling of which has two distinct variations.
The first and more genteel version of the tale holds that, after Mrs. Branscombe-Cornishe had won one particular exchange of cards, Sir Smyth-Smythe commented that Mrs. Branscombe-Cornishe had “turned a magnificent trick.” Sir Branscombe-Cornishe, who’d neglected to bring his ear trumpet to the table, thought Sir Smythe-Smythe had suggested Mrs. Branscombe-Cornishe was a floozy, whereupon he challenged Sir Smythe-Smythe to a duel in defense of his wife’s honor. (The duel is reputed to have been called off when it was discovered that the only weapons in the Branscombe-Cornishe residence were one bow, one arrow, and a peashooter.)
The second and slightly less tasteful telling of the tale contends that Sir Smythe-Smythe, who apparently suffered from chronic post-nasal drip, attempted to hock a loogie into Sir Branscombe-Cornishe’s spittoon. However, since Sir Smythe-Smythe had never heard of Kentucky Windage, he failed to allow for the cross breeze coming in through the Branscombe-Cornishe’s open parlor window. As a result, the errant clam sailed woefully off course, causing the pestilent gout to stick stubbornly on the side of one of Mrs. Branscombe-Cornishe’s cut-crystal vases. Taking offense at Sir Smythe-Smythe for being the cause of his wife’s violent retching, Sir Branscombe-Cornish invited Sir Smythe-Smythe to go home, get his own peashooter, and return for a duel to the death. There is no record of who emerged victorious … and who didn’t.
In any case, the version of the story to which one subscribes matters not a whit. The historical fact remains that, as of the date of the Smythe-Smythe vs. Branscombe-Cornish bridge dispute, Brighton separated from Cambridge.
Where Were We?
Oh, yeah. Empathy.
If you’ve been around the block just once, you know empathy is another one of those words that’s been criminally over-used, abused unto meaninglessness, and adopted by all the feel-good chuckleheads who want (expect) us to believe they feel our pain, along with anything and everything else we might experience. As I did here, I call bullshit on that. Besides, if it’s not already passé, now that it’s appeared in HBR, it will be soon enough.
Continuing with our story, then: Given the HBR editors’ gracious invitation to join them to explain the hollow inanity of empathy — as well as the perverse illogic of using fictional personae as surrogates for real human beings — I took to the Mass Pike to wend my way eastward toward Beantown. Arriving punctually in Brighton, I parked my car, took my parking ticket with me as instructed, and entered the hallowed halls of 20 Guest Street (Suite 700).
I was greeted warmly, as I expected. And after introductions, some initial pleasantries, and unanimous agreement to leave all firearms in the anteroom, we began our conversation, of which this is the essential excerpt:
HBR: Thank you for coming, Mr. O’Brien.
Me: Please call me Mark. Mr. O’Brien was my father. He was older than me.
HBR: Um … yes … well, Mark, we understand you take exception to some of the content of a post we published on organizational change.
Me: That’s a tad broad. What I took exception to are three very precise aspects of the content: (1) the fact that no organization leaders of sound mind would go to the trouble of creating — or insulting their employees with the creation of — fictional personae; (2) the notion of empathy was taken directly from one of your own publications, of which I have a copy right here, Take the M Path, published in 1967 (immediately following the Summer of Love, in fact), the title of which was inspired by the classic tune, “Take the A Train”, by the jazz composer, Billy Strayhorn; and (3) the entire post could have been reduced to this one sentence: Communicate openly.
The effect on the group was seizure-like. The editors, in unison, began emitting guttural utterances that sounded for all the world like growling. And the flailing! I hadn’t seen that kind of manic agitation and antic gesticulating since the time I visited the University of Sign Language, went looking for the men’s lavatory, and accidentally walked into a room full of deaf Italians playing Charades.
The Moral of the Story
Karl Marx wrote, “Religion … is the opium of the people” (“Die Religion … ist das Opium des Volkes”). If he was right (we’re not having that debate here), then Harvard Business Review is the opium of business people (“Harvard Business Review ist das Opium der Geschäftsleute”).
HBR is a publication entirely devoted to one particular fallacy of informal logic: Appeal to Authority. It banks (quite literally, thank you very much) on that appearance of authority to sell shopworn pop psychology, thinly veiled infomercials, and vapid, jargon-filled missives that business people accept as meaningful content to the tune of 280,000-plus paid subscriptions last year.
Following the admonition of W.C. Fields — “Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump” — that’s an awful lot of suckers and chumps being separated from their time, their cash, and their critical thinking.
I’m not sure if I’ll be meeting with HBR’s editorial board again any time soon. And returning to our gambling theme, it’s a pretty safe bet I won’t be getting any more invitations. I’ll find a way to live with that.
Regardless, if you decide to take on an organizational change, please do me a favor: If you happen to meet an empathetic persona during the process, please call me at 1–800-EMP-ATHY or email mark@takethempath.com.
Good luck.
