The Glick Factor

The Business Shrink Peter Morris talks a lot about the importance of developing skills like self-awareness and empathy in the workplace. But often, it seems like people lacking in those very qualities rise to the top of the business world. I’m reading a novel now that deals with that very issue – What makes Sammy Run by Budd Schulberg, who also wrote the screenplay for On the Waterfront. The book is the rags to riches story of Sammy Glick, who rises from newspaper copy boy to wealthy Hollywood producer in just a few years. Glick has no apparent talent; he succeeds because he is street smart, exploitative and opportunistic. He gets invited to Hollywood after plagiarizing the screenplay of another writer, and builds on that success with similarly devious tactics. I haven’t finished the book (which is definitely dated but a lot of fun) so I don’t know how Glick’s story turns out. But as Enron, Worldcom, and the latest round of business scandals demonstrate, there are a lot of Glicks out there running the nation’s biggest companies (and the federal government, for that matter). I thought about the Glick story when reading about the Judith Miller mess this morning. Miller’s tenacity and in the words of a former editor, “pushiness “ is clearly what made her a successful reporter. But this pushiness and competitiveness must have alienated a lot of her co-workers, because surprisingly few are rallying to her support right now.