Born Losers: A History of Failure in America
Author: Scott A Sandag
What makes somebody a Loser, a person doomed to unfulfilled dreams and humiliation? Nobody is born to lose, and yet failure embodies our worst fears. The Loser is our national bogeyman, and his history over the past two hundred years reveals the dark side of success, how economic striving reshaped the self and soul of America.
From colonial days to the Columbine tragedy, Scott Sandage explores how failure evolved from a business loss into a personality deficit, from a career setback to a gauge of our self-worth. From hundreds of private diaries, family letters, business records, and even early credit reports, Sandage reconstructs the dramas of real-life Willy Lomans. He unearths their confessions and denials, foolish hopes and lost faith, sticking places and changing times. Dreamers, suckers, and nobodies come to life in the major scenes of American history, like the Civil War and the approach of big business, showing how the national quest for success remade the individual ordeal of failure.
Born Losers is a pioneering work of American cultural history, which connects everyday attitudes and anxieties about failure to lofty ideals of individualism and salesmanship of self. Sandage's storytelling will resonate with all of us as it brings to life forgotten men and women who wrestled with The Loser—the label and the experience—in the days when American capitalism was building a nation of winners.
The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley
By examining the lives and careers of a number of businessmen who failed during the 19th century, [Sandage] portrays what we reflexively think of as the dark side of the American dream but what is, in reality, an only slightly exaggerated mirror of the reality with which ordinary people -- i.e., thee and me -- are fated to contend. He explores what he rather nicely calls "the hidden history of pessimism in a culture of optimism" by recording the "voices and experiences of men who failed (and of their wives and families)" as expressed in their "private letters, diaries, business records, bankruptcy cases, suicide notes, political mail, credit agency reports, charity requests and memoirs." In so doing he examines the ways in which our attitudes toward failure and our ways of measuring it have changed; if at moments Sandage lapses into the clotted patois of contemporary academia (he teaches history at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh), for the most part Born Losers is readable, interesting and thoroughly researched.
Publishers Weekly
It's a most familiar refrain of American life: work hard and prosper. That the dream of triumphant prosperity so consistently and perplexingly eludes so many, despite heroic effort and toil, is, alas, also familiar. Hardly surprising, argues Carnegie Mellon historian Sandage: it turns out that Americans are much less Andrew Carnegie and more Willy Loman. Why? In the early days of the republic, Protestant predestination and the uniquely democratic promise of reward based on a meritocracy of effort and talent unleashed the dynamic but often unfocused energies of untold numbers of self-styled frontier entrepreneurs. By the 19th century, the myth of the self-made man had become a test of identity and self-worth. A few succeeded beyond their wildest expectations but, says Sandage, most Americans faced unexpected and heartbreaking ruin. Sandage has done an admirable job of culling diaries and letters to tell their stories. Most compelling are the "begging letters" written by women to outstanding capitalists on behalf of their ruined husbands. Regrettably, these individual snapshots fail to cohere into a fully comprehensive portrait of the personal and social psychology of failure. That failure diminished a man is hardly revelatory, nor does it constitute the level of specific historical analysis one expects. 30 b&w photos; 30 b&w illus. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
In his first book, Sandage (history, Carnegie Mellon) concentrates on "the hidden history of pessimism in a culture of optimism" that was 19th-century America. This was the era when capitalism captivated much of the nation's consciousness, in some cases arguably for the better or, as the author emphasizes here, for the worse. To show this underside of the American dream, Sandage plumbs the surprisingly rich sources of letters, diaries, business records, credit agency reports, and the intriguing "begging letters" for financial assistance sent to successful men. He thereby adds to the limited, but growing, offerings in the field of failure studies represented by Edward Balleisen's Navigating Failure (2001) and Bruce Mann's Republic of Debtors (2002). The author movingly describes the emotional toll that economic collapse exacted on the self-worth of men in that patriarchal age. He delineates general changes over time with financial default moving from an incident to an identity. This finely crafted and challenging treatise, enhanced by illustrations, would make a substantive contribution to academic libraries seeking to develop their gender studies as well as intellectual and cultural history collections.-Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Library of Congress Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A book about failure? In America? Sandage (History/Carnegie Mellon) presents a darker side of the American Dream, complete with case studies and ephemera. He carefully considers the 19th-century's "go-ahead" US, which saw the rise of the businessman's vocation, and presents a stark portrayal of our national habit of speaking grandly while falling short of all the grand talk. It was a time of speculators, flunkies, and humbugs. Ben Franklin's maxims were popular. P.T. Barnum's bunkum was effulgent. Proclaiming self-reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson found the cause of a man's failure lay within himself. To track the financially feckless and to inform suppliers of credit risks, ubiquitous mercantile reporting agencies, like Mr. Dun and Mr. Bradstreet's, flourished, though they often provided misinformation as a coup de grace to a struggling tradesman. Keeping book on good-for-nothing losers started with local reporters (young Abraham Lincoln was said to be one). And so ledgers recorded the sorry handiwork of self-made men. Some strivers who once raised themselves by their own bootstraps but were finally without a shoestring resorted to new federal bankruptcy legislation that was designed to relieve legal debt, not necessarily the moral kind. Others wrote begging letters to titans of the Gilded Age. (The Rockefellers, among others, kept their pleaders' correspondence filed away for history.) The stories of the gaunt, ragged wraiths pictured in the garish chromolithographs of the day are brought to life here in mournful numbers. Taking us to the present, Sandage summons the tragic figure of Willy Loman, Arthur Miller's dead salesman, who somehow prepared a place for those who lost the rat race inour culture. There's "something of a market niche" for losers, the author finds, especially in pop music. Whether that niche contains many readers standing by for a straightforward study that hangs with left-behinds of the 1800s is an open question. An earnest entry in an emerging academic discipline, but a dreary topic for recreational reading.
Growing Your Company's Leaders: How Great Organizations Use Succession Management to Sustain Competitive
Author: Robert M Fulmer
Within the next few years, "baby boomer" leaders and managers will be retiring in huge numbers. From the executive suite on down, the challenge to put the right person in place for every job is becoming acute. The potential shortfall means organizations must put succession planning at the top of their priority lists. Growing Your Company's Leaders offers the results of a study of five global leaders in succession strategy: Dow Chemical, Dell Computer, Eli Lilly, Pan Canadian Petroleum, and Sonoco. Readers will learn what these and sixteen other high-profile organizations are doing to identify, secure, and prepare the next generation of leaders.
This book examines:
* the link between succession management and business strategy
* the architecture of good plans and how technology can make them better
* the importance of individual employee development
* why senior management support is crucial
* how to monitor the effectiveness of the succession management system.
About the Author:
Robert M. Fulmer (Santa Barbara, CA) teaches at Pepperdine University and is the academic director of Duke Corporate Education. His books include Leadership by Design and The Leadership Investment. Jay A. Conger (Manhattan Beach, CA) is Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California and teaches at London Business School. He has written or contributed to numerous books, including Corporate Boards.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
The book tackles the major issues in getting succession management right, with abundant examples from the best practice companies.
. . The result is an easy-to-read, comprehensive picture of where your company should be on succession management.
CIO
If you believe that people are the key to any successful enterprise, then Growing Your Company's Leaders is key reading.
Soundview Executive Book Summaries
For decades, succession management identified replacements for senior executives who, it was assumed, would eventually depart the organization through death or retirement. In many companies, the planning for succession was simply one of several "annual events," without much thought given that the process could be deployed for development and/or retention of talented employees. These days, good workers are often lured away to competing organizations, and companies without strong succession processes are left hanging. Many top managers move on and must be replaced.
In Growing Your Company's Leaders, Robert M. Fulmer, a teacher at Pepperdine University, and Jay A. Conger, a teacher at London Business School, explore how the competition for talent is changing, and how several best practice companies, including Sonoco, PanCanadian, Eli Lilly, Dell Computer, and Dow Chemical, have used succession management as a source for strategic advantage.
Succession management has been traditionally considered a necessary human resources system in most companies, the authors write, with the purpose of identifying replacements for senior executives who would eventually depart the organization. Few, if any, regarded the practice as being useful for developing or retaining talented individuals in the lower rungs of the organizational hierarchy. It was assumed that top managers were in place for the duration, until an unfortunate circumstance (a health problem, an accident, etc.) removed them from their places.
The authors explain that most companies possessed an essential, but largely unheralded succession management list, identifying an adequate and appropriate pool of replacements, warmed up and ready, should any of the top players in the company leave the field. The authors write that such a model of succession management had several fundamental shortcomings. For one, they explain, it was focused only on the very top positions of the company and, as a result, the names were chosen at the general manager level.
Secondly, they write, it gave top management few options in the search for the next generation of company leaders. Rather than focus on leadership development, the list merely acted as the ladder on which lower-rung executives could climb if they stayed with the organization long enough. As a participant, you were moved methodically after a certain number of years from one step to the next step. So, while you might prove to be a fast learner and a high performer, the authors explain, you still had to stay within the lock step of the career path.
Today, we are witnessing the impact of an emerging new breed of succession systems. Contemporary systems, the authors write, no longer think solely about the replacement of talent. They are also focused on development. These new systems take a more systemic approach toward the organization's talent and strategy, the authors explain, placing more emphasis on the candidate's potential than on recent performance alone.
Where old systems were characterized by complete confidentiality and secrecy, today's systems actually encourage involvement by individuals who are participants and candidates. Under older systems, the authors add, few participants knew where they actually stood in terms of their potential for career opportunities ahead.
While the succession management process differs from one organization to another, the authors explain that there are certain characteristics of an effective program that are universal:
- Smooth transitions. The authors write that having someone to step into an important vacancy is a critical measure of the effectiveness of succession management. However, helping that person transition in a positive manner with all the necessary skills and knowledge is as important and often more challenging to execute.
- The "right" developmental assignments. The authors explain that a successful process includes job assignments that properly prepare candidates for their new positions, as compared to a sink-or-swim approach.
- Meaningful appraisals and feedback. The authors write that objective assessments are essential in order for management to specify what is required for a successful promotion.
- Appropriate selection criteria. The authors explain that a successful succession management system is dependent on the development of competencies for each job, giving everyone involved a clear picture of the skills, values, behavior and attitudes required to succeed.
- A range of good choices. The authors write that a working succession system results in having more than one good person available for a key job. Real success requires choices between two or more qualified people. Copyright © 2004 Soundview Executive Book Summaries
What People Are Saying
CIO
If you believe that people are the key to any successful enterprise,then Growing Your Company's Leaders is key reading.
—March 2004
Table of Contents:
1. Succession Management: The New ImperativeA. Historical Development
B. The Re-Invention of Succession Planning
C. Dynamic New Systems
D. Why the Renewed Interest Today
E. Purposes of Succession Management
F. Underlying Dimensions of a Winning Approach
G. Key Dimensions of an Effective System
H. Summary
2. Building a Successful Succession Management System
A. Who Best to Run
B. Case Examples
C. Communicating the Overall Strategy
D. Always Improving the Process
E. It's Going Nowhere Without the Boss
F. Technology and Overcoming Georgraphy
G. Below the Executive Level
H. Principles of Systems Design
I. So What Have We Learned Thus Far
3. The People Behind Succession Management
A. The Role of 360 degree Feedback
B. Process for Picking Winners
C. Case Examples
D. Identification Tools
E. Talent Pools
F. Competency Models
G. Best Practice Insights
4. Growing Future Leaders
A. Losing the War For Talent
B. The Voice of the Leader
C. Developing a Developmental Perspective
D. Six Developmental Tools That Work
E. Conclusions
5. Measuring and Assuring Success
A. Qualitative and Quantitative Measures
B. Case Examples
C. Key Criteria
D. Future Goals
E. Key Best Practice Insights
6. The Future of Succession Planning
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