If you seek a monument
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The Great Fire of 1666 destroyed two thirds of the City of London. Christopher Wren was the architect who was responsible for rebuilding much of the city.
The work included the rebuilding of over fifty churches. Among the most magnificent of those buildings is St. Paul's Cathedral. Wren is buried there.
His tomb is covered by a simply inscribed slab of black marble. Nearby his son placed a memorial inscription in Latin. The English translation reads: "If you seek a monument, look about you."
Wren's buildings are everywhere. They are so much a part of the world of London that you almost overlook their influence. His ideas, like his monument are all around.
There are some managers who will grace the covers of business magazines or be memorialized in books. But most bosses don't get that kind of recognition. They still have monuments, just not marble ones.
Over a decade ago, I spoke at the retirement of Art Jones. Art was, simply, the best supervisor I've ever seen up close. He was a man of immense integrity, great professional skill, and powerful simplicity.
Art was a police sergeant in the city of San Leandro, California. In his years as a sergeant he supervised every person who later rose to high rank. They spoke at his retirement, too, along with other officers and civilians who had worked with him.
Long after Art retired, I was sitting in on a meeting of senior officers at the department where Art spent his career. One of them had a proposal for a change in policy. Then another asked the question that was asked whenever someone wanted to do something.
"What would Art say about this?"
If you seek a monument …
Boss's Bottom Line
You may never get formal recognition for your good work. You almost certainly won't get a marble monument. Your monument is in the lives of the people you lead and the people they touch.
Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.
Beautiful, Wally. Beautiful.
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Thanks, Derek.
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This article reminded me of a book I read about 30 years ago entitled "The Politics of Bureaucracy" by Gordon Tullock. Tullock was an advisor to the Goldwater Presidential campaign and for those of you that are fans of Von Mises or Von Hayek, you might want to google Tullock. His views might actually be very similar to those of Mr Bock. Tullock observed that administrators in large centralized organizations are essentially amoral. The organization comes first, human interest second. The small town police sergeant survived because he was in a decentralized organization. It would be highly unlikely that he could have remained uncorrupted in another context.
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Thanks, Thomas. I take issue with a couple of Tullock's points.
For me, his description is more idealized than real. In real life people have interacting desires and are acted upon by several forces at once. It seems to me that Tullock, at least in that sense, was more a creature of his time, the era of "the organization man" than a dispassionate observer of what was happening in organizations.
I'm not sure what small town you're referring to in your comment. San Leandro is a small city in the SF Bay area. Population is around 100,000 and it borders Oakland. I agree, though, that most smaller police departments operate as decentralized organizations most of the time, at least for patrol and investigations.
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>administrators in large centralized organizations are essentially amoral. The organization comes first, human interest second.
This assumes that the administrator doesn't have liberty to leave the organization. It's my experience that when people have increased mobility to change jobs, they will rather quit than do wrong.
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Tullock believed in decentralization of government and local control of police, schools and all state funcions. I think he would be horrified by the establishment of the Dept of Homeland Security in the USA and the Department of Education. A good administrator can quit, but I cannot imagine the self-descibed CZARS that run federal bureaucracies have any sense of morality. They don't work up thru the ranks. Look at the purge conducted by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz of the military. Everybody today acknowleges that the invasion of Iraq was a blunder and we were powerless to stop it.
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So true - and not just the people who work for you and the people at large they interact with but their families and children as well.
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Good point, Laura. The influence does flow out beyond the first ring.
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Something I try to remember about every person who has ever touched my life is a quote or saying they used. How you can honor people that have mentored and coached you is to pass on their teachings and advice to future generations. I often like to quote my past role models and in a way this serves as a monument too.
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Good point. There are lots of ways to honor those who have touched an influenced us. Repeating their key phrases is one good one.
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"If you seek a monument, look about you."
I like this sentence.
Everyone will die and the main difference is not whether you have a marble monument or not, but because the people around you or even people you may not know know you a lot and remember you for ever.
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Thanks, Patrick. You reminded me of something my dad used to say: "You're still alive as long as they tell stories about you."
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An inspiring, but sober thought for leaders.
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Thanks for stopping by, David. You're right. It's sobering to stop and think that what you do has an impact. Then you get to thinking about what you want that impact to be.
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I read that Mark Twain's memoirs are flying up to the top of Amazon's best seller list 100 years after his death, as he requested. When asked why the delay, it was said he did not want people to hear the honestly unkind things he had to say because he had such a kind heart. Is that a monument?
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