Success in Small Business Is a Laughing Matter

Goolsby is a stereotype of the big company chieftain. The slab of fat on his chin hangs loosely like a rooster's crop and jiggles like jelly when he moves. The old-timey pleats in his trousers puff out to make him look as if he had swallowed a melon, and he constantly twiddles a used string in nervous frustration.

His office decor is a tribute to Louis XIV: a cross between Versailles and a French bordello. A faint odor of pluff mud is ever present. You almost wonder if his bulging goldfish eyes are a result of his intense ambition. Goolsby is a humorless old fogey, but the main complaint, especially by the junior executives, is that the boss does not practice the type of management he preaches.

When he doesn't know the answer to a question, Goolsby mumbles down his sleeve rather than utter the executive's hardest concession: "I don't know." His two rules for success by underlings are straightforward: 1. The boss is always right. 2. In any other situation refer to rule 1.

Even his youthful wife holds him in contempt.

Mr. Goolsby insists on many meetings, typical of big business. The meetings establish two facts: 1. That Mr. Goolsby is, in fact, the boss; and 2. that some of his subordinates are good guessers at what he likes to hear them say.

President Kennedy was said to have been an excellent thinker, and his brain trust was said to have been the best group of presidential advisors ever. But some people believe the Bay of Pigs decision was made in a large committee meeting when the brain trust gave opinions it thought the commander in chief wanted to hear, rather than what they really believed about invading Cuba. Can you imagine how else this poor decision was made by such a brilliant group of people? Unfortunately for the country, the brain trust must have been working within the framework of a typical business meeting, which usually does not involve much thinking, but is a game of trying to say what the senior member wants most to hear.

The crunch of competition among young businessmen anxious to join the ranks of higher management has grown much worse in our lifetime, owing primarily to the baby boom of the late Forties. Because of the low birth rates before and after, this group of war babies is like a melon being digested by a boa constrictor. And these cohorts have ripened into working adults.

In the 1975-85 decade the number of 30- to 40-year olds in the U.S. population will increase by 12 million, a record jump of 45 per cent over the previous decade.

What impact will this have on the executive work force? Using the usual ten per cent rule of thumb of the work force to determine how many will reach the level of corporate management, there could be 1.2 million more 30- to 40-year olds in the executive ranks in 1985.

During most of the past 25 years, management talent has been in great demand with employers bidding up pay and fringe-benefit packages and considerable hard work by recruiters.

But no more.