If I had Been Kinder

When I was a boy, not yet even a teenager, I trapped squirrels and tried to keep them as pets. They didn’t like it. They rubbed their noses red trying to break out of my wire mesh walls. I’ve never thought I had a cruel streak—I didn’t vaporize ants with a magnifying glass—but I did trap those squirrels, so what was that?

In law school, I found another outlet for my instinct to dominate. Combat by verbosity. Early on, the stuff I did was boring. No chance for a well-placed dagger to the soft belly of opposing counsel. The only thing opposed to me were shelves of dusty law books.

Eventually, though, I broke out of that research cloister and began doing corporate acquisitions. Papering them, really, but I thought I was an indispensable warrior in my clients’ battles to take over companies that were underperforming and needed a shot in the arm…or a kick in the pants.

I had been ambling along in my law firm to that point, working hard but not zealously. Something changed in me when I suited up for combat, which was the way we viewed it. To the companies being pursued, or at least their managements, it was a life-or-death struggle. The lawyers on each side were the mercenary troops. I was one of them. Through field promotions, I became platoon leader, a persona I retained even when I became a white-collar general.

I’ve never been in actual combat, but I understand about motivating people to do a job. We were an elite squad, we told ourselves. Indispensable, ready to give our all to win our battles. (Our all in this case was largely sleep and time with our friends and families.)

Not everyone in a fighting platoon is the strongest member, but each is crucial to the success of the unit. If there is a slacker, he has to be convinced to dig in and work harder…or he has to go. 

Usually there was time between battles to adjust staffing so that every member was as dedicated to the mission as the others, but sometimes adjustments had to be made mid-battle. When a deal we thought was dead sprang back to life, one person on vacation refused to return. He was cut from the squad and his reputation sullied.

Even now, many years later, I feel badly about that. Wasn’t there a kinder, more humane way to make that transition? After all, we ended up getting along fine without him. Couldn’t I have just made a substitution on the fly and let him enjoy his vacation? I told myself at the time that a tight squad could only function on loyalty and commitment. If he didn’t want to make the sacrifice, he should just go work peacefully somewhere else and leave the fighting to the warriors.

Really, that’s the way we thought about it. War metaphors. It was only money and ego that were being fought over, but we worked ourselves up to the same fever pitch I imagine in real warriors.

Why did we do that? Why did I do that? Obviously, it was an effective way to get deals done, just like it’s an effective way to win battles, but was it worth it? And, as importantly, what atavistic urges underly bringing that level of life-or-death intensity to mere business transactions?

Maybe some of us just can’t help ourselves. We want to cage squirrels to see if we can domesticate them. We don’t outgrow those domineering impulses, we just re-direct them. We tell ourselves we are the masters of the universe, when the truth is we are on an ego trip. If you’re not in our platoon, you don’t matter. If you’re in the opposing squad, it's a fight to the death.

The Godfather famously said, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.” But there is nothing more personal than lives damaged in pursuit of a bigger fortune or another notch on a corporate gunslinger’s belt.