Which of the following options do you think is true?
Directions: Answer the question based on the following passage.
My parents were atto
rneys: my father, a criminal lawyer and my mother, a negligence lawyer. They were the perfect left–brain/right–brain combination, my father was intuitive and my mother, all reason – qualities that, when balanced, matter the most in business.
The first five years of my life, we lived in Shanghai, China (my father was then in Army Intelligence). My clearest memories are of riding around in a rickshaw with my amah (nanny) and “grazing” at street food stalls (much to my mother’s horror). Because life was so dangerous then (fear of being “shanghai’d”), I was sent off to Sacred Heart Convent day school (much to my Orthodox Jewish grandmother’s horror).
When we fled the closing Red Curtain (the last plane out), we moved back to our apartment on Eleventh Street, between First and Second avenues in Manhattan. In the years dominated by the middle–class flight to the suburbs, I was the quintessential city kid. I’ve since wondered whether being outside the mainstream later helped me view mainstream America with a more objective eye.
Growing up, I spent more time with my maternal grandparents than I did at home. My grandmother was born in America, while my grandfather had come from Russia (claiming, convincingly, that he’d escaped on a horse). They lived a few blocks away from us, where they owned some tenements. My grandfather’s maxim was: If you can’t watch it, don’t’ buy it. So I’d sit out with him on Second Avenue in bentwood chairs to help him “watch” their buildings.
And that’s where I began to learn about marketing.
He had a haberdashery store and together we would decorate the front windows. Then we’d take our chairs back outside and wait. Few customers walked by without being hooked by our display, we’d pick up our chairs and go inside again to re–do the window. Repositioning a tie at a jauntier angle or changing the colour of a shirt, I learned, could convey a different message.
Meanwhile, my grandmother was upstairs in their apartment above the store, keeping the books. Every noontime, like clock–work, she’d take over running the store from my grandfather and they’d pass one another on the stairs, rarely exchanging a word–a marvelous business shorthand. After lunch, they’d again slip by each other in virtual silence, as they returned to their respective posts. I often think of them when I give my TrendView seminars and mention the trend of Cashing Out: theirs was the perfect Mom–and–Pop business, honest and human–scale, a business that ran so well it transcended language.
It was also my grandmother’s job to collect the monthly rents; I’d “help” her with that, too. On the first day of the month, the tenants would drop by to pay their rents – all of eight, twelve, twenty dollars a month. She’d sit at the mahogany table in her dining room, and chat with them in Yiddish, Russian, some German, and Ukrainian.
The business worked. It was personal and hands–on, incorporating family and an occasional friend. There was built–in–child care for my sister Mechele and me. Family dinner conversations centered around daily problems and solutions – work was never something that stopped at 5 p.m. We talked about the real estate business, the store, my parents’ legal cases. Everybody knew everything, and we all helped out where we could. The objective was deceptively simple: get the work done and appreciate the process.
Years later, when I started to formulate the blueprint for BrainReserve, I structured it instinctively around what I had learned from my family. I began my filling up the ranks of the company with my sister and her friends and my friends. Many of my former colleagues were horrified. If you want to be a marketing consultant, act like one, they told me. Give your staff important–sounding titles. Develop a scientific approach [cut–and–dried) to what you’re doing. Don’t share any information with outsiders. And you must hire some M.B.A.’s.
Instead, I hired my best friend, Lys Marigold, a journalist, who turned out to be a genius at generating Big Ideas, at knowing something about everything, and at translating marketing into English. She worked with us for ten years, always claiming that she was only there “temporarily,” and when she left to spend more time in Europe, we were all devastated. It has turned out fine though – we just fax her in Amsterdam with questions and drag her back into the office whenever she comes home. She came home to work on this book.
My sister, Mechele Flaum, now manages BrainReserve – she runs operations, does strategic planning, and oversees client contentment. Plus, following the family heritage, she’s still watching over our grandparents’ buildings.
The point is that I never wanted a traditional corporation, with each employee sitting robotically in his or her office. I tried to create a community for thinking – for I believe what inspires productivity the most is freedom –and freedom begets creativity. Having a free and flexible environment provides a place where people can work together to focus on the future.