Cowboy Vs. Corporation: They Need Each Other

H. Ross Perot clashed publicly with General Motors, and an American myth was reinforced: The cowboy versus the corporation.

As is the way of all myths, the specific facts behind the story--why Perot criticized the company, whether GM’s high-ticket buy-out and speak-out penalty was justified--are less important than are the larger truths that the public derives from it. In this case the lesson is unmistakable: Large corporations are inhospitable to mavericks. Even to maverick entrepreneurs with demonstrated business-building prowess, and even to their own founders--Steven Jobs was pushed out of Apple Computer, Inc., and Mitchell D. Kapor left Lotus Development Corp.

This organizational drama has deep roots in American culture, which romanticizes the cowboy and mistrusts the large corporation. It reads like an archetypal Western. The hero-cowboy roams the business frontier, seizing opportunities like squatters seized land, taking direct action unconstrained by the shackles of civilization, seemingly accountable to no one. Meanwhile, the financiers “back East” build their bloated empires by dispatching clerks to entangle the cowboy in red tape and goon-squads to capture his profits, turning the populace into “civilized” (that is, submissive) employees in the process.

Variations of this drama are played out every time large companies acquire small, entrepreneurial ones, and whenever entrepreneurial ventures are allowed to sprout in the midst of an established company. The resulting clashes account for why large companies have such a dismal track record either in increasing the value of acquisitions or in developing new ventures on their own. And they make clear why it is so difficult for established companies to recapture the entrepreneurial spirit.

I have observed dozens of cowboy-type entrepreneurs and their uneasy relationship with large corporations. These are the typical sources of tension:

--The cowboy lives in a world of immediate action; the corporation wants review and deliberation. What the cowboy views as time-wasting, rear-covering conservatism the corporation may see as necessary consensus-building to get the implementation of decisions that many people control.

--The cowboy wants to seize every opportunity, betting big--but if he loses he’s wiped out. The corporation makes complex resource-allocation decisions balancing the protection of past investments with the pursuit of new opportunities; after all, the corporation is the trustee of other people’s assets.

--The cowboy strains limits, but the corporation has to establish limits in order to guide the actions of multitudes of people efficiently. The cowboy breaks rules and gets away with it, but the corporation thrives on controls and the uniform application of rules. There are few worse morale-plungers in a corporation than the realization that some are more equal than others.

--The cowboy motivates by personal loyalty, surrounded as he is by just a few trusted cronies who love the work the way he does. The cowboy’s direct control means that he can manage through impulse and whim, “shooting from the hip.” But the corporation has to make complex and longer-term agreements that make whim out of place, and it seeks an impersonal commitment to the philosophy of go-anywhere-do-anything regardless of personal ties or feelings about the job.

--The cowboy rejects fancy “citified” trappings, living simply at work--just one of the folks, regardless of his wealth. But the corporation displays symbols of affluence to make people believe in its importance; it establishes gradations of privilege and perquisite to motivate people to seek the higher ranks.

The large corporate manager’s suspicion of the cowboy, then, is not necessarily a politically motivated bias against mavericks who fight oppressive authority or speak unpleasant truths. It comes from a recognition that the cowboy personifies the challenge to the very premises on which a large corporation operates. Allow too many cowboys, and the foundations of bureaucracy begin to crumble.

If this really were a Western, we could afford to let it end here, as one of those archetypal dramas rewritten in new versions each time the struggle moves to another corporate territory. But the American economy is the loser if large corporations do not find better ways to let cowboys flourish on their business frontiers. Some flourishing high-technology companies such as Digital Equipment Corp. and Data General have managed to blend the cowboy spirit with the realities of managing a large enterprise, but this script is still rare.

Without the bold impulses of take-action entrepreneurs and their constant questioning of the rules, we would miss one of the most potent sources of business revitalization and development. It’s almost “High Noon” for the economy--and high time our most creative business talents learn to help the cowboy and the corporation get along.