VIEWPOINTS : Modern Managers Should Heed Renaissance’s Cellini

The Renaissance era appears to be alive and well in the literature of business management. References to “the corporate Machiavelli” spring up unbidden in books on business strategy, and articles on corporate sponsorship of the arts are incomplete without at least one reference to the “corporate Medici.”

These comparisons are generally accurate. No one can doubt that Machiavelli would feel right at home with a corporate raider on an acquisitional ramble, nor would Medici be out of place at Mobil Oil, sending yet another check to PBS. But it is disturbing that these Renaissance allusions are considered to be so grand that they apply only to the upper crust of the business world, to those folks who make corporate life-or-death decisions. There is also a Renaissance literature for the middle manager as well.

“The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini” was written by the famed Italian sculptor beginning in 1558 and was first published in 1728.

It should be required reading for all managers who feel strangled by the corporate hierarchy and victims of arbitrary power. The autobiography is a refreshing romp through Renaissance Italy, with lessons enough to last a lifetime on how to cope with unreasonable bosses and back-stabbing subordinates.

Cellini was not a starving-in-the-garret artist. He roamed Europe freely during his career, and readily took up the cudgel for others, including Pope Clement VII during the siege of Rome by du Bourbon. Born in Florence, he fled at age 19 after slaying an enemy who accused him of misdeeds before the Florentine magistrates. His subsequent travels took him to Rome, Venice and Paris, where he lived off the favors of various noblemen who admired his work.

Cellini enthusiastically murdered a number of his foes in his lifetime (a practice frowned upon in modern corporate culture), but he recounts these activities with the naive avidity of a 10-year-old who has just discovered the joys of pulling the legs off a daddy-longlegs. This disarming zest requires that the moral reader forgive him his trespasses.

Cellini’s world of spiteful clerics, selfish apprentices and petty chieftains of feuding city-states is admittedly a long way from a plant in Chicago or a regional office in Atlanta. But with Cellini--as with Machiavelli--the distance across time and globe is no object. There are numerous lessons that can still be mined from the master sculptor. The following are just a few:

1) Acknowledge hierarchy, but don’t let it bind you. No one was quicker than Cellini to bow before his superiors when such a gesture seemed expedient. Cellini never tried to change “the system.” There was no need to, since he generally managed to move fluidly within it, leaping from the grace of one cardinal or duke to the next, like a frog among lily pads.

But while he understood and respected authority, he was not intimidated by it, nor did he shrink from confronting superiors who abused their power. Sometimes he misjudged the favors owed to him by others, and such confrontations led to his suffering in prisons and dungeons, though often not for long. Corporate practitioners of the Cellini management style are likely to find themselves in the doghouse on occasion, but may find the heights more easily attained.

2) Obsequiousness has its place. A corollary to rule No. 1. Groveling is repugnant when it springs forth from the deepest part of a person’s character. But when it is used sparingly as a tool, its efficacy is remarkable. Cellini paused not a beat when the situation required him to go down on bended knee and kiss the hem of a cape or to speak words sodden with honey.

Such displays generally served his purpose. Even today, flattery sometimes is not enough, especially in an era when compliments have suffered from an inflationary spiral. Sometimes, reverence, or even minor deification, is necessary to achieve a goal.

3) Don’t avoid revenge; savor it. Nothing caused Cellini’s spleen to rise more than being insulted or wrongly injured. But instead of ruing attacks upon himself or his compatriots, he immediately planned for retribution. After being treated contemptuously by an innkeeper one night, he wrote “I did not get one wink of sleep, because I kept on thinking how I could revenge myself. At one time it came into my head to set fire to his house; at another to cut the throats of four fine horses which he had in the stable . . . “ Ultimately, he satisfied himself with slicing the mattresses and bed coverings into ribbons.

Although modern society and its legal codes discourage such behavior, the feelings that overcame Cellini are certainly familiar to many executives. Cellini had one way of getting things off his chest; middle managers should develop their own methodology of responding to their contemporaries’ incivilities. Unfulfilled revenge saps productivity. And if done with wit and verve, well-timed and well-crafted revenge can build organizational morale.

4) Delegate authority to those below you and be prepared to accept the consequences. After five years in Paris working at the court of Francis I, Cellini decided to go back to Florence, quite against the king’s desires. He left his home and studio in the care of two young guardians, one of whom had been his trusted apprentice for many years and was treated like a son.

No sooner had he left the city gates when the two eagerly informed the king’s treasurers that Cellini had fled with some of the king’s property. Even though this was true, it was ignoble of the two to tattle so willingly. Cellini learned too late. Managers with trusted proteges should learn now.

5) Thrive amid enmity. Cellini’s enemies were legion, but be did not let this get in the way of his work. In fact, his mind seemed to be most acute in such circumstances. He was always prepared to meet a challenge, be it in the form of a trumped-up charge or a pack of brigands armed with pikes ready to run him through. When his enemies were upon him, he was the first to deliver the call to action, and he often did so effectively. Middle managers are bound to develop enemies from both above and below. Dwelling on an unsavory situation solves no problems. Better to use that energy for productive purposes.

6) In excellence, there is discipline (and vice versa). Remarkably enough, amid all the hurly-burly Cellini managed to produce some of the finest metal work of the Italian Renaissance. He amply demonstrated that political infighting need not be at the expense of productive work; the two can complement each other nicely if well-managed. Cellini’s passions spilled over from his personal life into his professional life, but he had the discipline to channel them toward a goal, be it humiliating one of his opponents or creating a masterpiece of statuary.

7) Don’t be afraid to toot your own trumpet, but acknowledge when the notes have gone flat. Cellini writes in a self-aggrandizing style that should be discounted at least as much as outstanding loans to Bolivia. But in his style is a message almost important as that contained in his words: be yourself, and be fully yourself. Accept no half-baked limitations. Don’t be molded by arbitrary strictures and mores. Let your personality overflow, and be abundant.

By the same token, understand that the battle cannot go on forever. In time, the vigor will be spent. Then concede that a more accepting approach is required. When Cellini was in his 60s, he was bilked by an unscrupulous Renaissance real estate type. Where in earlier days he would have heeded the call of the challenge and chased after the scoundrel with dagger in hand, he this time chose to pursue the villain with lawyers, pummeling him with lawsuits rather than fists. This was not admitting defeat, but simply preserving dignity.