chairman and managing dirctor."
I asked Mr Otis whether objections to nepotism were as common in other countries as in Britain.
"Heavens, no," he said. "Why in the States we cultivate nepotism as a business asset. Most successful men give their sons the same name as themselves to ensure continuity of nomenclature, and titles such as Andrew Schelling II and Hiram Birnbaum IV are commonplace. I can tell you this: if Wedgwood were an American company there'd still be a Josiah Wedgwood (V or VI) nominally in control."
"What other reasons," I asked, -prevent born leaders from reaching the top in Britain?"
"You'd be surprised," he said, "how many men are left behind because they are supposed to be social misfits. One of Britain's biggest manufacturers of electronics refuses to appoint a senior executive unless he can prove his devotion to Rugby Union football. A soccer man hasn't a chance and a Rugby League aficionado could never climb higher in the company than shop-floor foreman.
"Then there's the sex bit. In some outfits senior executives are expected to indulge in wife-swapping if only to justify the extraordinarily 'permissive' behaviour of the chairman and anyone of a prudish nature is considered unsuitable. We had a chap from Wyfold Technics, a superb manager who had been relegated to an African subsidiary because he's rejected the advances of a director's wife. He came to us in desperation, off his own bat, and after a few aptitude tests we were satisfied that he would make the grade as managing director. But he was deeply in love with his wife and our suggestion that he should submit in a disinterested way to extra-marital dalliance was abhorrent to him. Finally, we came up with the idea that he should make eves at the chief accountant, and the stratagem worked. Soon afterwards the man was written off by the lubricious set as an oddball, and before the year was out he had achieved his ambition and become managing director.
"ILP," Mr Otis continued, "puts candidates through the most rigorous tests to see whether they come up to scratch in matters of etiquette. A man may have everything going for him know-how, languages, ability to delegate, personal popularity and a commanding presence and still fail to impress the powers that be. And as often as not the reason is that the chairman has spotted some minor defect in table manners or some unacceptable idiosyncrasy in speech."
"And in which country," I said, is a capacity for leadership most likely to lead to the summit?" -Difficult to say," replied Mr Otis. "Japan probably. But there they train at least a thousand junior executives for every one industrial
presidency, and all of them, the whole thousand, may pass with flying colours and there's only their proficiency at golf to distinguish one from another. Other things being equal it's a man's golf handicap that decides whether a man has powers of leadership or not.
"And the odd thing is that he gives up the game as soon as he's reached the top. The loss of face involved when his handicap is increased is too great a risk,"
Bernard Hollowood, formerly editor of Punch, writes this column weekly in The Spectator
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