How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying - The Gospel According to Broadway

In nineteen fifty-two, Shepard Meade wrote a book called How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

It was a satirical guidebook for how to get ahead in business without any skills, knowledge, or effort.

It poked fun at the business culture that was emerging in the post-World War II era of America.

And it became a bestseller.

So in 1961, Frank Looser and Abe Burrows wrote a Broadway musical comedy about what would happen if someone actually followed this satirical guidebook.

The musical is the story of J.

Pierre Pont Finch, who goes by the nickname Ponty.

Ponty is a window washer and a skyscraper in New York City who buys the book, and throughout the play, you hear the narrator of the book giving step-by-step instructions to Ponty as he reads.

The narration starts out, dear reader, this book is designed to tell you everything you need to know about the science of getting ahead.

And the first rule is to pick a large enough business so that nobody knows exactly what anyone else is doing.

And it includes steps like how to commute in a three-piece suit, how to enter a conference room with confidence, how to select who to lunch with, and to make the right social contacts.

But the advice gets a little more sinister with steps like in case you don't have any ideas, steal someone else's.

If you get in a jam, find someone else to blame.

And as Ponty follows this advice and adds some of his own efforts, like making people think that he was toiling away at his desk all night long, or fooling the boss into thinking they attended the same college and even sabotaging colleagues, he ascends from a window washer to the mailroom, to the junior executive pool, to the head of personnel, to the head of advertising, and finally to the chairman of the board in just a matter of days.

He truly succeeds in business without really trying.

It's satire.

And it's funny.

But it's not reality.

Satire by definition, it uses humor and exaggeration to expose and critique actual foolishness or societal problems.

It uses humor to point out absurdity and hopefully inspire change.

And it's what makes this musical a great example of the gospel according to Broadway.

This Broadway show humorously critiques our society's get ahead at all costs, get rich quick, get something for nothing mentalities.

I mean, we give lip service to values like hard work and ingenuity, dedication.

But we love a good something from nothing story.

We champion those who went from nothing to something with the least amount of effort or investment.

And we confuse wealth with success.

The richer you are, the more successful you must be, giving no regard to the fact that many of the people we call success stories have few morals.

They got where they are on the backs of others.

Or they inherited it all in the first place.

Many of the people we think of as the most successful in the world were born on third base and thought they hit a home run.

And I'm not saying that all successful business people are bad.

Definitely not, definitely not.

I'm simply saying that sometimes our understanding of success is skewed.

And we ignore the destructive behaviors or tactics that some people use to get ahead.

You can see some of the behaviors lined out in the How to Succeed in Business book reflected in what the Apostle Paul calls the works of the flesh.

Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

I mean, licentiousness is lacking moral restraint and excessive self-indulgence, ignoring societal, legal, and moral rules.

Enmity means deep-seated ill will towards others.

I mean, some of these behaviors may get us ahead.

And they help us achieve success by our distorted societal standards.

But Paul says, I'm warning you, as I've warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

In other words, these things don't lead us to live in God's will.

Similar to these works of flesh, Mahatma Gandhi put a twist on what people call the seven deadly sins.

He called his the seven societal sins, the practices that infect our institutions and systems and corrode the common good.

Gandhi's seven societal sins are wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice, politics without principle.

Gandhi doesn't say there's anything inherently wrong with wealth and pleasure and knowledge, commerce, science, and so forth.

He's saying that when these things lack the common good or moral foundations, they lead us to sin, or as Paul says, such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Reminds me of how Thomas Merton once said, most people spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to discover when they get to the top, the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

And so, in contrast, Paul says, We must live by the fruit of the Spirit.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I mean, he says there are no laws against these things.

They don't step on others to get you where you're going.

In fact, they lead us closer to others.

Not on top, not above, but with.

These things don't pit us against one another or tear one another down.

In fact, they see the value of connection and working together.

Yes.

They sometimes make things harder.

No one ever got rich quick by patience and generosity.

Self-control is hard work.

Kindness and gentleness are things that will get you eaten alive in a cutthroat world.

Love, joy, and faithfulness won't allow you to get anything for nothing.

Because love, joy, and faithfulness require you to give something.

And all of this applies to more than business or work.

It's every part of us.

We must live by the fruit of the Spirit in our work, our families, our neighborhoods.

As Gandhi said, our wealth, our politics, our commerce, our science, our religion.

All parts of us.

Because there's nothing inherently wrong with success and ambition and upward mobility.

As long as you get there through the fruit of the Spirit.

These ways of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

These are the guiding principles and practices that lead us to the kingdom of God and redefine what success looks like.

Ponti discovers this redefinition of success at the end of the musical, too.

His transformation begins when he falls in love with one of the company secretaries named Rosemary, but she convinces him that if he doesn't do things honestly, she doesn't want to be with him.

But he also realizes that all the people he's manipulated and lied to in order to be successful have been genuinely good to him.

And he realizes his love and gratitude for them.

He realizes that individual success that comes at the expense of others is not success.

And this leads to the show's big finale number that we just sang called The Brotherhood of Man.

I mean, this song, which uses antiquated male-dominated language, is all about how we are connected to one another.

And we belong to one another.

And ultimately, our success is defined by the good of the whole.

Ponty sings, there is a brotherhood of man, a benevolent brotherhood of man, a noble tie that binds all human hearts and minds into one brotherhood of man.

Your lifelong membership is free.

Keep a given each brother all you can.

Oh, aren't you proud to be in that fraternity the big brotherhood of man?

Paul calls it the kingdom of God.

Recently I heard about a company called P.

Terry's Burgers.

It's a chain of restaurants in Texas.

It was started in 2005 by Patrick and Kathy Terry.

But this is not a story of success without trying.

Patrick and Kathy worked very hard to get their company off the ground, doing every task in the business and sometimes sleeping in the restaurant.

And through hard work and sacrifice, they expanded to 38 stores.

But it was by more than just grit and determination.

They were guided by their values of caring about others in the community.

In 2006, they started the tradition that one Saturday every quarter, all the earnings would be given to local nonprofits.

And then after reading the book Fast Food Nation, they made decisions to use high-quality, healthier products with fewer processed ingredients in their food.

And it also inspired them to pay their employees over$4.5 an hour more than the average fast food worker in Texas.

Last month the Terries decided to finally retire.

They had a chance to sell their company to a private equity group.

But instead, they chose to sell to their employees.

And they created an employee ownership trust where profits get shared with all the people who work there.

Kathy Terry said, when we had the opportunity to sell the business, we joked that we could buy our own private island, but we realized that would just be really lonely.

I'm not making a judgment on private equity or claiming some business models are better than others.

I'm simply pointing out how this couple chose their values overall.

They took a harder road and made sacrifices to create what they thought were more important than wealth or comfort or ease.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

That, my friends, is how to succeed in business.

And the gospel according to Broadway.

Amen.