An attractive archetype

Americans are a scrappy lot. We’re “cussedly independent.” After all, the United States was founded by “embattled farmers” who broke the rules of war by wearing buckskins and hiding behind trees to shoot at soldiers marching in lines wearing bright red target-coats.

So it isn’t surprising that we love the “pirate” and the “outlaw,” those who “disrupt,” break the rules, or “stick it to the Man.” You can see it in our literature, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn,  our movies, Pirates of the Caribbean  and The Godfather and TV shows, The Sopranos  and Breaking Bad. We idolize business leaders like Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Fashions change, but the pirate’s earring, the outlaw’s bandanna mask, the gangster’s pinkie ring perpetually resonate.

It is a romantic archetype, daring Outlaw, passionate Revolutionary, swashbuckling Pirate, Maverick, Outsider, Rebel. We cheer Zorro and Batman, rich men turned thieves and justice warriors for the poor.

Americans didn’t invent this archetype. The British have Robin Hood; the French have Cartouche. The Germans have Schinderhannes and the Australians have Ned Kelley, The Keralans in Southern India have Kayamkulam Kochunni, the Irish have Gráinne O’Malley, and the Chinese have Song Jiang. Outlaws with a heart are a global phenomenon.

There are brands that promote themselves as outlaws, Harley-Davidson, MTV, Apple. Some celebrities style themselves  bad-boys, like Erroll Flynn, who famously played Robin Hood, or Charlie Sheen  or bad-girls, like Madonna or Milie Cyrus. Country singers Willie, Waylon, and Kris were called outlaws because they resisted album strings tracks. Hank Williams Jr, and Chris Stapleton carry on the outlaw-country tradition.

Some leaders strike an outlaw pose, which, I guess, is OK until they start breaking actual laws or behaving in toxic ways. Then maybe it becomes a little less romantic and a lot less cool.

The Law is the law . . . except . . . maybe . . .

The United States was founded in the tradition of English common law. Before the Norman conquest of 1066 England was ruled in Anglo-Saxon legal tradition. Crimes were personal. Victims were entitled to compensation. If I killed your cow, I paid you for it. If I killed your wife I paid you, maybe more or less depending on the wife and the cow. If the parties could agree on compensation, great; if not, the chief or a jury of locals decided the crime price.

The feudal Normans built stone castles with square towers and keeps on hills overlooking thatch covered villages. The Normans, a colonial power, needed to keep the peace, so there were rules of accepted behavior. Crimes became less individual, and more crimes “against the community.” Adjudication of the law was centralized, conducted by clerks, literally clerics, literate clergy. These clerks’ knowledge of law came from Cicero, Virgil and the Vatican and was described as flowing from the Divine Right of the King. It’s tough to make exceptions to God.

The outermost rim of an Anglo-Saxon village was called the pale. If someone’s behavior was wild and uncontrollable it was described as “beyond the pale,” outside village acceptable behavior that might get you banished. The Normans expanded the concept of outlawry, to be outside the community and protection of the law.

Everyone had to follow the rules, even Kings. Henry II discovered this when his knights murdered Thomas á Beckett,  Archbishop of Canterbury. Royals were slow to learn.  King John’s barons spelled out the rules in the Magna Carta in 1215.

This is what the Adams, Jefferson, Franklin crew were upset about; George III was not following the rules. So they built a government to ensure “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It was a representative republic, which, despite visionary words, wasn’t all that representative, and we’ve been trying to grow into the words they used ever since.

The founders broke the rules to break away, but they were rule based folks. Sam Adams, the firebrand of the Son’s of Liberty, was an outlaw to the Crown and a patriot in our history books. So Americans had this dichotomy from our beginnings. We love “law and order,” a “government of laws not of men,” “the rule of law.” We also love the Outlaw and the Pirate. Maybe everyone does.

Unintended consequences

I have been rebellious for much of my life. I rebelled against my parents, my teachers, against bosses, against anyone who had the smallest bit of power over me. I broke some laws. I’m not proud of that, but fortunately I never hurt anyone or went to jail. I loved the pirate image; I even once contemplated an earring.

Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean is a fun romp. Captain Jack Sparrow meets up with Edward Teach, Blackbeard. The real Edward Teach was captured and beheaded after a career of capturing ships, killing their crews and marauding coastal communities. Maybe the earing isn’t so cool.

One filmmaker shows the horrific consequences of outlaw behavior. We laugh as Vito Corleon (Marlon Brando) in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather talks about an “offer he can’t refuse.” Then we wake with the man who discovers a severed horses head on his bloody satin sheets.

Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid have been lionized in books and movies, but you rarely hear from the families of Pinkertons guards or Bolivian federales they killed. Al Capone, the bootlegger operator avoided getting caught by becoming a local folk hero. The victims of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre didn’t get a say. Capone was put away by the IRS for tax evasion.

People talk blithely about tax evasion a “victimless crime.” This is the Anglo-Saxon view of crime. The victim isn’t one person or one company, it is a crime against the community.

Some admire how drug dealers “beat the system” until your brother dies of a fentanyl overdose or your little sister is caught in a gang crossfire. We call terrorists “freedom fighters” until they commit an unspeakable crime in the name of “liberation.” The Pirate and Outlaw are too wrapped up in ”rules don’t apply to me” to care about anything but themselves.

But that earring, bandana, and pinkie ring sure are cool.

“The Emperor is naked!”

It is left to a naïve child to blurt out the truth, when so many would not because they were flattering the emperor or afraid of appearing stupid.

In 1837, the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen published the folk tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The story tells of a vain ruler obsessed with being a fashion plate. Every outfit had to be new and spectacular. Enter two con men who flatter the high king promising to create a suit of clothes so dazzling that only the incompetent and stupid will not see its magnificence.

Andersen, like the Grimm brothers, collected folk tales from around the world.  He based this one on a German translation of a Spanish version of a Persian retelling of an Indian tale. All previous versions make the clothes visible to those of legitimate birth; people praise the unseen clothes lest they outed as bastards. Andersen changed the invisibility indicator to incompetence and so insecure courtiers’ fawning exposes the king’s bum.

The con-tailors elaborately loom an invisible suit. The emperors advisors rave about the garments’ beauty. No one, including the Emperor, admits they might be too stupid to appreciate such sartorial splendor.

One small boy gives the ruler the “straight skinny” when the emperor parades past in his birthday suit.

As leaders rise, the “straight skinny” recedes.

Getting honest feedback at the top of an organization (or a country), is hard. A Mike Nichols and Elaine May song lyric from the movie Ishtar illustrates:

“Telling the truth can be dangerous business. Honest and popular don’t go hand-in hand.

If you admit that you play the accordion, no one will hire you in a rock-n-roll band.”

 There are the flatterers, who might “fib just a little” to better their career prospects.

“You are such an amazing founder. Ignore the shareholder requests for a new CEO. Who else could lead this company as well as you do!”

There are the “sugar-coaters.”

“The people who fill out surveys only complain; we have millions of happy customers.”

“When you cut sales demographically we’ve made some real gains in the those over 65.”

 There are some who are protecting your feelings.

“No, of course that dress doesn’t make you look fat.”

“Everybody forgets things.”

“You look good!”

We old people hear this one so much, comedians now talk about the three ages of man: Youth, Middle Age, and “You look good!”)

It ain’t all their fault

Leaders create the dearth of straight skinny. When you explode at bad news, you ensure others “won’t make that mistake again.”

Are you susceptible to flattery?  When you receive a compliment do you glow in a way that affects critical thinking?

Who do you include in your closest meetings? Flatterers and sugar-coaters? People who believe in you and your ideas? Or “”Difficult people,” “Debbie Downers,” “Nattering nabobs of negativity?”

Are you prepared to believe any cockamamie explanation instead of the truth. ”You know DeNile is not just a river in Egypt.” (Denial is self-preservation for vanity.)

There are consequences beyond your feelings.

Beneath the radar in every disaster there was probably a “straight skinny teller:”

“General Custer, sir, I think there might be more of them than you think.”

“Captain Smith., I’d like to see Titanic set the crossing record too, but they did say icebergs have been spotted.”

At one point in my career I studied large process safety incidents, BP’s Texas City Refinery, Deep Water Horizon, Challenger, Columbia, and many more. In every one I studied there was always someone with the “straight skinny” who was disregarded or even ridiculed. Lives and livelihood are too much at stake not to listen.

Not listening is a tragic flaw

Playwrights and authors have always seen those who ignore the “straight skinny” as creators of their own destruction.

Sophocles, gave Oedipus many who warned about the “kill Dad, bed Mom” thing. Did Fast-Oedi listen? Not-so-much.

King Lear listened to daughters Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery and rejected his truth-tellingdaughter Cordelia. ‘How like a serpents tooth it is to have a thankless child.” When the Earl of Kent tries to inform him of his mistake, Lear kicks him out of the cabinet.

Anakin Skywalker, feared losing Padme, became Darth Vader. Othello feared losing Desdemona and he and pretty much everyone became dead. Neither listens to people trying to give them the straight skinny.

Finding your straight skinny teller

You can look for straight skinny devotes by assiduously avoiding the opposites. What is the opposite of the straight skinny teller? The crooked skinny teller who promises you inside information, but gives you lies that only benefit them? The straight corpulent who is always positive, not just a half-full person, but a cup-runneth-over person.

There are some other ways:

• Start with the person in the mirror. Express gratitude for bad news. Take compliments graciously and move on, steeling yourself against flattery. Ask for all the data, not just the good stuff.
• Notice who agrees and disagrees with you. You want independent thinkers. The person who always agrees with you is gravitating to the power source. The person who always disagrees may be counter-dependent.
• Don’t play favorites. Bring different people into meetings. Ask for opposing viewpoints in decision-making discussions.
• Value you those who help keep your ego in check. When the Roman Senate authorized a Triumph, the parade and celebration ceremony for victorious generals, they placed a Senate slave in the general’s chariot to repeat “Momento mori sic transit gloria” (“Remember you are mortal; glory fades”). My wife sometimes fills this role, with humor that helps me laugh at myself.
• Say “thank you” when someone gives you the straight skinny. Reward those who break you out of denial, short circuit your magical thinking, and identify and challenge assumptions. Perhaps you’ll avoid that embarrassing moment when someone blurts out:

 The Emperor is naked!