Fifty years ago, the manager of Bell System decided his executives needed to be not just good followers but leaders, too: the kind of people who knew not just how to answer questions but how to know what questions are worth asking. The solution? Give the executives (some of whom didn’t have college degrees) a crash course in the liberal arts–including seminars on Joyce’s Ulysses. The result? The executives reported that the book had enriched their lives in many ways. They were more curious about the world around them and, during the ravages of the McCarthy era, were able to see things not in black and white but in shades of grey.
The educational institute was deemed a success—and also ultimately discontinued. Bell discovered that its executives were more dynamic intellectually, but also less likely to put the company’s bottom line ahead of their families and communities. Read more. . .
Readers, is literature a solution for the modern-day corporate problems that plague us? Maybe we should all send our favorite executives a copy of Ulysses. Who knows? It just might change the world.
