Lee Iacocca and Quitting - When to Throw in the Towel
On July 13, 1978, the president of Ford Motors got fired. This was significant because the company's president in 1978 was Lee Iacocca, a genius salesman who introduced the world to the Ford Mustang. Lee also posted record profits for Ford in two years leading up to his termination. He looked like he was on track to lead Ford into the next era of auto manufacturing. Which led economists and car enthusiasts to ask the same question about Ford letting Iacocca go: “What the hell?”
We've all had friends who have gotten fired out of the blue. We asked them about it, and they say things like it was unexpected, or the boss just had it out for them. We comfort our friends when they get canned, but on the inside, we are rolling our eyes, right? Well, when Lee Iacocca got fired, it was all true. Lee's boss, Henry Ford II, was a chairman of Ford Motors and the grandson of Henry Ford. Henry literally had it out for Lee Iacocca for being too successful and too strong of a businessman. While firing Lee, Henry told him, “sometimes, you just don't like somebody.”
To make matters worse, Lee was replaced by a 28-year-old kid, the son of Henry Ford II, Edsel Ford. At 54, Lee Iacocca, a man who worked his way through engineering school and bootstrapped his way from an engineer, to Ford salesman, to record-setting company president, was fired and replaced by a 28-year-old son of the chairman just ten years before his retirement. If there ever was a time to throw in the towel, this was it.
The phrase “thrown in the towel” has become so overused. It's lost its meaning. We say it to discourage friends and co-workers from quitting before things get too tough. But in today's episode, we're talking about quitting. When is it a good time to quit? And statistically, how much quitting should we expect to do in our lifetime? We also want to remind everyone that throwing in the towel can be a good thing. It's a signal to stop a boxing match when your fighter is losing so badly and not persevering anymore. They're simply being hurt. Lee Iacocca technically never quit, but he did redirect his abilities. So that's the first myth:
Myth 1: Never give up. Odds be damned. We shall persevere always and forever, even against reason.
Starting with relationships, there's not a lot of good statistics for how people feel about past relationships. Still, many people say the same thing: that they should have quit dead-end relationships earlier. Have you ever heard of the sunk cost fallacy? It is the notion when we invest in something (money or time) we are more likely to keep investing in it because we feel like it's going to pay out eventually. If you're sitting at a slot machine, you're more likely to keep putting money in if you've already put money in. So, if you're in a relationship, you stay because you think it will work in the end.
You have every reason in the world to quit and try something else. We'll get into that when we talk about later how many millennials quit their jobs and why younger people are more likely to do so. Spoiler, they are, and it's mostly because they're pursuing something creative. Another good reason is burnout, when you physically and mentally cannot handle it anymore, no matter if you are good at it or not.
Have you ever been in a situation where you were ready to quit, but somebody took you aside, and they talked you into continuing? When we talk about quitting, there's a study that used the mouse swim test. It's cruel, and it's used by a lot of antidepressant companies to test hopelessness. They will put mice, sometimes rats, in a bucket of water, and they will watch how long they swim. When mice and rats have the emotion of hopelessness, they will give up and drown. But if they have hope, they will swim longer. That's why they use it in depressant tests because a depressed Mouse will die faster. It is basically the gold standard of testing antidepressants. If you give mice real hope that they'll get out of this, they'll do it for days. This encapsulates work; when you have problems, and someone pulls you aside, it gives you more hope to continue on and not quit. But that is not always good for your overall wellbeing and sanity.
Myth 2: If you've mastered something, you should continue down that career path.
Is there something you've ever mastered, and then you abandoned it? We're going to talk a little bit about Malcolm Gladwell, and we're going to shoot him full of holes. You and I have both read a lot of Gladwell books. He talks about mastery in the 10,000-hour mark, which is the idea that it takes 10,000 hours to master something. I went looking for data to back that up, and it turns out chess champions and master musicians can become masters in their field in just a couple of years, far below that 10,000-hour mark. And the website called Fast Company posted that 10,000 hours only accounts for about one-third of your mastery. I thought all you have to do is invest time. But turns out, age, when you pick up a skill, and how many complementary skills you already have play a whole lot into it.
I want to bring up the notion that you may feel like you've mastered something, but that means you can transition that skill. Hopefully, if you've put in that mastery and take it elsewhere if you wish. If you've mastered something, you can always transition away from it. And on top of that, be confident in your ability to master something new.
Have you ever heard of the book “The Obstacle is the Way?” It's a book about stoicism, similar to Gladwell's stuff. It's self-help oriented, but it's mostly focused on slow stoicism, and one of the stories they share in there is about the time Thomas Edison's factory burned down. Edison was, at this point, an old man, pretty much done with his career. He was ironically trying to make fireproof concrete, and his factory burned down in the middle of the night. With Thomas Edison his factory, he should have wanted to be done and quit. But instead, Edison turned to his kids, and he said go get the neighbors, friends, and bring everyone out here. They all watched as the weird chemicals produced light and flare like fireworks in different colored explosions. They watched from afar and admired the colors. So, when we went on a lot of this episode about quitting, it was secretly about stoicism. It's how we can quit in a meaningful way; transition our abilities to something new.
Myth 3: In this economy, if you have a stable job, you should fight to keep it.
How many times will we quit in life statistically? How many jobs can we expect to hold? According to USA Today, the typical worker will have about 12 different employers in their lifetime. Younger workers are also statistically more likely to leave their jobs in search of better offers. So generally speaking, you can expect to have a job change 12 times in your life.
Now we're going to have a slight caveat, that mastery might be overrated for a job. If you're mastering something that you enjoy, then it's something worthwhile because you’re more likely to remember the things that you're mastering. You're more likely to engage in it outside of a job if you genuinely enjoy it. You may even stick with it even if you weren't getting paid. Stepping into a Forbes article, which is an interview with Robert Greene, he quoted,
“I had also worked as a consultant to many powerful people in the business and the Arts. I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid. They could adapt to almost any circumstance when confronted with the problems. They could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them. They could do all of this with surprising rapidity as if they had developed an intuitive.”
I don't know if there's a better way of saying it, but simply that the ability to look at something fluidly, adapting, and being flexible might be true mastery. So, if you have mastered soap carving or cabinetmaking, you may want to master flexibility next. I've always thought of it as being stubborn, and things are the way they are, but it’s the opposite. Go with the flow and remain flexible in your approach.
Final Thoughts
If you're stuck in a dead-end job and you know there's no place to go, no way to improve, no chance to get what you want, and the compensation isn't worth it, then quit. Stop swimming in circles. Be honest with yourself. Ask the hard questions.
Do I have more bargaining power right now behind my desk or at my next job interview? Is my boss likely to let me advance, or is he holding the position open for his son, whose name is on the building?
Mastery is no safeguard. Becoming proficient at a skill is essential, but companies already expect you to master whatever they sit in front of you. If you take your valuable time to master something, choose a skill that's meaningful to you. Because mastery isn’t an equal playing field, you'll learn faster and be less likely to quit if you master something valuable to you.
Lastly, the typical worker will have 12 different employers throughout their lifetime. For some of us, it'll be a lot more. This means your loyalty and time should be invested in yourself. Flexibility, education, fluidity, emotional stability, awareness, those are the skills that will carry you should you decide to quit. Your loyalty should go to yourself, not your company. You are not a forklift rated for a particular load capacity each day and used for a specific purpose. Instead, we're all by the necessity of the times and economy - Renaissance men and women, inventors, experimenters, and flexible learners and we should damn well act like it.
“Well, I didn't plan it out that way. But by getting canned in 1978, I got thrown into a situation where I became a leader. You need to have a war to make General.” - Lee Iacocca.