“Institutions Don’t Love You Back”

“Institutions Don’t Love You Back”

By

Leonard Zwelling

Here’s what the late, great oncologist Joe Simone first wrote in Clinical Cancer Research in 1999 in “Simone’s Maxims” the first of which is the title of the blog:

“This first maxim may sound cynical, but the relationship between any employee and the institution is impersonal and contractual, whether written or not.”

This is easy to forget. Institutions, corporations, universities, and even religious organizations want to make you, the employee (and I include academic faculty and physicians here who want to be more than employees, but are not differentiated from cafeteria workers by the institutional leadership), feel like you are part of something bigger. You know, “one MD Anderson.” The leader wants you to believe in him and his cause.

After all, the Supreme Court said that corporations have First Amendment rights in the Citizens United case of 2010. Institutions are “people.” They can feel, right? No.

Corporate institutions may be “people” in the eyes of the United States Constitution, but they still don’t love you back.

There is, then, a natural conflict here. Most current leaders of institutions want their flock to embrace the mission statement and core values they state. They want employees and, if this is an academic institution, the faculty, to be loyal to the institutions they lead. They want the people to “love” the institution. They want the employees to feel part of something greater than themselves. And they may feel that way as I feel about Duke Medical School, but don’t be fooled into thinking you are in a true human relationship. You are not because, “the institution doesn’t love you back.” My feelings about Duke are more about gratitude than about anything I expect back beyond good leadership for the institution.

The institution has only one love. That is itself and its continued healthy (especially financially healthy) existence. That’s why it was built in the first place–to do something big regardless of who was running it or who was working there.

It is most easy to understand this when you are fired from an institution. Your first emotions are feelings of anger and betrayal, like those of a jilted lover. But you and the institution never had that kind of relationship. The love was always in one direction, but the institution counted on that love to fulfill its mission of continued existence.

The prime reason for someone being fired from an institution is the perception on the part of institutional leadership that the person has used up his or her usefulness to the institution in the eyes of those to whom the institution has seen fit to grant the stewardship of its survival, i.e., the president. It doesn’t matter if you are on the board of the institution, or, in the case of an academic institution, on its faculty, or even if you are the boss. I have certainly seen presidents disposed of without so much as a whimper on the part of great institutions, often without a wet eye in the house.

Following a firing, the fired person may get great support from his or her former co-workers. Letters of recommendation may get written. Severance and short-term benefits may be granted. Make no mistake. Once you are fired, you are gone.

Now there once was a time when academics had meaningful tenure and could not really be fired. That time is over as recent action by the Texas State Legislature has made clear. Presidents of UT institutions can fire faculty for any cause or no cause. If the faculty member is deemed “unprofessional,” he or she can be whisked away into the night, her name scratched from the door, his email address disabled.

This lesson cannot be taught enough. I have learned it the hard way many times as my recent blog on being fired relayed. Being let go feels bad every time. Even when being fired had no adverse effect on my income stream because I had tenure, it still felt awful. I had been betrayed. I had been jilted. It felt like a messy divorce.

It was not a divorce of any kind because I was never married to any of the places from which I was fired. I was just employed there and marriage and employment should never be confused for each other.

“Institutions don’t love you back.” This may well be the most lasting legacy of Joe Simone, a man who cared for many children with cancer, is given credit for curing acute lymphoblastic leukemia, had major leadership roles at St. Jude, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the University of Utah, and was a mentor to hundreds.

I was fortunate to know Joe. He read my blog and sent me comments until his terminal illness. He was a great man. He did many great things. But this insight about the unidirectional love affair between employees and institutions and its clear articulation will live forever among academic oncologists.

It’s a good lesson for everyone. When your career is going well; when your papers, grants and awards are accumulating; when you think you are at the top of your game and indispensable; when the boss calls you up for advice; re-read this blog or Clinical Cancer Research 5:2281, 1999 and remember, no one is indispensable in the eyes of the corporation.

Or, remember, from The Godfather, but also attributed to the mob accountant Otto Berman who worked for Dutch Schultz in the 1930s:

“It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.”