Perseverance
Other names:
Persistence, voluntary continuation of action in pursuit of a goal, in spite of obstacles, difficulties of discouragement (CSV)
Steadfastness
Hardworking
(Does "Initiative" belong here?)
Definition:
Not giving up; "to persist long in something good until it is accomplished" (II-II q137 a1)
Advice:
“Once you quit one thing, then you can quit something else, and pretty soon you’ll get good at being a quitter.” (Rumsfeld)
The five second rule: “If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.”(Robbins)
Get up early (Corley #1)
Empirical Research:
Persistence is a desirable character trait for several reasons. It helps one to achieve one's goals, but studies show that it also increases enjoyment of success (Festinger, 1957; Aronsen and Mills, 1959), as well as self-confidence (Bandura, 1977). Persistence is necessary for successful entrepreneurship (McClelland, 1987). It is necessary to exercise prudence and adaptability in discerning where and when to persist (Janoff-Bulman and Brickman, 1982; Wortman & Brehm, 1975).
Individuals with a history of being rewarded for high effort are more likely to develop persistence than individuals with a history of being rewarded for low effort (Eisenberger, 1992). However, some extrinsic rewards, like money or prizes, have actually been shown to reduce persistence. It is necessary to structure rewards in such a way that the task is seen as having positive value in and of itself (Harackiewicz, Manderlink, & Sansone, 1984).
Case examples:
Gifts of the Spirit:
Further reading:
Robbins, Mel. https://fourminutebooks.com/the-5-second-rule-summary/
Vices opposed:
Softness or Weakness, giving in too easily
Pertinacity, hanging on stubbornly, beyond reason
Definition:
Not giving up; "to persist long in something good until it is accomplished" (II-II q137 a1)
Advice:
“Once you quit one thing, then you can quit something else, and pretty soon you’ll get good at being a quitter.” (Rumsfeld)
The five second rule: “If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.”(Robbins)
Get up early (Corley #1)
Empirical Research:
Persistence is a desirable character trait for several reasons. It helps one to achieve one's goals, but studies show that it also increases enjoyment of success (Festinger, 1957; Aronsen and Mills, 1959), as well as self-confidence (Bandura, 1977). Persistence is necessary for successful entrepreneurship (McClelland, 1987). It is necessary to exercise prudence and adaptability in discerning where and when to persist (Janoff-Bulman and Brickman, 1982; Wortman & Brehm, 1975).
Individuals with a history of being rewarded for high effort are more likely to develop persistence than individuals with a history of being rewarded for low effort (Eisenberger, 1992). However, some extrinsic rewards, like money or prizes, have actually been shown to reduce persistence. It is necessary to structure rewards in such a way that the task is seen as having positive value in and of itself (Harackiewicz, Manderlink, & Sansone, 1984).
Case examples:
Gifts of the Spirit:
Further reading:
Robbins, Mel. https://fourminutebooks.com/the-5-second-rule-summary/
Vices opposed:
Softness or Weakness, giving in too easily
Pertinacity, hanging on stubbornly, beyond reason
Case Study 1
ReplyDeleteIn her book, The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur, Mary Kay Ash recognizes the need to practice the virtue of perseverance on a day-to-day basis.
"Like everyone else, I still have days when I don’t feel like working. That’s when I have to struggle a bit to muster up my usual enthusiasm. A very successful man once told me, 'Mary Kay, if I only went to work on the days I felt like it, I’d never go to work!’ I’m certain that if we were honest, we would all admit to having those days when we simply have to give ourselves a little pep talk. So you do it. It’s easy to be enthusiastic when everything is going smoothly. But the real test of one’s mettle is to maintain enthusiasm under adverse conditions. We often tell our Independent Beauty Consultants, ‘You’ve got to fake it until you make it!’ That is, act enthusiastic and you will become enthusiastic." (May Kay, The Mary Kay Way, pp. 74-75)
Case Study 2
ReplyDeleteIn his book, Good to Great scholar Jim Collins writes about Colman Mockler, CEO of Gillette from 1975 to 1991. Mockler’s behavior in the face oftwo hostile takeover attempts from Revlon and a bid by the Conistan Partners investment group to gain control of the board and sell the company to the highest bidder, is a good example of the virtue of Perseverance.
“Colman Mockler did not capitulate, choosing instead to fight for the future greatness of Gillette, even though he himself would have pocketed a substantial sum on his own shares. A quiet and reserved man, always courteous, Mockler had the reputation of a gracious, almost patrician gentleman. Yet those who mistook Mockler’s reserved nature for weakness found themselves beaten in the end. In the proxy fight, senior Gillette executives reached out to thousands of individual investors—person by person, phone call by phone call—and won the battle.
“Now, you might be thinking, ‘But that just sounds like self-serving entrenched management fighting for their interests at the expense of shareholder interests.’ On the surface, it might look that way, but consider two key facts.
“First, Mockler and his team staked the company’s future on huge investments in radically new and technologically advanced systems (later known as Sensor and Mach3). Had the takeover been successful, these projects would almost certainly have been curtailed or eliminated, and none of us would be shaving with Sensor, Sensor for Women, or the Mach3—leaving hundreds of millions of people to a more painful daily battle with stubble.
“Second, at the time of the takeover battle, Sensor promised significant future profits that were not reflected in the stock price because it was in secret development. With Sensor in mind, the board and Mockler believed that the future value of the shares far exceeded the current price, even with the price premium offered by the raiders. To sell out would have made short-term shareflippers happy but would have been utterly irresponsible to long-term shareholders.
“In the end, Mockler and the board were proved right, stunningly so. If a shareflipper had accepted the 44 percent price premium offered by Ronald Perelman on October 31, 1986, and then invested the full amount in the general market for ten years, through the end of 1996, he would have come out three times worse off than a shareholder who had stayed with Mockler and Gillette.20 Indeed, the company, its customers, and the shareholders would have been ill served had Mockler capitulated to the raiders, pocketed his millions, and retired to a life of leisure.” (Collins, Good to Great, p. 22-24)
Case Study 3
ReplyDeleteIn his book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don’t, Jim Collins investigates the habits and character traits necessary for success. One of his case studies is the Nucor steel company. It achieved success by focusing its efforts on recruiting for and cultivating the virtue of perseverance.
“Nucor built its entire system on the idea that you can teach farmers how to make steel, but you can’t teach a farmer work ethic to people who don’t have it in the first place. So, instead of setting up mills in traditional steel towns like Pittsburgh and Gary, it located its plants in places like Crawfordsville, Indiana; Norfolk, Nebraska; and Plymouth, Utah—places full of real farmers who go to bed early, rise at dawn, and get right to work without fanfare. 'Gotta milk the cows' and 'Gonna plow the north forty before noon' translated easily into 'Gotta roll some sheet steel' and 'Gonna cast forty tons before lunch.' Nucor ejected people who did not share this work ethic, generating as high as 50 percent turnover in the first year of a plant, followed by very low turnover as the right people settled in for the long haul.
"To attract and keep the best workers, Nucor paid its steelworkers more than any other steel company in the world. But it built its pay system around a high-pressure team-bonus mechanism, with over 50 percent of a worker’s compensation tied directly to the productivity of his work team of twenty to forty people. Nucor team members would usually show up for work thirty minutes early to arrange their tools and prepare to blast off the starting line the instant the shift gun fired. 'We have the hardest working steel workers in the world,' said one Nucor executive. 'We hire five, work them like ten, and pay them like eight.'"
"The Nucor system did not aim to turn lazy people into hard workers, but to create an environment where hardworking people would thrive and lazy workers would either jump or get thrown right off the bus. In one extreme case, workers chased a lazy teammate right out of the plant with an angle iron.
...
"Nucor illustrates a key point. In determining 'the right people,' the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience. Not that specific knowledge or skills are unimportant, but they viewed these traits as more teachable (or at least learnable), whereas they believed dimensions like character, work ethic, basic intelligence, dedication to fulfilling commitments, and values are more ingrained." (Collins, Good to Great, pp. 50-51)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins discusses the habit of perseverance.
"We came to call this the rinsing your cottage cheese’ factor. The analogy comes from a disciplined world-class athlete named Dave Scott, who won the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon six times. In training, Scott would ride his bike 75 miles, swim 20,000 meters, and run 17 miles—on average, every single day. Dave Scott did not have a weight problem! Yet he believed that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet would give him an extra edge. So, Dave Scott—a man who burned at least 5,000 calories a day in training—would literally rinse his cottage cheese to get the extra fat off. Now, there is no evidence that he absolutely needed to rinse his cottage cheese to win the Ironman; that’s not the point of the story. The point is that rinsing his cottage cheese was simply one more small step that he believed would make him just that much better, one more small step added to all the other small steps to create a consistent program of superdiscipline." (Collins, Good to Great, p. 127)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn her memoir, Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina explains that for some time after she became CEO of a floundering Hewlett-Packard, the company consistently missed analysts' estimates for a long period of time. Nevertheless, she was determined to persevere on the course of reform. "Every quarter we missed was painful. Each time we did so, the change warriors would lose courage. Each time, those who resisted change gained strength. Each time, I had to recommit the organization to the path we were on, reassure people that we could accomplish what we attempted, and reiterate my passion and enthusiasm for our aspirations and our potential. When I spoke to the people of HP, I spoke to everyone who observed and was interested in us: in our always-on world, every communication finds its way to everyone. Many took my words as naïveté or a failure to understand the details of the business. I was, in fact, clear eyed about those details as well as the difficulties and the pitfalls. I knew that progress, not perfection, was the goal, and I knew the greatest danger of all was that we’d quit along the way. 'When we make a mistake or fall short, we will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, learn our lessons and move on.'" (Fiorina, Tough Choices, ch. 24)
In Mackensie Busch's The Paperboy, entrepreneur-philanthropist Timothy Busch explains how perseverance is necessary in order to realize and implement a (theoretically) brilliant idea. "To stay competitive, you’ve got to keep churning talent. Also, I think 'Market-Based Management is our management style, which encourages everybody in the business to think of new ideas. But then those ideas have to be implemented and replicated in other [hotel] properties, and then continued, so they can’t stop. We can’t just say, 'Hey, great ideas! Oh yeah, we did it.' And then do an end zone dance. I want our people asking, 'What are we doing about that right now?' Or 'What’s next?' Because that’s what all good businesses do. They have discipline in execution, and they plan for the future. Take Whole Foods. Look at how complex that business is, but they’ve got discipline, and they know how to execute. They’re not perfect, but they’re always striving for perfection. I’ve always been impressed with that." (Busch, The Paperboy, ch. 8)
ReplyDeleteCase Study
ReplyDeleteIn his autobiography, Eat Mor Chikin: Inspire More People, Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy recalls a trying episode from the time when he owned his first restaurant, the Dwarf House. "On a cold Saturday afternoon in February 1965, potential tragedy struck. The fryer under the hood of the Dwarf House caught fire, and flames went right up to the roof. The Hapeville Fire Department responded quickly and put out the fire before the restaurant burned to the ground. Water poured out of the front door and into the parking lot, where I stood watching the smoldering mess.
"One of the waitresses walked over to me and asked, 'When should we apply for unemployment?'
"'We're going to reopen Monday morning,' I said.
"She looked at me like I was crazy. Nobody else would have dreamed we would open on Monday, given the condition the restaurant was in. But I was dead serious. We had customers who wanted to eat with us, and I couldn't stand to turn anyone away. I was not going to be put out of business by another fire.
"We couldn't do anything until the building was inspected by the insurance company, but the adjuster came out quickly and wrote up his report. While I waited for him to finish, I found a telephone and started calling people who could help us back in business.
"By Sunday we had at least a hundred friends, family, and contractors bundled against the cold doing what they could to help. It was like an old-fashioned barn raising, perhaps not unlike what my parents had experienced when their house burned down in 1914. An electrician who was a friend of mine called a warehouse and got the supplies he needed to rewire the building, including new light fixtures. A plumber friend made repairs in the kitchen.
"The sheet rock had collapsed under the weight of the water, so we had to shovel it out and replace it. After we did all that, we painted the whole thing.
"In the dark of night, at around two o'clock Monday morning, we had everything in shape to open, although the rafters were still steaming. The fire department pledged to remain on alert.
"A few hours later, we opened for business as usual.
"Several customers came in and said, 'I see y'all repainted over the weekend.'
"'That's right,' I said, 'we sure did.'" (Cathy, Eat Mor Chikin, p. 83)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteDuring the Panic of 1875, also known as the Great Depression of the 19th Century, Heinz Ketchup founder H. J. Heinz' fledgling company was forced to declare bankruptcy and default on its loans. After a bleak Christmas of prayer and soul-searching, Heinz worked to set his young business back on track through sheer perseverance. "No one worked harder than H. J. Heinz to rebuild the company. He traveled around with his pledge to make good on all debts. His personal commitment quickly relieved their fears. He sold horseradish and salted pickles with the passion of his youth and traveled to nearby railroad stops to sell more. His distribution network stood with him because of the popularity of his products. That popularity proved itself in the midst of a national economic depression. His old landlord offered him the Pittsburgh pickle factory to rent again, starting in April. The landlord recognized Heinz's promise to pay back old debts and the continued demand for his products...By early summer even his critics were amazed at the Heinz's family unity and determination."
Slowly, Heinz's company began to recover from the recession. "By late summer of 1876, Heinz was back overseeing many things. He would often inspect the gardens in Sharpsburg. He acted as chief accountant and financial officer. He looked for asset bargains on old horses, wagons and mules. He continued his trips and his work with glass houses to improve his packaging and reduce costs. He designed labels and studied inks for his glass bottles. He made tough long distance sales calls, working to establish beachheads in Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore." (Skrebac, Jr., H. J. Heinz, pp. 68-69)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn 1931, industrialist and earth-moving machinery inventor R. G. LeTourneau accepted a much-needed commission to begin work on the Orange County Dam in California. However, a bureaucratic miscommunication would place LeTourneau in a tight spot, as he explains in his autobiography, Mover of Men and Mountains. "My machines were just arriving at the dam-site when the State Inspector of Dams showed up. 'Sorry,' he informed me...'You've been so long getting here, and none of your preliminary work is done, so we'll just have to wait until next year.'
"I was flabbergasted. 'Now what?' I asked.
"'You were supposed to have started two months earlier,' he said. 'If you start now, you will get this dam about half way up when the fall rains come. Your spillways won't be finished. That means you'll back up a lot of water that might get away from you. No, you will have to wait until next year, and start earlier."
Without this commission, LeTourneau's company would be in dire straights. To complete the job on schedule, he would have to compress a summer's work into just one month. "I called in my key men, and put the figures on the table. 'Think we can do it?' I asked. 'In one month?' They went into a huddle, sizing up what each one of them would have to do, and what machines would have to be doing what work when. They had to time the job so that no one machine or crew would be held up by another. Finally one turned to me and said, 'We don't think it's possible, but we're willing to try.' That was good enough for me. I had a mighty loyal bunch of men. If all Christians could unite like that in their loyalty to the Lord, this world wouldn't be in the mess it's in."
...
"We started in, and we worked around the clock, seven days a week. At night, with the flood lights turned on, and the machines milling around, and a sort of clanking roar that you could feel as well as hear - well, there is no sight or music like it. Trenching machines lowered their steel maws into the dirt and spewed out half-ton mouthfuls on the spoil bank. Hopper wagons dumped clay into the trench, and sheepfoot rollers tamped it to the hardness of fired brick. Up in the hills, rooters broke through the sun-baked clay, and the bulldozers, power shovels, scrapers and conveyor belt began moving in the dirt to cover the core trench as fast as it was dug, filled and tamped." (LeTourneau, Mover of Men and Mountains, pp. 178-81)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteBorn Sarah Breedlove to former slaves amidst the upheaval and uncertainty of the post-Civil War South, Madam C. J. Walker struggled in her early life to achieve ultimate success as America’s wealthiest black businesswoman. As her descendent and biographer, A’Lelia Bundles, recounts in On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of C. J. Walker, Sarah was only twenty upon the death of her first husband, and was left to raise her infant daughter, Lelia, alone. In 1889, Sarah fled growing violence against African Americans in Mississippi for St. Louis, where she worked as a washerwoman. “The work,” says Bundles, “all done by hand in wooden washtubs and iron pots of boiling water, was steamy, strenuous and laborious. Lye soap irritated hands and arms. Heated flatirons were heavy, cumbersome and dangerous.” (36)
Nevertheless, Sarah, now remarried to C. J. Walker, was determined to improve her condition. “During that period she was ‘educated in night school in St. Louis,’ according to one source. Although no public school records exist to verify the dates of her enrollment, it was not unusual for adult black women to attend school, as did sixty-three washerwomen who studied bookkeeping, English, reading, arithmetic and geography in night school at Dumas and L’Ouverture in the fall of 1900…St. Paul’s Mite Missionary society also allowed Sarah to develop social skills while doing good deeds. By helping those who were now as needy as she had been when she first arrived in St. Louis, she gained confidence.” (58)
Sarah Walker’s breakthrough came from her personal struggles with scalp disease and baldness, a common malady amongst African American women in an age when the mainstream cosmetics industry was tailored to whites and upheld straight, Caucasian hair as the ideal standard of beauty. Sarah later claimed that the formula for the highly effective salve she developed came to her in answer to a prayer. “‘For one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix for my hair. Some of the remedy was from Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out.’ After obtaining the same results for her daughter and her neighbors, she later told a reporter, ‘I made up my mind I would begin to sell it.’” (60)
Bundles observes that Sarah’s account, “embellished with claims of divine providence and intervention, proved to be an ingenious marketing device,” even though skeptics found it “more apocryphal than verifiable.” (60-61) By the turn of the Century, Sarah had moved her budding enterprise westward to Denver, fashionably restyling herself as Madam C. J. Walker. “In these early months, Sarah remembered, she rarely rested, so determined was she to succeed. Customers gravitated to her because of her ‘splendid personality.’ A charisma and conviction forged from her own difficult journey now shone through as a sincere desire to give excellent service and to assist other women.” (83) Eventually, despite the growing skepticism or her reluctant husband, Sarah began touring the country to promote her products all across the United States. “Within only a few months of leaving Denver, Madam Walker could boast of an income greater than all but the most highly paid American corporate executives. During 1907, her first full year on the road, she took in $3,652, nearly triple her total 1906 earnings…In an era when most working black women made only $8 to $20 per month as domestic servants, and white male factory workers had monthly incomes of $40 to $60, Madam Walker’s business was averaging upward of $300 each month, a more respectable sum by any measure.” (92) (Bundles, On Her Own Ground, pp. 36, 58, 60-61, 83 and 92)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteBefore going on to found EWTN, Mother Angelica began her work in the public spotlight by seeking to found a racially integrated monastery in Birmingham, Alabama during the early ‘60s. As biographer Raymond Arroyo explains, she demonstrated great perseverance in her hands-on leadership style even during the construction phase. “By any standard, Angelica maintained a wearying daily schedule throughout the building of the monastery. On most days, she was up at five A.M. After Mass, praying the Divine Office, breakfast, and a bath, Mother arrived at the work sit by nine o’clock. For the next eight hours, she would shadow the crew. Hovering with her ever-present crutch, she braved the Birmingham sun, offering the workers challenge and encouragement.
“Of her daily sun exposure at the work site, she wrote, ‘When I take off my gimp I look like a clown: a perfect round circle of sunburn and a very red nose that makes others suspect that I either belong, or should belong to AA.’
“Retiring to the Trinitarian convent [where she and her followers were staying] after 5:00 P.M., she prepared prints for bids, wrote checks, and made phone calls while Sister Joseph attended to the laundry. Mother’s engagement in every phase of the building was total.
…
“Slowly, the crew began to realize this was not your average cloistered nun. More often than not, she knew what she was talking about, could easily read plans, and had no reservations about expressing her displeasure with shoddy work. ‘I had to tell the bricklayers off when they got a little careless on the joints,’ Mother wrote in October 1961. ‘I think they got the idea when I told them they’d have to tear down any wall that didn’t suit us.’” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 98-99)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteEWTN founder Mother Angelica began her life as a nun at Sancta Clara Monastery in Canton, Ohio. Even as a maverick Sister who was often at loggerheads with her peers and superiors, she displayed great perseverance in the face of obstacles, as she proved when she took it upon herself to rectify a structural flaw in the basement of the new building. “The architect,” as biographer Raymond Arroyo explains, “had neglected to leave an inch of space between the outer bricks and the inner wall, thus trapping moisture within. Sister Angelica had detected the flaw in the plans early on, but her warnings were ignored. With physical evidence at hand, Angelica re-presented her criticisms to [her superior] Mother Clare.
“‘Mother, we’ve got to fix this place up; it’s falling apart.’
“‘We don’t have the money for it, Sister Angelica,’ Mother Clare replied.
“Angelica had a ready-made solution: ‘I’ll get some of the boys over here,’ the nun announced.
“The ‘boys’ from the old neighborhood in southwest Canton [where Angelica grew up] were persuaded to join the nun’s crew; for the most part, they donated their labor.
“‘I got as many honest ones as I could, and a few mixed in between,’ Mother Angelica said with a knowing smile. Thus began the first of Angelica’s many building projects.
“Common laborers and syndicate sidemen traipsed through the halls of Sancta Clara when their day jobs ended. [Angelica’s] uncle Nick Francis was tapped to be the late-night contractor. Around the monastery the men became collectively known as Angelica’s ‘Tonys.’
“‘Let’s get it right this time, boys,’ the bespectacled nun called out to her troops in the basement.
“Armed with a high school course in blueprint reading and a regular diet of Popular Mechanics, along with architectural and carpentry magazines, Sister Angelica was the perfect monastic foreman. The handy nun knew her way around tools, could repair leaky faucets, and build cabinets if necessary.
“‘She was sort of a Miss Fix It,’ Sister Mary Anthony, an extern at the time, remembered. ‘Anything broke, you called Sister Angelica.’
“Her duties were not limited to the mechanical. The young sister juggled an unusual array of positions within the convent, simultaneously holding the positions of community bursar (bookkeeper), portress, and economist (buyer of supplies).
“At the same time, she would stay up with her ‘Tonys’ until two o’clock in the morning, plying them with instructions and stale doughnuts. Three hours later, she would rise with the rest of the community and begin her day of prayer anew.” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, pp. 62-63)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteAs a young man, John D. Rockefeller already possessed deep reservoirs of perseverance, which sprang from his desire to achieve financial independence for himself and his family from his dissolute, absentee father, Bill. “Perhaps no job search in American history,” as Ron Chernow explains in his monumental biography, Titan, “has been so mythologized as that begun by sixteen-year-old John D. Rockefeller in the sweltering Cleveland of August 1855…Though times were tough, the boy set out with no modest ambition as he pored over the city directory, identifying those establishments with high credit ratings…His quest had a touch of callow grandiosity. At each firm, he asked to speak to the top man – who was usually unavailable – then got straight to the point with an assistant: ‘I understand bookkeeping, and I’d like to get work.’
“Despite incessant disappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o’clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds of appointed firms. This grimly determined trek went on each day – six days a week for six consecutive weeks – until late in the afternoon. The streets were so hot and hard that he grew footsore from pacing them. His perseverance surely owed something to his desire to end his reliance upon his fickle father. At one point, Bill suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made ‘a cold chill’ run down his spine, Rockefeller later said. Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down all discouragement. ‘I was working every day at my business – the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day.’ He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking.”
After weeks of disappointment, Rockefeller finally walked into the offices of commission merchants and produce shippers, Hewitt and Tuttle. “He was interviewed by Henry B. Tuttle, the junior partner, who needed help with the books and asked him to return after lunch. Ecstatic, Rockefeller walked with restraint from the office, but when he got downstairs and rounded the corner, he skipped down the street with pure joy. Even as an elderly man, he saw the moment endowed with high drama: ‘All my future seemed to hinge on that day; and I often tremble when I ask myself the question: “What if I had not got the job?”’ In a ‘fever of anxiety,’ Rockefeller waited until the noon-day meal was over, then returned to the office, where he was interviewed by senior partner Isaac L. Hewitt. Owner of a good deal of Cleveland real estate and founder of the Cleveland Iron Mining Company, Hewitt must have seemed a mighty capitalist indeed. After scrutinizing the boy’s penmanship, he declared, ‘We’ll give you a chance.’” (Chernow, Titan, pp. 44-45)