Finnegan's Way

by Charles Kelly

  FINNEGAN’S WAY: The Secret Power of Doing Things Badly

  By Charles Kelly

  A NOTE TO THE READER:

  The following story is a fable. None of it is true. Furthermore, the author’s credentials are minimal. Charles Kelly does not hold a Ph.D. degree in psychology from Yale University (1970) or a Masters’ in Business Administration degree from Harvard University (1973). People do not pay him consultant fees amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to help them solve personal and business problems. He is merely a former reporter for The Arizona Republic who has published one novel, Pay Here, issued by Point Blank Press, and one short story, “The Eighth Deadly Sin,” in the collection Phoenix Noir published by Akashic Press. He has written enough unpublished novels and stories to fill up a basement, if he had a basement. His record of failure is impressive. No, stunning.

  “To illustrate the power of these principles, I wrote Finnegan’s Way as badly as possible, though not as badly as James Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake.” (Charles Kelly)

  “I make nothing of it whatever.” (Ezra Pound, speaking of Finnegans Wake)

  “(Finnegans Wake) is the pinnacle of literary achievement in the history of civilization itself.” (Will Miller)

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE: Encountering Finnegan

  CHAPTER TWO: Do It Badly, Just Horribly

  CHAPTER THREE: Finnegan’s Way

  CHAPTER FOUR: Humanity Beats Conformity

  CHAPTER FIVE: Perfection is a Pitfall

  CHAPTER SIX: Help Others Do Things Badly

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Imperfection Creates Partners

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Do Many Things Badly, All At Once

  CHAPTER NINE: Take Care, But Not Too Carefully

  CHAPTER TEN: Seek Relationships—It’s Not a Bad Thing

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Life is Struggle, But Struggle is Life

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Where’s Finnegan?

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER ONE: Encountering Finnegan

  THE IMPORTANCE OF DOING THINGS BADLY would never have come home to me if I hadn’t encountered Finnegan one day at a Starbucks coffee shop in Scottsdale, Arizona.

  Let me set the scene for you. Outside, it was a bright day in late October, and the air was pungent with the odors of saguaro, paloverde and creosote bush. Arizona was easing toward another delightful winter, and the lean man sipping a double espresso at a corner table seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, though all he was doing was poring over a slim volume bound in rich cloth.

  He cut a fine figure. His suit—which obviously came from Savile Row—was sumptuous white linen. His white shirt was open-collared. His cap-toed shoes were polished to a mahogany gloss.

  As I noted those details and edged into the coffee line, a distraught-looking woman entered, spied him and rushed up to his table. He laid down his book, smiled and formally extended a hand. Lawyer and client, or doctor and patient, I thought, as the orders for lattes and espressos and decaf cappuccinos began to erupt around me.

  The coffee server had caught me eyeing the man in the corner, and when I called for a tall coffee-of-the-day, the Colombia Narino, he arched an eyebrow and informed me, “That’s Finnegan.”

  “Really?” I replied.

  “Really,” said the server, after he had turned to call out my order to the coffee-prep man. “Big CEO at one time, in England, I think. Made a pile. Now he helps people all the time.” He nodded significantly. “Tells them to mess up.”

  Surely, my ears had tricked me. That couldn’t be what he’d really said. But I didn’t have time to ask him to clarify. Just then my coffee arrived and the line behind me was making a push.

  I might not have bothered to ask him anyway, because at the time I had plenty of other things to worry about. I was running a small publishing operation in downtown Phoenix, specializing in cookbooks, local travel guides, and accounts of Arizona history, and it looked like I was running it into the ground.

  Nothing was working. My freelancers were turning in junk, my secretaries were slow in getting out the contracts to the printer, my marketing people weren’t hitting up enough bookstores and other outlets. I was sinking, slowly but surely. Bankruptcy was tugging at my sleeve. The fact was, I shouldn’t have been ordering coffee at all, because it was just going to attack my insides with another wave of acid. I already had an ulcer on the way.

  As I turned and made for the door, I felt a twinge of desperation. Maybe I, too, needed some advice from the mysterious Finnegan. I was willing to try anything.

  I hesitated, to see if I might be able to catch him for a few moments. But he was deeply involved with the woman’s problems, and the few snatches of conversation I heard didn’t give me much confidence in his abilities as an advisor. In fact, they made me question his sanity.

  The woman was relatively young, about 40 or so. Her hair was expensively cut, but matted by nervous perspiration, and too many pounds swelled the hips of her fashionable black pants. It was clear, too, that she was disorganized.

  She floundered in her turquoise-beaded purse before coming up with documents to show Finnegan. I caught the words “divorce,” “anti-depressants,” and “co-dependent,” shorthand for personal problems endemic to a New Frontier place like Scottsdale.

  What wisdom would Finnegan impart? Perhaps if I caught some flavor of it, I would know whether he might offer me hope. I didn’t want to stand there hovering, but the answer wasn’t long in coming.

  Strangely, Finnegan tapped his titanium-rimmed eyeglasses and looked at me with his long-seeing eyes as he launched into his prescription for the woman’s problems.

  “You are in a depressing quandary,” he told her. “But it will be easy to come out in fine shape. First of all, though, you have to make a vow to me. If I tell you to do something, you must do it in the worst possible way.”

  The worst possible way? I groaned. With all I was going through, I didn’t need this kind of disappointment, too. I abandoned my eavesdropping and slammed through the door, so abruptly that I spilled coffee down the front of my suit. In disgust, I pitched the rest of the cup in a trash barrel and kept going.

  I was going to have to face the day with sloppy clothes, lousy prospects, and the words of a nut case ringing in my ears. Do things “in the worst possible way.” Excellent. Right. Wonderful. Thanks, Finnegan. I was doing that already. So much for your advice. I could easily be stupid on my own.

  As I turned the key in my Toyota Avalon, I was still wondering about what the coffee server had said, though I didn’t have time to puzzle it out. I supposed this was just one more of the mysteries of Scottsdale.

  How had someone like Finnegan gotten a reputation for helping people? How had he made so much money running a business? How could he possibly have been a successful CEO?

  CHAPTER TWO: Do It Badly, Just Horribly

  WHEN I STAGGERED INTO THE STARBUCKS again a week later, events at work had taken a terrible turn. My heart was going like a jackhammer, and I barely registered the presence of Finnegan at his corner table.

  I had entered automatically, my mind searching for diversion. The last thing I needed was caffeine. That would throw me into a full-blown panic attack. But a decaf latte might at least calm me down.

  I was standing there feeling chills surging up and down my arms and legs when I heard a voice both hearty and warm. Finnegan.

  “Excuse me,” he was saying, “but you are looking quite pale. Perhaps you should sit for a bit and let the Green Willies roll away.”

  I made my way to his table and fell into a chair. Of course there was no table service, but he beckoned briskly with his hand, and a customer detached himself from the line and rushed over with a cup of cold water. I drained it and sagged back, closed my ey
es.

  When I opened them, Finnegan had slipped the slim volume he had been reading into his pocket. And he was examining my face, his eyes curious.

  “Business problems or personal?” he asked.

  “Business,” I murmured, and saw him smile broadly.

  “Oh, well, then!” he exclaimed, as if I had just announced that I had a hangnail.

  My water cup been refilled, and I emptied it again, regarding him bitterly. “So business difficulties are simple, are they?” I said. “I guess you’ve never faced bankruptcy.”

  He leaned back genially, his eyebrows quirking.

  “On the contrary,” he said. “In fact, I’ve faced down bankruptcy. Not once, but many times.”

  Hmmph. Probably just idle boasting.

  “You’ve been in business, I’m told,” I said. “What businesses?”

  “Oh, many businesses,” he replied. “A delivery service, retail sales, the restaurant business, consulting, publishing. Among others.”

  “Publishing,” I said. “That happens to be my business. I run a small operation, and I’ve got several big problems.” I added, ironically, “Perhaps you can help.”

  He smiled charmingly. “Oh, I’m sure I can.”

  All right. We would see about that. I explained one of my thorniest difficulties. I was having trouble with the quality control on my cookbooks.

  To save money, I’d gone from a process of using sewn signatures to secure the pages in perfect-bound volumes to gluing in the pages. The pages kept coming loose, and my customers were furious.

  I put it to Finnegan: What instructions could I give to the printer so that I could produce higher-quality books?

  Finnegan’s smile widened and grew wiser.

  “You know,” he said, “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  Just as I suspected.

  “What?” I replied incredulously. “You say you were in publishing? And you can’t help me? Did you make any money?”

  “Oh, millions,” Finnegan said, unfazed. “Actually, millions and millions, my accountants tell me.”

  I said acidly, “And how did you manage to do that? You don’t seem to know anything about a process that is basic to publishing.”

  “I don’t,” he admitted. “But someone does. Probably someone who works for you. Or the printer himself. Tell me, are you trying to do the best you can in solving this problem?”

  “Of course I am! I have the highest standards, and I communicate them to my workers and my suppliers. I tell them in no uncertain terms that they had better do the best they can or get lost.”

  Finnegan nodded sympathetically. “Just as I thought. You are going about things in exactly the wrong way.”

  I was about ready to explode. “How can I be doing the wrong thing when I demand that they do things well?”

  “It is very simple,” Finnegan said, placing his right pointer finger on the table as if marking a page in a book. “You should be telling them to do things badly.”

  My belly tightened. Now it was all coming back to me.

  “Oh,” I said. “I get it. I’m just like that woman who asked you for advice the other day. Your brilliant idea is that I should do things in the worst way possible.”

  “No, no,” he replied benignly. “Hers was an extreme case. But yours is quite easy. If you and your workers do things badly, just horribly, that should be sufficient.”

  “What?” I said. “You are telling me to accept failure?”

  “Of course not,” replied Finnegan. “Doing badly is not failure. It is a way of avoiding failure, of outfoxing the forces that bring on failure."

  By now I was so confused and worried and weary, that I couldn’t find it in myself to be angry any more. I simply shook my head and said, “I don’t understand.”

  He reached across the table and patted my hand. “Soon, you will.”

  Finnegan leaned back. “Tell me,” he said, “When you demand the best of your workers, how does that work out?”

  I considered. “Well,” I said, “Some of them, the really good ones, do very well. They do just what I tell them to do. The others, well, you know, there aren’t a lot of good workers around. I just get rid of the bad ones and get some more.”

  “It’s so frustrating, isn’t it?” said Finnegan. “I suppose you’ve done your best to improve things by posting ‘mission statements’ in your workers’ cubicles, telling them to clean up their desks and rationing the number of Form X’s and batteries they use. Am I correct?”

  “Well. . .yes,” I said. “I’ve done something like that.”

  “Then, a couple of weeks later, things start to get back to normal. Oh, maybe you chastise someone for having a dirty coffee cup or using an extra battery, but no-one really seems to care.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “It’s terrible. What exactly is going on there?”

  “What is going on there is good sense re-asserting itself,” said Finnegan. “This is wisdom finding its own level. This is the system deciding how much bad personal behavior it will tolerate. And, usually, it will tolerate a lot.”

  “Why, that’s nonsense!” I said. “It’s just rebellion. And it’s all caused by those bad workers.”

  “Yes,” nodded Finnegan. “Those bad workers. Those bad, bad workers.” He thought about that for a moment. “But your good workers do just what you tell them. Do they continue to do that, year after year?”

  “You bet they do,” I said, regaining a bit of enthusiasm. “It’s remarkable how they can stick to my program. That shows real quality.”

  “Does it now?” said Finnegan. “And are they happy?”

  “I’m not one of these coddling managers who cares all that much if my workers are happy,” I shot back. “They are there to do a job, and by golly, I expect them to do it.”

  “It sounds like they aren’t doing the job very well, though,” he pointed out. “Since you are facing bankruptcy.”

  I felt instantly deflated. “Well, no,” I said. “I suppose they aren’t.”

  “And you aren’t doing a very good job as a manager,” he continued.

  “No,” I sighed. “I suppose I’m not.”

  His face glowed. “Then perhaps you are ready for my way.”

  I shrugged. I genuinely didn’t see any way out.

  “I suppose I could try it,” I said. “However crazy it is, what have I got to lose?”

  “Exactly,” said Finnegan.

  CHAPTER THREE: Finnegan’s Way

  “IT’S REMARKABLE,” I WAS TELLING FINNEGAN cautiously several days later. “I’m not saying that there has been a complete turnaround, but things are definitely showing signs of improvement.”

  He bent forward, pressing his palms together.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Well,” I said, “I had some reservations about your method, but in the end, I did as you said. After we talked, I went directly to work and called a meeting of my employees. All of them.”

  “You say, ‘all of them.’ Was there a time in the past when you would not have summoned all of them?”

  “Oh, yes,” I replied. “My normal method would be to just call in the good ones, the leaders, the ones who carry out my program as I have laid it down. After all, why bother with the ones who aren’t doing well? But you told me to call them all together, and that’s what I did.”

  “And what exactly did you tell them?”

  “I told them, first of all, that we were facing a business disaster, and that I didn’t know what to do—”

  Finnegan was watching me keenly. “And did they believe you?”

  “They did. After all, it was the absolute truth…is the absolute truth…and I have been feeling so rotten about it that I’m sure that showed in my face.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Then I told them we had some time to play with before the final blow fell, since we are going into a bankruptcy reorganization. In the short run, we’d all continue to have jobs. And while we all still did
have jobs—”

  I paused. This part had been difficult for me while I was doing it, and it was difficult for me to describe it. It just seemed such a crazy thing to do. But Finnegan was giving me an encouraging look.

  “—I told them while we all still had jobs, I wanted them to do those jobs badly. Everyone still had to come to work, and they still had to do their jobs—no long sessions playing video games on their computers, for instance, though if they wanted to do some of that, that was all right, too. But their main focus should be on doing their jobs badly.”