Mind Your Own Business

A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life

(Doubleday & Company 2003)

by Sidney Harman, Ph.D. 1973

A true trailblazer and graduate from the first decade of Union Institute & University's 40-year history, Sidney Harman, Ph.D. 1973 still lives the pledge he made in his doctoral Project Demonstrating Excellence dissertation, "to reject dogma and rhetoric and to embrace invention, daring, and human development." That same energy, candor, and authenticity is reflected in his critically acclaimed memoir, Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life, which concludes with a heartfelt affirmation about the lasting value of his Union doctoral studies.

For more than 50 years, the name Harman has symbolized high-fidelity sound, and the concept of "fidelity" - faithful adherence to what is true or real - is synonymous with Harman's approach to living and leading in business, education, and government. He is executive chairman of Harman International Industries, which he founded as Harman/Kardon, Inc. with engineer Bernard Kardon in 1952. Together they launched a revolution in the audio industry by creating the first integrated, high-fidelity audio receiver and the very first series of stereo amplifiers. Harman became sole owner in 1956 and today heads a Fortune 500 company with 14,000 employees worldwide, nearly $3 billion in annual revenue, and audio products in concert halls, home living rooms, and workplace computer stations everywhere, along with high-end digital sound and navigational systems, voice-activated telephony, and climate controls for luxury automobiles.

Harman also championed a progressive "Quality of Working Life" management theory that empowered employees and became a model for industry and case study at business schools worldwide; taught disenfranchised African-American students when Prince Edward County, Virginia schools defied desegregation orders in the 1960s; served from 1970-1973 as president of the experimental Quaker Friends World College; and put a thriving business aside to serve the nation as deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Carter administration.

After retiring from government service, Harman reacquired his company and resumed his role of successful but "maverick" CEO. He promoted long-term, emotional bonds between company and employees, established in-house classrooms, and built his newest plant in the United States, bucking the trend of outsourcing jobs overseas. In 1996, President Bill Clinton visited the Northridge, California plant and commended Harman's ability to show equal commitment to innovative ideas and products as well as to the success of Harman employees, their families, and the community. "Harman International shows how a cutting-edge company can do well while doing right by its people," President Clinton said.

Frequently the subject of profiles and interviews by the media, Harman has written extensively for publications including Newsweek, The Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, and coauthored Starting with the People (Houghton Mifflin, 1988) with public opinion pollster Daniel Yankelovich.

In Mind Your Own Business: A Maverick's Guide to Business, Leadership and Life, Harman tells how he created a culture of personal responsibility throughout his company, and compares his top management team to a jazz quartet that listens to and improvises with one another to create harmony. "The true leader sees his job as setting an environment in which new ideas can emerge that neither he nor any other individual anticipated. That leap of imagination, that moment of genuine creativity, can only be inspired by a leader who encourages exploration and shows a willingness to consider a totally new approach," he writes.

Harman also emphasizes his belief that employees at every level are a company's most valuable asset. "What is essential is an ingrained, developed, and practical system of ethical conduct. We cannot legislate conscience. It must be the raw material of every transaction, every judgment, every decision." And, it must begin with the CEO's consistent exercise of "simple, straightforward decency and respect for others," he says.

"The maverick's way of conducting business forswears the leader as commanding general; it rejects the practice of top-down, authoritative command," he explains. "Rather, it proposes the leader as catalyst, conscience, and inspirer."

Former President Jimmy Carter, management guru Tom Peters, and countless leaders in business, education, politics, and nonprofits have lauded Harman's book as required reading in this era of highly visible corporate misdeeds and bad behavior. Others commend the quality of his writing as well as the substance of his character and message. National Public Radio's Daniel Schorr writes, "Sidney Harman is that rare phenomenon in American life - the titan of industry who is also a titan of humanity. And, unusual for a business executive, he writes with wit and style."

Harman concludes his memoir with a reflection on UI&U: "Thirty years ago I received my doctorate in social psychology from the Union Graduate School.I concluded [in his dissertation].that through my experience at Friends World College and the writing of the dissertation, I had become aware of my growing consciousness. I acknowledged that I had long felt guilty in my role as a businessman, but had come to understand and appreciate that it provided a special opportunity to be an active agent for constructive social change."

Now a hearty age 86, Harman continues to honor his high-fidelity commitment to enhancing the greater good. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is an advisor for Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the university's Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program; a trustee of The Aspen Institute and the Carter Center at Emory University; and board member of Business Executives for National Security, the Public Agenda Foundation, and the National Alliance of Business. He alternates between his Washington, D.C. corporate headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue and his home in Venice, California, where this fall he campaigned for his wife, six-term U.S. Representative Jane Harman (D-California).

"Retirement is the enemy of longevity," Harman writes. "Nothing expands the day, the week, the year, or a life like the excitement of a new idea. an idea rather than an apple a day." -MARY BETH ORTH