The vision of mail room grunts and wizened executives in 44th-floor aeries presented in 1994's The Hudsucker Proxy may still work as a retro joke, but it's a given that Microsoft's Redmond headquarters has become the archetype for corporate culture. Television has never been very good at handling intelligence in its characters, which pretty much leaves technologists out of the equation. Where TV has most aped Redmond is in its dress codes. General Motors never dreamed of. There's something creepy about a TV ad for minivans featuring a soccer mom shuttling the family around town while a voice-over describes her as the chief executive organizing her company.
American culture needs a lot of things.
Better management isn't one of them. Tim Cavanaugh is a freelance writer in San Francisco. By Howard Schultz and Dori Jones Yang. Pour Your Heart Into It is a precious title for an occasionally precious book. If you do, what may seem to be a niche market could very well appeal to far more people than you imagine.