Book Review: Managing Upside Down, Tom Chappell, Tom’s of Maine

It took me a long time to read this book – I kept stopping to think. That’s usually a sign of a good book!

I’ve never met Tom, but I imagine he speaks like this book is written. I’m also guessing that he had to fight to get this book published the way he wanted it written – editors often insist on “correcting” everything. Tom uses commas, where he wants to, not where grammatical rules dictate they go. He probably puts them where he would have a natural pause in his speech (he likes parentheses a lot too, and so do I). It is written is a simple, homey, no-nonsense style – what you would probably expect from Tom of Tom’s of Maine.

The big idea in this book is simple: instead of managing a company strictly according to profit and loss, companies should be managed according to their principles first and foremost. Tom admits this is a radical notion, and not easy to do. The book is full of examples from the journey of Tom’s of Maine towards achieving this ideal.

It’s easy to say, “Wait, Tom’s of Maine is a ‘Hippie Toothpaste’ company (Tom’s description). Idealism is simply good business for them; good PR and good marketing.” While there is some truth to that statement, it’s obviously not the whole story. Companies typically put profit first, certainly NOT marketing and PR.

Everything we see is flavored by our own experiences, and this book is no exception. Tom calls his ideas radical and believes they will be hard to accept for many people. My business experiences are largely from the world of Information Technology, and I would have agreed until after the Internet Bubble, which popped around 2000, after this book was written. During the Internet boom, we collectively held an underlying assumption that getting rich was a noble pursuit. It was the “best” thing anyone could do. During the Stock Market boom similar ideas were collectively accepted.

The Internet culture as well as Wall Street, at least during their respective boom years, valued money – which they strongly correlated to intelligence, much more highly than previous generations. By Internet boom standards, Bill Gates was a greater person than Ghandi, Marc Andreesson was certainly cooler than Nelson Mandela, and a cog in the wheel almost killing themselves at some Internet startup for fortune and stock options outranked both the Pope and the Dalai Lama! If you made money honestly, and ‘honestly’ was somewhat loosely defined, you had presumably added value somewhere and benefited people. If you were smart enough to make a lot of money, you had benefited a lot of people – perhaps humankind as a whole. You might even be close to sainthood if successful enough!

Those ideas are popularly dismissed these days. Life Balance is a popular “buzz term.” Excess is unpopular. Being a do-gooder is back in style. And many of Tom’s ideas have become popular. Even Donald Trump in “How to get Rich” emphasizes how it’s important to respect every employee and how anyone, regardless of position or title, can have great ideas. Of course Tom espouses these same notions in his book.

Some of Tom’s “radical” ideas in this book have been validated since the few years since it’s been published. Yes, there is still plenty of “upside down” non-conventional thinking left, but the book is not as "far out" as when it’s been published.

Tom has started “The Salt Water Institute,” a not for profit organization whose charter is to support those who want to manage in a more values-centered way. I’m hoping to see Tom speak on behalf of the Salt Water Institute soon, and will report back!

Disclaimer: I’m a long time user of Tom’s products – from before I cared whether they were natural or not. They are simply good products.