Triumph of the Will: Corporate Religion in the City. posted by Richard Seymour

Warning: This tale was supplied by a number of former employees of Welbeck Consulting, over a series of drinks in Surrey. I was so intrigued that I took notes, went back, and asked more questions. Could be a load of shit, but it sounds accurate enough to me. Proceed...

The “mean square mile” is as secular and de-spiritualised a zone as one can imagine, a concrete conurbation of finance and corruption. It radiates hard-headed realism, icy egoism and unsentimental calculation. Why should it be, therefore, that in one of its most esteemed corporations there exists a tyranny of religious fanaticism every bit as doctrinal, rigid and ethereal as Orthodox Christianity, say, or Scientology. Welbeck Consulting, a franchise of the infamous Zurich, is for all intents and purposes a telesales company seeking to flog tax advice, life assurance, unit trusts and pensions to rich people – the generally accepted threshold being an annual salary of £100,000+. Self Invested Personal Plans (SIPPs) also rake in substantial sums, as they help the client avoid inheritance tax because money invested in SIPPs is not considered part of the client’s estate when he or she dies. In fact, a great deal of their work is tax relief for the wealthy, using perfectly legal loopholes. Higher Rate Tax relief gives the client back £22 for every £100 paid in tax. If the client is aged thirty-five, married with two children and a working wife on a similar income, Welbeck will have struck gold. Stakeholder pensions can be allocated to the kids, the wife can partake of joint life assurance, and tax avoidance can go double trouble.

Appointments are made by staff who are employed on a commission basis. They search for the names and numbers of CEOs, CFOs, investment bankers, fund managers, managing directors and others likely to be in the upper income bracket. The only wealthy clients they don’t want, generally speaking, are lawyers. Staff are obliged to seek these details themselves, because Welbeck don’t purchase databases. They are given a script which they learn, then cold-call prospective clients whom they invite to a 45 minute presentation at the office. The expectation is that a good caller will yield at least six appointments per day out of fifty cold-calls – but this is not a reliable guide to actual achievement. Naturally enough, approximately half of those who even agree to an appointment fail to attend. Only one out of three clients are likely to be “closed”. Staff begin work at 8.30am and may be compelled to stay until 9pm – depending on how soon they reach their target of six appointments.

I don’t outline these working arrangements to cast any particular pall on Welbeck. Employment in the City typically does involve long hours, and the expectation of employees is that they may make a lot of money with sufficient dedication. I am merely spelling out what ought to be obvious constraints on their capacities. Reality dictates that even the most skilled salespeople have their limits. Yet, this is a disavowed reality in Welbeck. Such thoughts are “negs”. If staff members suggest, for example, the telesales script is unworkable in practise, they are being “neg”. If they challenge apparently ridiculous working practises, they are being “neg”. If they do not have Olympian illusions in their own unlimited ability, they are being “neg”. If they mention that their clients happen to be on voice-mail over a holiday period, they are told not to discuss it. It is “neg”, and only successes are to be discussed. You didn’t fail to get through; you made arrangements to call back. You weren’t told to fuck off; you caught a prospective client on the back-foot. Your wife didn’t die; you just dramatically cut your heating costs.

Staff are encouraged to draw up a “wheel of life” in which each area of their lives are examined, and to which they attach specific long- and short-range goals, which are numbered in order of priority. They may then be asked at a later time which of those goals they have achieved. They are probed for personal details, as these are taken to be the key to motivated salesmanship. They are encouraged to have material goals which require substantial assets – again, so that they will be motivated sellers. Motivational meetings assure staff of the ease of the job. “It’s a piece of piss”, they are told. “Pigs do fly here”, it is said. If they fail to achieve it will be because they do not want it enough, they have too many inner conflicts, they are “neg”. Use of the words “don’t” and “won’t” is also “neg”. In fact, any attitude that is not rangy and cocky and game is considered “neg”. What the hell is going on?

The straightforward answer is “indoctrination”. The company presumably would not see it that way, but I’ll just venture a suggestion that if you create a corporate climate in which staff are heavily pressured to internalise values specific to that company and its leadership, and a Nietzchean doctrine of super-human will triumphing over material reality, this might be some kind of ideological control. Failure is never a matter of material fact in this world – it is a matter of the wrong attitude, insufficient adherence to the shared values of the company, personal inadequacy. In fact, there is a strange emphasis on individualism, yet the overwhelming dynamic is conformity – reinforced by the ubiquitous “neg”. It may seem perfectly natural in some senses that a capitalist enterprise which depends on the efforts and achievements of staff on commission would generate such an ideology. But it does, in fact, have a source.

Anthony Robbins , the quack guru of global repute, is the idol of staff and executives alike. Robbins runs costly motivational seminars for company executives and ambitious employees in which they are apprised of the “power of the human brain”. The mind, it seems, is an infinite source of a power which defeats reality, hands down. Problems don’t really exist, as such – it is how one views a situation that makes it a problem. In fact, Robbins promises to help you annihilate limiting beliefs and ideas. He promises to show you how to turn your company around, how to bust through mental barriers and reach peak performance. An accomplished capitalist himself, Robbins also makes much out of his many charitable and “humanitarian” works. His website enumerates the many obscure awards he has won for being nice to inner city kids and feeding an alleged 1 million people around the world. His books, about as thick and heavy as your average pile of horse apples, explain through various parables, fables, mangled quotations and homilies the infinite power of the human brain. It seems that people who want to achieve should believe in destiny, rather than chance. They should have life goals and design life strategies. They should ask positive questions rather than negative ones. He offers this advice to fatties on his website:

"If you have repeatedly tried and failed to lose weight, could it be that you were asking yourself the wrong questions? Questions like "What will fill me up?" or "What's the sweetest, richest food I can get away with?"

What if you were to ask instead, "What would really nourish me?" "What light, delicious dish can I eat that would give me energy?" "Will this cleanse me or clog me?" And, if you're tempted to binge: "If I eat this, what will I have to give up in order to still achieve my goals? What's the ultimate price I'll pay if I indulge now?"

A single change in the habitual questions you ask yourself can and will profoundly change the quality of your life."

Staff at Welbeck who have attended his seminars all attest to his power to “make you believe you can do anything”. His ideas are considered tried and proven. The reverence they nurture for Robbins defeats all objections to his prattling dogma. Staff read his books, follow his methods, even adhere to a diet they attribute to him. They each carry a “book of goals” in which goals are recorded for a 48 hour period. The “wheel of life”, too, is a prescription of Robbins. His method and madness is replicated with astonishing fidelity in the company. He is a Corporate Christ. One of the stories retailed is of how enthusiastic members of Robbins’ paying audience queue up to walk over hot coals – not because they have to, but because they want to. Quite literally, armies of poorly suited, sweaty, unkempt, red-faced execs of both genders swarm around a track of red hot embers and cheer as gormless wonders swan across on bare feet pretending not to be affected. The power of belief, you see. I believe! I believe! The truth is that many end up with aching feet for weeks. In fact, I venture to suggest that those who deny any experience of pain following this astoundingly stupid feat are simply avoiding “negs”. One just doesn’t discuss these things – and if they aren’t discussed, they don’t exist.

I suppose it is too utterly easy to patronise the Walking Brain-dead who take Robbins and his proto-Nietzchean bullshit seriously. That a market exists for such vapid wank is not a spectacular surprise. The world of selling is a particular haven of deception, and self-deception is the most priceless asset of all. What is astonishing is that such conceits become the unwritten norms and forms of acceptability and employability in a respected company. Their implementation is approximately the most absurd form of totalitarianism I have ever heard of, which would be sinister if it wasn’t so comical. I had always thought that the kind of person who would excel in the sales world is likely to be unpleasantly arrogant, self-absorbed and sleazy. It now seems that they can also be demented fanatics who are obliged to change their relationship to ordinary facts in order to sustain their success-driven outlook. Would that I could meet these people and irradiate their filthy, soiled world-view with some perfectly vile explosions of “neg”. I’d like to detonate “don’ts” “won’ts” and “can’ts” under their up-turned noses. I’d like to bring their coarse, vulgar, pea-brained skulls to the earth with a shattering thud. Fight Club was too moderate.