Management's Renaissance Man

JOHN L. BURNS

IN an age of increasing specialization, many U.S. companies dream of a Renaissance-type man, skilled and versatile, who can command all the specialties in a smooth, rhythmic whole.

Few men come closer to that dream than a onetime teacher named John Lawrence Burns, 50, president of the huge ($1.2 billion a year), kaleidoscopic Radio Corp. of America. Spectacled, stocky John Burns not only runs the biggest U.S. entertainment company, but a sprawling complex that is intimately involved in a dozen major fields, from space vehicles to atomic energy, contains all the myriad problems unique to scientists and scenarists, artists and admen.

Burns belongs to a growing group of U.S. managers who got their training in an almost unexcelled school of versatility: the management-consultant firm. Born in Watertown, Mass., he has made a career of versatility. He swung a pick in a highway gang, earned a doctorate in metallurgy at Harvard ('34), taught in universities (Harvard, Lehigh) before joining Republic Steel as a laborer (wages: 59-c- an hour). In 1941, having moved up to become boss of Republic's wiremaking division at $12,000 a year, he turned down an offer of twice that and accepted the bid that really appealed to his talents: a job with Manhattan's top-drawer management consulting firm of Booz-Allen & Hamilton. Burns bagged a partnership within a year (still a company record) at age 34, became a corporate confessor for 30 of the nation's 100 top companies -- including RCA. He dissected every department, hopped in between the balance sheets, shook up managements. Says he : "Consulting is a science because it is a study of principles, an art because people are involved.''

CLIENT RCA had problems with people. It was tightly bossed by prideful, brilliant David Sarnoff, who did better at creating products than marketing them. Its scientists performed better than its managers. When Burns arrived on the scene, RCA brass bared the corporate soul and accounting books. Burns worked up 100 monumental reports suggesting changes in RCA. To launch RCA in TV, Burns advised its National Broadcasting Co. to spend freely on a few outstanding shows and fill the other hours with low-budget shows; it proved to be NBC's success formula, set the pattern for other networks. So well did ex-Teacher Burns learn his RCA lessons that when the corporation in 1957 needed a president, it could find nobody who knew more about the company than Burns.

Many RCA pros bet that steady John Burns would wilt in the brightly lit world of entertainment. Instead, Burns outshone the lights. He boosted RCA's non-entertainment business by more than 30%, directed the company to new areas and products. Under Burns, RCA brought out its stereo tape-cartridge, the first successful one in the industry. Burns moved RCA strongly into circuitry, controls and computers. RCA has developed the first medium-sized, all-transistor computer, hopes to find a big market in paper-clogged Wall Street. Burns took over RCA's money-losing color-TV project, cut losses in half last year, expects soon to put it in the black. Result: RCA sales have jumped sharply for the first time in four years; first-half sales rose 17%, profits 43%.

BURNS believes that corporate versatility is the key to progress and profits, plans to make RCA even more versatile. Within a year RCA will bring out a "hear-see" stereo-TV attachment that will run video tapes, e.g., Hamlet, on regular TV sets, bring ex-Teacher Burns closer to his highest goal: teaching by TV. He wants all the nation's schools linked in one grand educational network, starring the best U.S. teachers, who would be paid as much as Burns himself ($170,000). For the blue-sky future, Burns is pushing the development of simple "thermoelectric"' air conditioners with no moving parts, space vehicles. TV systems that will peer to the stars.

Burns seizes every chance to pick a brain or dissect an idea, even when he is with his wife or son or daughter. He scribbles his ideas on memo sheets or matchbooks, empties them out of his pockets in the morning, when his secretary fires them off to RCA executives. On the way from his twelve-room stone house in Greenwich. Conn, to his antique-studded office on the 53rd floor of Manhattan's RCA Building, he usually takes along an RCA executive for a back-seat conference in his chauffeur-driven Cadillac. Visiting the U.S. exhibit in Moscow, Burns was Johnny on the spot during the Khrushchev-Nixon debate. He quietly slipped an exclusive TV tape to a departing U.S. businessman, who flew it out to give U.S. audiences an uncensored look.

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