. welcome to "mosaic." thank you for joining us. we feature today another great christian person from the bay area. that is dr. raymond e. miles. he is the professor eher us and former dean of the hoff school of business. welcome. he is born in central texas. he went through the air force, made his way to standford and finally to cal berkeley. we'll find out about him and some of his perspectives. thank you for joining us. let's take you back. where were you born and what was your growing up like? >> i was born in central texas, north central texas, named for a civil war general who was never

defeated. he retreated successfully before every battle. i spent my early childhood there. i was born in 1932, so i was a depression child. and my father was one of the youngest of several siblings. and so i was the only baby born for a long period of time. and that was great for me because i was the child of the whole family. that was a delight, an absolute delight. at any rate, i spent my early days there in cleburn. my father being from texas was in oil and gas and used tires. he had a service station which he had bought just before i was born for $50, i think. that was support for us during the depression years.

that was not a bad time at all. actually, i began my first church in that period because it was the closest church to our house. it was the disciples of christ. i didn't know that until much later. i didn't know the formal name. it was the first christian church. we belonged to that because it was populated by people like us, lower middle class, and the preachers were not bombastic and they didn't attempt to condemn you and save you. that was good. perfect for a kid. >> growing up there, you got out of high school and what happened? >> well, i spent my time there and through high school played sports and worked all the time as well, because everyone did in

those days. when i got out of high school, i didn't have enough money to go to college. so i looked around for a job and several of my family worked for the railroad, and they wanted -- one of my cousins, an older cousin, got me or helped me get a job with the railroad as a clerk in gainesville, which was 100 miles north. rail records were situated in those days in 100-mile segments because that was the steam engine time. that was about the limit of steam engines run. so at any rate, i started working midnight till 8:00. what i realized was that i could go to college because there was a university, the university of north texas, 0 miles away in deniton. i will work from midnight till

8:00 and i could good to school during the daytime, so that's what i did for several years. well, the first year i did all the dumb things. i took too many classes. i pledged a fraternity. i dated all the girls on campus. >> shocking, shocking. >> that was too much. and so the next year i went to a junior college for one year. not only that, but i switched my hours from midnight till 8:00 to 4:00 to 12:00 which demolished my social life. it gave me a nice sleep. that was good. >> you are going to take us through being in the air force and migrating to stanford as soon as we take a break. we're talk become dr. raymond e. miles. stay with us. we'll be right back.

. raymond miles is our guest, hoff school of business, former dean. you are talking about central texas and growing up there. you were working on the railroad. you are in college. then something momentous happens. >> that's right. i met my wife with whom i've enjoyed 60-plus years now. that was the most important thing that happened in that early period. we became engaged. she was finishing up at tcu at the time. that information fort worth. we got married in december of 1952. so that was great. i was barely 20. people got married early in those days. but that was a great experience in every possible way and has

lasted a long time. anyway, i then went back to north texas. i finished my degree in journalism. i then switched over to the business school because i had to finish up an extra year because i had gotten into rotc late into air force rotc. and i anticipated going in and training and then being in the korean war. fortunately for me, by the time i got in and went through pilot training, the war was over. so i avoided that and that was a good thing. not only that, but they no longer needed all of us. so they offered me an early out. well, they didn't demand that i go on to further training.

i took the easiest job that i could find because i had worked and gone to school and then been in pilot training. i was tired. so i took the easiest job i could find which was flying navigator cadets around in southern texas. and that was a boon dogle assignment for two years. >> how did you get from there to stanford? >> well, north texas had offered me a teaching job when i got out of the service. i went back and lectured there for a couple of years in the management department. i decided that that was a fun thing to do. i had been aiming at journalism, but now suddenly i had this opportunity to become an academic. and so i had to find a way to get to a doctoral school, get a

ph.d., if i was going to remain in academia. i won a fellowship. then i applied -- stanford at that time was looking for a -- expanding the doctoral program. i don't think they would have taken me had i not had the scholarship because north texas was not a big school on their mosaic at the time or -- >> i like the word. >> so at any rate, we ended up in stanford. we drove across country and pulling a trailer with our belongings, two kids in the back, and that was quite an adventure. we even stopped off at the grand canyon on our way. palo alto, where i spent three fabulous years living in student housing, the cheap student housing which was about a quarter of a mile from campus

and maybe a half mile. i had a bicycle. i rode it across the railroad tracks. but it was a great experience. fairly quickly, i discovered that i truly enjoyed not only learning but beginning to teach and they offered me an opportunity to teach a class there. i taught one in san jose at san jose state. and then when i finished in three years which i had to do because i had a wife and two kids, no one finishes now in three years, but i applied only to berkeley. they had an opening, and my wife and major professors pushed me in that direction. my wife explained that she did not want to go back to texas.

so we came to berkeley. >> and rooted in the bay area. >> that's right. >> you came to berkeley in what year? >> 1963. >> raymond miles is the author of six books, many papers, many consulting jobs with corporations. we'll learn a little bit about business organization and his perspectives. we'll be right back.

. raymond e. miles, former dean of the hoff school of business ucb, is with us. you ever taken us through your growing up in central texas, your marriage, working on the railroad and teaching at north texas state and going through the business school at stanford,

and then opportunity opened at the hoff school of business fortunately. it's the only one you applied to. what was your field? what did you engage in? >> i had had been doing research in the hottest topic of that time which was managers, leadership attitudes. i had done that in what was then silicon valley. that was about five firms at that time, 1962 or so. hewlett-packard, for example, had two divisions in palo alto. they've now got 120 or something like that. it was another time. but the companies -- because it was another time, companies were incredibly cooperative. they were very eager to link with universities on this search and they were excited about learning which was partly the product of the depression,

partly the product of world war ii, when leadership training had been so good that the managers who came back went through on the g.i. bill were flooding into firms and bringing with them values that sadly are not there today. at any rate, what i learned -- >> management leadership and what was the third? >> management, leadership, and that was team building. >> ok. >> that was a big factor at that time. i discovered that at berkeley three professors in the psych department in the organizational psychology department were doing similar research in europe. we met and that was one reason i was so attracted to berkeley. when i got here, i was able to work with them and we did some

interesting research beyond that. i continued, went back with a doctoral student and re- examined all the firms that we have looked at in the silicon valley, particularly hewlett-packard, just to illustrate how cooperative firms were. we gave questionnaires to every manager at hewlett-packard. 98% participated. >> what are you asking? >> we're asking them about their attitudes toward their subordinates, what they thought their subordinates were particularly strong in, what they thought they were strong in, and what they thought their bosses were strong in. now, not surprisingly, even in a good company like hewlett-packard, they saw themselves further above their subordinates than their bosses were above them.

their bosses were very close to them. in fact, below them in certain respects because they didn't listen, and yet if you tested their subordinate, they said the same thing about them. even in a good company, even in a well managed company, less so there than in a poorly managed or poorer management forum. >> so people with self-perceptions and so on, what qualities were valued highly after your years? what are you looking for that says, that's good stuff? >> well, at the time that was breakthrough in leadership research and we got articles published very easily about this because it was fun stuff. it was interesting. and it was a new arena for research. >> self-perception of people.

when we were talking yesterday, you said that you had been to a conference at the hoff school where people were somewhat younger than you are, but you are dealing with problems that you thought we'd knock offend decades ago. >> the conference was a national conference and the academy of management which i had gone to in its earliest days in the 1960s. now it's huge, monstrously large. what i discovered was that the topics were recycling. the crucial issues of the 1960sen re-emerging. >> what are they? >> the issues are simply motivation and organizations. people have been turned off by

the typical behavior of most of the managers in firms. their ideas all over the organization that are trying to get up. in fact, they're not listened to. that was part of the issue in the early 1960s, but managers were far more receptive to the notion that they were blocking innovation. now i don't think managers are aware of how much they are blocking the flow of ideas upward. >> you ever some hesitancy about the future. >> well, i think that the future is going to be driven by innovation. it's going to be driven boy how fast we can take knowledge which is flowing out of universities

and other places and in huge ways, how fast we can take that into products and services that are going to benefit the world. and right now the typical organization is a suppressor of this knowledge rather than facilitator. at least that's my judgment. i'm not sure that most organizations would agree. they think they're letting as much through as they can manage and they probably are. but they should be able to manage a lot more. >> i assume that that goes over into one's personal life, too, that it's a cautionary tale for us to listen more and to integrate. >> i it think so. we certainly emphasize that in parroting back in the 1950s.

that was the whole theme. we have three children and seven grandchildren. i think they've all been raised to express themselves freely and we have two academics in the group and one whose wife is an academic. i think the best thing that i ever did in terms of applying my knowledge from my ph.d. was with the kids. >> congratulations. we're talking with raymond e. miles. we'll be right back. well said, sir.

. raymond miles, he was talking about his proudest

achievements are taking these great organizational ideas and putting them into practice in his own family. you were talking about a baseball story where one of your children was really happy over something that happened on the diamond that you would not think would be a celebratory time. >> well, this was the youngest son. he was the best athlete and went on to college playing baseball. but he remembered being the happiest when one of the least capable players on the team got a walk that drove in the winning run and the whole team raced out to embrace him. i thought that was a great recollection. >> in your world view and perspective, why is that so important, such an important part? >> i just thought it illustrated again what we could do if we

were capable of lifting out the knowledge and the capables of all of our members of everyone in society and everyone in the world for that matter. so that's what we have been writing about in recent years. not just that baseball story, but about turning loose the capabilities of and the global environment, turning loose the emergeant countries, turning loose the flow of knowledge upward in organizations. we think if we were able to do that, that the global economy would blossom and we could all benefit from this. >> optimism, i love that. you also have been involved in religious community. what's been the benefit of that

and why did you do it? >> well, i think i've never found any challenge between my religious beliefs which were focused on caring for people and valuing their capabilities and the research that i've done through all the years. so this seemed a natural extension. i mentioned to you one example of that right now from the disciples of christchurch, we graduate leigh migrated over to the unitarian church and discovered that we had been unitarians all along but didn't know it. and one of the people there that i thought was doing fabulous

work is a doctor in public health. he has a ph.d. in public health. he spent time in pakistan and many countries. in pakistan he created a program where villagers helped race their own health beyond anyone's belief. about you he trained the indigenous resources to be capable of delivering their own care. well, this was sort of the same thing we had been preaching in organizations that if they will simply allow people to do with you they were capable of doing, they'd be amazed at how good they were.

so now he's doing the same t thing. this is frederick shaw, dr. frederick shaw. he's doing the same thing now in a program in india, where he has trained young people to basically do what public health doctors do. >> raymond, i'm amazed. coming out of the depression and it must have been a pretty hard scrabble life there, and going through the air force and building a life here. i'm glad to know that your wife going back was not such a good idea, but staying here in the bay area was. it's certainly been a boon nows the bay area. your enthusiasm and optimism comes through. i hope the viewers hear that. a great pleasure and honor to have on, dr. raymond e. miles.

thank you. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> ron swisher will be back next month. thank you for being with us.

. hi. welcome to "bay sunday." we begin with our weekly pitch. if you have a show idea, go to cbssf.com, click on kpix logo. showtime now, september 15-october 15 is had hispanic heritage month. the city of san francisco is going all out two plus weeks of the fifth annual san francisco latina film festival kicks off september 12. we have their executive director and founder and producer filmmaker kelly whaleen with us. this is your baby. >> it sure is. >> five years and it's growing, growing, growing. >> it's amazing how ti