Chreiai – An Important and Ignored Term

The term “chreiai” is ignored and grossly underdeveloped in our professional literature.

Chreiai is a term that describes memorable statements or useful sayings that speakers use as topics that they can expand into rhetorical presentations.

I found this definition from Emory University website.  You can access the site here.

chreia: A chreia (pl. chreiai) is a brief statement or action aptly attributed to a specific person or something analogous to a person. If a chreia features a brief statement, that statement may be a thesis. There are three types of chreiai: sayings chreiai, action chreiai, and mixed chreiai. A chreia may be expanded, elaborated, or abbreviated.

In his book, The Gnostic Discoveries (Harper Collins, 2005), Marvin Meyer states:

“Chreiai continued to be used in the Middle Ages and beyond by students of rhetoric and grammar, but eventually among Christian rhetoricians chreiai lost much of their Cynic cleverness and wit and became domesticated.  They turned into the serious statements of those engaged in the business of Christian theology and ethics, where there may be little room for cleverness and wit” (p. 60).

Not so fast!  I think the examples he uses on the same page are pretty witty.  I reproduce these here:

“Marcus Porcius Cato, when asked why he was studying Greek literature after his eightieth year, said, ‘Not that I may die learned but that I may not die unlearned.’”

“The Pythagorean philosopher Theano, when asked by someone how long it takes after having sex with a man for a woman to be pure to go to the Thesmophoria (the festival celebrated in honor of Demeter and Kore), said, ‘If it is with her own husband, at once, but if with someone else’s, never.’”

Meyer notes that even the words of wisdom offered by Jesus in Christian texts qualify as chreiai.

I am surprised how buried this term has been.  Even our fellow blogger, Randy Mayeux, who went through seminary, then graduate training in rhetoric, and then in the ministry for twenty years, had never come across this term.

Yet, I find it descriptive, and perhaps useful as we look at clever sayings in contemporary books.

What about you?  Does this interest you?

Let’s talk about it really soon!

 

Richard Tedlow on “searing” business insights

In Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built published by Harper Collins (2003), Richard Tedlow devotes an entire chapter to what he characterizes as “searing” business insights. These are comparable with religious epiphanies, what George Fox described as an “opening” and what John Wesley described as a “shock of recognition.”

As Tedlow explains, the power and value of a “searing insight” are most evident when “one looks at the true giants of enterprise in the history of business in the United States…one sees repeatedly the central role played by visionary leadership with a crystal clear commitment to a corporate mission.” For example:

Andrew Carnegie: “Cut the prices; scoop the market; run the mills full.”

George Eastman: “You push the button. We do the rest.”

Henry Ford: “It takes you there, and it brings you back.”

More recently, consider these:

Coca-Cola: “The Pause That Refreshes”
Intel: “Intel inside”
Johnson & Johnson: “Doctors Recommend Tylenol”
McDonald’s: “You deserve a break today…at McDonald’s”
Miller Lite: “Tastes Great!…Less Filling!”
The New York Times: “All the News That’s Fit to Print”
J.M. Smucker Company: “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good.”
Southwest Airlines: “THE Low Fare Airline”
Walmart*: “Always the Low Price, Always.”

Now consider this excerpt in which Tedlow discusses Lou Gerstner’s insight, one that saved IBM after he was named chairman and CEO in 1993:

“Gerstner’s insight was fundamental. It is one from which every great company that finds itself in deep trouble can benefit today and tomorrow. He implicitly asked himself: How does IBM have to change in order to survive and prosper? But he also asked himself second, more profound question: What does IBM have to keep in order to survive and prosper? Gerstner’s searing insight was that there was rock-solid muscle under the fat of the company. That muscle had been developed during decades of Watson management. The muscle had to be further strengthened while the fat was worked off. To get rid of everything in a company that had dominated its world, which is what the pundits were urging, would have killed IBM.”

Do you have a “searing insight” that will guide and inform your company’s decisions and initiatives during the months and years to come?

Leon Leonwood Bean’s Integrity

Anna Bernasek is the author of The Economics of Integrity: From Darwin to Toyota, How Wealth Is Based on Trust & What That Means for Our Future, published in 2010 by harperstudio, an imprint of Harper Collins. In Chapter 6, she shares an especially interesting account of a crisis and how the company founder resolved it.

About 100 years ago, Leon Leonwood Bean had a passion for the outdoors and “imagined how satisfying it would be to have a hunting shoe that kept his feet warm and dry when he was deep in the Maine woods.” After searching without success to find such a shoe, he decided to design one himself that was essentially made by sewing rugged leather uppers to rubber bottoms. In 1912, he came upon a list of nonresident Maine hunting license holders and contacted them with a flyer that promoted The Maine Hunting Shoe. “We guarantee them to give perfect satisfaction in every way.” That guarantee nearly ended the company. Alas, through no fault of his, 90 of the first 100 pairs sold were returned because stitching created leaks that resulted in cold, wet feet.

“True to his word, Bean borrowed money to return the payment for all ninety pairs of shoes. It was a humbling lesson but it didn’t stop him. Bean went about fixing the problem and sent out more flyers. That was the beginning of L.L. Bean, one of America’s most successful family businesses and a household name.”

A business crisis such as this does not develop integrity, it reveals it.