Corporations: An Appetite for the Future

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Tex Thornton has thought about this revolution perhaps more than any other man. "We are experiencing technological change at by far the fastest rate man has ever known," he says. "In the past 20 years we have seen more technological change than in all recorded history. It took 112 years for photography to go from being discovered to a commercial product, 56 years for the telephone, 35 years for radio, 15 years for radar, twelve years for television. But it took only six years for the atom bomb to become an operational reality, and five years for transistors to find their way from the laboratory to the market. You might say we are in danger of being engulfed by change."

In a Low Key. Change brings its hazards, of course, but it also brings many unprecedented opportunities—and it is Thornton's job to see that Litton takes advantage of the opportunities. Many men in both business and Government consider Thornton to be the best executive in the U.S. today. Yet his gifts are not always on display, and in many ways the low-key Texan does not fit the usual conception of a dynamic manager at work in an exciting industry.

Deeply involved in technology, Thornton is neither a professionally trained engineer nor a technician, and, though he is a great believer in running things under tight statistical control, he places little reliance on electronic logic in making management decisions. In a field where speed is a motto, he snaps out no instant decisions, likes to take his time about making up his mind. He overcomes a problem by attacking it with dogged tenacity, painstakingly learning all the facts, then turning them over slowly in his mind many times until they fit together into a decision—a decision that often comes to him on horseback or in his Cessna, which he sometimes uses (with a hired pilot) to get up into the clouds to think.

Thornton is a dreamer and a vision ary who talks constantly about the way-out future, yet he is also an intensely practical man who has made realities out of many of his early dreams. Immensely wealthy and forever faced with decisions about spending millions, he is nonetheless a penny pincher who makes waiters and taxi drivers scowl at his meager tips, is indifferent to carrying cash (his secretary presses pocket money on him just before he goes on every trip) and always takes a single room rather than a suite when he is staying in a hotel. He is often shy and inarticulate among strangers, yet he has managed to dazzle some of the nation's top businessmen with his knowledge and versatility. "Everybody loves Tex," says Buff Chandler, wife of Los Angeles Times President Norman Chandler, "but nobody really knows him."

No Safe Niche. Far from being a lonely decision maker in an isolated executive suite, Thornton shows his true executive quality in the ability to pick good men and give them free rein. He has surrounded himself with an intensely loyal group of managers, who are independent thinkers not afraid to question his judgment or to lunge at opportunities without waiting for his nod. More often than not, Thornton's decision merely sets off a spirited debate that produces a compromise solution that the company finally follows.