Word: thorntons
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...point, Colonel Thornton had 2,800 officers all over the world under his command. Among them were nine who became particularly expert at Thornton's new concept of statistical control. After V-J day, he talked them into offering themselves as a team-with him as the captain-to apply the knowledge they had acquired to the business world. This was the beginning of the famous Whiz Kids, who then ranged in age from...
Cokes & Smokes. Thornton and Ash have come to work together as smoothly as if they were held on course by one of Litton's inertial-guidance systems. Thornton is the man with the intuition and the flair for the right deal at the right time; Ash is the lively and witty coordinator who keeps a day-to-day watch on Litton's ever-expanding activities. Chain smoking (at least two packs a day) and sipping Cokes, Thornton spends at least four hours a day on the telephone talking with managers, investigating mergers, gathering facts and keeping up with...
Vice presidents and executives from out of town are urged to pop in on Thornton and Ash at any time, and headquarters has a freewheeling quality. Thornton and Ash feel that keeping their men well-informed and making their responsibilities clear is the best way to get the most effort from them. "Our system works," says Roy Ash, "only because the individuals and the system work together. If we had a highly institutionalized system, our people would be frustrated; if we had institutional-type people, we as a company would be frustrated." Litton is not noted for paying its executives...
...Useless Leisure. Tex Thornton himself has few broad interests outside of work. "I can't stand useless leisure," he says. Thornton and Ash take vacations only in alternate years, but after a few days Thornton usually finds himself hankering to get back to work. Thornton lives in a Spanish-style ranch house in the fashionable Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, among such Hollywood names as Walt Disney, Bing Crosby and Claudette Colbert (he bought the house for $250,000 from Frank Sinatra's first wife Nancy). He and his tall, graceful wife Flora live there during...
...Thornton set some sort of record by remaining a second lieutenant for only 48 hours. After a series of whirlwind weekly promotions, he became one of the youngest full colonels in the Army Air Forces. With the war now on, Thornton got to work with a determination that the Pentagon still remembers. He not only established training programs for 1,700 different kinds of specialists, but also devised the first system of "statistical control" the armed forces had ever seen. Thornton calls that "a fancy name for finding out what the hell we had by way of resources and when...