Father John Patrick Francis Mulcahy (aka Father Francis John Patrick Mulcahy depending on the season), spent 11 seasons of M*A*S*H trying to balance his two realities. He was a priest, opposed to violence (aside from boxing), thrust into a war zone. As the 4077th chaplain he was responsible for the spiritual and emotional care of more or less everyone else. Father Mulcahy spends many scenes helping in OR. He supports the doctors however he can; he brings supplies and drinks to the staff; offers prayers for the dying; even assisting in surgeries at times.
Mulcahy’s Balance
Throughout the show his story is one of a man struggling to find balance – sometimes he does it well, sometimes he misses. The writers make his goal most clear in the episode Heroes. A former boxing champion has come to came on a USO tour stop and has a stroke that is eventually fatal. As the boxer lays in a coma, he explains the influence the champ had had on his world view.
Mulcahy talks about his struggle with the idealism in Plato and his desire not to be beaten up at school. He tells the story of the first professional fight he’d seen. The now dying champ, had asked the ref to stop the fight so he didn’t hurt his opponent too badly.
“And I realized for the first time, that it was possible to defend myself and still maintain my principles. … That was when I made up my mind to keep one foot in the ideal plane and the other foot in the real world.”
Father Mulcahy
Mulcahy Consulting
Consulting is, obviously, less challenging than Father Mulcahy’s world. But M*A*S*H has a lot of useful ideas to use to inspire us in our lives. If you aren’t familiar with the show, I highly recommend it (although new viewers might start in Season 2 or 3 since it took them a season to find their feet).
Balancing the ideal and the practical is one of the challenges in consulting. We can often see an ideal solution for a client, but the client doesn’t have the time or budget to reach that ideal. Our job is then to find a balance between that ideal solution and meeting deadlines and controlling budget. We need to keep one foot on the ideal technical plane, and the other in our practical world.
Like Mulcahy, sometimes we get frustrated that we can’t do our best work for doing for reasons that feel short-sighted. Finding ways to work on personal projects or other things that allow you to be technically purest can help keep skills sharp and scratch itches can help. Unlike Father Mulcahy, leave the choice to charge into other people’s battles to rescue a wounded soldier to the properly trained.
We may sometimes error in the other direction. Like Mulcahy trying to write the perfect sermon during a visit from a cardinal, and miss the place we should really be (hopefully we can pull it together as well as he does). It’s easy to get focused on our own goals, and miss a client’s needs go in a totally different direction. But it’s our job as consultants to course correct and deliver on our obligations.
In the end try to consult like Father Mulcahy would.
M*A*S*H Consulting
If you didn’t know, or can’t guess from context, my wife and I are M*A*S*H fans. We grew up with it. We bought the DVDs as they Fox released them. It’s our go-to for something comforting to watch. It’s entertaining, and full of great lines and moments to borrow for life examples. As part of marking the show’s 50th anniversary this is the first in a short series of posts (not sure how many yet – at least two maybe more) using consulting lessons from characters in M*A*S*H (likely avoiding some of the obvious choices like the doctors for things we can take from others).