Dov Seidman is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LRN and Author of “HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in Life)”.

Dov Seidman has built a career, and pioneered an industry, around the idea that the most principled businesses are the most profitable over the long term.

Fifteen years ago, long before Enron, Dov founded LRN with a powerful vision that the world would be a better place if more people did the right thing. From that basic notion, he has grown a successful business that has helped to shape the ways millions of employees, managers and leaders behave and interact all over the globe. LRN helps more than 400 leading companies worldwide – including Disney, Dow Chemical, eBay, Proctor & Gamble, Raytheon, Johnson & Johnson, and 3M – develop ethical corporate cultures and inspire principled performance in business.

Dov maintains that in today’s connected, transparent world, people and organizations stand to gain by dedicating new thought and energy to how they do what they do. That's the inspiration behind “HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything ... in Business (and in Life),” named a best business and leadership book and a Wall Street Journal best seller.

The premise of Dov’s book is featured as one of the nine rules for companies to embrace in Thomas L. Friedman’s seminal book, The World is Flat. Further, the HOW philosophy is featured in Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, in which Dov calls for a green revolution through a strategy of outgreening the competition – where leaders and employees find advantage by keeping green top of mind in everything they do and in how they go about doing it.

Dov is frequently invited to speak at leading industry events, and to senior management and boards of directors. Recent presentations include The National Press Club, The Aspen Ideas Festival and The Forbes Business Visionaries Series. He has also been the keynote speaker at University of California Los Angeles’s annual commencement.

Dov’s views on business behavior, success and corporate culture have been quoted in dozens of print broadcast media, and online, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, The Financial Times, Charlie Rose, ABC’s Good Morning America and BBC News. Each month, Dov shares his views on human behavior as the ultimate source of competitive advantage in a monthly column for BusinessWeek.com.

Dov testified in 2004 before the U.S. Sentencing Commission, arguing that corporations must move from a check-the-box-compliance-only approach, to instead focus on fostering ethical cultures and behaviors. His proposals were adopted and today are the very standards by which companies, cultures and programs are judged.

Dov earned simultaneous bachelor’s and master’s degrees, summa cum laude, in philosophy from UCLA. He later earned a B.A. with honors in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. He, his wife Maria and their son live in Los Angeles, where LRN is headquartered.

Blog Entries by Dov Seidman

Why Values Trump Rules and Regulation

Posted November 9, 2009 | 02:42 PM (EST)


Everywhere I travel, I hear the same refrains: "We need more regulation," or on the flip side, "If we hadn't deregulated, we wouldn't be in this financial mess."

It looks like the White House is of this mind-set. Citing Wall Street for helping to create a "culture of irresponsibility," President...

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Sustainability: It's Not About Light Bulbs

5 Comments | Posted October 1, 2009 | 02:45 PM (EST)


The owner of a McDonald's franchise made news recently by opening an eco-friendly restaurant in Cary, N.C. It has energy-efficient refrigerators, low-flow toilets, tables made from sunflower seeds and even recharging stations for electric cars.

This McDonald's is surely going green. But that doesn't make it sustainable.

To many people,...

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Why I Don't Want the Recession to End Yet

20 Comments | Posted July 22, 2009 | 02:30 PM (EST)


Everyone is asking the same questions: Have we hit bottom yet? When will the recession end? When will things go back to the way they were?

As a chief executive, I'm as eager as anyone to put the recession into the past. A growing economy benefits everyone. More importantly, there...

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Indonesia Tries Honesty Policy to Rebuild Trust

Posted July 17, 2009 | 03:30 PM (EST)


Years ago, I heard about an unusual doughnut vendor in New York City. During the morning rush, instead of calculating the correct change for every customer, he put a pile of coins on the counter of his pushcart and asked people to pay what they owed, and make change for...

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A Call for Reconnecting With Values

1 Comments | Posted July 13, 2009 | 12:53 PM (EST)


Like many of you, I have followed the recent headlines related to Pope Benedict XVI's call for a "return to ethics in the global economy." I've been seeing this thinking in many arenas, and I was meaningfully struck by his desire to see business reconnect with values in...

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Why Madoff Is Not a Symbol of Our Times

9 Comments | Posted June 29, 2009 | 02:09 PM (EST)


Lots of attention has been paid to the sentencing of Bernard Madoff, and rightfully so. There are no words for his actions. He was epic in his perfidiousness. His behavior was monstrous.

But when we talk as business people about the times we are living in, we do...

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A TRIP We Should All Take

5 Comments | Posted June 17, 2009 | 02:08 PM (EST)


At first glance, money management giant Mellon Bank Corp. (now the Bank of New York Mellon), the British alternative rock band Radiohead, and my company, LRN, would appear to have little in common. But we've all been on a TRIP. (TRIP is an acronym to articulate how Trust...

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The Era of Inspiration

Posted April 6, 2009 | 04:24 PM (EST)


By converting from a command-and-control disciplinarian to an inspirational head football coach, the New York Giants' Tom Coughlin led his team to an improbable Super Bowl victory last year. Coughlin's success signals the value of embracing an inspirational approach to leadership in the 21st century.

Despite an impressive win-loss...

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Trust Me, It's Time to Fill the Certainty Gap

Posted April 1, 2009 | 08:26 PM (EST)


Rethinking the emotional and monetary value of trust

Conventional wisdom holds that the economy is suffering from declining consumer demand, insufficient business investment and the high cost or unavailability of credit.

Government and business leaders need to understand the problems run deeper. I believe that the global economy has been...

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Flying Into Trouble, Again

Posted December 20, 2007 | 09:32 PM (EST)


Should JetBlue's industry-leading Customer Bill of Rights be grounded? With the holiday season upon us, I was reminded of what air travel was like last Valentine's Day, when many of us fell out of love with the airline industry. On that cold February morning, a series of severe storms roiled...

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Mackey and the Rush to Judgment

Posted October 16, 2007 | 03:06 PM (EST)


Three months ago, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey revealed in a company FTC filing that from 1999 to mid-2006, he participated in an online stock discussion board under a pseudonym. During that time, according to the company's admission, he made some strong and, some might say, disparaging, comments about Whole...

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iPhoney? What Is An Apple If It Loses Its Core?

Posted September 16, 2007 | 04:43 PM (EST)


One thing jumped out at me during Apple's latest customer relations challenge. Charting the consumer and public reaction of consumers to Apple's iPhone price cut, the Los Angeles Times quoted Jonte Richardson, a 36-year old filmmaker, who said:

It feels like you're being punished for being brand-loyal. If...

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Breaking the Ruler

Posted August 21, 2007 | 02:33 PM (EST)


Education at the primary and secondary levels has always been rules-based: raise your hand, get a hall pass, obey the dress code, show your work, double-space, check your chewing gum at the door. As much as we hated them (and who didn't grow up hating all those rules?), schools have...

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Bonds Makes Number But Misses Mark

Posted August 10, 2007 | 05:35 PM (EST)


Barry Bonds just made the number. It was a big number, one of baseball's great records: the most home runs ever hit by a human being. In general, this would be big news. Almost every pursuit of a major baseball record like this has commanded rapt national attention.

Yet surprisingly,...

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