I am appalled but not surprised at many of the postings in response to my note, "Whole Foods But Not the Whole Truth" (July 25, 2007). When I decried CEO John Mackey's deception in bashing a company he was trying to acquire (by using a pseudonym for his postings), more than a few responses advised me to have low expectations of the integrity of CEOs, to "get real" and accept the notion that most business leaders have no moral compass.
You don't know how wrong you are. You don't know the terrible consequences for you and all of us for your armchair attitudes. And you are not entitled to hold such attitudes if you do not meet the activist criteria below.
But first I will relate an incident I witnessed firsthand. Bobby Kennedy was campaigning at a high school in Brooklyn. A heckler in the balcony interjected every few minutes: "You are all crooks!"
Kennedy ignored the heckler until about the fourth or fifth time. Then he looked up and said in a loud stage voice but without animosity: "We, er, have representative government in the United States. And we are just representative." He went on to say that if you want something better, you'd better campaign for it, speak up, do your part.
And I agree. You are not entitled to your low expectations if you have not been an activist investor, participated in an annual meeting, written a letter to the board of directors, written to your local newspaper, started your own "soandsosucks.com" -- done something active. You deserve the Congress we have (need I say more?). You deserve the leaders we have in all walks of life if all you do is passively "eat what's served" and sneer.
Further, I have worked with more than two dozen CEOs. With rare exception they have "good purpose": they are trying to do the right thing while growing shareholder value. And I am confident that the same is true for most of the 13,000 business owners and CEOs in Vistage International, a community predisposed to help each other. And under very great pressure to do otherwise.
Finally, the winds of change are already causing course changes. It is not clear what the last dozen CEOs who are going to jail were thinking when they backdated options, paid handsome non-competes to themselves via companies they owned, inflated revenues and earnings by sham transactions. Sarbanes Oxley, anti-racketeering laws and tax evasion penalties are being used more and more effectively. Sam DiPiazza, CEO of PriceWaterhouse Coopers, one of the largest public accounting firms, told me on camera at Baruch College (on my series Inside the CEO) that the situation today is orders of magnitude different from 10 years ago when the public trust was breached all too often.
Mackey may or may not get away with what he did (there are still on-going investigations). But you better bet the majority of CEOs (and their boards) are more careful these days about their choices and about the permanent record on the internet of what they say and do. And if 2 or 3 percent of the top 1,000 CEOs cheated their employees, customers, suppliers or shareholders, it would still be far too many. But your resignation won't ensure theirs.