You Can t Hurt Others While Enriching Yourself

You Can't Hurt Others While Enriching Yourself

"All you really have in this world is your credibility," says former Senator Bob Dole. That point has been vividly illustrated in the corporate world over the last couple of years. CEOs who have paid themselves tens of millions of dollars while laying off thousands of workers have lost all credibility in the business community. They got away with it in the booming 1990s, but they will not get away with it anymore. If your company or organization is performing badly enough that you need to cut staff, benefits, or salaries, you have to share in the pain. Even if you are at midlevel, one manager at an automaker said, "You need to suffer with everyone else." This gentleman decided to forgo a raise the year he had to lay off seven people in his department. It was not that painful for him, but it was a priceless gesture on his part.

The ImClone insider trading scandal that ensnared Martha Stewart was big news because it looked like an elite group was abusing its position of power while everyday people suffered the losses. The numerous instances that have surfaced where companies lent their executives millions of dollars out of the corporate treasury greatly added to the career woes of those who got the loans once the companies experienced problems. The secret partnerships that enriched individual Enron executives proved fatal to the careers of the executives who thought that they could profit at the expense of shareholders and employees.

Executives and their careers can survive economic or business downturns. They cannot survive such downturns when the downturns are coupled with evidence that they got sweetheart deals, quietly and secretly enriching themselves prior to or even during the downturn. The scrutiny and criticism will be unbearable in such situations.