Icons are CEOs possessing both fame and strong reputations. The icon CEO combines style and substance in the execution of his or her job responsibilities. Mary Kay Ash, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett are good examples of icons. The late Mary Kay Ash founded Mary Kay Cosmetics Corporation. The firm’s great success and Ash’s unconventional motivational methods, such as rewarding sales representatives with pink Cadillacs, made her famous. Partly because she emphasized helping other women succeed and ethical business practices, Mary Kay Ash also had a very positive reputation. Richard Branson has created an empire with more than four hundred companies, including Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Records. Branson’s celebrity status led him to star in his own reality-based show. He has also appeared on television series such as Baywatch and Friends, in addition to several cameo appearances in major motion pictures. Bill Gates, founder and former CEO of Microsoft, also has fame and a largely positive reputation. Gates is a proverbial “household name” in the tradition of Ford, Rockefeller, and Vanderbilt. He also is routinely listed among Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People” and has received “rock star” receptions in India and Vietnam in recent years.
Warren Buffett is perhaps the best-known executive in the United States. As CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, he has accumulated wealth estimated at $62 billion and was the richest person in the world as of March 2008. Buffett’s business insights command a level of respect that is perhaps unrivaled. Many in the investment and policymaking communities pay careful attention to his investment choices and his commentary on economic conditions. Despite Buffett’s immense wealth and success, his reputation centers on humility and generosity. Buffett avoids the glitz of Wall Street and has lived for fifty years in a house he bought in Omaha, Nebraska, for $31,000. Meanwhile, his 2006 donation of approximately $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was the largest charitable gift in history.
CEOs who display high levels of relative fame but low levels of reputation are in the group called scoundrels. These CEOs are well known but vilified. The late Leona Helmsley was a prototypical scoundrel. Leona Helmsley’s life was a classic rags-to-riches story. Born to immigrant parents, Helmsley became a billionaire through her work as the head of an extensive hotel and real estate empire. While certainly famous, her reputation was anything but positive, as reflected by her nickname: the Queen of Mean. During Helmsley’s trial for tax fraud, her housekeeper quoted her as proclaiming, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” Following twenty-one months in jail, Helmsley was required to perform 750 hours of community service. One hundred fifty hours were added to this sentence after it was discovered that employees had performed some of her service hours. Helmsley’s apparent arrogance, combined with her cruelty to employees and her reputation as the ultimate workplace bully, cemented her position as a scoundrel.
The corporate governance scandals of the early 2000s revealed several CEOs as scoundrels. Perhaps the best known were Kenneth Lay and Dennis Kozlowski. Both men rose to prominence as their firms’ success and stock prices soared but were undone by dubious activities. Lay was once revered as the son of a poor minister who founded Enron and built it into a giant in the energy business. In 2001, however, he became the face of corporate abuses in the United States after Enron’s collapse led to scenes, captured on television, of employees left jobless and with retirement accounts full of worthless Enron stock. Lay was convicted of fraud in 2006 but died before sentencing.
Also born to a poor family, Kozlowski started at Tyco as an accountant and worked his way up to the executive suite. In May 2001, a BusinessWeekcover story lauded Kozlowski as “the most aggressive CEO” in the country and detailed his strategy for building Tyco into the next General Electric by using acquisitions to gain the first or second position in all the industries in which it competed. By 2002, Kozlowski’s reputation was in jeopardy. He was indicted for avoiding more than $1 million in sales taxes on art purchases. Media stories described in detail a $2 million birthday party Kozlowski threw for his wife (billing half of it to Tyco as a company function), a $19 million apartment Tyco purchased for him, and $11 million worth of furnishings for the apartment (including an infamous $6,000 shower curtain). Accusations that Kozlowski and another Tyco executive stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the firm ultimately led to a prison sentence of eight to twenty-five years.
Hidden gems are CEOs who lack fame but possess positive reputations. These CEOs toil in relative obscurity while leading their firms to success. Their skill as executives is known mainly by those in their own firm and by their competitors. In many cases, the firm has some renown due to its success, but the CEO stays unknown. For example, consider the case of Anne Mulcahy. Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox, started her career at Xerox as a copier salesperson. Despite building an excellent reputation by rescuing Xerox from near bankruptcy, Mulcahy eschews fame and publicity. While being known for successfully leading Xerox by example and being willing to fly anywhere to meet a customer, she avoids stock analysts and reporters.
Silent killers are the fourth and final group of CEOs. These CEOs are overlooked and ignored sources of harm to their firms. While scoundrels are closely monitored and scrutinized by the media, it may be too late before the poor ethics or incompetence of the silent killers is detected. In this sense, silent killers are sometimes worse than scoundrels. One example of a silent killer is Harding Lawrence, former CEO of defunct Braniff International. Lawrence initiated a massive expansion of the airline following industry deregulation in the late 1970s. The result was a bloated firm, ill-equipped to survive the extremely competitive setting that evolved in the early 1980s. Howard Putnam, the CEO of a small regional carrier named Southwest Airlines, was hired in a failed effort to save the company. By the time Braniff went bankrupt, Putnam was left to explain its demise, and the name of the main culprit was all but forgotten. Ironically, had Putnam declined the opportunity to try to save Braniff, perhaps he and not Herb Kelleher would have become an icon at the helm of Southwest.
Strategy at the Movies
Iron Man
Has Tony Stark gone crazy? This was the question that many stakeholders of Stark Industries were asking themselves in the 2008 blockbuster Iron Man. Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries, stunned his shareholders, employees, and the world when he announced that he was changing Stark Industries’ mission from being one of the world’s leading weapons manufacturers to being a socially responsible, clean energy producer. Following his announcement, Stark faced fierce opposition from his board of directors, employees, the media, and clients such as the US military. The changes at Stark Industries attracted tremendous attention in part because of the glamorous Stark’s status as a celebrity CEO.
Initially, Stark is seen by the public as a scoundrel that pays little attention to the social impact his company makes. After shifting the direction of Stark Industries, however, Stark is viewed as an icon that is just as attentive to the social performance of the company as he is to its financial performance. Iron Man illustrates that while changing elements such as firm mission and CEO status is difficult, it is not impossible.
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