Page 178 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

I went back to the hotel and immediately reported this conversation to
our auditors because it just felt funny.And it turned out that this guy him-
self had been accused of molesting his daughter.
We immediately got rid of him, and he soon went to jail. But I was
sued anyway for wrongfully terminating his contract, and his lawyer used
the fact that I had said we were a forgiving company against me. That’s
okay—I was more than willing to stand by that firing. But giving people
access to you in a social situation can be
dangerous.
SOCIAL OCCASIONS When you are dragged into these
GIVE YOUR quasi-social business occasions, it is up
EMPLOYEES THE to you as the boss to set the standards
OPPORTUNITY TO for behavior. I was at another conven-
TELL YOU tion once, earlier in my career, when I
SOMETHING got a call at three or four in the morn-
PERSONAL THAT ing. One of our salespeople had had a
WILL COME BACK fight with his girlfriend and had put her
TO HAUNT YOU. head through the wall of the hotel
room. I got dressed and went down to
the room, where there were a couple of
other executives and lawyers—and a woman sitting at the edge of the bed
whose head was bleeding and covered in plaster dust.
One of the executives began saying to me,“Look, we don’t have to fire
him. She is not going to press charges. He’s willing to go home.” Then the
kicker, “He’s such a good salesman.”
One of the lawyers then weighed in and said that I might not even have
the right to fire him because the incident hadn’t happened on company
property.
I never should have listened to them. I wasn’t mature enough yet to
understand that by tolerating this behavior, I was sending a message—a
very bad one—to everybody else who worked for me.

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