Page 49 - Executive Warfare

Attitude, Risk, and Luck

Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He’d also shown considerable personal
courage during the Watergate scandal, when he was attorney general.
Nixon had ordered him to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald
Cox. Richardson refused, resigning instead.
At John Hancock, we used to have lunch together as a board, and one
afternoon Richardson and I both came in late. Everybody else had wan-
dered off, so for the first time, it was just the two of us sitting at the table.
Richardson had just gone to his fiftieth reunion at Harvard and said con-
spiratorially to me, “You know, if a guy was an ass at 21, he’s still an ass
at 71.”
I thought that was very funny. Then Richardson went on to say,“Most
people don’t know this about me, but one of my ancestors was a quarter
Italian,” as if this made the two of us Sicilians in arms.
It was not only amusing, I thought it was quite endearing. It was his
way of telling me that as far as he was concerned, I was okay. And for
the first time I understood that I could be a contender for the top job
at John Hancock.
I’d advise you to be yourself, but also to disarm potential critics where
you can by being self-deprecating.
In my case, since I was much more aggressive and direct than my peers
and wore ties with so much more wattage, I think it was extraordinarily
important for me to maintain a sense of humor. If you’d have taken away
my sense of humor, then there would have been no question that I was
just an ambitious jerk.
Humor has helped me deflect many an awkward question over the
years, including at the press conference in Toronto in 2003 where we
announced that John Hancock was merging with the large Canadian
insurer Manulife Financial. When a reporter asked me why I was paid
more than most Canadian CEOs, there was only one possible answer.
“America is a great country.”
Everybody laughed, and we left it at that.

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