Page 55 - Executive Warfare

Attitude, Risk, and Luck

years of terrible newspaper headlines and a steep decline in the number
of life insurance policies people bought from the company, which fell from
about one million in 1991 to less than 300,000 in 1997. There was also
considerable misery for the top executives there, including being forced
to change their plans at Christmas after
a judge ordered them to be deposed in
the destruction of documents. While
EVERY PROJECT IN
Prudential eventually righted itself, it
THE WORLD HAS A
was not before a lot of suffering.
FATHER OR
The one risk you must never be
MOTHER WHO
wrong about in your career is enterprise
DECIDED TO TAKE
risk. It doesn’t appear that often, but
THE RISK. AND
there are times when, even in a position
ORGANIZATIONAL
below CEO, you can actually put the
MEMORY IS VERY
entire organization in jeopardy. Just ask
SHARP ON THIS
Andy Fastow, former CFO of Enron, or
POINT—WHO
David Duncan, the partner in charge of
DECIDED TO TAKE
the Enron account at the now-defunct
THE RISK.
accounting firm Arthur Andersen.
The problem with living in the verti-
cal village of an organization is that you can become very provincial.
Within that bubble, it’s easy to forget how the outside world might view
your actions and the degree to which your organization could be made to
pay for them.
Enterprise risk, by the way, doesn’t always take the form of scandal. I
recently hired two companies, an air-conditioning company and a plumb-
ing company, for a renovation. The owners worked on many of the same
job sites and were in the process of merging.
Now, one would think that such a merger would be relatively easy. Two
families, 20 employees each, pipes and water in common. But it is just as
hard as a big merger. Questions such as “Who brought the newer trucks
into the marriage?”and “Who is going to pay for the new trucks going for-

35