Today we have a guest post from Steve Paskoff, CEO of ELI.
Today is my birthday, so I have asked my client Steve Paskoff, CEO of ELI, Inc. to share some of his wisdom about the importance of leadership behavior in creating a winning business model. ELI offers its clients a foundational learning platform (training products, manager tools, informal learning opportunities) built on laws and behaviors for civil treatment that enhances organizational performance.
Steve’s choice of Tiger Woods as an example is a compelling one. It shows how transparent our world has become and why leaders’ actions, not just their words, will increasingly drive how their companies are perceived. Internal employees have always judged their employer by leadership actions, not words. With the internet and instant communications, the outside world now has a window into all of our organizations.
From Steve:
Tiger Woods has been the premier sports brand for the past several years. We’ve wanted our businesses to perform like he plays golf, our kids to behave the way he acts, and our commitment and intensity to approach his impossible standards. Ultimately, his corporate message has been to trust what he endorses and buy accordingly. Maybe if we do, in some small way we can all be like Tiger.
That’s all changed. His reputation as a golfer remains intact, but his personal credibility, a key to his phenomenal business success, has foundered. Now he’s fodder for jokes rather than a model to emulate or a person to trust. From what we know, he broke no criminal laws. However, aside from committing a criminal act that would have subjected him to prison time, there is no legal penalty he could suffer that will prove greater than that which he will receive at the hands of his betrayed family and the public. One moment Tiger was a hero and the ultimate role model; the next, a bounteous resource for comic relief and anger. For a long time to come, Tiger Woods’ name will conjure up memories of his athletic accomplishments linked with his personal misdeeds. The latter will tarnish what should have been the pure genius and excellence of the former.
Organizations building their own brands should remember this painful lesson: Compliance with the law is necessary and important, but brands and business can be quickly destroyed by behavior that conflicts with their messages and stated values, whether that conduct is legal or not. The more an organization preaches values of honesty and integrity, the more powerful will be the effect when their contrary daily behavior surfaces.
Hi Steve, Kay – The Tiger Woods situation is very disheartening on many levels. It seems as though business and sports, which used to be, could be, and should be bastions of ethical conduct, offer up one scandal after another. Golf seemed to be scandal proof, and I think the fallout from Tiger’s fall will go beyond what many people expect because it is so unexpected and dramatic. The only thing I can add to Steve’s eloquent post is that the ramifications of a disconnect between words and action go far beyond the individual or an organization. The bad actions of a relative handful of unscrupulous financial leaders helped bring down an entire industry. Similarly, Tiger’s situation, whatever you think of it, will undoubtedly affect innocent bystanders including Tour sponsors, other touring pros, and fans.
.-= Brad Shorr´s last blog ..How to Sell Social Media to B2B Companies =-.
Happy Birthday Kay!
It’s interesting to see where the lines are drawn. Letterman’s popularity appears to have survived philandering relatively easily while Tiger is taking a much deeper plunge. I’m always intrigued as to where the lines are drawn. I think, in addition to the misbehavior, there is a level of stupidity and hypocrisy that when breached the ‘public’ finds intolerable.
I find it extremely hypocritical that Anderson Consulting, um, I mean Accenture, the company that was partner in the biggest corporate crime in history (Enron) is now going to distance itself from Tiger Woods. Incredible gall and a very sad commentary on American business in 2009. They may think that spending 100 million dollars to re brand from Anderson to Accenture made this small footnote in history disappear, but you can’t erase the truth. I call upon those of you commenting on this blog to find it in your moral code to also point this fact out to Accenture and the world at large this blatant hypocrisy.
Donovan Moore
Gotham, WI
Thanks Donovan for your comment. Actually there is even more to learn from Enron. Many of the large banks behind the 2008 financial markets disaster that’s devastated Main Street were behind the “investments” that were in fact “loans” that kept Enron going when it was clear its business model was broken. These banks were charged significant fines by the US government. This alone should have been a warning to US regulators that bankers, to make expected financial returns, were bending rules and engaging in highly risky activity.
Let’s not forget the potential that we co-created the Tiger Woods image. Was he perhaps a focus for our need to have a hero? When his affairs were revealed it also revealed for us, (if we chose to look), the falseness in our assumptions. The closer to the “pinnacle” that Tiger came, the more he built his business model to be our hero, the greater the likelihood of his fall.
In many ways, so to did we co-create Enron and Bernie Madoff. We kept investing with the mistaken belief that the past always predicts the future and that these performance outliers were real. What should have their collapse revealed in us?
How can we create business models that are as “real” as we are – that don’t take advantage of a real tendency on our part of wanting to believe what is unreal. (See “The Black Swan” by Nissim Nicholas Taleb.) Perhaps this type of business model doesn’t create the phenomenal growth we tend to seek, but may be more lasting and healthy for our communities and even the earth.