A few days ago Jonathan Hemus shared a post on the importance of preparing (not planning) for “reputational crises”. A straw poll conducted during a conference organized by his company Insignia – Crisis Management Consultancy showed 68% of organizations in the room had never exercised such a scenario.
In an article published in this WE’s Financial Times appropriately titled “Sex, lies and magical thinking about CEO behavior” Brooke Masters points out that “last year, fully half of the forced CEO departures among the 3,000 largest U.S. companies were due to personal misconduct, up from 14 percent in 2017, according to the Conference Board”.
One of the most interesting aspects of the matter relates in my view to “culture” both in terms of “national” and “corporate” cultures. Perhaps not surprisingly this is addressed in a second FT article.
Some, Brooke writes, argue that the ousting of BP CEO Bernard Looney this past week is due to a new wave of Anglo-American Puritanism which, I add, should not surprise in the era of religious fundamentalism. Brooke however argues this misses the point, the BP executive “lost his job not because of sex but because of lies”.
The writer concludes that perhaps the nature of the CEO job “makes some occupants vulnerable to magical thinking, both about what they are entitled to do and what they can get away with”.
This is most probably true but I would also add that “culture” – especially when thinking of events of a “sexual nature” – plays a key role as recent events involving Mr. Rubiales the head of the Spanish women’s soccer federation and the team’s coach exemplify.