Leadership is, at the bottom a matter of ethics. Socrates suggests that being ethical requires that we first know ourselves. WaPo business columnist Steven Perlstein asks whether former Enron CEO Ken Lay was convicted and then died of a heart attack because he deceived himself.
Ken Lay, the self-made son of a Baptist preacher who put himself through college and graduate school and won the Horatio Alger Award set up by the champion of "positive thinking," Norman Vincent Peale. …
Ken Lay, who carefully built a reputation as Mr. Houston, bringing the Astros downtown and spearheading countless civic, cultural and charitable causes.
Ken Lay, whose old-world charm and politeness earned him the extraordinary loyalty and affection of Enron employees -- the same loyal employees whose warnings about the company's financial problems he stubbornly ignored.
For many who knew him well, it was simply inconceivable that Ken Lay could have known about, let alone encouraged, the kind of financial shenanigans that led to the downfall of a company that was his life's work and the source of his power and fortune. But what they missed, and what a jury came to conclude, was that like many in corporate and public life, Lay had become a con man, unable to untangle truth from fiction.
The remarkable rise and tragic fall of Ken Lay is really a story about a man whose optimism was finally outrun by reality. …
Were those instances of willful deception? Or are they examples of the self-deception that becomes ingrained after years of obfuscation and half-truths, part of the corporate leadership game? Because of an untimely death in Aspen, we'll never know for sure.
Sometimes a man can change the world by clinging stubbornly to his optimism in the face of contrary facts. This is the case that Richard Reeves makes in his President Reagan: the Triumph of Imagination. In Lay’s case he seems to have been done in by his own imagination. The question for us is: how do we tell the difference between courage of our convictions and self-deception?
We can pray for Kenneth Lay, for his victims anf family, and for the grace of discernment for ourselves.
NOTE: linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for 07/07/2007
Comments