Board chairmen I have known ... and what I have learned from them.

• Author: Finn, David
• Position: LEADERSHIP - Personal account

OVER THE YEARS, I have known many board chairmen of large and small companies, and have thought a good deal about the nature of both their business and personal lives. I have admired many of them for their management abilities, been impressed by those who have made outstanding public contributions, and been pleased when some have become personal friends. I might confess that I have also known some board chairmen whom I didn't admire and didn't enjoy knowing, but that's another story.

Some years ago, I wrote a book entitled The Corporate Oligarch, in which I tried to describe the different aspects of the lives of executives who held the top positions in corporations. I studied the way they handled their corporate responsibilities, what their leadership capabilities were, their personal motives, their philosophical ideals, their relationships with the public, and even their family lives. I tried my best to describe what it was like to be a corporate chairman.

The review of that book by Christopher Lehman-Haupt in the New York Times was complimentary, but he questioned my relatively "soft" criticism of the tobacco industry regarding the health issue. He wondered if perhaps one of the major tobacco companies was a Ruder Finn client. He was very perceptive, for indeed I had shown our tobacco company client a draft of my text in which I suggested that the tobacco industry was losing public confidence because of its relentless position that the surgeon general reports linking smoking and cancer were wrong and that no cause and effect between smoking and cancer had ever been proved. In my draft I suggested that the industry would do better if it acknowledged that those reports should be carefully studied to see what new initiatives might be taken to protect public health.

The public relations officer of our client company told me that if I didn't change that statement I would have to suffer the consequences. He insisted that smoking cigarettes was harmless, and that if I didn't believe that was true I shouldn't be working for a tobacco company. I said that every doctor I knew believed the surgeon general was correct and that I couldn't see how I could disagree with them. I wanted to be helpful, not critical, but I thought that the industry was doing harm to itself by its non-credible response. I also said that I would be dishonest if I changed my manuscript. As it happened, the chairman of that company was an old friend of mine whom I respected and admired, but because of the position I took in the text that was published, I was forbidden to participate in any future meetings with the client or be involved in any work our firm would do for it.

Stubbornly held convictions

I learned from that experience--and others involving different industries--that top executives find it hard to accept criticism. Too often they are convinced they are right unless public pressure forces them to think otherwise, as happened years later in the tobacco industry.

Subsequently, I wrote a series of articles about top executives for the Conference Board magazine Across the Board. The purpose was to describe the personal lives of people who headed large corporations. The articles included interviews with the board chairmen and CEOs of AT & T, General Motors, General Foods, RCA, Hewlett-Packard, Chase Manhattan, Mobil...