Peter Georgescu: revisiting a painful past for a deeply personal exploration of good vs. evil.

• Position: 5 QUESTIONS WITH ... - Interview

Ed. Note: When one learns from his new book what Peter Georgescu endured for seven years of brutal captivity under the Communist regime in his home country of Romania, the reader is astonished that he could then go on--with sound mind intact--to have a distinguished career as a business leader. Upon being freed from a Soviet-style labor camp, Georgescu came to the U.S. and started on a track that ultimately led him to Young & Rubicam, where he had a 37-year career, rising to CEO and chairman of the global marketing giant. But he did not bury all that torturous personal history in some remote recess of his mind. In The Constant Choice: An Everyday Journey from Evil Toward Good, he draws on those painful years of his youth for a deeply reflective exploration--with philosophical, scientific, and spiritual dimensions--to understand humanity's moral nature. His book, published in January 2013 by Greenleaf Book Group (http://theconstantchoice.com), is the culmination of a lifelong quest to answer the question, "Why does evil exist?" Georgescu is now chairman emeritus of Y&R and has served on the boards of Levi Strauss, Toys-R-Us, and EMI Recorded Music and Publishing, among other organizational boards. See box for a passage from The Constant Choice, and in the following G&A he fields a few board-related queries tying in with the theme of his book.

You have written in your book that "Little by little, in the corporate office, the darker side of human nature emerged in the behavior of good people."

Have you seen some of that dark behavior in your boardroom service? It would be unrealistic to expect boards to be exempt from the darker side of our natures. If a director is exhibiting bad behavior, he is not necessarily a bad person or even a bad director, but he has to understand that his behavior or lack of sensitivity to people can result in harmful outcomes--outcomes that often affect the company management team members or even outside stockholders. The solution is an engaged board governance process: in most cases, prompt discussion (in private) with the offending director to get the problem solved.

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The key is for the board chair and the governance committee chair not to tolerate unreasonable behavior and address it directly and with urgency. I have seen corrective and positive results in most such cases by appropriate intervention.

Have you ever run into an "evil" director--or what we call in Directors & Boards a rogue...