Sayings of chairman milt: the publisher who led Directors & Boards into the activist and M & A-fueled decade of the 1980s always pointed leaders in the right direction.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: Milton L. Rock- Hay Associates

DR. MILTON L. ROCK, armed with psychology degrees from Temple University and the University of Rochester, joined Edward N. Hay & Associates in 1949. It was a one-office firm founded in 1943 in Philadelphia that was doing pioneer work in the formative field of job evaluation and salary administration. Over the next three decades Milt Rock, as managing partner, led the firm's growth into the world's largest human resources consultancy, with 100 offices in 30 countries. Hay Associates acquired DIRECTORS & BOARDS in 1980 (see D & B History, page 8), and the journal continued under his private ownership upon the consulting firm's sale in 1984. The following are passages from his "Letter from the Publisher," which appeared in the journal during the years when he held the role at the top of the masthead and provided his distinctive leadership advice to directors and senior executives.

To be chosen as a member of a board of directors is the highest accolade for anyone who wishes to make an important contribution to American business. [Summer 1981, his first Publisher's Letter]

Boards must realize that their individual investors, while relatively faithful, are not naive. Their loyalty has its limits. [Fall 1981]

The board is responsible for reviewing and approving or rejecting the strategic plan--not for creating it, nor for its evolution from idea to reality. Those roles, I believe, are reserved respectively for the CEO and the committees of the board. The truth of a strategic plan is in the eyes of its beholder, and to see that plan in depth the beholder can have only two eyes--the CEO's. The board's many eyes can never conceive a clear vision of the corporate future. [Winter 1982]

Many a CEO cannot see his own company culture, and perhaps that is just why he needs outside directors, and why CEOs and other officers want to serve on other boards. It's not to learn the ins and outs of this or that industry--if you're in the chemical business, do you really need to know how a retail operation is run?--but to learn something about those beliefs and expectations that make other companies, and more important, one's own, tick. [Fall 1982]

Is there a CEO for all seasons? Can any one CEO be effective in all situations and business environments--be it a go-go or a go-slow era? One of the perennial qualities that makes a CEO effective in all situations is the capacity to listen and learn. The CEO who has a strong and balanced core of management to turn to...