Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the Toughest Questions in Business Today (19 page)

I
n the days and weeks after the Enron verdicts were handed down in May 2006, there was an understandable focus on the victims of the company’s collapse: employees who lost their jobs and pensions, shareholders who collectively lost billions of dollars, and residents of Houston, where Enron played a large charitable role.

These victims, it was said, could take only cold comfort in the verdicts. Yes, the system worked. In fact, the old system worked, since Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay were tried under laws that were on the books long before the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. But the convictions, everyone rightly agreed, could not bring back all that lost money or repair all those disrupted lives.

Nor, we would add, do they seem likely to bring back the optimism, confidence, and courage that made business so much fun.

Yes, fun. Remember? Before business-writ-large became demonized by Enron and other companies where wrongdoing was found, being in business felt different. The bursting of the dot-com bubble certainly had an impact, but we’re talking about a phenomenon that supersedes that. It’s hard to quantify, but we sense a kind of fear and trembling everywhere we go. People worry about taking risks. They’re anxious about the future. They’re hesitant to say they love work. In short, business has lost some of its spark. What an unnecessary shame.

Why? Because if there is one thing the corporate scandals have shown us, it’s that bad behavior is actually pretty rare. The
Wall Street Journal
estimates that about one thousand people have been convicted of corporate crimes since July 2002. That’s one thousand—not ten thousand or even a hundred thousand—out of the tens of millions of businesspeople. Not every case of bad behavior has been uncovered, but an overwhelming number of businesses play by the rules, and most of the time, the rules work.

We know that, and you probably do too. You just might be having a hard time admitting it these days. Some time ago, we were speaking to a group of insurance agents in Florida. They were a cheerful bunch until one man asked: “Is it just me, or do other people here feel ashamed to admit they work in business now? I mean, sort of…dirty? I know I haven’t done anything wrong and that I work with good people. But still…” There was silence, and then the crowd gave him a round of supportive applause. They were all in the tank together.

This sort of self-loathing isn’t the only worrisome fallout of the changed business climate. Managers everywhere tell us that they are spending vast quantities of time in defensive mode, heads down, chanting, “Compliance, compliance, compliance.” Now, we’re obviously for accuracy in reporting—and ironclad integrity. But the blood in the water, even five years after Enron, has too many businesses swimming in circles instead of charting new horizons.

Look, business isn’t perfect, and it never will be, as long as it is comprised of human beings. After all, we have laws galore, and people still drive above the speed limit, rob convenience stores, and of course, do far worse. The FBI raids one congressman’s office; another is indicted and resigns. A journalist at a respected newspaper fabricates stories for years. A man of the cloth takes what’s in the collection plate to fund a lavish lifestyle. Just as you could write off business because of such aberrations as Enron, you could write off all public servants, the media, and the clergy because a minute percentage of politicians, journalists, or padres. But you might as well write off all of humanity.

Business is a huge source of vitality in the world and a noble enterprise. Thriving, decent companies are everywhere, and they should be celebrated. They create jobs and opportunities, provide revenue for government, and are the foundation of a free and democratic society. People who work at winning companies give back: they pay taxes, mentor in schools, volunteer at firehouses. So, don’t buy the line that Enron is business, and business is bad. Enron and the others were exceptions. Business is good. In fact, business is great.

Yes, Enron had its victims. The whole awful story is a tragedy. But we can’t let a relatively small group of companies rewrite reality and make businesspeople cower in shame and lose their courage. We can’t let business—society’s engine and great hope—be Enron’s final victim.

W
inning, actually, doesn’t have anything to do with the markets. Or we should say, it doesn’t
have
to have anything to do with them. By our definition, winning is a personal journey. It’s about you as an individual setting a goal and achieving it. That goal could be creating and supporting a happy, healthy family. It could be founding or funding a homeless shelter. It could be teaching children to read; it could be sailing around the world.

And then again, it could be building a thriving company that succeeds in the global marketplace.

Winning is about reaching the destination you choose. It is not necessarily about profit, although it can be. But winning is, at its most fundamental, about making something of your life. It is about progress and meaning. It is about achievement.

Winning is not about destroying families, communities, and nations. Not even when the winning is done by companies taking part in the new global economy. In fact, your suggestion that economic success is somehow, by definition, morally corrupt is just dead wrong.

Look, winning in business is not a zero-sum game. In sports, when one team wins, the other loses. On the other hand, in business, when a company wins, there are usually lots of collateral winners too. A successful company’s executives and shareholders benefit, of course, but so do its employees, distributors, and suppliers. In some cases—Microsoft and Amgen are two good examples out of thousands—a company’s success has led to the creation of dozens of more companies, who supply or sell to the parent company. Sometimes they create whole new industries, with slews of new competitors. The most important thing is that all these new companies create jobs, the lifeblood of any society. When people have meaningful work, they have the freedom to set their own goals, not just survive. They can educate their children, travel, or give to charity. They can dream.

Along with creating jobs, winning companies pay taxes, as do their employees, funding countless programs, from schools to hospitals and courts.

What in all of this “destroys”?

Now, obviously, there are people in business who lose their souls to profit, as you put it. It’s an old story that, very unfortunately, gets regularly refreshed with some new account of corporate lying, cheating, or stealing. There are and always will be corrupt jerks out there, and not just in business, but in every field, from the priest-hood to politics.

But we strongly believe that most people in business, just like people in general, are good. They want to win the right way, cleanly, fairly, and by the rules. They want to start companies or help build them. They want to search every day for new ideas. They want to invent new technologies and ways of getting things done. They want a different future—a better one for themselves, their families, friends, and colleagues.

Will future historians look back on these people and say their definition of winning ruined the world?

Or might they say they made it a better place?