{"id":278,"date":"2003-11-01T12:07:41","date_gmt":"2003-11-01T17:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/2003\/11\/how-to-run-a-company-well\/"},"modified":"2003-11-01T12:07:41","modified_gmt":"2003-11-01T17:07:41","slug":"how-to-run-a-company-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/2003\/11\/how-to-run-a-company-well\/","title":{"rendered":"how to run a company well"},"content":{"rendered":"

appearing in the economist, how to run a company well<\/a> gives a list of ten “commandments.” only they’re not commandments… (natch). nonetheless, a few comments on these points…<\/p>\n

their first “commandment” (a sound ethical compass) is an echo that “getting the evil out” just isn’t easy. once it becomes an institutional issue for a company, even breaking it up into baby-rails or baby-oils or baby-bells leaves the evil largely intact. evil can even be a cancer that spreads by acquisition by all accounts diebold was a fine corporation with a solid 144-year track record of good work, until they compromised<\/a> it by getting into the electronic voting business.<\/p>\n

i guess this is “commandment #1” since the “corporate scandal” and reflexive “we’re not evil” response is going around a lot lately. personally, i fear a lot of this “not evil” is more of a statement than anything else – even google, famously not evil, flirts<\/a> occasionally<\/a> with evil.<\/p>\n

over the past few years, i’ve been wrestling with concepts to make “doing the right thing” a part of a corporate structure. it’s not enough to say “we’re good people” – i’m looking for ways to build trust and responsibility into the corporate fabric.<\/p>\n

another article<\/a> in the same issue got ryan’s<\/a> attention<\/a>, and demonstrates, to me, at least, that the typical management-directors structure isn’t entirely effective anymore. poor performance and poor ethics<\/a> are rewarded – more than ever.<\/p>\n

i believe in building empires (#4 ambition), but i also believe in playing positive-sum games. does that make me an idealist? unrealistic? crazy?<\/p>\n

now, if only my fairy godmother would send me to charm school (#10)….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

appearing in the economist, how to run a company well gives a list of ten “commandments.” only they’re not commandments… (natch). nonetheless, a few comments on these points… their first “commandment” (a sound ethical compass) is an echo that “getting the evil out” just isn’t easy. once it becomes an institutional issue for a company, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}