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Leaders of companies with a recent history of scandal have a special obligation. They are obligated – or they should be – to lead their companies ethically as well as effectively.

Companies that fall into this category are, for example, Volkswagen. Its reputation was badly tarnished eight years ago when it came to light that it had long installed in its vehicles a defeat device, or “cheat device,” deliberately intended to mislead on emissions. Also Wells Fargo, some of whose executives are only now paying for their roles in a scandal that burst into the open in 2016, when the bank was revealed to have created millions of fake accounts not for the benefit of its customers but for the benefit of Wells Fargo. And, more dramatically, Boeing, when two of its 737 MAX airliners crashed within five months of each other (in 2018 and 2019), killing 346 people.

What happened at Boeing was not only the most dramatic of the corporate scandals, but it was also the most tragic. In direct if inadvertent consequence of what happened at Boeing, and did not happen, hundreds of people died.

Peter Robison wrote the definitive account of the causes and effects of the two crashes, Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing. His conclusion was that the Federal Aviation Administration had “abdicated much of its oversight to Boeing itself.” And, even more disturbingly, that the culture at Boeing had “rotted.” That under then CEO Dennis Muilenburg, “Boeing had reinvented itself into one of the most shareholder-friendly creatures of the market. It celebrated managers for cost cutting, co-opted regulators with heaps of money, and pressured suppliers with Walmart-style tactics.”*

Given this dismal recent history one would think that Boeing’s current leadership team – every member of Boeing’s board and every one of Boeing’s top leaders and managers – would be especially alert to anything that smacked of carelessness, casualness, or callousness. Anything that did not convey the message both to those inside the company and to those without, that whatever the mistakes management made in the recent past the present would be different. In the present Boeing would be above reproach.

No such luck. I was astonished last week to read in the Wall Street Journal that Boeing’s two top executives were apparently oblivious to the mood of the moment. Apparently unaware of the temper of the times in which workplace issues – especially, post-Covid, the issue of hybrid work – were front and center. The Journal does not normally dig up dirt on America’s corporate elite. I surmise then that the editors found this story irresistible, or egregious, or both.

Boeing’s Chief Executive Officer, David Calhoun, started to work from home during the pandemic. The problem is he never stopped. He simply did not return to the office, continuing instead to work from one of his two homes, either his “sprawling waterfront house” on a lake in New Hampshire, or his other house “in a gated South Carolina resort community.” According to records obtained by the Journal, to accomodate Calhoun Boeing’s fleet of private jets made more than 400 trips to or from airports near his homes in the last three years. Not a good look.  

 Similarly, Boeing’s Chief Financial Officer, Brian West, who also does not usually go to Boeing’s headquarters, now located in Arlington, Virginia. Instead, West needs just five minutes to get from his home in New Canaan, CT to a small, newly opened Boeing office – which just happens to be also in New Canaan.

None of this would matter so much if we were not now consciously post-Covid. Now not in a time during which Boeing is itself urging its workforce to get back to the office. Some of its employees are back in the office full time; others are permitted to work remotely or to go hybrid, into the office some days, work from home the others.   

The Journal article was just that, it was an article about Boeing, it was not an editorial. Still, the piece was opinionated, strongly opinionated. It pointed out that while it was not unheard of for a CEO to live and work remotely, far from the office, it was unusual. It quoted a management professor saying that Calhoun and Davis were clearly “out of step with the general messaging from corporate America,” which was encouraging everyone to get back to the office. And it pointed out that Boeing was also an outlier among its peers – for example, the CEO of rival Airbus regularly worked from the company’s headquarters in Toulouse.

“People are pissed they’re being told to get their butts to the office,” said a union official representing some of Boeing workers. No wonder. Their boss is working from home while many of them are not. Their boss is earning $22 million a year – any of them doing the same?

Shame on Boeing’s board for tolerating leaders who do not labor every day, in every way to restore the company’s honor. Shame on Boeing’s leaders for doing less than their best to boost the company they purportedly represent.

“People are pissed”? Really? The wonder is they are not more pissed than they are.

*Doubleday, 2021, p. 6   

Franz Kafka’s famous story, Metamorphosis, is about Gregor Samsa, a salesman who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably become a bug.

Mike Pence’s famous story, also called “Metamorphosis,” is about himself, one kind of politician who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably become another kind of politician.

Mike Pence was Vice President to Donald Trump’s President. In that role, Pence was Trump’s stunningly reliable, astonishingly indefatigable, and stupefyingly unsurpassable Enabler. In my book, The Enablers, I wrote about Pence in part as follows:

Pence [felt he] had no choice. So long as he remained vice president to Trump, he could not risk disagreeing with him, distinguishing himself from him, certainly not in public, not once. Trump’s demand for, need for, fealty was absolute, so before all else it was Pence’s fulltime job to fall into line. [Moreover] part of his job description was to praise the president tirelessly, extravagantly, and effusively …. But Pence’s decision to lash his political fortunes to those of Donald Trump would prove costly. History is not likely to treat Pence kindly. He will be viewed as an enabler, an abject subordinate who, among his other failings, not once corrected or contradicted the president’s numberless lies.*

That was Pence then. Pence now is something different. Of course, unlike Gregor Samsa, Pence did not metamorphose overnight. It took him months, years even, fully to grasp, at least for public consumption, the man he had served so subserviently for so long.

But now, finally, his metamorphosis is complete. In a speech he delivered two days ago, Pence devoted himself entirely to separating himself once and for all from his former boss, his previous puppeteer. The former vice president spoke of what he now calls the “fundamental” and “unbridgeable” divide in the Republican Party – between traditional conservatives like himself on the one hand, and populists such as Trump and his clones on the other. It was a time for choosing, Pence said, echoing a phrase of Ronald Reagan’s. A time for the Republican Party to choose between traditional, long venerated conservatism or the “siren song of populism.”    

So, what are we to make of Pence’s metamorphosis? Why did he – if he even did – have a change of heart? Are we to take his flip-flop seriously? Does anyone care?

First, why the apparent change of heart? He would deny that he has changed – he would insist that it is Trump who is different. To which there is an element of truth. Trump is far more dangerous a leader now than he was when he first asked Pence to run as his vice president. Even during his time in the White House, Trump went from bad to worse. His incitement to insurrection on January 6, 2021, was a logical, even predictable, outcome of what had come before. So, if Pence did not see Trump for what he was especially during the last year of his presidency, Pence was being willfully blind.

Second, are we to take Pence’s flip-flop seriously? Yes. I do not doubt that Pence now is more comfortable in his own skin than he was while serving as Trump’s Toady-in Chief. What we’re seeing in the present is in keeping with Pence in the past, the more distant past, before he lashed himself to the man who would be his downfall. Pence as a member of Congress, and Pence as Governor of Indiana was deeply conservative. He was never, however, on the fringe, at the extreme, a far-right populist.  

Finally, does anyone care who Pence now is or what Pence now says? Not really. As I predicted, history has not treated Pence kindly. Even members of his own party largely ignore him, treating him as someone more marginal than consequential. Pence has become the quintessential example of someone who did too little, much, much too late.

From 2016 to 2020 Pence was so abject a follower he was an Enabler. From 2020 to 2022 he was so timorous a follower that despite the January 6 chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” he still did not separate himself fully and forevermore from the man who was his leader. Only recently did Pence finally complete his metamorphosis. Only recently did he wake one morning to find himself transformed into someone different.

Pence will never be an impressive leader. But at least he is no longer a pitiable, even pathetic follower.

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*Barbara Kellerman, The Enablers: How Trump’s Team Flunked the Pandemic and Failed America (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Pp. 171 ff.    

A coup d’état or, coup, is the overthrow of a government by illegal means. Usually, though not always, coups entail some violence, and usually they are executed by small groups, often members of the military.  Recently has been a spate of coups, specifically in Africa. But they are by no means confined to a single continent or region of the world. In fact, Donald Trump’s attempt to forestall the peaceful transfer of power from his presidency to Joe Biden’s, has frequently been referred to as a “failed coup.”  

Though a coup is generally thought of as the overthrow of a government, what coups really are, or at least more precisely are, are overthrows of leaders. Of single individuals, heads of states, and of their allies and aides, all of whom represent the old order that must be deposed. Generally, at least the leaders, now perceived as the old guard, are murdered, or imprisoned, or held under house arrest, or in some other way permanently eliminated or removed. They are no longer, in other words, free to go about their business for the obvious reason that they represent a threat, likely an indefinite one, to those who had the temerity to forcibly overthrow them.

“Coup d’état” is a French term that refers, literally, to a coup against the state. To a blow against the existing government, or a strike against it, or a hit against it in the attempt, if necessary, a violent attempt, to upend it. To overturn the old or at least the previous order in favor of a new one.

However not all coups are the same. And they are not all executed against leaders of a state. Now the word “coup” can be used more broadly to, for example, refer to corporate leaders who have been pushed from their perch suddenly, and without their consent, and by a small group determined to remove them from their positions of power.

About Bob Chapek, for example, the former chief executive officer of Disney, I could reasonably say that he was removed by a coup. He was in any case pushed out of his post from one day to the next, entirely by surprise, and against his will, and by a small group, in this case Disney’s board. Further Chapek was immediately, instantly, replaced by a successor. To be sure, Chapek was given a golden parachute. But getting out immediately, and completely, and forevermore was part of the deal. He was never to darken Disney’s door again.

During the first quarter of the 21^st century Africa has been the epicenter of coups against the state. In the last decade alone have been 22 such coup attempts on the African continent. And in the last six years 11 coups were successful, for example in Chad, Mali, and Guinea. Moreover, early this summer, in July, was the forcible overthrow of the government in Niger. And late this summer, in August, was the forcible overthrow of the government of Gabon.

In Africa, certainly in parts of Africa, coups have become almost normalized. While all coups are different, in Africa they tend to have these things in common: economic deprivations and democratic discontents. However, for those among us with an interest in leadership and followership they represent a larger trend – one in which more uneasy than ever lie the heads that wear the crowns.   

In all American history, for example, a grand total of three presidents have been impeached. Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. Notably, three of the four impeachments were in the last 25 years and, notably, Trump was impeached twice during his single term as president. Continuing the quickening, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently said that the next “natural step” was to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she would “not vote to fund the government” unless the House voted on a Biden impeachment inquiry.

Whatever your opinions of the recent impeachments, or threats to impeach, the syndrome’s the same. You don’t like the leader you have? Get rid of them by any means necessary – and replace them with one you do.

Lebanon is a small country – its population is fewer than 6 million. Still, as recently as the 1970s, it was punching far above its weight. It was known as the secure, and mountainous, “Switzerland of the Middle East. And its capital, Beirut, was known as the liberal, and fashionable, “Paris of the Middle East.” Which makes Lebanon’s vertiginous descent into rampant corruption and relentless chaos almost impossible to comprehend.

How did it happen? There are several reasons, of course, among them Lebanon’s malevolent neighbor, Syria, and, for more than two decades, its malevolent president, Bashar al-Assad. But no single explanation is as powerful as Lebanon’s own leadership class which, by wide agreement, has been an unmitigated disaster. By leadership class I refer specifically to its political and economic elites, both of which have been on the whole miserably inept – and atrociously corrupt.

They have been somewhat inept and corrupt since Lebanon’s inception in 1943. However, their power to wreak havoc has waxed and waned over the years, culminating only in recent years in such a disastrous lack of competence and rectitude that it sometimes seems hope is lost. The country’s infrastructure is crumbling. Inflation is out of control – in April it was almost 270%. There are electricity outages and water cuts. Garbage is piled in the streets and the environment is being degraded. The economy is stagnant if not crippled. Political unrest and civil disorder range from intermittent, to frequent, to constant. And at any given time, sectarian friction is on a continuum from dysfunctional to deadly.  

Arguably no single leader personifies the overall wretchedness of Lebanon’s leadership class as vividly as does the former governor of its central bank, Riad Salameh. Salameh was governor for thirty years. He was repeatedly reappointed to his post by Lebanon’ Council of Ministers, each time for a six-year term. By the time he finally, just recently, exited his post, he was the world’s longest serving central banker.

For much of his tenure Salameh was praised for helping to steady his country during its frequent times of economic crisis. However, he is now being charged with a litany of financial crimes, for which he is being investigated in the United States and Europe, as well as in Lebanon. Salameh is accused of engaging in financial practices “to the detriment of the state.” They include money laundering, engaging in fiscal fraud, and embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds.  In addition to his personal corruption, he is now regarded not as Lebanon’s financial mastermind or, as he was sometimes known, as its “magician,” but as the architect of its misery. As the Financial Times (FT) recently noted, at the “root of the current rot” were decisions that Salameh had been making for years.

Which raises these questions. Why was he reappointed, over and over again, for three decades, to his post? Was everyone in Lebanon unable to see what was happening? Was the entirety of the political establishment and the rest of the financial establishment incapable of detecting either his obvious wrongdoing or his glaring stupidity? Or was their blindness, their collective blindness, willful, deliberate?     

The above-mentioned piece leaves no doubt. It is widely assumed that Salameh will stay in Lebanon to avoid certain questioning and possible arrest abroad. “The arrangement suits Lebanon’s politicians.” Why? Because as one put it, “As long as Salameh stays here, he won’t squeal [on their secrets] and everyone stays happy.”   

Everyone, that is, except the Lebanese people who have suffered too much and too long at the hands of those ostensibly responsible for their health and welfare. It is an astonishment that the antidote to bad leadership, sad leadership, remains so elusive.

As the link below attests, for some time I’ve been interested in the question of how women’s bodies might impact their ambition and ability to lead. Specifically, do the physiological, physical, and psychological differences between women and men having any bearing on why still so few women in high positions of leadership and management?

Women and Leadership – Our Bodies, Ourselves

To explore this question more fully, I agreed to write a chapter for the second edition of a volume titled, Women and Leadership: Navigating Change from Ancient Times to the Present.*

Given that women menstruate, get pregnant, bear children, breastfeed, and go through menopause, and given that men do not, I have come to conclude it defies logic to assume that these distinction between the genders are irrelevant to the gap to which I allude. This especially applies because each of the above, say menstruation and menopause, is often accompanied by physical discomforts and psychological changes that range from minor irritations and limitations to symptoms that are more severe. All challenges from which men are exempt.

I have come further to conclude that unless women take this bull by the horns, which includes breaking taboos on what can be discussed publicly without shame or embarrassment, specifically in professional situations, it will be difficult if not impossible openly and honestly to address the question of why so few women at the top.

It does no one any favors to avoid the distinctions to which I allude. To pretend they do not exist, as if women’s bodies and men’s are the same, or that the differences between them are irrelevant to the matter at hand. They are not. Which is precisely why since men are more than content to avoid the subject, it’s up to us. It’s up to us – to women – to claim our bodies, to claim ourselves, and to claim the implications for women and leadership.

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*Editors are George R. Goethals, Crystal Hoyt, and Karen Christensen (Berkshire, 2024).

*   

This is my fourth summer post with the running title, “Leadership in Russia.” The previous three are here.

Leadership in Russia – Who’s the Dog? Who’s the Tail?

In an earlier piece I wrote that after the failed, finally half-hearted mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin against Vladimir Putin the latter was likely to follow his previous pattern. The suggestion was that Russia’s leader would take down Wagner’s leader by imprisoning him, poisoning him, or murdering him. Given that Prigozhin’s plane yesterday fell out of the sky leaving nothing behind but charred debris – including the remains of ten passengers – the path that Putin chose is clear. Everyone without Russia is near certain that he was responsible for the death of Prigozhin and, more importantly, everyone within is near certain as well.  

Once Putin launched his attack on Ukraine, he found himself on the horns of an unfamiliar dilemma. He needed someone. Putin badly needed Prigozhin. And Putin badly needed the political and, especially, military support of the group that Prigozhin led. The by now notorious Wagner group.

Putin tolerated Prigozhin’s increasingly overt upstart ways for as long as he did because Prigozhin’s brutality enabled Putin’s brutality. But once Prigozhin got too big for his britches, once Prigozhin threatened Putin directly, the latter concluded he had no choice but to shoot the former down, literally.  

So where does this now leave Putin? He got his revenge – and he sent a warning shot that no Russian could possibly miss. “Don’t mess with me or you’ll get your heart cut out and your head cut off.”

But make no mistake. Putin’s short-term win incurs long-term costs. First, in Prigozhin Putin lost an inordinately important if ultimately unreliable ally. Second, Putin cannot any longer count on the Wagner’s group’s powerful presence and invaluable contribution in Ukraine or, for that matter, in Africa, where it also importantly defended and expanded Russian interests. And third, manifest murder is a bad look. On the one hand Putin comes across as a tough guy willing to go for the kill. But on the other hand, he comes across as weak. As a leader who felt forced to assassinate a competitor.

Donald Trump is an Outlaw Leader. A leader who will linger forever in American lore precisely because he is an outlaw.

First things first. Trump is among the American leaders who have had the most seismic impact – ever. For eight years now his imprint on America’s national psyche has been so strong, so outsized as to transform the country and leave forever his mark on the time in which he led. Whatever he has said or done, and continues to say or do, always dominates the conversation, and sometimes determines the course of American history.

His impact has been overwhelming and overpowering since he first came on the political scene. It so remained during his first campaign for the White House and during his four years as president. And it remains the same now, in his post-presidency. No other American leader – including the incumbent president – comes close to so effectively grabbing and holding the national spotlight. To being so completely the center of our collective attention. And to suck the air out so totally of our communal room.

Trump leads us to his alter. All of us. Even those among us who insist they detest him cannot resist him. He is irresistible – we are incapable of pushing him away or turning away. He pulls us in, the force of his personality and persona so strong we are drawn as if by a magnet into his orbit.

He dominates America’s news. He impinges on America’s discourse. He plays with America’s politics. He tramples on America’s trust. He leads his followers, and he leads other leaders, leaders who become, who long ago already became, his followers.

Trump is a familiar American archetype – an outlaw. He is an Outlaw Leader. A leader who leads not because he is good but exactly because he is bad. Because he disrupts the status quo. Because he tramples on American norms. Because he leads an outsized life. Because he has an enormous appetite for money and power and food and sex. Because he is a rebel and a risk-taker. Because he defies the establishment. Because he bends rules and breaks them. Because he is as outrageous as rebellious. Because he is Jesse James and Dillinger, Rambo, and Tony Soprano.

Trump is an outlaw because he is, among other things, literally outside the law. He is not law-abiding he is law deriding. Four times over he has been indicted. And four times over his popularity will not decrease but increase. Why? Because he is an outlaw – and proud of it. Trump is America’s id. Trump is America’s bad boy. Trump is America’s poster child for the triumph of impulse over reason.    

Trump’s time will not be forever. But forever this will be the Time of Trump.

As several of my previous posts attest, issues relating to women’s health have near certain implications for why women continue to lag so significantly behind men in leadership roles. See, for example, this.

Women and Leadership – Our Bodies, Ourselves

Earlier I referenced the following factors, each of which pertains:

• Women get pregnant. Men do not.
• Women give birth. Men do not.
• Women breastfeed. Men do not.
• Women are vulnerable to mental and physical disorders associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Men are not.
• Women go through menopause. Men do not.

To this litany one major biological difference between women and men remains to be added. Women menstruate. Men do not.

Why, and how, does menstruation matter? It matters primarily because large numbers of women have dysmenorrhea – menstrual cramps. These cramps usually begin just before women get their period and they subside after a few days. Additionally, are other symptoms sometimes associated with menstruation, such as nausea and fatigue.

Of course, many women have no symptoms at all during their periods. But about 60 percent do: they report having mild cramps just before and during menstruation, and somewhere between 5 and 15 percent report having pain so severe it interferes with their daily activities. (This number is likely however to be much higher. Healthcare providers believe that many women who have menstrual pain do not report it.)

Notwithstanding the 60 percent figure, the number of women who suffer some sort of discomfort associated with menstruation remains unclear. For example, one Dutch study found that fully 85 percent of women who responded to an online study said they experienced painful cramping during their periods. In contrast, though the number is still significant, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reports a much lower figure, 50 percent. Specifically, it has found that half of women who menstruate have some pain for 1 to 2 days each month.

Why the variability and uncertainty? Because the subject remains taboo. It is this taboo – and the shyness, embarrassment, and concern associated with it – that is assumed to explain why many women opt not to report menstrual pain.

I cannot prove there is a tie between the biology of a woman’s body and the still astonishingly few women leaders because I have not conducted the relevant research. Moreover, I readily acknowledge that there are many other factors that pertain. It’s also the case that some strides have been made – that there are many more women in positions of leadership than there were even a decade ago.

Still, there is no logic to excluding from the conversation physiological and psychological imperatives. Women have issues that pertain to their well-being that men do not. To hide these differences, or to assume without evidence that they have no impact whatsoever on women aspiring to, and assuming leadership roles, is counterproductive. Women can handle the truth.

As the three posts included in this one attest, I’ve been writing for some time on a subject that up to now has been taboo. How being a woman, specifically being in the body of a woman, pertains to the leadership gap. The persistent gap – despite all that’s been done in the last several decades, at least in the West, to reduce it -between the number of male leaders and the number of female leaders.  

Leadership and Lactation – in the Wake of the Pandemic

Leadership and Lactation – the Evidence Grows

Women and Leadership – Now Menopause

My original focus was on the impact on women’s bodies of being pregnant, giving birth, and breast feeding. And on how the enormous physical and psychological changes that are associated with childbirth and breastfeeding – over long periods of time – almost certainly have an impact not only on women’s capacity to lead, but on their ambition to lead. (I know, I know, even to suggest this is politically incorrect.)

But every few months there’s further evidence that being a woman is not like being a man. And that the differences between them might go further, much further, toward explaining the leadership gap than we have been willing so far to appreciate or admit.

The third of my posts above takes the argument further – to menopause. To the fact that while for some women menopause has little or even no impact on their well-being, for other women it’s different. For many women the effects of menopause are considerable, and they are deleterious. Menopause is often associated with symptoms such as hot flashes, mood swings, and brain fog – all in the prime of women’s professional lives. Not helpful if you’re on a leadership track – or for that matter already in a leadership role.

In recent weeks I’ve been reminded of two more health issues that, logically, further explain why women lead less often than men. Both also revolve around pregnancy and childbirth – which a woman typically experiences in her twenties, thirties and now, into her forties.

The first is the relatively high rate of maternal mortality in the United States. While this is especially true of Black women – who have a maternal mortality rate 2.6 times higher than that of white women – it is by no means confined to a certain segment of the population. The U.S. maternal mortality rate is already the highest among all peer nations. And in recent years the numbers have deteriorated still further. As Vernonica Gillispie-Bell put it, writing in the New York Times, “Maternal outcomes in the United States are a public health crisis and they are only getting worse.”

The second health issue that directly pertains to – likely limits – the numbers of women in leadership roles is what used to be called (and often still is) postpartum depression. Now the term is a more general one – “mood and anxiety disorders.” But the point is the same. These disorders impair women, often for months or even years at a time, and they are not uncommon. Researchers estimate that one in five new mothers suffer from such disorders during pregnancy and up to one year after giving birth. We’re talking here about some 800,000 American mothers each year. The impact of such afflictions is not, moreover, always transient. Last year the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said that mental health disorders are the leading cause of maternal deaths, including from suicide or drug overdose.

Why are women everywhere still so underrepresented in leadership roles? Let me count the ways. To the familiar list of explanations and excuses such as implicit bias and the white male leadership model, we must though add another one. We must freely and openly acknowledge that women and men are different and that these physiological and sociobiological differences impact on why women lead less often than men. To do otherwise is to continue to stick our collective head in the proverbial sand.       

I know, I know. People (like me!) who write a lot about a single subject – in my case obviously leaders and followers – sometimes till the same soil. We return to topics that grab our attention not because we’re being repetitive, but precisely because we are not. Because things change, and people change, and the lives of leaders such as Larry Fink don’t end, they continue. They continue chapter after chapter until the leader leaves.

Fink is the chief executive officer of BlackRock. (He has appeared in at least two of my previous posts, to which the links below.) BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with, at the end of last year, some $8.59 trillion under its management.

For years Fink has tried to lead other leaders by being reasonably progressive. By “reasonably progressive” I do not mean to suggest he is a flaming liberal. He is not. But he is someone who has been trying to play a modest role in addressing some of the world’s most pressing, and intractable, problems, above all climate change. Specifically, Fink has been at the forefront of American corporate leaders on E.S.G. – on how environmental, social, and governance goals should be core to how companies do business.  

No good deed goes unpunished. So, for his efforts, Fink has been attacked by the right for betraying capitalism by being too “woke” – too responsive to the prevailing political winds. And he has been attacked by the left for, above all, not ditching BlackRock’s investments in fossil fuels. Just recently the left had a field day with Fink when his company announced it would appoint to its board the head of the Saudi Arabian Oil Group (Aramco), which, oh by the way, is the biggest oil producer in the world.

Fink is, of course, trying to thread the needle, to strike a balance between two conflicting forces. First and foremost, he’s a businessman, a leader whose primary responsibility is make money for his company, as much money as possible. But second, he’s a citizen, a global citizen, an American citizen, a leader who has demonstrated some sense of what it means to be civic minded.

Still, in recent months Fink has been more assertively prioritizing the first and backpedaling somewhat on the second. He has strongly defended BlackRock’s newly close ties to Saudi Arabia. And he has retreated on E.S.G., even telling a group in Aspen in June that he had stopped using the term because it had been “weaponized.”

It’s hard to fault Fink for doing his day job as well as he knows how. But it’s not hard to fault him for retreating on E.S.G. If not Fink, CEO of the largest asset management company in the world, who?

What Should Leaders (NOT) Do? – Part III

Larry Fink – Leader Caught in the Crosshairs