News and Views

Here’s a story of a large technology company.

The security department came to the CEO and warned him that their servers had been hacked by a competitor and proprietary information had been stolen. The CEO pooh-poohed the claim, and said that even if they had been hacked it could have been anyone, not necessarily the competitor. And he emphasized that he had nothing to do with it. He gave no directions to further investigate the situation, prefering to ignore it and claim it was erroneous.

A while later the security department came back to the CEO with clear evidence that they had been hacked, and clear evidence that it was that same competitor. Again, instead of responding to the threat to the company, the CEO just keeps stating that he had nothing to do with it, and anyway it started before he took over the company. Again, no plans or even a clear intention to respond despite strong warnings from the security department that the hacking was ongoing and would continue.

What would happen to this CEO? Wouldn’t the board vote him out immediately? Wouldn’t it be obvious that he doesn’t have the best interests of the company at heart, but rather is just concerned with how he looks and with deflecting any blame for the situation? Some people might even suspect that there were shady connections between him and the competitor.

Of course, this is only a story. Nothing like this could happen in real life. No one could rise to the level of a large company CEO without demonstrating much stronger leadership abilities than this.