I’ve been struck by the heroic actions of ordinary men and women who didn’t think twice when a crisis required them to put the interest of others before their own; they just did it.  When asked, most replied, “It was my duty.”  You know the people, U.S. Airways pilot “Sully” Sullenberger, American cargo ship captain Richard Phillips, Firefighters everywhere. 

These people have purpose in life.  They do their work as if all eyes were on them (or at least one pair of Divine Eyes).  Why don’t we see the same of business leaders?  To speak of duty to shareholders, employees, customers, is old fashioned.   If there is a sense of duty, it is a self-serving one; it is solely focused on short-term profits, or short-term revenue growth, resulting in short-term stock price increases; which happen to also increase the value of compensation packages for those at the top.   The list is long of now ailing or defunct financial houses with recently retired (and heralded) CEO’s who left with hundreds of millions in compensation for the value they created that is now gone.   Most complain that they couldn’t see it coming.  I don’t buy it; financial risk assessment tools indicated looming problems, but few took heed.

We’ve seen what a quest for short-term profits and stock price increases will get us, a worldwide crisis.   I agree with Jack Welch when he recently confessed that “shareholder value” was nothing more than a term to describe a focus on stock price increases and the focus was misplaced.    Business leaders should live as if they have a duty to customers, employees, shareholders, and more. 

I like the word duty.  I’d like to see it embraced by those that “run” our capitalist system.