Sonia

Jeff Stern
Eagle Business Solutions
631-219-7648

Sonia

Thanks for the sharing your views. I wanted to know which company were you working. I tired to find out on Linkedin to connect with you, but there was no one with the same same and job roles.Your facebook page also doesn’t give any details. it doesn’t even have a photograph. I changed my setting yesterday for the comments section to ensure everyone log ins that correct people are writing instead of trolls. Seems like one person has been commenting under different names. So kind of confused.

Eitherways, let me conuteract your points for the sake of discussion:

Mahatma Gandhi’s quote exact words : A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.”. He was talking in reference to courage, that people say yes because they aren’t brave enough to say no.

Your second point: Examples and scenarios are to illustrate, they don’t cause riots. My readers are educated professionals and most of them are risk managers except a few CXOs’ Risk managers are quite balanced from my experience and don’t jump to conclusions.

“Corporate leaders believe lack of moral courage isn’t a big deal” .If you are going to make such comments which is an insult to the rest of CXOs, please provide a balanced view. _ thank you for pointing it out, that moral courage is a big deal for everyone. Without moral courage people will view leaders not as heroes but villains.

Please read the report of Japan’s Investigation Agency on TEPCO. It clearly stated that the management did not disclose the full risks, they knew about quite a few and delayed disclosure. Even earlier on the inspection reports recommendations were not adequately implemented.

On the mortgage and foreclosure problem – the banks should have checked the the repayment capacity of the borrower, it is their job. If I come and ask you for RS 100 crores will you give it to me without checking my repayment capacity? Secondly, the banks did not follow proper processes for property identification and loan repayment. They foreclosed properties of people who had repaid. This is a complete lack of respect of their customers.

If you are having a bad weekend it is okay. Some days one just can’t take the issues and everything becomes a big deal.

Sonia

I completely and vehemently disagree with you to the extent that it makes me sick.

I have been a CXO, including a CRO. Leaders DO NOT lack moral courage. It is easy to use to some failures to make a statement, including taking Mahatma Gandhi’s words out of context. He said, and I quote “You have to do the right thing… You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.” There is no statement about moral courage here.

Yes one doctor didn’t tell the information. But what about what about the doctors who told Angeline Jolie of her Cancer probabilities, allowing her to make the decision based on that knowledge. One doctor does not represent the entire profession.

Taking one doctor and using the hypothetical scenario is extremely dangerous, especially about moral courage. Same goes with CROs.

I have been a CXO myself and have advised CXOs at Fortune 100 companies. NO ONE BELIEVES THAT “Corporate leaders believe lack of moral courage isn’t a big deal” .If you are going to make such comments which is an insult to the rest of CXOs, please provide a balanced view.

In the Fukushima incident, TEPCO was trying to assess the damage which was increasing by the minute. They didn’t know what to report. It may have come across as hiding the incident, but it wasn’t. Moreover, the CEO of TEPCO resigned of his own accord due to the shame he felt — is that lack of moral courage?

About the mortgage crisis, the fault also includes the borrowers by borrowing huge sums of money to buy houses they could not afford. The banks had to deal with these defaults. I am not saying that what was is happening is not wrong, but give a balanced view. Also as a result, senior management was held responsible and changed accordingly.

Please do not write such inflammatory and unbalanced comments in the future. I understand you can write whatever you want to, but you may fall into that doctor scenario you have mentioned.

Very well said. Presently some parents view that giving birth and sending a child to school is all the parenting that is required. Bullying the kid to get good marks at the expense of physical and spiritual growth of the child is justified in most parents mind. Isn’t it surprising that by the time a child reaches the age of 21 yrs, to start his or her life, s/he is already damaged.

As you said we need more ethical, intelligent, modest, humane and socially responsible individuals in the society. I believe that social media is going to be a double edged sword for parents (as it has proven out for leaders) in the long run. When the parents were autocratic or destructive, a child’s world view was limited and options were restricted. Now children will have different views from their parents because they have easy access to them – the good and bad stuff. So while the society can lament that children will watch porn, they will also read philosophy and politics.

Same thing applies for leaders, previously divergent views could be curbed. Now everybody reads it across the world. How can one control people’s minds? One can cage a person but one cannot cage the mind of a person. So autocracy as we see it, is in the last stages of its usefulness.

Sonia

Corporate leaders believe lack of moral courage isn’t a big deal. But without being able to inspire others, how in the hell will they get followers.

Another aspect which they believe is risk managers should give the required report because after losing their job, they won’t have money to survive. So basically they are paying for the desired report. If money should be driving force, then what will they do if I reverse the scenario. Let us say, a CXO was just suffering exhaustion. But the doctor wouldn’t have earned much money from it, he would make more from a heart surgery. So he operates just to make money. Will the CXO be happy about it.

They want a risk manager to compromise his/her ethics but the doctor shouldn’t. Everything in the world is interconnected. One can’t separate and put different aspects in neat little compartments, where one gets only the good part. But delusions has made the world go round.

Sonia