A few good men (and the world needs more)
By Bill Settlemyer
I can’t recall when I first heard Jerry Zucker speak to a local business or civic group, but what I can recall is that every time I heard him speak, or spoke with him, my view of the world changed in some way.
Along with his family, our community and the world suffered a great loss with the passing of Jerry earlier this month. He was both a brilliant businessman and an untiring philanthropist who gave freely and generously of his time and money.
I recall vividly a meeting I had with Jerry at his company’s modest headquarters in North Charleston a few years ago. He launched into an explanation of how he managed The InterTech Group, his multibillion-dollar, multinational conglomerate.
It was simple, he said: He identified the key performance measures for each subsidiary, making sure they would fit on a single page.
All he had to do, at any time, was to look at that sheet and he’d know whether his managers were on track.
Of course, the seeming simplicity of his one-sheet management system belied the depth of understanding and complex thinking behind the system. The basic idea may not have been novel, but the successful execution of the process yielded extraordinary success that placed him in the top 1,000 people in the world in terms of personal wealth.
But Jerry Zucker never saw wealth in terms of money. His test was loftier, measured by his contribution to making the world a better place. For him that was the real business of life.
Not long before Jerry’s death, the Charleston region lost Dean Harton, another talented and valued member of our business and civic community. Dean’s quiet professionalism and business acumen in his role as president of Hawthorne Corp. culminated last year in the
company’s participation in the $1.9 billion sale of Landmark Aviation to Dubai Aerospace
Enterprise.
I had lunch with Dean shortly before the deal closed. We reminisced about his kind assistance to me when I was launching the Charleston Regional Business Journal back in 1995.
A friend had steered me to Dean for advice on the basis of his business skills and ironclad reputation for integrity and willingness to help others.
And just as Dean helped me get my business off on the right foot, here he was again last summer acting as a sounding board as I pondered the question of whether it was time to hang up my spurs and start looking in earnest for a buyer for my business.
It didn’t matter that my business wasn’t a billion-dollar multinational company. What mattered was that I had asked for Dean’s help, and he responded generously and without hesitation.
So it was a shock to me to hear of Dean’s sudden passing, as it was to so many others, and doubly so when the morning headlines a few weeks later announced the death of Jerry Zucker.
Doing the right thing
Before I sold my business earlier this year, I kept a quotation from Mark Twain on the wall next to my desk: “Always do right — This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
In business, it’s not easy to “always do right.” As any business manager, owner or entrepreneur can tell you, business is a contact sport.
It can be rough, and the temptation is out there to cut corners. Tough decisions have to be made, and they affect the lives and livelihoods of others.
That’s why a strong moral compass is so important in business, and why things go terribly wrong when business leaders rise to high positions without high moral standards.
Enron. WorldCom. The subprime mortgage meltdown. These business disasters didn’t happen by accident. They happened when personal integrity took a back seat to greed and the quest for money, power and public adulation.
Sadly, these deviations from ethical business practices represent all too well the face of “big business” in the United States today.
Too many Fortune 1000 companies have come to see the American consumer as someone to be picked up by the heels and shaken until his or her pockets are empty. They bear much of the blame for the tenuous financial condition of middle-class Americans.
Yes, the consumer is also responsible for his or her own finances, but the game is rigged by big business to favor irresponsibility.
I have increasingly found the contrast striking between the ethics of big business and small business. In the years I’ve followed the ups and downs of our local economy, I have rarely found evidence of major lapses in business ethics by local companies.
Perhaps that is one reason Al Parish’s financial shell game was such a surprise to those in the area’s business and civic community. Most small business people play by the rules most of the time.
It should be said that there are many ethical and admirable companies among the Fortune 1000.
Still, there are far too many big companies that don’t “always do right,” and the resulting hardship and economic damage can be huge, as it is with the subprime mortgage meltdown.
So even as we mourn the loss of two of the Charleston area’s great business leaders, let us also celebrate their lives as proof that a few good men (or women) can change the world for the better. We could have no better role models for ethical business and civic leadership than Jerry Zucker and Dean Harton.
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