Annie in Beziers
Enron. Arthur Anderson. Tyco. WorldCom. Adelphia. Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities… Their leaders were highly touted, considered the most talented, the best and the brightest. And yet, these and others cascading business disasters contributed to the largest business failures in modern financial history. And all of them were caused not by disruptive technology, superior competition, unforeseen shifts in the marketplace, but by the lack of character on the part of the leaders. In the final analysis, character can take out a company more completely than incompetence or competition.
Before and after everything, companies are about character.
Before the first idea, the first money, the first employees, the first distributor, retailer and customer, before the creation of the company itself, there is the character of the founders.— Michael S. Malone, Infinite Loop, p.1
