Quick follow-up on Angelo Mozilo and Countrywide.
Let me say this up front: I don’t know much about Angelo Mozilo. He might be a prince among men. He might be a model citizen, a devoted family man, and a civic leader of the type you just don’t see enough of these days. He might be a funny guy with a big heart who also makes a mean veal parmigiana. Might be.
What I do know: he’s made metric tons of money as Countrywide’s CEO, including from large sales of stocks made as the company has gone in the tank. This was covered in an earlier post, which drew a couple of interesting comments — one of which cast aspersions on Mozilo’s stock sales. This is part of what I wrote in response:
. . . it’s not at all hard for the folks inside Countrywide — including many who will not be drinking the wristband Kool-Aid — to learn in detail about the piles of money Mozilo’s been collecting. In fact, I’d be surprised if C-wide insiders aren’t much better informed about this than most of the rest of the world, because it affects them directly.
This reminds me of something I just read in an interview with Reuben Mark, who led Colgate-Palmolive for more than 20 years:
[Mark] pointed to former Tyco chief executive Dennis Kozlowski, who agreed to pay restitution for tax evasion after he was caught in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on artwork purchased in Manhattan. Empty cartons supposedly holding the art were shipped to a Tyco facility in New Hampshire for tax purposes, but the paintings were actually sent to Kozlowski’s New York apartment.
Mark asked his audience to think about the impact on a worker in the New Hampshire plant, earning $22 an hour, seeing the crates coming to his plant. “He knows that the boss is cheating on taxes. How can you really expect that warehouseman to be honest in his job when the example he’s getting is just the opposite? With everything you do as a leader, you’ve got to think not only, ‘Is it the right thing for me to do?’ but, ‘Is it right for the organization?’â€
Would you rather have Mozilo or Mark running your company?
Category: Executives, The working life3 Comments so far
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I am a senior VP at Countrywide. The good people at our company are struggling with this, among other things. Many of us wish the leadership would have chosen to use this crisis as a time for reflection, self-examination, and betterment rather than retrenchment and PR bullshit, but leadership at our company has ceased to listen. They merely dictate. Very few people in Drew Gissinger’s circle have the temerity to question his mandates, which are often formulated in haste, and often very emotional and reactionary in nature. I don’t sign loyalty pledges for anybody, and my inquiries into what the potential consequences to my career might be for failing to do so have gone unanswered.
It is truly a sad time. Though I’m sure the company will survive, and someday thrive again, I now have serious doubts as to the sincerity of our mission at the very top of our ranks. Those of us at my level believe it in our bones.
Anonymous — I’ll take you at your word that you are who you say you are, and add my thanks to you for writing in.
In any business, inept senior management can lead to all sorts of trouble, for themselves and for everyone down the ladder. But if they’re sincere and truly giving their level best, it at least takes some of the sting out of operational pitfalls.
But *cynical* leadership is the worst, because everyone down the ladder can smell the cynicism from a thousand yards away.
My worry is that Mozilo & his lieutanants might be the worst of all — inept AND cynical. And the really crummy part, if this is true, is that he’s got his vigorish regardless, while thousands of workers on down the line have been given the sack.
[...] response to last night’s post about Countrywide and CEO Mozilo, I got this response from “anonymous.” On the [...]