Best and Worst

Some CEOs are great and offer stellar business advice. Some CEOs are not so great and fall victim to errors of judgment.  Today’s blog looks at some of the best and worst (of 2016), courtesy of Forbes (via MSN) and Business Insider.

Best: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

Worst: While defending a significant price increase for an important medication, a healthcare company’s CEO claimed that the product was fairly priced and blamed high-deductible health plans for the increase. In October 2016, the company “agreed to pay a fine of $465 million to settle accusations that it overcharged the government” for its products.

Best: “The biggest risk is not taking any risk…In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg

Worst: After last year’s presidential election, the CEO of a cybersecurity startup threatened on Facebook to kill the president-elect. He resigned from the company in November 2016, and later admitted that what he said “was incredibly dumb, perhaps the dumbest thing I have ever said.  I really only have myself to blame for this.”

Best: “My mother always taught me to never look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting the energy into another project always amazes me.” – Richard Branson

Worst: When the CEO of a large U.S. bank only shouldered some of the blame for opening new customer accounts without permission in order to meet quotas, and put much of the blame on “the 5,300 low-level employees who had already been fired,” Senator Warren accused him of “gutless leadership.” Later he admitted full responsibility and stepped down from his position.

Laurie Berman, lberman@pondel.com