CEO's Gone Wild: Ready, Aim, Fired

What do Gucci, Boeing, Pfizer, HBO, and the University of Mary Washington have in common? They all hired highly qualified managers, who they later fired for behaving badly.

Giacomo Santucci, chief executive of Gucci, was fired in 2004 one day after the company heard that he was thinking about resigning.

• If you’re unhappy with your current position and are thinking about leaving your company, be careful who you share those thoughts with. Share them with the wrong person and you may be looking for a job sooner than you planned!
  

Harry Stonecipher, 68, was fired from his position as CEO of Boeing for having an affair with a female executive, who also worked for the company. Boeing’s website listed the fact that Stonecipher was married with children and grandchildren. Boeing felt that Stonecipher’s actions were against their ethical beliefs and news about his affair would be an embarrassment to the company.

• Know what your company policy says! Most companies specifically prohibit their employees from dating others who work in the same department. Some policies prohibit dating anyone else within the same company, no matter which department they work in.
  

Hank McKinnel, CEO of Pfizer, resigned from Pfizer, after working for them for nearly 40 years. He’d run the company for about 5 years, but resigned after the Board of Directors expressed their dissatisfaction with his performance and declining investor confidence in his leadership abilities. 

• Senority can give you advantages, but it doesn’t mean that you can sit back and relax. Higher Position + Higher Salary = Higher Standards.
  

Chris Albrecht, chairman and chief executive of HBO, lost his job when he began drinking again after 13 years of sobriety. On a trip to Las Vegas, he allegedly assaulted his girlfriend, after drinking too much. He said, “I had been a sober member of alcoholic anonymous for 13 years, Two years ago, I decided that I could handle drinking again. Clearly, I was wrong.”  

• HBO, Albrecht’s former employer,  produced a documentary about the problems caused by alcohol and drug problems. The documentary is called Addiction.
  

William Frawley, 53 year old president of The University of Mary Washington, was also fired for his abuse of alcohol.  In April, he flipped his car and was taken to Fairfax hospital. He left the hospital the next day, against doctor’s advice and was charged with driving under the influence. The day after he left the hospital, police attempted to stop Frawley for driving without a right front tire on his car. Frawley refused to stop for police who followed him to his home. He refused to take a Breathalyzer test but was arrested by police for suspicion of a DUI. Police took him to Mary Washington Hospital, where he stayed for a week. He is due to appear in court in May and July on the DUI charges.

The Alcoholic Can Recover - excerpt from Alcoholics Anonymous

The alcoholic is a sick person suffering from a disease for which there is no known cure that is, no cure in the sense that he or she will ever be able to drink moderately, like a nonalcoholic, for any sustained period. Because it is an illness — a physical compulsion combined with a mental obsession to drink — the alcoholic must learn to stay away from alcohol completely in order to lead a normal life.

Fundamentally, alcoholism is a health problem — a physical and emotional disease — rather than a question of too little willpower or of moral weakness. Just as there is no point blaming the victim of diabetes for a lack of willpower in becoming ill, it is useless to charge the problem drinker with responsibility for the illness or to regard such drinking as a vice.

Alcoholism takes many routes. Some A.A. members drank in an out-of-control way from their first drink. Others slowly progressed over decades to uncontrolled drinking. Some alcoholics are daily drinkers. Others may be able to abstain for long periods. Then they cut loose on a binge of uncontrolled drinking. The latter are called “periodics.”

One thing all alcoholics seem to have in common is that, as time passes, the drinking gets worse. No reliable evidence exists that anyone who ever drank alcoholically has been able to return, for long, to normal social drinking. There is no such thing as being “a little bit alcoholic.” Because the illness progresses in stages, some alcoholics show more extreme symptoms than others. Once problem drinkers cross over the line into alcoholism, however, they cannot turn back.

For More Information About Topics In This Article:
Whistleblowers , Addiction, Fired, How to manage problem employees, A Call to Action (Hank McKinnel’s, former CEO of Prizer’s book about the drug industry), The Whistleblower: Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman. (a book by Peter Rost, M.D., former Vice President, Pfizer)

If you suspect that you or someone you know has a drinking problem, you can view questions and answers about alcohol addiction at  the familydoctor.org 

Comments

[Kelvin]

Indeed many jeopardized careers are due to addiction but unfortunately many find it hard to recognize such and to seek help. Also, this article just reinforces the fact that we should always be on top of our game in the corporate world because years or even decades of service to a company won't save us from being fired at any time.