That means they pay close attention to what is happening around them. Warren Bennis said long ago that the best leaders are “first-class noticers” (a term borrowed from Saul Bellow’s novel The Actual). So why, in the spring of 2005, didn’t I probe further into what had struck me as unusual conduct? Because I was susceptible to the same factors that prevent many well-intentioned people from recognizing and acting on questionable behavior.
In light of those reports, the request to change my testimony seemed (to me) more suspicious, and likely unethical. Reynolds Tobacco Company, a defendant in the case, on trademark and patent matters. McCallum Jr., a former partner of the Alston & Bird law firm, which had previously represented R.J. Members of Congress and consumer advocates protested the reversal, specifically questioning the impartiality of U.S. The government formally won its case, but in my view the remedies were trivial, and society missed an opportunity to save millions of lives.
#WHAT IS FIRSTCLASS CLIENT TRIAL#
A month later, the DOJ made an unexpected and stunning retreat, cutting its request for financial penalties against the tobacco firms (which would have helped fund smoking prevention efforts) from $130 billion to $10 billion, just as the trial was coming to a close. Still, at the time, I told no one in a position of authority about the interaction. I told him I stood by my opinions, and on May 4, I gave them on the stand. When I asked him why I would make the changes, he said that if I didn’t, senior DOJ officials might not allow me to testify, which would result in more than 200 hours of wasted work, at taxpayers’ expense. I didn’t have the legal knowledge to evaluate the changes he was suggesting, but my on-the-spot assessment was that they would weaken my testimony. But four days before I was to testify in court, a member of the DOJ legal team asked me to amend those recommendations to state that many of them would not be appropriate if four conditions (that he read to me) existed. In my written testimony, I urged the court to make significant changes to the industry, such as appointing external monitors with the power to restructure the tobacco companies and remove executives from their roles.
My job was to suggest corrective actions should the defendants be found guilty of a conspiracy to commit multiple frauds to deceive the public about the risks associated with smoking. Department of Justice in its landmark case against the tobacco industry. I’d agreed to serve as an expert witness for the U.S. How is it that smart, upstanding managers miss-or turn a blind eye to-wrongdoing that ultimately imperils their businesses? One of my personal learning moments came in 2005 when I witnessed what I later realized was an ethical breach and, in spite of my knowledge, experience, training, and values, initially did nothing about it. The failure of leaders to notice ethical transgressions has been a key area of my research. I’ve spent the past decade studying why some people notice and act on organizational threats and opportunities while others do not. Given the string of ethical failures of corporations around the world in recent years-from BP to GM to JPMorgan Chase-it’s clear that leaders not only need to act more responsibly themselves but also must develop keen noticing skills in their employees and across their organizations. Bazerman also advises taking an outsider’s view to challenge the status quo. Bazerman, a professor at Harvard Business School, requires conscious effort to fight ambiguity, motivated blindness, conflicts of interest, the slippery slope, and efforts of others to mislead us.Īs a manager, you can develop your noticing skills by acknowledging responsibility when things go wrong rather than blaming external forces beyond your control. We fall prey to obstacles that obscure or drown out important signals that things are amiss.īecoming a “first-class noticer,” says Max H.
We’d like to think that no smart, upstanding manager would ever overlook or turn a blind eye to threats or wrongdoing that ultimately imperil his or her business.
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