Ben W. Heineman Jr. – Why I’m in your Tribe!
Stanford Law School – Ben Heineman Jr. < Download Video – Quicktime
Who is Ben W. Heineman Jr. and why am I listening to what he’s saying? Ben’s message resonates with me. He is speaking out on values that are at the core of my professional beliefs: business has the responsibility to balance their high performance with high integrity. This is the title to his recent book: High Performance with High Integrity (Harvard Business Press, 2008).
We all have professional beliefs that guide our behaviors. As a Certified Safety Professional (CSP) I have devoted my career to the protection of people, property, and the environment. My day-to- day world is to think in frameworks that assess business risk. I actively look for the people who manage and govern business operations with one purpose: to have a courageous conversation with them on the risks they are taking in pursuit of performance.
So this is where my purpose, passion and professionalism connect with the wisdom of Ben Heineman. He just makes sense to me in how he approaches the conversation. Yes, it helps that his distinguished career included being a Senior Vice President and General Counsel for General Electric From 1987-2003 and SVP for Law and Public Affairs until his retirement at the end of 2005.
So by now you can see that I’m in Ben’s tribe. The reason I so love what Ben is saying is that it speaks to my belief that the more global our business communities the greater the need for conversations about the impact on people and the world they live in. Leaders are privileged to be given the trust to be in charge but with it comes great responsibility.
I admire that Ben is out speaking to business leaders. He supports me everyday as I step up to listen and speak with executives and board directors about risks. I am joined by other guardian professions: accounting, attorneys, safety, security, risk, human resources and many more. We all want leaders to make informed decisions that are high performing for your company and your career. We understand the challenge of performance with integrity. Most of us work in professions that give us a code of ethics for professional practice. We’re working to share our ethical insight with you to help you understand the risks you are undertaking.
I urge you to take a moment to listen to the message and thank the messenger for bring this to you. We are speaking up because we understand risk and care about your challenges of being responsible leaders.
Here are some ideas Ben has on building a safety culture. Let me lend my support and voice to his message:
But responsible companies will have a strong commitment to obeying the spirit and letter of existing safety law. They will also establish their own internal rules, beyond what the laws may require, if an additional margin of safety is required to protect employees, consumers, and communities. In my view, such voluntary action avoids catastrophic impact on the company and has benefits for a corporation inside the company, in the marketplace, and in global society.
In light of these legal and ethical rules, they will adopt the following safety culture credo:
–Our company is built on the foundation of high performance with high integrity, and safety is an essential element of integrity.
–Each senior leader will be held personally accountable.
–There will be no cutting of corners for commercial reasons. Integrity and safety must never be compromised to make the numbers.
–One strike and you’re out. You can miss the numbers and survive. You cannot miss on integrity and safety.
This credo can create culture through investigation and discipline of company leaders. But, more importantly, an affirmative culture, where employees up and down the line want to do what is right, must be created by leadership aspiration and by leadership action in embedding the key safety principles and practices — risk assessment, risk abatement, continuous improvement, safety auditing, early warning systems, proper education, and training — deep into business operations.
Here are his entire remarks:
Ben Heineman was the Senior Vice President and General Counsel for General Electric From 1987-2003. He then served as Senior Vice President for Law and Public Affairs until his retirement at the end of 2005. Mr. Heineman is currently Senior Counsel at WilmerHale, a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Program on the Legal Profession at the Harvard Law School, and a Senior Advisor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He researches and writes on a variety of topics, including globalization, anticorruption, corporate citizenship, dispute resolution, and the legal profession. Mr. Heineman also serves on the boards of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Transparency International-USA and the Committee for Economic Development. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Science, Technology and Law, and a recipient of the American Lawyer Lifetime Achievement Award.
Posted: April 20th, 2010
at 1:21pm by Fay Feeney
Tagged with • best practices, • corporate board, • corporate governance, • Enterprise Risk Management, • envision strategic group, • ERM, • fay feeney, • risk, • risk assessment, • risk aversion, • risk experts, • risk management, • risk management plan, • risk taking, • risk tolerance, corporate board, corporate governance, CSR, Enterprise Risk Management, ERM, SEC, social justice, values
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