March 2012 Archive

Last week, on March 14, 2012, the New York Times published an Op-Ed entitled “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs” by Greg Smith, a 33-year old mid-level executive that had been with the firm for close to 12 years. In his article, Mr. Smith denounces the environment at Goldman Sachs that has become “toxic and destructive,” and believes that the firm is focused solely on making money for the bank putting its interests ahead of its clients.

The article provoked consternation at Goldman Sachs. Shares fell 3.4% which represents a $2 billion paper loss for investors.

Lloyd C. Blankfein, the CEO and Gary Cohn, the president said in a letter to employees: “We are disappointed to read the assertions made by this individual that do not reflect our values, our culture and how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients.”

There are many lessons we can all learn from this story. Let me mention just two aspects that I find interesting from an ethical point of view.

1.      One can never rest on the laurels of a good reputation and an ethical culture. Mr. Smith says that the culture at Goldman Sachs until recently had been one of “teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility and always doing right by our clients.” The temptation will always be there for any company or individual to lose one’s focus and vision by being distracted by the legitimate need to make money. Many people believe that the culture changed at Goldman Sachs when the company went public which resulted in increased pressure from stockholders for management to generate profit.

2.       How can we determine when it is the right time to resign from the company that employs us once we have determined that we can no longer participate or be associated with activities that we find reproachful?

That is a particularly difficult question to answer.  Below are two questions we may ask ourselves before making that critical decision.

1.      Can I reasonably assume that I can be an agent of positive change, (when change is needed,) in the company that employs me?

2.      Am I making a positive contribution, in terms of human values, in the work I do?

If the answer to both questions is a categorical “no” then resigning is probably the right thing to do. There is a saying among ethics officers, that we should always have our letter of resignation ready in our back pocket.

Some have criticized the very public way Mr. Smith explained the reasons of his resignation and his motivation. I tend to disagree with those critics. As one of his high school friend, Lex Bayer said: “He has always been an advocate for the firm, but he wanted Goldman to do things the right way. In his mind, this was the only way that he could change the culture of the firm.” I have a feeling by the very tone of the Op-Ed that was really his goal. One can sense a nostalgia for what Goldman Sachs used to be and a plea for a return to its former core values. Toward the end of the article he writes: “I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors.” I share his hope.

As the American poet and filmmaker James Broughton once said:

“My major aim in writing is to set out flags and issue wake-up calls.”

The Kony 2012 documentary and public awareness campaign will probably be one of the most successful social media campaigns to date. The documentary released on March 7^th, 2012 has been viewed to date by more than 70 million people.

The video, for those of you who have not seen it yet, was created by Jason Russell, the founder of a U.S. not-for profit organization called Invisible Children. It exposes Joseph Kony, the Ugandan head of the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and advocates for his arrest in 2012.

The campaign has been praised by the White House and endorsed by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Rhianna and Taylor Swift.

Joseph Kony has for the past 25 years has kidnapped children in Uganda and forced them into his “army.”   He has turned Ugandan girls into sex slaves and Ugandan young boys (some 30,000 of them) into brutal killers. The International Criminal Court has named him a war criminal. Yet he is still a fugitive now operating, with a much smaller army (a few hundred) in the region, possible in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Invisible Children was founded by Jason Russell in 2006 to reveal to the world the suffering of Ugandan children.  Through his fundraising efforts Jason was able to create schools in Uganda. He also developed an early warning radio network to protect villages from attacks.

There have been some critics of the campaign which is accused of being too late, and of oversimplification of a 25-year old complex war and of exaggeration. Others have questioned the way Invisible Children spends the funds they raise.  Whether the criticism is justified or not changes nothing to the fact that Joseph Kony is a criminal that need to be stopped and brought to justice and that public awareness and pressure can only hasten his arrest.

Permile Ironside, a child protection advisor at UNICEF and an expert on the LRA says that ultimately the campaign is a good thing because Invisible Children “is distilling a very complicated 26-year war into something that’s consumerable and understandable by mass media.” Maria Burnett of Human Rights Watch told the Associated Press that the video has drawn attention to a problem they have been working on for years. She said: “We hope it will be helpful. What it leads to remains to be seen, but the goal to bring pressure on key leaders, to protect civilians and to apprehend LRA leadership is important, absolutely.”

The most encouraging aspect of the Kony 2012 campaign is that we, in very large numbers, can still be moved to reaction and action. We can still be awakened from the slumber of our comfort and most often from our indifference to social ills such as abuse, injustice wherever it happens.

I hope that Kony 2012 is the first of many such successful campaigns in the future.

As Anatole France, the French Novelist and Nobel laureate once said:

“I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.”