December, 2005, Volume 10, Number 3

CONTENTS

Coming Back from Adversity:  Conference on Leading with Resilience

Value from Value:  How Corporate Values Help Generate Financial Value

Master Story Telling:  The Films of Steven Spielberg
 

comING back from adversity:  Conference on Leading with Resilience  

Wharton’s annual Leadership Conference on June 13, 2006 is focused on "Leading with Resilience:  Coming back from Challenge and Adversity."   

The seven previously confirmed speakers include Good to Great author Jim Collins and IMAX film-maker David Breashears, and now also confirmed is Roberto Canessa, a pediatric cardiologist based in Montevideo, Uruguay.  In October, 1972 he was with his rugby team aboard an ill-fated flight from Argentina to Chile that crashed in the Andes.  He and a companion reached civilization more than two months later, and their survival and rescue were later featured in a well known book and film entitled Alive. 

Information on the conference is available here, and online registration for the conference is available here.  
 

Value from Value:  How Corporate Values Help Generate Financial Value 

By Andrea Useem 

Publicly committing to ethical values such as “integrity” is now standard practice in the business world, according a report from the Aspen Institute and Booz Allen Hamilton.  But only a few financially elite companies say their ethical standards lead to corporate growth – a link some experts say is essential for translating values into practice.    

Corporate scandals of the past several years have generated “profound skepticism” among the

 general public about business ethics and conduct, said the February, 2005, report, Deriving Value from Corporate Values.   

As a result, corporate value statements are “part of a company’s license to operate in an increasingly complex regulatory and legal environment,” said the report, jointly authored by the Washington D.C.-based Aspen Institute and Booz Allen Hamilton, a global consulting firm. 

Eighty-nine percent of the 365 executives surveyed worldwide said their companies had a written corporate values statement.  The values most commonly cited – in 90 percent of the statements – were “ethical behavior” or “integrity.”  Values often closely associated with revenue growth, however, such as “initiative” or “innovativeness,” were included much less frequently, said the report.  

Performance leaders – public companies that out-perform their competitors by at least ten percent – were significantly more likely to say values lead to growth, and that “social and environmental responsibility have a positive effect on financial performance,” according to the report. 

Establishing a “return on values” is a key to transforming ethical statements into corporate behavior, according to Nancy McGaw, a co-author of the report.   

“Values as ends in themselves don’t seem to move people to action,” said McGaw, deputy director of the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program.   

Potential employees, such as MBA graduates, are increasingly interested in a company’s ethical outlook, reported McGaw, as are a growing number of agencies that monitor corporate social and environmental behavior.    

The report called for more companies to measure the financial impact of their ethical standards.  While conventional wisdom holds, for example, that demonstrated corporate values lead to customer loyalty, few companies have measured the link, the report found.   

“A commitment to corporate values may be in vogue, but the public will remain suspicious until corporations both understand – and can demonstrate – they are committed to using values to create value,” the report concluded.  

Note:  Andrea Useem writes about religion for the Washington (D.C.) Examiner, and the Religion News Service.  Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, Dallas Morning News and other newspapers.  Based in Reston, Va., she can be reached at auseem@gmail.com.  The report, Deriving Value from Corporate Value, is available here.
 

Master Story Telling:  The Films of Steven Spielberg 

By John Baldoni 

A child flying on a bike in front of a brilliant full moon.  A nightmare-sized shark closing in on a drunken young woman.  Elderly Jews, stripped naked, running in circles before their Nazi captors. 

These iconic images are the creations of Stephen Spielberg, the world’s most financially successful motion picture director.  Beginning with his 1970s blockbuster, Jaws, and stretching through his 2005 War of the Worlds, Spielberg has brought narratives – be they magical, terrifying or morally disturbing – to life on the big screen in a manner so entertaining and compelling that many are now firmly implanted in the American cultural imagination.  Spielberg’s genius?  Satisfying, in the most spectacular way possible, the basic human desire to hear a good story.   

A Moral Compass 

Spielberg has said he draws inspiration from Normal Rockwell, the 20th century painter.  “Aside from being an astonishing good storyteller, Rockwell spoke volumes about a certain kind of American morality,” the 59-year-old director once said.  Journalist Stephen Dubner noted that Spielberg could have been describing himself in that statement.  

The father of seven claims never to have made an “immoral film.”  At the same time, Spielberg has created movies that are enormous crowd pleasers.  His ability to combine a moral sense with entertainment values has resulted not only in great commercial success but also immense cultural influence, as two of his more serious films – Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan – demonstrated.   

Schindler’s List told the story of a charming, conniving but ultimately righteous man who saved more than a thousand Jews from the Nazi death machine. In spite of its graphic images of Nazi oppression, the film drew enormous crowds around the world and earned seven Academy awards.  Because of its “cultural significance,” the Library of Congress now preserves the film in its National Film Registry.    

World War II’s post D-Day battlefields were the epic setting for Saving Private Ryan.  Rather than telling an obvious story of good triumphing over evil, Spielberg created a gritty human drama about men who fought less for the abstract ideal of God and country and more for the love of comrades with whom they served – a theme that resonates strongly today.    

Today’s Issues 

Though his recent movies have ranged from the violently thrilling (2002’s Minority Report) to the warmly entertaining (2004’s The Terminal), Spielberg has a made a new film touching on perhaps the most dramatic and difficult issue of our time: terrorism.  Munich, slated for general release in 2006, concerns the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the1972 Munich Olympics and tells the story of the Israeli intelligence agents who hunted down and killed the perpetrators.  

 “Viewing Israel’s response to Munich through the eyes of the men who were sent to avenge that tragedy adds a human dimension to a horrific episode,” Spielberg told the New York Times.  “By experiencing how the implacable resolve of these men to succeed in their mission slowly gave way to troubling doubts about what they were doing, I think we can learn something important about the tragic standoff we find ourselves in today.” 

Leadership Lessons 

§         Think big.  Spielberg lives to put stories on the big screen. Whether crafting an historical epic or a sci‑fi fantasy, he adds a larger‑than life dimension to make his movies both accessible and thought-provoking.   

§         Control your destiny. Spielberg has parlayed his success into production agreements that give him the control to turn his vision, as well as the dreams of many fellow directors, into digital and celluloid reality. 

§         Work in a team. Making a movie is a cooperative enterprise. Spielberg has surrounded himself with men and women who share his commitments so that he can pursue his passion of making stories come alive. 

§         Encourage creativity. Actors say they like to work with Spielberg because he gives them the freedom to create multi-faceted characters.

Note:  John Baldoni is a leadership and communications consultant and speaker, and author of the forthcoming book, How Great Leaders Get Great Results (McGraw-Hill, 2006) from which this article has been adapted.  He can be reached at john@johnbaldoni.com or through his website.

Copyright 1996-2005, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management
 University of Pennsylvania.