When I first interviewed Peter Dolan, CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb, he had just survived the DOJ investigation into Bristol-Myers’ “stuffing” of their drug sales pipeline.  Some of the sales leadership of the company realized they were not going to achieve the company’s revenue targets and thus, pushed drugs through to the middle man without end market/consumer demand.   No matter how you look at it, that’s still an end game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” unless somehow you believe that the following year’s demand could make up for the earlier pipeline push.  Even then, it is at a minimum unethical and more likely illegal given SEC and accounting guidelines.  Dolan was Chairman and CEO at the time of the ruling.  He was stripped of the Chairman title but remained CEO.  Not surprisingly, his spokesperson said he would take my interview as long as we stayed off that topic.

As with anyone, there are strengths and weaknesses.  Dolan’s strength was his focus on process and team alignment.  He also on the personal side has been an incredibly generous supporter of cancer charities.  But, an enlightened leader knows his or her weaknesses and in Peter Dolan’s case, that emotional intelligence seems to be lacking.  I thought from my interview with him for Sudden Impact that he had learned from his DOJ setback.  He had instituted some wonderful annual sessions that he personally facilitated deep into the layers of his company to talk about strategy.  He was very hands on and focused on making sure the company was aligned on strategy – the future direction of the company.  The question is did it include any discussion on the ethics, values or integrity.  And, it would seem that he failed to “reach for the stars” as my book points out.  A leader is only as strong as his or her team.  A leader is not omniscient, except through the eyes, ears and intellect of the team.  In spite of all these brilliant strategy sessions, it would appear that Dolan did not instill in his team a need for ethics and integrity, the ability to call out a misdeed and speak the truth.

Interestingly, when I asked Dolan to give me his three pieces of advice to a new leader,  Several seemed to foreshadow his demise.  His number one piece of advice for the early days on a new job was focus 100% internally.  That  myopic view left Dolan with little insight on what his customers wanted, where the market was going and what his stakeholders were expecting.

The other piece of suspect advice was “get the right people in place as soon as possible.  Not only must they be competent, they must be committed 110% to your agenda”.  Dolan sounds like he wanted a stable of “yes men.”  My own personal leadership experience has been that I’ve been at my best as a leader when I’ve chosen people who were not entirely committed to my agenda and in fact, the team helped form the collective agenda.  They were confident enough to challenge the status quo – including my own- and find unique, innovative, richer, more imaginative solutions that enhanced the integrity and reputation of the organization.  At the same time, this approach made me take a deeper dive at what we were trying to achieve and my own beliefs about what we were doing.   As Jim Collins and Jerry Porras assert in their groundbreaking book Built to Last, ”Companies that mimic the evolution of well-adapted species – those that try a lot of stuff and keep what works- will have better odds of survival in an unpredictable, changing environment; others will likely become extinction.”  Dolan’s insistence on commitment to his agenda – 110%-   led to his own extinction.

While the DOJ, on the most recent Dolan conundrum did block the sale of the generic Plavix and thus side with Dolan, the damage was done.  Bristol-Myers’ leadership came down on the wrong side of ethics and integrity.  As demonstrated by its stock price and earnings forecasts, the organization’s performance was directly impacted.  Bristol-Myers undoubtedly would have better served by a leader who aligned clear values and ethical execution with dynamic, collective strategy.

Enlightenment arrives when leaders realize no one human being  – even the CEO-  has all the answers  and are  confident the stars on their teams can continuously play the role of challenging the status quo and developing imaginative approaches to an existing “agenda” that meets and exceeds performance expectations while maintaining integrity.