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From “A Year of Leadership” – Career Opportunities Podcast with Douglas E. Welch)
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Transcript:
One of my big issues with corporations — large corporations — is that, inherent in their organization is the ability for people to say, “Well, I’m not the one screwing over that person. I’m just a cog in the machine over here. That’s someone else. That’s the executives. That’s the ‘company’ screwing someone over” — like the company is an entity in itself. Now, frankly, legally, yes, corporations are entity, almost a human being and just like a human being, corporations can be — let us say — dysfunctional. It is up to the people in that corporation to sense that dysfunction and work against it. If you don’t — if you don’t stand up and take the leadership and act against that dysfunction — you are a huge part of the problem. Don’t believe me? Well, ask all the people at Enron. Ask all the people who have been involved in some great scandal or some great failure. Guess what? In their heart of hearts, I think all of them know that they were part of the problem. They, at some point, had the ability to stand up and say, “No! This is not right. This is not the way to do this,” and they didn’t do it. They didn’t exercise the leadership necessary to bring this to an end. Some people, in the case of Enron, did try. They ended up in a lot of trouble. It was very risky for them. It was very scary for them, but you know what? They were right. No matter what happened at Enron, it wasn’t their fault. They were right. They were calling out the issues that needed to be addressed. They were just being ignored.
Douglas is writer and host of Career Opportunities, a long running column and podcast dedicated to “Helping to Build the Career You Deserve!” Career Opportunities began in 1997 as a magazine column and expanded to a podcast in 2004. Douglas is also a New Media Consultant, Technology and Career Consultant with over 30 years experience in high-tech. You can find all of Douglas’ work at DouglasEWelch.com.
