Davia Temin, Directors & Boards, February 11, 2019
Lessons for boards on how unexpected boldness sometimes wins the day
“If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?”
With those words, written in a Medium blog post last week announcing that he would not give in to extortion by American Media LLC (AMI) and its publication the National Enquirer, Jeff Bezos set off a firestorm, and charted a course that few CEOs or boards have equaled.
What the founder of Amazon, and the richest man in the world, did was show us how the head of a public company could put it all on the line to stand up to bullies. “Courage comes first,” he essentially told us, no matter what the personal or professional cost.
And apparently his prestigious board agreed. […read more]