by

Ben Horowitz, CEO of Opsware, offers an interesting essay on why so many bigshot CEOs seem to be in legal trouble. Why, he asks, would a rich and powerful executive risk going to prison? The easy answer, greed, is too simple because many of these guys were already tremendously rich and stood to gain little or nothing personally from the illegal acts. There must have been something else driving them.

One answer is pride. Exhibit A is WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers (now doing 25 years for fraud and conspiracy).

As WorldCom grew at a rapid pace, Bernie set expectations high. This led investors to give him advance credit, thus boosting his stock, which was the currency he used to build his company. When Bernie saw that WorldCom wasn’t going to meet those high expectations, and that thousands of shareholders to whom he had promised great performance would lose their money, and thousands of employees who he had hired would lose their jobs, he was willing to do anything to make things right. Even if it meant doing things that were wrong. Like a killer committing his second murder, the decisions to commit fraud must have come easier as Bernie gained experience. In addition, the stakes continued to get higher. He continued to commit fraud, because if he hadn’t, there was a 100% chance that he would let everyone down who mattered to him and he would no longer be the person that he had worked so hard to become. He wouldn’t be Bernie Ebbers #11 in Time Magazine’s Cyber Elite; he’d be Bernie Ebbers, former milkman, bouncer, and disgraced CEO.

If this is right, Ebbers defined himself by the success of WorldCom. If the company failed, then his work – his contribution to society – would evaporate.

Even beyond pride, some executives see themselves as great benefactors, bringing happiness to employees, wealth to investors, and great products at low low prices to customers. If WorldCom’s growth was good for humanity, then it was worth taking risks to defend. And when the time came to take risks, the Great Man stepped forward.

While working on the Microsoft antitrust trial, I read Titan, Ron Chernow’s biography of John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller saw most things clearly, but he had one blind spot: he honestly saw little distinction between the growth of Standard Oil and the advancement of humanity. Cheap, high quality oil would transform American life, and Standard Oil would be the agent of that transformation. America needed Standard Oil. Rockefeller had an uncommonly strong drive to do good in the world, a drive that was channeled into an intense need to win every business skirmish. His opponents, who were only trying to make money or run a business, were no match for a guy trying to save the world.

One gets the sense that WorldCom grew as big as it did, and the house of cards stood up for as long as it did, because Bernie Ebbers had a Rockefeller-like drive to make it so. He would do almost anything to keep WorldCom afloat, which is what made him dangerous to his employees and investors.

He was a danger, too, to his competitors.

Once WorldCom started committing accounting fraud to prop up their numbers, all of the other telecoms had to either (a) commit accounting fraud to keep pace with WorldCom’s blistering growth rate, or (b) be viewed as losers with severe consequences. How severe were the consequences for not breaking the law? Well, like a baseball player who refuses to take steroids, CEO Mike Armstrong of AT&T did not keep pace with the cheaters. As a reward for his honesty and integrity, he was widely ridiculed in the press prior to being fired and AT&T, perhaps America’s most valuable brand, was acquired for cheap. Now you see why Barry Bonds needed something to help him keep pace with Mark McGwire.

The steroids analogy helps explain why corporate criminals must face serious punishment. It’s not enough for the average performer to know that the leaders probably aren’t cheating. Given the choice between believing that the other guy is cheating, and believing that he is honestly outperforming you, most people will go for the cheating theory. People need to know that nobody in their right mind would cheat – a lesson that Bernie Ebbers will be teaching us for the next twenty years or so.