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No, it's not simple, and it's not easy. Doing the right thing when it involves immediate cost and disruption takes courage. I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Joh

No, it's not simple, and it's not easy. Doing the right thing when it involves immediate cost and disruption takes courage. I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". That's how big organizations work. But in 1982, J&J leadership could see beyond that, cut through the noise, push back on short-sighted recommendations, and do the right thing for the company in the long term. My question is why we rarely see "enlightened self-interest" like this today. From Boeing to Facebook, Wells Fargo to Uber, it's hard to think of companies that do the right thing in difficult situations, even when that would be in the company's own long-term best interest.

SkyMarshal 7y ago
> I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". This is not necessarily a given. In the Tylenol case an external saboteur was to blame, so little or no internal CYA was necessary. Easy and correct for everyone to just blame it on the saboteur and then do the right thing to fix the problem. In the Boeing case the culprit was internal, which likely resulted in a tangled web of CYA, leading to a diet of wrong and horrible information. Not excusing Boeing, they acted wrongly. But it’s clear how and why the odds of bad corporate behavior were much higher in Boeing’s case than in J&J’s case.
- panarky 7y ago
  Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. If J&J had behaved like Boeing, they would have blamed the saboteur, blamed law enforcement, and blamed retailers while gradually and secretly fixing the packaging problem before regulators could force them to do it. If Boeing had behaved like J&J, they would have taken immediate responsibility, voluntarily grounded the entire fleet even before all the causes were known, and put passenger safety first.
  - Litmus2336 7y ago
    >Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. Do you have a citation for that? I don't doubt it's possible but I've never heard it. As far as I know no major pain medications had tamper resistant seals at that point in history. I've read a lot about this (being from Chicago myself) and do not believe you're representing it correctly. J&J took responsibility insomuch as they pioneered tamper resistant packaging, but they very clearly blamed a saboteur. The initial allegation was that Tylenol was unsafe. J&J successfully re-spun it, correctly, as an external terrorist poisoning their medication. And, to their credit, they did a great job making future Tylenol very safe. But the bottom line is that these two incidents are very different. In J&J's case they were not at fault. In Boeing's case they were. Info taken from https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%20Johnson.htm https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%2...

SkyMarshal 7y ago

> I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". This is not necessarily a given. In the Tylenol case an external saboteur was to blame, so little or no internal CYA was necessary. Easy and correct for everyone to just blame it on the saboteur and then do the right thing to fix the problem. In the Boeing case the culprit was internal, which likely resulted in a tangled web of CYA, leading to a diet of wrong and horrible information. Not excusing Boeing, they acted wrongly. But it’s clear how and why the odds of bad corporate behavior were much higher in Boeing’s case than in J&J’s case.

panarky 7y ago
Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. If J&J had behaved like Boeing, they would have blamed the saboteur, blamed law enforcement, and blamed retailers while gradually and secretly fixing the packaging problem before regulators could force them to do it. If Boeing had behaved like J&J, they would have taken immediate responsibility, voluntarily grounded the entire fleet even before all the causes were known, and put passenger safety first.
- Litmus2336 7y ago
  >Many argued at the time that J&J was at fault because their packaging wasn't sealed or tamper-evident. Do you have a citation for that? I don't doubt it's possible but I've never heard it. As far as I know no major pain medications had tamper resistant seals at that point in history. I've read a lot about this (being from Chicago myself) and do not believe you're representing it correctly. J&J took responsibility insomuch as they pioneered tamper resistant packaging, but they very clearly blamed a saboteur. The initial allegation was that Tylenol was unsafe. J&J successfully re-spun it, correctly, as an external terrorist poisoning their medication. And, to their credit, they did a great job making future Tylenol very safe. But the bottom line is that these two incidents are very different. In J&J's case they were not at fault. In Boeing's case they were. Info taken from https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%20Johnson.htm https://www.ou.edu/deptcomm/dodjcc/groups/02C2/Johnson%20&%2...