High Performance with High Integrity (Memo to the CEO)

by Ben W. Heineman Jr. (Author)

9 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-1422122952

ISBN-10: 1422122956

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Our free-market capitalist system is the world's greatest driver of prosperity, but it has a dark side. Under intense pressure to make the numbers, executives and employees face temptation to cut corners, fudge accounts, or worse. And in today's unforgiving environment, such lapses can be catastrophic. Fines and settlements have amounted to billions of dollars. Careers and companies have imploded.

In High Performance with High Integrity, Ben Heineman argues that there is only one way for companies to avoid such failures: CEOs must create a culture of integrity through exemplary leadership, transparency, incentives, and processes, not just rules and penalties. Heineman, GE's chief legal officer and a member of both Jack Welch's and Jeff Immelt's senior management teams for nearly twenty years, reveals crucial "performance with integrity" principles and practices that you can begin applying immediately, and shows how you can drive performance by integrating integrity systems and processes deep into company operations. Such principles and practices also create affirmative benefits: inside the corporation, in the marketplace and in society.

Concise and insightful, this book provides a much-needed corporate blueprint for doing well while doing good in the high-pressure global economy.

From our new Memo to the CEO series--solutions-focused advice from today's leading practitioners.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ben W. Heineman Jr., is Distinguished Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School's Program on the Legal Profession and a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. He was GE's Senior Vice President-General Counsel from 1987 to 2003 and Senior Vice President for Law and Public Affairs from 2004 until his retirement at the end of 2005.

Series: Memo to the CEO
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (May 6, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1422122956
ISBN-13: 978-1422122952
Product Dimensions: 4.8 x 0.8 x 7.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 9 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #313,038 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #207 in Books > Textbooks > Business & Finance > Business Ethics
- #622 in Books > Business & Money > Business Culture > Ethics
- #3778 in Books > Business & Money > Management & Leadership > Leadership

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It's both winning and how you play the game

July 9, 2008

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Ben Heineman Jr., the former longtime general counsel of General Electric, summarizes his point nicely in this brief and thoughtful book: It's both whether you win or lose AND how you play the game that matter.

In this handbook for the CEO's of the twenty-first century, Heineman rejects both the facile notion that corporations exist only to maximize profit and the similarly superficial idea that corporations should worry less about the bottom line and more about their impact on society. To Heineman, high performance and high integrity are equally important and are indeed inseparable.

What sets this book apart from other business how-to books is the specificity of Heineman's writing and of his examples. In his twenty years at GE, employees who demonstrated lack of integrity were routinely disciplined and fired, and Heineman explains why and for what. GE didn't just talk the talk. Values and integrity mattered, and the company was the better for it.

This would have been a five-star review were it not for the fact that Heineman repeats himself too much. This short book would have been better had it been even briefer.

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Michael P. Maslanka

Valuable Tips

May 24, 2008

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I would have given this book a 5 but a lot of it is full of corporate speak which may be the language of choice in mega corporations like GE but does litle to help the rest of us. When the book drills down to the mechanics of infusing performance with integrity it excels. Some of the excellent ideas: have employees report the more palatable(to them) "concerns", not illegal conduct and you will get more information on what may be going wrong in the corporation; ID employees at risk of corruption of ethics violations(such as those in overseas assignments or in purchasing etc) and focus customized training on them; explain to employees not only what to do but give them "red flag" examples of dangerous situations so they know if they are cruising off course; use case studies because a story teaches more than a lecture. One other insight: when a company confronts a crisis, one thing needs to be said asap to the corporate crisis team: we will be judged by what we do from this moment on.

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Hank Boerner

A Great Little Book - With High Impact

December 17, 2010

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Tuck this book in your briefcase for travel and home reading. Ben Heineman Jr brings years of experience and perspective to this book which (in my view) is an outstanding business book for those starting out in their career or we "grizzled veterans" of the business wars. Consider this important view from the author: "...Compensation and promotion decisions are always going to be matters of judgment. But personalized goals and objectives plus explicit integrity comp guidelines -- which affect a component of pay and are factors in promotions -- provide essential, real world incentives that can have a significant role in creating the high-performance-with-high-performance culture. They can turn a corporate cliche - (that is, integrity is considered in compensation decisons) -- into a core corporate principle."

Integrity is essential to high-performance organizations. This book may have helped avoid some of the high-impact crashes we've seen in recent business history. As a crisis and issues manager, I found this book very helpful. It explains quite clearly what a high-performance organization is -- and how to get there.

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Megan Sargent

This is a pretty good business book and also a pretty easy read

July 12, 2018

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This is a pretty good business book and also a pretty easy read. Sometimes I prefer these books to be quick reads because I tend to put them down and not pick them back up!

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Yan Xiner

Five Stars

June 18, 2015

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good

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Mo Kabiri

Good

May 14, 2016

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Good overview of types of issue a ceo can face. Good overview of types of issue a ceo can face. Good overview of types of issue a ceo can face.

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What is the proper role of business?

May 14, 2008

This is one of the titles in the "Memo to the CEO" series published by Harvard Business Press, each less than 200 pages in length and superbly produced. In fact, none is a "memo" nor were any of them written solely for a CEO. In this volume, Ben W. Heineman Jr. affirms the need to combine high performance with high integrity for a number of reasons. For example, that will "protect the corporation and its stakeholders from catastrophic train wrecks." However, Heineman adds, such a combination "isn't just about avoiding evils. It also has strong, affirmative benefits for the company: internally, in the marketplace, and in the broader society. Ultimately, it creates the fundamental trust of shareholders, creditors, employees, recruits, customers, suppliers, regulators, communities, and the pubic at large." I am curious to know why Heineman did not also include competitors, especially now when so many former competitors are forging strategic alliance. Surely none would be consummated without trust as well as respect.

He urges C-level executives (including but not limited to CEOs) to "drive a robust performance-with-integrity culture deep into the company: through powerful leadership that voices the vision and the values and through effective management that builds the integrity principles and practices [at all levels and in all areas of] business operations." It is no coincidence that on Fortune's annual lists, year after year, many of those ranked among the most valuable are also ranked among the most highly admired.

Some of the most valuable material in this book is provided in Part II as Heineman examines a series of core principles and practices that must serve as the foundation of the culture he envisions. CEOs must be wholly committed to demonstrating as well as advocating integrity in all systems and practices; manage performance with integrity as a business process; adopt global ethical standards; take full advantage of "early-warning systems" to stay ahead of global trends and expectations; view the CFO (or equivalent) and general counsel as full partners as well as fiduciary guardians; encourage and nourish employee awareness, knowledge, and commitment; give them a "voice" for their grievances, concerns, aspirations, observations, and suggestions; and recognize and appropriately reward "performance with integrity." A leader's performance should be measured in terms of the extent to which she or he fulfills these expectations.

In the final chapter, Heineman shares his deep belief that "the governance debate about corporate performance with integrity must shift [from an emphasis on members of a governing board] and focus primarily (although not exclusively) on the `third dimension' of governance: the role of the CEO and top leadership in governing the company and driving the principles and practices necessary to fuse the twin goals of capitalism. Neither the shareholders (the first dimension) nor the board (the second dimension) can do it." In essence, Heineman challenges CEOs and other senior executives to provide leadership and management that combine high performance with high integrity so that the same can said of the organization they are privileged to serve.

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