Indiscreet E-Mail Claims a Fresh Casualty

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB111032151515173916,00.html>

The Wall Street Journal


 March 9, 2005

 BUSINESS
 By ALAN MURRAY



Indiscreet E-Mail
 Claims a Fresh Casualty
March 9, 2005; Page A2

Let's be clear. Harry Stonecipher wasn't fired simply because he had an
extramarital affair with an employee. Plenty of chief executives have done
that in the past, and plenty more will do it in the future. It's a bad
idea, it often violates company "fraternization" policies, but for the most
part, it isn't a firing offense -- yet.

No, the Boeing CEO was fired because, among other things, he had the bad
judgment to detail his actions and desires in a series of very explicit
e-mails to the woman in question.

To borrow from one of my favorite country-music songs: We know what you
were feeling, Harry. But what were you thinking?

Lest there are others like Mr. Stonecipher out there, a little history is
in order. In Washington, the last vestige of personal privacy disappeared
roughly a dozen years ago, when the Senate Ethics Committee subpoenaed the
8,200-page diary of Sen. Bob Packwood, who was being investigated for
various acts of sexual harassment. Even correspondence with yourself, we
learned, isn't protected.
TALKING BUSINESS Should Boeing have fired CEO Harry Stonecipher? Write to
Alan Murray at business at wsj.com1. If you want to share your thoughts, but
don't want your letter published, please make that clear.

Check here2 Monday to read selected letters and responses.

RELATED ARTICLES * Snooping E-Mail by Software Is Now a Workplace Norm3
 
* Desk Surfers Abound, But Some People Find Ways to Outwit Them4
 


As for e-mail -- well, unlike love, it is forever. You may think you've
destroyed every last vestige of it, but it lives on, in some forgotten
corner of some far-off server, waiting like Sleeping Beauty to be brought
back to life by a zealous prosecutor or an overcompensated trial lawyer.

A CEO might be forgiven for overlooking these lessons from Washington. But
has Mr. Stonecipher ever heard of Eliot Spitzer? In the past three years,
the New York attorney general has built an awe-inspiring career on
indiscreet e-mail, and now believes they are his e-ticket to the governor's
mansion. Among his most prized discoveries were Henry Blodget's e-mail
using the acronym POS (hint: the first two words are "piece" and "of") to
refer to a tech stock that he was touting to the public on behalf of
Merrill Lynch. Then there was Jack Grubman's e-mail boasting that Citigroup
Chairman Sandy Weill had helped his children get into an exclusive
Manhattan nursery school after he boosted his rating of AT&T stock.

Meanwhile, former U.S. Attorney James Comey, now deputy attorney general,
built his successful case against Frank Quattrone on an e-mail the
investment banker sent to his staff at Credit Suisse First Boston
"strongly" advising them to catch up on their file cleaning.

Even if Mr. Stonecipher somehow ignored all this, he could hardly have
missed the case of Michael Sears. Mr. Sears is the former Boeing chief
financial officer who offered a job to high-ranking U.S. Air Force
acquisition official Darleen Druyun, then wrote about the offer and his
"nonmeeting" with Ms. Druyun in an e-mail to top Boeing executives. Without
that e-mail, Mr. Stonecipher might never have become CEO.

The lesson of all this couldn't be clearer. Don't ever put anything in an
e-mail that you wouldn't want to read on the jumbotron at Times Square.

Boeing Chairman Lewis Platt has refused to characterize the contents of the
"correspondence" between Mr. Stonecipher and his lover, and he has refused
to say that it was e-mail correspondence. But others have confirmed the
existence of the e-mail and the board's fear it might become public --
bringing enormous embarrassment to both Mr. Stonecipher and the company.
(Companies generally are free to monitor e-mail on company equipment or
company e-mail accounts. See related article5.)

At most big companies, document training has long been a standard part of
good executive education. Corporate lawyers remind clients of the employee
at Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company, who wrote an e-mail referring to "fat
people who are a little afraid of some silly lung problem" -- a reference
to the fact that some diet-drug users had contracted a fatal pulmonary
disease. Wyeth has paid some $13 billion to settle its diet-drug problems.
They may also mention the Chevron Corp. employees who touted "25 Reasons
Why Beer Is Better Than Women" -- part of a case that led to a $2.2 million
sexual-harassment settlement. Then there's the series of e-mail by
Microsoft's Bill Gates, talking about how to undercut the competition,
which became part of antitrust efforts against the company.

If there's some good news in this sordid tale, it's that Boeing directors
proved they are no patsies, and moved quickly to deal with a problem that
could have hurt the company's reputation at a critical time. Corporate
governance is changing, and for the better.

But the demise of confidential communications, in government and in
business, is more troubling. E-mail is one of the great management tools of
recent decades, making it easier for top executives to manage a far-flung
work force, communicate with multiple stakeholders and even correspond, on
occasion, with journalists. Unfortunately, the Stonecipher case is one more
prod for executives to follow the example of a former CEO who never wrote
e-mail: WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers.


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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