Leadership Failure at Tyco
Lessons of Tyco: Just Say No
OCTOBER 6, 2008
FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL TO REAGAN, TYCO DISCUSSES ETHICS AT VLS
[pic]
William B. Lytton speaking in the Chase Center at Vermont Law School.
William B. Lytton remembers the aura of working in the White House in 1987, amidst the power and the personalities that surrounded President Ronald Reagan. Lytton had taken leave from his Philadelphia law firm for six months to act as Deputy Special Counselor for Reagan during the Iran-Contra investigation.
“I would mentally pause and think of how fortunate I was to be there,” Lytton recalled. But as if to check that emotion, he would summon the lessons of John Dean, the young White House lawyer who found himself caught up in the Watergate scandal after allowing himself to become “dazzled,” as Lytton put it, by the blinding light of power.
Speaking to several hundred Vermont Law school students, Lytton recommended they readBlind Ambition, Dean’s memoir about the Watergate years. The book, he said, would serve as a vehicle for young lawyers to question themselves on how they might behave in such a situation.
Lytton’s Oct. 6 lecture, entitled “Just Say No,” laid out the ethical challenges faced by lawyers in a culture where it is often difficult to speak up to power, whether it be in a politically charged atmosphere such as the White House or in a corporate culture such as Tyco International.
Lytton stepped in as general counsel at Tyco in 2002 as the company was enmeshed in a multi-billion accounting fraud scandal. Lytton’s role was to resolve the legal issues and clean up the culture, no small feat in a $38 billion company that employed 260,000 people worldwide. His friend was among those under indictment.
In the Tyco failure, Lytton said, “They failed as leaders. They forgot that leadership was about serving others and not themselves.” But it was also a failure of those who follow the leaders, the corporate lawyers who failed in their duty to keep the leaders in
OCTOBER 6, 2008
FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL TO REAGAN, TYCO DISCUSSES ETHICS AT VLS
[pic]
William B. Lytton speaking in the Chase Center at Vermont Law School.
William B. Lytton remembers the aura of working in the White House in 1987, amidst the power and the personalities that surrounded President Ronald Reagan. Lytton had taken leave from his Philadelphia law firm for six months to act as Deputy Special Counselor for Reagan during the Iran-Contra investigation.
“I would mentally pause and think of how fortunate I was to be there,” Lytton recalled. But as if to check that emotion, he would summon the lessons of John Dean, the young White House lawyer who found himself caught up in the Watergate scandal after allowing himself to become “dazzled,” as Lytton put it, by the blinding light of power.
Speaking to several hundred Vermont Law school students, Lytton recommended they readBlind Ambition, Dean’s memoir about the Watergate years. The book, he said, would serve as a vehicle for young lawyers to question themselves on how they might behave in such a situation.
Lytton’s Oct. 6 lecture, entitled “Just Say No,” laid out the ethical challenges faced by lawyers in a culture where it is often difficult to speak up to power, whether it be in a politically charged atmosphere such as the White House or in a corporate culture such as Tyco International.
Lytton stepped in as general counsel at Tyco in 2002 as the company was enmeshed in a multi-billion accounting fraud scandal. Lytton’s role was to resolve the legal issues and clean up the culture, no small feat in a $38 billion company that employed 260,000 people worldwide. His friend was among those under indictment.
In the Tyco failure, Lytton said, “They failed as leaders. They forgot that leadership was about serving others and not themselves.” But it was also a failure of those who follow the leaders, the corporate lawyers who failed in their duty to keep the leaders in
References: Bateman, T., & Snell, S. (2007). “Management: The New Competitive Landscape”. 7th Edition. Lowenstein R. ()2004). “The company they kept” Retrieved on August 28th , 2009 from : http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/magazine/01RIGAS.html?8br “Tyco Executives highlights ethics problems” (2003, October 31) Tyco 's Edward Breen: When Leadership Means Firing Top Management and the Entire Board Published: November 30, 2005 in Knowledge@Wharton