Principled Leadership and Ethics C2

Peter Jennings’s Magnifying Glass ..................................

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Peter Jennings’s Magnifying Glass

NO WAY, I SAID TO MYSELF. We’re not going to let ABC News barge into the R. W. Beckett Corporation, shoot a lot of footage,

extract a few sound bites and say whatever they want to say about

us on national TV!

So went my reasoning as I hung up after the phone call from

ABC’s headquarters in New York. After all, hadn’t they told me

they were considering other companies they could feature? Why

us? It would just be an intrusion, and for what benefit? In fact,

the wrong kind of coverage could be damaging.

The news team had learned about the Beckett Corporation a

year earlier. I had spearheaded a national effort, taking issue with

the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) after

the agency had issued a set of guidelines many thought would

restrict religious freedom in the workplace—such as the right to

display a poster for a religious event or sing Christmas carols at

a company dinner. National media had run stories on the result-

ing controversy. Now ABC News was following up with our

company, wanting to learn more of how we were relating our faith

to our business practices.

I knew from earlier experiences with the media that we needed

to be cautious. I thought back to the time a regional magazine

did a satirical feature story on our company, lampooning some

of our most important values. On the title page I was piously

caricatured in a robe and a halo—not the most endearing way for

a CEO to be profiled to the greater Cleveland business commu-

nity! I didn’t want something like that to happen again, especially

in front of a national TV audience.

But ABC needed an immediate reply. As reluctant as I was to

agree, something that had happened earlier that day gave me

pause. In a planning meeting with our senior management team,

I had talked about how we could do a better job of making an

impact on the marketplace with our core values, such as integrity

and excellence. I had referred to a verse from the Bible that speaks

about our being salt and light in the world, “a city on a hill [that]

cannot be hidden.” As I recalled that discussion, I decided it

would be hypocritical not to think seriously about ABC’s request.

We weren’t going to scatter much salt or shed much light if we

yanked the welcome mat from Peter Jennings, America’s most

widely watched news anchor.

The day after our affirmative reply, ABC’s news team arrived

at the company—a camera crew from Chicago, a producer

from New York, and Peggy Wehmeyer, a correspondent from

Dallas.

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The Shoot

“We’ll need to be here for two days,” said Peggy. “Our crew

may do as much as fifteen hours of shooting for our three-min-

ute news segment. We’ll need to see the whole operation, talk

to your employees, speak with some of your customers and

suppliers, as well as people in the community. We want to talk

about your policies and practices. We need to interview you.”

I could feel the knot tightening in my stomach. “Tell me again

what you’re looking for,” I said, half hoping they would change

their minds.

“We understand that you believe your faith has a bearing on

the way you do business,” replied Peggy. “We’d like to see the

evidence of what you’re doing. How is it affecting people’s

lives? How has it made you different from businesses down

the street?”

There was no turning back. We were committed to walk out

this risky but exciting endeavor—exposing our company, our

beliefs and our reputation to ABC’s magnifying glass. In spite of

my apprehensions, I sensed we were doing the right thing.

“Peggy,” I said, “we’ll be very open with you—show you

whatever you’d like to see and let you speak to anyone you want.

But I want to ask a favor. As you know, a lot can happen between

now and the final version of this piece. The story can come out

a dozen different ways. All I ask for is an honest and fair portrayal

of who we are and what we believe.”

“John, I’ll do my best,” replied Peggy. “But the final deci-

sions will rest with Peter. He’s my boss and he really runs the

show.”

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Show Time

The night of the broadcast, my wife, Wendy, and I held our breath

as Peter Jennings eyed his twelve million invisible viewers:

“We begin another season of ‘The American Agenda,’ and we

start this September with our religion correspondent, Peggy

Wehmeyer. It seems to us that everywhere you turn in America

these days, millions of people are searching for greater meaning

in their lives. Tonight we’re going to concentrate on the growing

tendency of business leaders in America to have their personal

faith make an impact in their companies. In other words, they

are using the Bible as a guide to business.”

“Whew . . . that’s a good start,” I said to Wendy, as I eased back

slightly on our den sofa.

Peggy’s voice came in over the first clip:

Nancy Borer, an assembly line worker, is taking a six-month

maternity leave with partial pay. On top of that, her employer

made the extraordinary offer of three years off so she can raise

her children. Eric Hess assembled oil burners until his em-

ployer sent him to school and paid his $1500 tuition. Now he’s

a plant supervisor.

The man who gave these unusual opportunities to Nancy

and Eric is John Beckett, a successful Ohio manufacturer who

takes his work and his faith very seriously.

So far so good. But at the next clip, I winced. No, this wasn’t home

video. It was national TV, and I was looking at my own face on

that TV screen.

Instantly I flashed back to Peggy’s hour-long interview with me

in my office. As a cameraman had threaded the microphone wire

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down my shirt front, Peggy had chatted about Laura Nash’s new

book, Believers in Business, which she had skimmed on her flight

that morning. “The book is great!” she had said. “It identifies seven

areas of business conflict which Dr. Nash discovered in her inter-

views with sixty evangelical business people. These are conflicts

between the walk of faith and the practical world of business. An

example is the conflict between caring for employees in a downturn

versus tending to the bottom line.”

I saw it coming: I’ll bet she’s going to ask me questions that Dr.

Nash took two years to research, and she’ll expect sound-bite answers

from me.

And she did exactly that!

One of those questions had concerned my life’s purpose. As I

sat watching the broadcast, I heard the response to that question

that had made it into the final cut: “My main mission in life is to

know the will of God and to do it.”

I swallowed hard and said to Wendy, “You’ve just seen a

miracle. Of all the jumbled answers I gave in that high-pressured

interview, Peggy has extracted my main goal in life in one short

sentence.”

The rest of the news piece came across wonderfully. The

integrity of the company, the enthusiasm of our employees, and

the relevance of our core values to the everyday world of work

were presented in a clear and compelling manner.

Peggy concluded her commentary by observing that for our

company and increasing numbers of business people “lasting

rewards cannot be measured in dollars . . . satisfaction comes

from building a business without selling their souls.”

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The unusually positive report hit a responsive chord with

viewers, and they let ABC know it. Peggy called me that evening

to say the program had prompted the largest number of favorable

phone calls ever received for their news broadcast.

We had been put under Peter Jennings’s magnifying glass.

What he found, although very imperfect, was a manufacturing

company in northern Ohio where faith and work were not

mutually exclusive but coexisted remarkably well.

What he didn’t know as he closed his broadcast that evening

was that one very relieved business owner was just then leaning

over on the sofa, giving his wife a smooch and saying, “Honey, I

think I can sleep tonight.”

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