Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Told You So . . .

I started my blogging career in March this year, writing a post called The New Robber Barons. In it I used Pfizer CEO Hank McKinnell and his oversized pay and pension as an example of capitalism out of control. And I also pointed out that Pfizer stock had taken the opposite direction of his pay. Six months later the Pfizer board of directors agreed with me and Dr. McKinnell lost his CEO job.

In May I wrote Pfizer Celebrity Lawyer Runs To Court to Shut Me Up. In this post I pointed out that "I suspected there might be a conflict of interest between Mr. Kindler . . . and Ms. Katen." And boy was there a conflict of interest. Three months later Mr. Kindler became CEO and Katen decided to "pursue other opportunities."

In July I wrote about the UnitedHealth CEO in Cheating Executives, who had amassed over a billion dollar worth of stock option, by cheating the system and backdating his options. This week the board of directors for UnitedHealth had enough and fired him. AP commented today, "William McGuire ran UnitedHealth Group Inc. like his personal fiefdom, allowing the former CEO and his cronies to gain tremendous wealth with few internal controls to stop them. "

In August I wrote a post called Bye, bye Peter Dolan, hello Karen Katen??? Two months later Mr. Dolan was gone, too. But I was wrong about Karen Katen showing up at BMS.

All in all, though, a pretty good track record.

So what is my prediction about me and Pfizer and celebrity lawyer Ron Green?

Clearly I will win. But so far they have behaved like mad people and it is impossible to predict how people with no common sense will behave; what they do is anyone's guess. Meanwhile, if any future opponent to Ronald Green does a search on his name plus the word lawyer, they immediately find the story on how Mr. Green tried to mislead the Court. Not a good outcome for a famous lawyer.

Pfizer has also lost enormous public relations goodwill by treating me like a pariah and then firing me. There have been innumerable articles about this fight. For any reasonable employer, it would clearly have been preferable to find a single position for one employee, among 100,000 other employees, but Pfizer's hubris stopped them from doing that.

We asked for another job for me, in writing early in 2004, giving lots of examples of positions on a director level that would be acceptable, but they ignored this letter and later repeated that there was no position available on a VP level, conveniently "forgetting" our suggestions for jobs on a director level. That's how badly they didn't want to hire me.

And now they are backed into a corner with the world watching and a book out there telling the story.

To make matters even worse they asked for sanctions against me for writing the book, which sent sales sky rocketing, and continued sending letters ahead of all my public appearances, until I pointed out that this was like pouring gasoline on fire. In my post I have three more radio interviews coming up this week. I wrote "The more attention they give to me, the more credibility they give me. Best would be for them to be totally silent and stop acting like bullies."

And that, finally, made Pfizer stop sending their self-defeating letters.

This gives you an idea of what happens when lawyers run a corporation, without input from reasonable business people. And considering that a lawyer is now in charge of the entire corporation, my prediction is that this won't be the last time Pfizer stumbles.

And of course, in their panic they now resort to go on the record lying to a federal judge, which I wrote about in Ronald Green, Famous Lawyer for Pfizer Caught Lying in Court.

The point of all this is that no matter how things end, Pfizer has proven to the world that they are complete amateurs when it comes to adaptation and dealing with challenges. Such a corporation is not likely to give shareholders a good return on their investment.

You heard it here first.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You obviously know how to fish.

Teach the world to fish and you won't be so busy.

(and you'll be lauded as the best fisherman in the world).

Anonymous said...

Most of the legal world agrees with you, doctor. Pfizer can win or lose in court, but in the end, they've lost the battle no matter what. And you are right about lawyers; we have a limited view of the world. Smart lawyers understand this and get advice from public relations specialists. It doesn't appear as if that is the Pfizer way.

Benedict 16th said...

Dear Pete
(yes I have ordered that book, it should reach the antipodes sometime this century).
Well Macdonalds has recovered* from 1) the Greenpeace infiltration in London and 2) the SuperSize Me saga.
But Pete, while you are having a good run with things want to comment on Bush's war in Iraq?**
Benedict



* (too lazy to find reference showing the McEmpire increased profits in last 6 months)
** Iraq (n) - Defn: Arabic for Vietnam

Anonymous said...

What to do about the fact that you take one big boy (or girl) down and 3 more pop up hoping to replace them?

The change that will make a difference will have to be more fundamental I guess.

Argon said...

You obviously know how to fish.

Teach the world to fish and you won't be so busy.

(and you'll be lauded as the best fisherman in the world)


Well let's not mention the part about being a master at baiting hooks now shall we *wink* But the idea about getting people to stand up to injustice in the workplace as long as the SNAFU principle still rules, you can't tell the boss what he doesn't want to hear when your job is on the line and you can't afford to lose it. Telling the management only what it wants to hear is how FUBAR gets to be SOP

They don't learn and adapt since none of the important info is reaching them, they pass that on to the shareholders to make sure they're kept in the dark also until things rot so far that the corp implodes the way Eron did.

That is a good point about lawyers they breed faster than cockroaches. I doubt they'll run out of any people to hire at for the firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe any time soon since corps like Pfizer love to use them for Stooges to throw some slapstick on those that cross them.

Peter Rost said...

Nice new pic Argon!

Argon said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Argon said...

Aha! It DOES work! No wonder those sales reps are so effective eh? *wink*

The only downside is if he's too busy looking at the pic to actually read the comments, but Moogirl doesn't seem to have that problem so I might be safe on that count.

It's probably like the 1st step in teaching a mule, you gotta get their attention. At least the pic feels better than a 2x4 between the eyes right? *wicked grin*

So now that it's been shown that some can be taught (other things than than expert baiting skills) I suppose the next step is to give the effective reps more training in exactly how to pay attention to reasonalbe business people. Or failing that let the reasonable people use the reps as translators so they can pass on the good ideas to the corporate lawyers.

That might help them in adapting and dealing with challenges if the only people they'll listen to are the sales reps, the shareholders might get a better return on their investments if they pay them more to feed the people that are managing the corporations better ideas so they won't panic so much