Today’s Executives Deserve to Get Celebrity Treatment

I take issue with the conclusions reached by Warren Bennis in his Oct. 19 Viewpoint, “The Problem With Today’s Executive Heroes.” I think it is about time that top-level executives got the full celebrity treatment along with entertainment industry people and sports figures. Isn’t this better than it being given to cult leaders and certain others in the public eye who extol the virtue of hard drugs and the like?

It is true that many top executives in the past were union-busting, Robber Barons, but the majority of today’s business leaders are responsible people with a social conscience. That is the difference.

I don’t believe it is true that cults develop around such chieftains, at least not within their own company, because if they truly are great leaders, they are interested in obtaining as much input as possible. If not, you can be sure that they won’t be great leaders for very long. You can also be sure that young tigers will be coming up around them all the time to challenge their position.

I think the new wave of entrepreneurial corporations that is spreading across this country is a healthy trend, and will give our economy the ability to vastly improve and make our goods more competitive overseas. Government by committee simply does not work. Everyone is out to protect his or her own special interests, but it takes a true individual leader, such as the President of this country, to look beyond petty issues.

FRED SANDS

President, Fred Sands Realtors

Los Angeles