These are some examples leaders should not follow and should learn about in order to know what roads not to take when leading a company or a team.

1. Some of the worst
business leaders
and CEOs that
United States has
seen
By David Kiger
Image courtesy of MyEyeSees at Flickr.com

2. David Kiger has written many posts about successful stories and
business leaders in the last centuries. United States is the place were
corporate culture was born and it is here where many examples of
good management gave happened and many corporations have seen
success in a short and long term. Has there never been a negative
story? Of course, success comes with failure and failure brings
experiences and experiences will inevitably bring success. so, even
though there have been many amazing business leaders, there have
also been many leaders that have not lived up to their role and have
taken their companies to almost bankruptcy or left them in a total chaos
near to going broke.
These leaders are the ones that have made mistakes due to
mismanagement or to criminal activities and corruption. Either way,
these are some examples leaders should not follow and should learn
about in order to know what roads not to take when leading a company
or a team.

3. Jonathan Schwartz: Sun Microsystems
Jonathan Schwartz, a very trendy, hip and updated person. He
blogged. He used social networks and was seen as a fresh leader that
could inject new ideas to the company. His mentor was its CEO, Scott
McNealy. When Scott was at the front of the company Microsystems
became one of the four companies to dominate the server and
processor space, which also included Oracle, HP and IBM. Before
Schwartz’s, the company was profitable and competitive, not being the
first company or the unbeatable leaders, but was having a lot of success
and caught the attention of many investors. He was a good CEO as he
was known as one of the few Fortune 500 CEO's to use a blog for
public communications. He was recognized for his efforts to bring
greater transparency into the corporate world, and thought that the use
of websites and blogs for the dissemination of financial information was
far better. Then came failure and the company suffered a loss in market
share and their shares fell from almost $27 to under $4 from late in
2007 to late 2008; Sun also later fired nearly 6,000 people, or about
18% of its employees. The reason? Java was free and Sun never came
up with a realistic model to monetize it. Simple as that.

4. Ken Lay: Enron
Everybody knows Ken Lay and the Enron story and how they
manipulated the balance sheets. Ken Lay became CEO in 1986 and
was responsible for making the company grow and diversify into the
energy generation sector, gas distribution businesses and water based
utilities. Lay was so successful at marketing the firm to Wall St. and to
the press that it was Fortune’s “America’s Most Innovative Company” for
six years in a row, from 1996 to 2001, but then came disaster. In 2001
everybody was shocked to know that the company was hiding portions
of its liabilities off of its balance sheets. The legal battle began and
Enron´s saw the worst part of it. By the end of the year, Enron filed for
bankruptcy, was the focus of an investigation and the authorities found
that Lay had actively participated in the alteration of the balance sheets.
The story ends a bit tragically because Lay was found guilty of
securities fraud and other charges and he then passed away in July 5,
2006, just before we was sentenced. In this case, it was not the lack of
ability from the CEO, it was more about the corruption and the pressure
to show good results for investors and shareholders that took this really
famous company to the worst case scenario in the business world.

5. Chuck Conway: Kmart
Yet, another fraud case. Chuck Conway was the head of Kmart when it
declared bankruptcy and he was charged with fraud that improved the
company’s balance sheet. By the 1970s, Kmart was the Walmart of its
era and one of the biggest retailers in the US, Canada, and Australia.
Chuck Conway was hired in 2000 after some bad decisions and by the
time he arrived, Kmart was still an outstanding force in the US retail
space, despite the problems they had been having in the previous 15
years. Conway promised to regain the power Kmart used to have by
improving the supply chain and boosting the brand to compete with
Walmart. He never came through and instead he covered up details of
the firm’s faltering financial position and bought cars and planes with the
company´s money. Yet, another case of corporate corruption that takes
the company to the ground.
The perfect examples in order to not repeat history and play by the
rules. Do you want to know more about corporate leaders and their
stories? Click here to find out everything you want.