Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 824

other things that are equally important in the life of a company, such as your ability to bring in good people, the quality of your products, the relationship of management to employees, the spirit of the company. You know, you can have a dandy bottom line and a terrible spirit, and sooner or later the terrible spirit will wreck the bottom line. So I'm an anti-bottom liner.

What was the other thing?

Q:

Chief executive officer.

Heiskell:

Oh, it just seemed like you were beating your chest, calling yourself that.

Q:

[laughs] It was a bit too preten--a bit too much?

Heiskell:

Yes. You know, they never used to have that term, and that was invented after World War II, pretty much. And now you see people calling themselves, chairman, chief executive officer, president. I don't know why they don't also say, “And all the vice presidents is me!”

Q:

Okay. What I would like you to do now--we've talked about briefly--if you can, I'd like you to give an overview of the corporation, of how it faired from 1960 to 1980, the directions it took, when it was in its trouble periods, when it pulled out of them, etc.--keeping in mind that the individual areas that you touch upon we're going to come back and deal with separately.





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help