I think this quote sums up where a CEO ought to be coming from (regardless of his problems)

"America doesn’t need another faceless, institutional apparel company. They need an apparel company that gets it and does it right." - Dov Charney

Bunch of good ones here:
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/1699/Dov-Charney-Quotes.html

Since I am the first commenter, I will try and knock out some of the obvious ones regular readers of your blog might jump on.

-How to leverage the value created outside of the firm (users, competitors, open source) for the benefit of users
-How to create the most TOTAL value
-How to improve our industry (ie. contributing to open source, setting standards, providing free data)
-How to make the business more transparent to outsiders/customers/investors

What I think is particularly interesting are the conversations new CEOs are NOT having:

-How do we crush the competition?
-How do we create barriers to entry?
-How do we force our customers to upgrade/migrate to new products?
-How do we hide our costs from our customers?
-How do we inflate our companies' value?
-How do we maximize this quarter's profit?

Some things new CEO's must accept, and I plagiarise liberally from Don Tapscott [wikinomics]:

Open and transparent with approach to customers,employees,shareholders

Accept that innovation cannot come solely from within the corporation - encourage company to work with peers [customers, industry, vendors]to develop next generation products

Allow corporate data to be shared online so that others can work with it and assist in development of alternatives

I think Eric is leading you on a fool's errand.

There is no moral imperative.

He's distracting you off of his trail so you will follow the good feelings all the way down the dark well.

Google is not about good. They're about getting the right things done the right way. They're about efficiency and priorities, not about charity.

Don't believe the hype.

Umair, I suggest you look beyond corporations, (no matter how innovative or evolved they may be), to new "hybrid organizations" which are gaining influence and making positive changes that most corporations would not or could not due to their responsibilities to their shareholders. Markoff covered this in April:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/technology/13stream.html

(Full disclosure: I work for one of the organizations named in the piece.)

Lots of businesses have talked about moral imperatives. In the first half of the 20C newspaper industry barons spent decades talking up the public duties of the press. Bill Paley reworked it for network TV.

Let's call it Moralising Midas Syndrome...only the platform is different.

I think CEOs must simply realise that people (be they customers, employees or whoever) pay attention to what you do and not what you say you do and that in a transparent world it is increasingly hard to hide what you do.

What about giving CEOs percentages of the company's profit instead of shares in the company?

Every time I look in the Wall Street Journal, there's an article about whether or not Company A should take a buyout offer because Company B is offering $2 higher than market value per share. What about asking "Would the buyout make Company A better at what they do? Would Company B do a better job of solving problems Company A is trying to solve? "

I wonder, for how much longer will Sun Tzu, art of war be used for business?

Q: How do you manage the "membrane" that governs information flow in and out of the firm? Especially if your company has lots and lots of employees?

Now that any single employee has the publishing tools to create and distribute knowledge/sales advice/brochures/trade secrets/personal information/gripes/accolades, how do you guide the right decisions and reinforce them with incentives?

I think your perspective would benefit from seeing this as a moral continuum rather then as a binary good/evil distinction. That way, we could talk about good/bad in relative terms. Then, I would add an excellent/mediocre aesthetic/quality dimension as well.

Companies at any point on the graph can make lots of money. Apple is very good, and has excellent standards, Exxon is very bad, but has excellent standards. Coca-Cola sucks and has low standards. A lot of bad tasting organic food is an example of good ethics but low standards. All these models are profitable.

The way you are using good, I think you mean that the pendulum of profitability is swinging towards both good and excellent.

I think your writing is blurred a little by thinking of this as good bad, rather then splitting the moral and aesthetic/quality dimensions and considering both independently. When you do that, I think it comes out that you actually wan morally good people with high aesthetic standards. This clarifies the thing I think you are actually asking about.

The reason you are my favorite writer on business is because you see so clearly that we need people who combine ethics, very high standards, divergent thinking, and an understanding of big picture problems. I think when you summarize these different qualities as good/bad, you are oversimplifying a little bit too much. You should consider them independently. In the people you cite as admiring, we find these different qualities all in high degrees. But we can't condense them farther without losing the ability to analyze what actually seems important to you.

I think your perspective would benefit from seeing this as a moral continuum rather then as a binary good/evil distinction. That way, we could talk about good/bad in relative terms. Then, I would add an excellent/mediocre aesthetic/quality dimension as well.

Companies at any point on the graph can make lots of money. Apple is very good, and has excellent standards, Exxon is very bad, but has excellent standards. Coca-Cola sucks and has low standards. A lot of bad tasting organic food is an example of good ethics but low standards. All these models are profitable.

The way you are using good, I think you mean that the pendulum of profitability is swinging towards both good and excellent.

I think your writing is blurred a little by thinking of this as good bad, rather then splitting the moral and aesthetic/quality dimensions and considering both independently. When you do that, I think it comes out that you actually wan morally good people with high aesthetic standards. This clarifies the thing I think you are actually asking about.

The reason you are my favorite writer on business is because you see so clearly that we need people who combine ethics, very high standards, divergent thinking, and an understanding of big picture problems. I think when you summarize these different qualities as good/bad, you are oversimplifying a little bit too much. You should consider them independently. In the people you cite as admiring, we find these different qualities all in high degrees. But we can't condense them farther without losing the ability to analyze what actually seems important to you.

(sorry about double posting above.)

I just reread your post and wanted to add one more thought. Your wrote: "Greed is good, right? Wrong. In fact, good is good: today, it's good that can be deeply strategic, and powerfully profitable."

Here is how I think you should have thought it. I do not claim to be an elegant writer like you are, so I don't know how to write it to make it flow nice but here is how my idea would plug in.

"Greed (the combination of low ethics, no vision, and low standards) is good (profitable), right? Wrong. In fact, Good (the combination of high moral standards, excellent execution, excellent aesthetics, and sound thinking about the fundamentals of big problems) is good (where the best places to make new industries). Today, it's good (the simultaneous occurrence of all 4 elements, which do not further reduce without losing too much clarity) that can be deeply strategic, and powerfully profitable."

While I am not quite as cynical as Daniel, I do harbour a certain amount of skepticism about any "moral imperatives". Google is not "good" because of an internal moral compass that Larry, Sergey, and Eric share. Google is good because its actions follow a coherent corporate philosophy. This philosophy is much deeper/specific than "don't be evil" and encompasses a specific set of values. At this point in history, those values happen to be apt (as you repeatedly mention on your blog) and Google and their shareholders benefit greatly from that.

What I mean here is that we should not trust CEOs to try and do the right thing, but we should judge them on their ability to execute a particular strategy.

In Google's case, this strategy is to 'organize the world's information'. From this perspective, they are incredibly efficient. Using the standards and ideologies of a book publisher, however, Google is doing 'bad' with Google Books. Using the standards of a political scientist or free speach activist, they are doing 'bad' with their operations in China. The important thing is that we accept the premise that organizing the world's information is the greatest priority in 2008 and judge Google on their execution.

It is not difficult to imagine that a time will arise when the world will require a different set of priorities, yet Google will remain on the same path. Without Google changing their policies or ideologies, their practices will cease to be synonymous with 'good'.

Microsoft once had a 'good' strategy of putting a PC on every desk. They continue to work towards that goal, yet the world has changed, and that is becoming an increasingly trivial aim. That aim, however, can be used to justify many of their worst anti-competitive behaviours.

All the innovations which are succeeding at the mass level as well as at the 'Bottom-of-Pyramid' have 'Moral Imperative' as a guiding factor. And in the process those organizations make lot of money and successful in traditional sense. Leaders have to be strong, but not Rambo Style!!

A look at the way Tata and Sons is structured will be revealation by itself.

Gents, The whole redefining the CEO agenda debate is interesting. The reason behind Google's current competitive advantage is that they are doing it differently, irrespective of your view on weather they are moral or not you have to agree that they are doing things differently in a more open an engaging way. Empowring people etc. What is interesting for me though is this:

Is Google's advantage due to their management strategy or due to the fact they are one of the only few organisations that have this strategy?

I would say its a bit of both, however what happens when other corporations and companies start copying this? You would end up with a red queen race, i think we are seeing something similar with the whole social networking scene right now. Myspace, Google, Facebook are all racing to be 'more open'

So here's another question for thought... when everyone is doing it Google style, Would a company that does it old school gain an advantage?

It all boils down to applying Peter Drucker's axiom:

"There are no profit centers in your business: your customers are your only profit center."

Lotsa good stuff here.
To the above, I'd add a few more questions future CEOs will and must wrestle with (IMHO, of course):

1. How do we realistically and practically solve the portability of health insurance dilemma so people are liberated to make better choices about employment/alliances independent of servitude-for-insurance considerations?

2. We need to co-author a new social contract that takes into account all the dynamic shifts of this post-industrial/post-internet/post-company store economy.

3. How does the employer really and genuinely match up the skills of the new multi-faceted, multi-tasking, multi-personalitied employee, and then grow with her, not just churn her?

4. Why is this Umair character sending me these terse notes critiquing my strategic and moral imperatives?

Here is a great example of innovation and change:

Ear Candy with Travis Hay
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/earcandy/archives/140907.asp

This says it all to me. You have the middleman in a state of evaporation, growing increasingly irrelevant and un-attached to the evolving reality which is eating away the frayed fabric of old business mindsets! Please read about this change in my link example.

CEO's and boards need to get serious about their DNA. It is the core of the organization and its advantage or lack thereof. It's the only enduring thing and the fundamental reason for doing what they are doing in the first place.

So then, how do boards and CEO's give the necessary attention to the development and oversight of DNA when having a purpose and values discussion in most boards is that last thing they want to be doing? In my experience they don't. If you didn't start with it, you can't create it. And if you start with it, you need to bake it in as part of the core management process and responsibilities - which of course can only truly happen if it's authentic. Can't fake DNA - certainly not when it counts.

I wonder how explicitly Google deals with DNA at the board/governance level - and in their management process?

I don't buy it.

This is a classic double bind. Eric is setting the standard for business operation in the realm of 'moral imperatives', but businesses only exist in the nonmetaphysical, i.e., the real world.

Morality, religion, and science fiction exist in the non-real, along with Eric's moral imperatives.

Basically, he sets a standard that no one can achieve, and in so doing, you can't go either way: you can't achieve a non-existent standard, and if you don't follow it, you'll not be doing what the leader is says to do. A psychological double bind.

Good luck following that red herring.

Or, you can simply set priorities and then make your business machines as efficient as possible in accomplishing those priorities.

To play devil's advocate a bit...

Isn't Google's "moral imperative" to help publishers benefit from advertising aligned quite a bit with their own interests? Of course Gooogle wants to help publishers run successful content sites, because Google makes a lot of money by taking a cut of the Adsense revenue that many of these publishers generate.

Google wants the internet to grow and prosper and become more compelling because they know how to monetize the internet better than anyone else. I'm aware of this, and as someone who earns a living on internet technology myself, I love a lot of what Google does because I know their interests are aligned, whether out of selfish reasons or because of a moral imperative, with mine.

I'd like to believe the moral imperative thing is true, but I have a difficult time buying it.