INTRODUCTION    

     As I write this, the American political arena is demonstrating this epidemic of deficiency to an alarming degree. The elected president of the US is self-obsessed, dangerously impulsive, poorly educated, and alarmingly uninformed. Because the democratic system creates a tabula rasa for each newly elected commander in chief, he has been able to largely eradicate many of the people, policies, and platforms of the previous administration, often dismantling old structures but failing to replace them. Democracy’s predilection for short-termism has never been more damaging than in Washington today, where the prevailing Republican Party has virtually closed ranks behind the president even as allegations of serious political, business, and personal misconduct increase, and a constitutional crisis seems all but inevitable.

      What has made it possible for one man to instigate the collapse of a 250-year-old political democracy? One considerable factor is the prevailing climate of dishonesty and double-talk legitimized and championed by President Donald Trump, a man who literally lies with impunity, both off the record and on, often compounding previous lies with new ones.

      While America has presented the world with the most blatant (and therefore the most dangerous) scenarios of rapid-fire political and cultural disintegration, similar problems have arisen in numerous other parts of the world as well. Nationalist movements in Europe are on the rise as is terrorism, and Brexit has given a clear indication of the extent of the European Union’s instability. The breakdown of our ability to communicate cogently coupled with our increasing tolerance for—or unwillingness to censure—double-talk, hypocrisy, and outright prevarication in our leaders has put the whole world at risk.

      The decline in our ability to communicate honestly and with integrity is a dangerous signpost. All cultures are to some extent predicated on shared identity and experience, and communal and historical connection. Language is the bastion of all of these. A leader with the power to control language and communication is one who will be able to maintain broad political and social power, for better or worse. In contemporary society, we depend upon the media and upon a free press as the most reliable means for the communication of news and information. A political leader who openly wages war on the media poses a serious risk to culture and society, one that cannot be ignored.

      And who is doing the listening—who comprises most of the collective body of people that enable a leader to take and keep power? They are largely the regular workingmen and -women of the society or institution in question. They are the people with whom I’ve had some of the most rewarding and gratifying experiences of my professional life. On the factory floor at Volvo and beyond, I’ve found the labor force to be more open-minded, honest, and fair than any other group, and I’ve long admired their ability to see things that even their white-collar counterparts could not.

      The mutually respectful relationship I’ve had with working people over the years is not a result of my being a highly skilled speaker—since I don’t believe that I am—it has come rather because our interactions were always unvarnished, honest, and direct. This is the source of my long-standing conviction that when one strives to narrow the gap between what one thinks and how one acts, the resulting correlation engenders trust and followership—not by capitulation, but through the consensus that comes from interacting with people on equal terms as adults with agency, and by addressing their higher-order psychological needs.

      And so, a good half century after writing Towards the Turn of the Century, at Random, as a young man of thirty-four, I return to this somewhat familiar but shifting territory. With the benefit and hindsight of decades of good fortune, I’ve been privileged to come to know a number of great institutions and remarkable people. Some are familiar names, while others remain unsung heroes who accomplished great things in relative anonymity. In reflecting on what qualities these leaders of many different kinds might share, there is one compelling commonality: profound integrity. Every person or organization that I have experienced as highly effectual is one who held its actions and communications to the highest ethical standard, with unflinching alignment between words and deeds, regardless of how such forthrightness would be received by the prevailing establishment. And each individual has had the intuitive understanding that a true leader of any capacity must possess and demonstrate an authentic intolerance for injustice.

Foreward - Ingvar Carlsson - Former Prime Minister of Sweden

       For nine years, Pehr G Gyllenhammar was voted “Sweden´s most admired man.” This is reason enough to be interested in Gyllenhammar the man, and to learn more about him. We all know it is windy atop the high hills of accomplishment. How has it been possible for him not just to become so successful, but to maintain his good reputation for so long? In this book, Gyllenhammar tells you in his own words what it took to rise to the top, and what it takes, in his opinion, to stay there.

It was a very young Gyllenhammar who was appointed CEO of Volvo, a position he kept for 24 years. Volvo began in Sweden, but during Gyllenhammar’s tenure it became more and more global in its activities. Swedes were proud to see Volvo cars wherever they went, all over the world.

It is no surprise that the shareholders and car-owners were satisfied with Volvo’s dynamic leader. What I find quite interesting, however, is that he inspired such sympathy and support in the labor unions. Step by step, Gyllenhammar worked to build a very special relationship with Volvo’s workers. He created a corporate structure in which the workers enjoyed more dialogue and participation, and as a result, wasted less energy fighting. The unions knew that their company had a strong leader who was also good listener. This created trust in Gyllenhammar not just as a CEO, but as a person.

Volvo remained Pehr Gyllenhammar´s first priority throughout his time there. But very early on he also became involved with matters concerning European infrastructure. As Europe’s countries, through political and economic cooperation, were growing stronger and more united, Gyllenhammar saw new possibilities for everyone. His vision was that industry and its leaders should play an active role in developing Europe through new large-scale infrastructural projects.

In 1983 Gyllenhammar took the initiative in founding the European Round Table of Industrialists. The idea behind this organization was that European enterprises should strengthen their competitiveness and find new projects that would stimulate development and cooperation throughout Europe. To enable faster and easier movement of people and goods, new tunnels, bridges and high-speed trains were needed. Gyllenhammar described these as “missing links” in Europe.

One of these missing links was a bridge for cars and trains across Öresund between Sweden and Denmark. This issue had been discussed for decades, but without result. At the end of the 1980s, Sweden and Denmark finally reached an agreement to build the bridge. At that time I was Prime Minister in Sweden, and I can confirm that the work done by Mr Gyllenhammar and the European Round Table of Industrialists was very helpful in promoting the project.

In 1984, Gyllenhammar was asked to join the board of Reuters Holdings PLC. His participation demonstrates not just his broad capacity, but also how well-known and well-respected he had become around the world. The doors to Presidents, Prime Ministers and Ministers for Foreign Affairs were all open to him. He had friendly relations with Singapore President Lee Kuan Yew, with King Hussein of Jordan, and with David Rockefeller, to name just a few.

Pehr G Gyllenhammar is a true democrat and a person of firm liberal values. As CEO of Volvo he dissociated himself early on from the apartheid policy of South Africa. Today, he is deeply troubled that extreme right wing, nationalistic, populist and fascist forces are gaining ground in the world. He is very outspoken about the dangers we are facing, and has made his position very clear: Democracy is in danger!

In this book you will meet a colorful and charismatic person, a man with whom I have been friends for many years. Through the experiences Gyllenhammar recounts, you will encounter his unique perspective on industry, modern history, and politics. Gyllenhammar makes no secret here of the one quality he values above all others, the one quality that any person, corporation or community must possess in order to achieve the kind of long-term success that Gyllenhammar himself has enjoyed: integrity.

Ingvar Carlsson
Former Prime Minister of Sweden

Chapter 1 – Truth - Reuters and 9/11

     On the evening of September 11, 2001, as a shaken world absorbed the news of the devastating terror attacks in the United States, David Wenig, Reuters president of Investment Banking and Brokerage Services, requested that the large electronic billboards outside of Reuters’ London office display an image of the American flag, to communicate England’s solidarity with America.

      Feedback came in from a number of editorial managers asking that the flag be removed, as it could be construed to be an indication of bias. I happened to be in New York on that day, visiting the Lazard financial management firm in my capacity as their senior advisor and managing director.

     I had arrived at Lazard’s Rockefeller Center office quite early in the morning, and a colleague and a secretary were the only other people in the sixty-second-floor office. It was an absolutely beautiful day, cool and clear, the skyline of the city crisp and vivid against the bright blue sky. On one of the television monitors, I heard the breaking news that a plane had just hit a Manhattan skyscraper. The southern-facing exposure of the Lazard offices provides a bird’s-eye view of Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson. After hearing the news, my colleague and I went to the window from which we could clearly see a vast plume of brown smoke pouring from the north tower of the World Trade Center. At that moment, we saw a second plane approaching rapidly from the southwest. We stood shoulder to shoulder watching with disbelief as the plane hit the south tower, sending a massive fireball shooting into the sky. I don’t believe either of us spoke—what was there to say? The sight was so dramatic—so viscerally brutal—it is virtually impossible to convey to anyone who did not see it with their own eyes.

      After the towers collapsed, the scene in lower Manhattan was one of utter devastation, and the scale of human suffering unbearable. I was not only deeply shaken by what I had seen, I was not at all sure that more attacks were not on the way. I had no intention of getting into the elevator to descend sixty-two floors, so I remained where I was. My colleague followed suit. At about 11 a.m., I heard voices and saw several policemen entering the office. They seemed surprised to see us, as the building had been closed off and no one was supposed to be inside. My colleague and I took the sixy-two-floor elevator ride in silence, emerging in the plaza with no idea where to go or what to do. Like countless others, I was marooned, unable to travel out of the city. I followed the events surrounding the London Reuters’ office and the American flag by telephone from my hotel. I was both touched by their impulse to display solidarity and impressed with their difficult decision to take the flag down. To me, it represented the pinnacle of integrity, and embodied everything I admired about the organization.

      In an internal newsletter dated September 19, 2001, Wenig discussed the painful decision to comply and remove the flag, saying, “It was and is clear on reflection that the ideals of independence and objectivity go to the heart of what we are as a company. These pillars cannot be selectively retracted when we feel passion, or when we believe that right and wrong are so plainly clear. In fact, the trust principles are reinforced most powerfully when they are stretched and challenged the furthest.” This was a remarkable demonstration of what it takes to protect ethical principles in a corporate world. The Trust doesn’t pose a burden of expense or bureaucracy on the corporation, but it does preclude prioritizing profits over everything else. The fact of Reuters’ longevity as a company is evidence that with a long-term view, the Trust Principles have served the institution extremely well. It is also a clear indication of the clarity of vision and flexibility of mind of the Trust founders, not dissimilar to that of the authors of the US Constitution—anticipating in the extreme long term the needs and obstacles of the company—creating a structure of preservation that is neither too specific nor too broad, but that will safeguard the principles without compromising the company’s ability to operate, expand, and adapt to the times.

Chapter 2– Heritage- The Name, “Gyllenhammar”

     In Scanian peasant culture of that time, personal honor was valued above all other qualities, and loss of one’s honorable reputation could result in ostracization from community—a punishment that was nothing less than the severance of a lifeline. In the sixteenth century, the Swedish King Gustav Vasa had ended compulsory military conscription, so that “the native peasantry may sit at home, tend their fields and meadows, feed their wives and children, and no longer go out to get themselves killed.” By Mans Andersson’s lifetime, the Golden King had devised new rules of conscription, and King Charles X Gustav made it clear that more was needed and expected of peasant families. When Denmark declared war on Sweden in 1657, county governors received word from the Swedish Council alerting them of the imminent war and asking them to do their part in bolstering the courage of their constituents and encouraging them to actively partake in the defense of the fatherland. In instances where King Charles X Gustav specifically requested that a county governor muster the unit of volunteers, the response was negotiated and agreed upon by the peasants themselves. But after many successive calls for volunteer soldiers, numbers and patience were growing thin. When a new request for the mustering of volunteer soldiers reached counties in the autumn of 1658, the Crown met with somewhat more resistance and found many fewer men stepping forward to answer the call. For that reason, the willing participation of men from families such as that of Mans Andersson was especially appreciated by the Crown.

      In recognition of the honor and sacrifice of Mans Andersson’s service and death in the Battle of the Sound, he was posthumously knighted as Adliga ätter (untitled nobility) and introduced at the Riddarhuset—the Swedish House of Nobility—in 1668. With a family’s ennoblement, the Crown also presented them with a new name, and from that time onward the recipient would cease using the patronymic system and instead pass the noble surname down to each successive generation. These names were generally crafted to impart an imposing or admirable air—the one bestowed upon Andersson and his descendants at the Riddarhuset was Gyllenhammar—which translates as golden battle axe. A perusal of a list of 2,350 numbered noble family names produces eighty- one surnames with the golden prefix “gyllen,” including Gyllenpistol (golden gun), Gyllensvard (golden sword), Gyllengranat (golden grenade), Gyllenskold (golden skull), and the impressive if nautically dubious Gyllenskepp (golden ship). Other popular prefixes of the time were Silfver (silver) and the Germanic Adler and Ehren—meaning eagle and honor respectively

Chapter 3 – Innovation - Kalmar Factory, Teamwork

     One of the primary arenas for making the socially and humanistic oriented changes I prioritized was Volvo’s assembly plants, beginning with the Kalmar factory, established in 1974, and later with the Uddevalla plant. The goal was to design plants around the supposition that employees should be able to find meaning and satisfaction in their work, and to work in a healthful and pleasing environment while neglecting neither efficiency nor economic results. As Åke Sandberg put it in Enriching Production, the project was “innovative, productive, and humane...with various concepts of group work.” In developing the design and concepts, I worked with Volvo management and engineers and with the local and national unions to have an unfiltered source of information about what would truly benefit the workers.

     In the Kalmar plant, we created a work-batch system to move away from the single-repetitive task assembly line system. Groups of workers were formed into teams, and each team was responsible for the collective assembly of one of the car’s systems. In a 1987 article in the New York Times, Steve Lohr cited the positive effect of the Kalmar plant on Volvo’s rising productivity and quality, and of the benefits of a work-batch team approach over an assembly line approach, writing, “Because each worker typically performs a series of tasks, the ‘cycle times’—or the period the worker has to complete his assignment—are often several minutes instead of the several seconds common on the assembly line. In addition, the workers in a team are taught to do several jobs, not only to escape monotony but also to fill in for sick or vacationing workers.”

     Kalmar was the breakthrough I had hoped it would be. It became a workplace in which human-centered designs and concepts created improved jobs, which led to improved worker well-being and productivity. In conceiving the next plant, Uddevalla, the basic Kalmar concept remained, but was refined to be a bit more radical and sophisticated. The assembly line production system was dispensed with altogether at Uddevalla in favor of a fixed-site car assembly system in which multiple teams of skilled laborers worked in cooperation to collectively assemble entire vehicles. Åke Sandberg described a visit to Uddevalla in which he observed “the human orientation of the work being done...a group of nine workers assembled a car from beginning to end. They conferred with each other while working, resulting in the completion of the entire car before the morning coffee break. This team like all others in the plant had no supervisor. And the first level manager of this and the seven other teams in the product workshop was on vacation; the groups could clearly manage their own work.”

      My work along these lines of reinventing the labor model drew interest from others in the automotive industry, and many came to visit the factories. In 1973 and 1974, we hosted visits from Henry Ford II and Leonard Woodcock, the latter then president of the United Auto Workers union. I came to know and like both of these men enormously. Ford loved the Kalmar plant, and told me, “Pehr, this is a revolution!” Leonard Woodcock was also impressed with Kalmar’s humanization of the labor system. It was an issue that had long been of concern to him. Ten years prior to his visit to Kalmar, a 1964 New York Times article reported the UAW’s refusal to drop demands for better conditions in return for an improved financial package. The article stated, “Leonard Woodcock, UAW vice president and director of the General Motors Department, said at a news conference today that he had no illusions that the workers ‘can be bought off this time’ on working conditions. ‘Our purpose this year is to humanize conditions in the General Motors plants,’ he said.”

Chapter 4 – Humanism - Joe Slater, Aspen Institute

     In the summer of 1967, Slater became acquainted with two burgeoning organizations: the Jonas Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, and the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies as a scholar-in-residence. Both groups were seeking a new president, and perhaps it is not surprising that both asked Slater to consider taking the position. He accepted the Salk Institute’s offer, but Aspen never gave up its efforts to hire him, and after serving for four years Slater stepped down from Salk to become president of the Aspen Institute. In Genesis of the Salk Institute, Suzanne Bourgeois writes about the future the Salk Institute might have known if Joseph Slater had remained its president, saying it “would be a different place today, perhaps with broader goals and deeper impact than a pure research institute.” Instead, Slater’s successor “killed the original spirit of Jonas’ institute without providing a solid basis for its expansion.”

Chapter 5 – Diplomacy - The Middle East, Teddy Kollek

     In the context of an informal mission with an Aspen employee, we embarked on our Middle East venture. Our first stop was in Israel to meet with Teddy Kollek—Jerusalem's fascinating mayor—and with the opposition leader Shimon Peres. Of all the leaders I met during that trip, it was Teddy Kollek who made the deepest impression on me. He was a generous and open person with an encyclopedic knowledge of affairs, a natural sense of diplomacy, and a deeply ingrained desire to have Jews and Arabs living peacefully side by side in Jerusalem.

     Solidly built, with a leading man’s classical profile, Kollek was instantly recognizable and when he was out walking the streets of Jerusalem, people flocked to him. He took me for a walk at Golgotha and it was fascinating. On every street he was greeted with smiles and salutations. He stopped to chat with anyone who approached him. He was very popular with both the Palestinians and the Israelis. He talked to them and they talked to him—and they addressed him not as “Mayor” or “Mr. Kollek” but simply as Teddy.

      By all accounts, and from my own observations, Teddy Kollek seemed to be almost universally loved. Born in Vienna, Austria, in 1911, he skirmished with Hitler youth, then immigrated to British-controlled Mandatory Palestine with other pioneers. During the war, he negotiated for the transfer of thousands of young concentration camp prisoners to England and was instrumental in helping countless other Jews to flee Austria. Asked to run for mayor of Jerusalem in 1965 by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Kollek reluctantly agreed and was elected mayor—a position he would hold for almost thirty years. Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike held him in high esteem, and he in turn was tireless in encouraging cooperative coexistence, saying, “Jerusalem’s people must find peaceful ways to live together, other than by drawing a line in the sand.” For all his devotion to the ancient city, and the enormous amount of work his job required, Kollek took the time to enjoy his life, always savoring a strong cup of coffee, a good meal, and a fragrant cigar.

      To walk the streets of Jerusalem with Teddy Kollek was to see the city in all its ancient and diverse splendor. His pride was palpable as he gave me a walking tour of the Jerusalem Music Center which he cofounded with virtuoso violinist Isaac Stern. He was equally comfortable strolling through the Arab quarter as the Jewish quarter.

Chapter 6– Industry - The Chunnel

     I received surprisingly little resistance from the heads of state with whom I met. We were, after all, talking about an enormous investment of both time and money. But I knew that both the Missing Links proposal and the argument I was making in support of it were compelling. I stressed that some of this investment could be financed by the private sector, through instruments such as EuroShare, which would attract private risk capital. As for the profit potential, the long-term returns of the Mont Blanc Tunnel provided solid evidence of success. The tunnel was completed in 1966. Over the next thirteen years the flow of traffic (and hence the generation of cash flow via the toll) grew by about 20 percent a year. By the fourteenth year, the net income generated exceeded the amount of the total project investment. The newly constructed Paris-Lyon railway line showed a similar pattern. The success of these projects was no flash in the pan—it was in essence a matter of logic. Both the Mont Blanc Tunnel and the Paris-Lyon railway line created a means of travel that was faster and easier than any previously available. Better routes attract more traffic, thereby offering a consistent and sustainable income—it was that simple.

     To pitch the Anglo-French tunnel, I had already approached Jacques Delors. I explained what we were doing and told him I would like to have his acceptance and initiative to create it. He was enthusiastic about the tunnel and indicated that President Mitterrand was receptive as well. He also informed me that the president would be making an unofficial visit to Madame Thatcher in two weeks’ time. So, I knew I needed to organize a meeting with Mitterrand, so that I could speak to him personally before he met with Thatcher. Though I would have a number of occasions to sit down with Mitterrand in the future, this would be my first meeting with him.

      President Mitterrand usually ate dinner at the Elysée Palace or at his home, but he happened to have plans to dine with Jacques Attali two days before the Thatcher visit. Attali was then serving as presidential advisor and would go on to become the first head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. I knew Attali as well, so I asked to go along to the dinner, which would be held at Attali’s home, as it would clearly be a private visit, not an official one. I was not there to dine, so I sat at the table and talked to Mitterrand as he ate oyster after oyster—each one going down with a little slurp. I recapped what Jacques Delors and I had discussed and argued that an Anglo-French tunnel was a key element in European infrastructure. The specifics of the design were to accommodate road and rail, by way of a four-lane motorway and two-track rail line. Mitterrand was enthusiastic, and indicated he was in agreement that the proposed tunnel would benefit both France and England, as well as the greater EU. Of course, he could make no assurance that Prime Minister Thatcher would agree.

      Ultimately, Mitterrand’s meeting with Thatcher proved to be a breakthrough, though not without considerable resistance. In her competent and firm way, she said Britain couldn’t afford the proposed four-lane motorway. Her response to Mitterrand was, “No, I will not support that—I won’t spend a penny of state money on this. I can only agree to support a railway tunnel.” This was a huge mistake on Thatcher’s part. Had they agreed to the motorway tunnel, the toll revenue would have covered the investment within ten years. The technology of drilling two pipes under the English Channel did not require any sort of miracle—it was pretty straightforward. When Thatcher made the condition that it should only be a train tunnel, what she was really doing was limiting the project to just one or two drilling operations instead of four or five. She cheated herself and her constituents, because with rail only they would never recoup any investment in toll income, while the motorway could have paid for the whole thing, with private enterprise and contracts paying the costs of the tunnel. The economics had already been proven—these tunnels have a very high return annually including the repair works expansion and renewal they have to pay for. Thatcher ultimately fooled her own cabinet—had they taken the taxpayers’ money they would have been paid back in less than two decades. To make only a train tunnel was in essence calling for bankruptcy on that project. But Thatcher remained immovable on that point.

     Mitterrand, on the other hand, understood the practicality of my proposal, and had the courage to be willing to implement it. He had undergone an impressive transformation, having spent his first year in office acting as a socialist, and gradually becoming quite liberal in economic matters. I think he was a very good president. Some years later, Mitterrand gave me the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor), established in 1802 by Napoleon Bonaparte. I got it from him in the grand salle of the embassy palace, where I was one of six or seven recipients. I got the highest order of any civilian, over GE head Jack Welch (to his displeasure), as Mitterrand found me to be the industrialist of top rank because I worked for Europe and not only for myself. I was deeply honored and touched by this.

Chapter 7 – Dialogue, On Katherine Graham

     This was a time in my life, in my early years at Volvo, when I seemed constantly to be meeting very remarkable people. Kay Graham was another, and she is someone I still consider a hero. I was invited to join her and her team for a lunch at Newsweek in New York shortly after I began at Volvo. She was a very impressive woman even then, before she took over the Washington Post. She was modest and soft-spoken, but at the same time sharp and brilliant. She had observed me and my position as a very young man becoming CEO of one of the largest industries in northern Europe. She had questions for me, which she asked directly, but never in the manner of a cross-examination. She did some probing but was elegant about it—in interviews as in all aspects of her life that I could see, Kay Graham had distinction, style, and taste.

     We had a mutual esteem for one another, and in time we became good friends. I was aware of what she went through when her husband died and she took over for him, becoming editor in chief and publisher of the Washington Post. To say it was a major career move is a gross understatement. And I was not at all surprised that she handled it brilliantly. She emerged into the leadership role subtly, with a quiet and discreet authority, but there was no doubt she was in charge.

     After that first meeting, I saw her several times when she came to London, and in other contexts as well. So, from the very beginning, I was a true admirer of Kay Graham. When Watergate surfaced, she rose to the challenge in a way that was simply awe-inspiring. She had the immutable faith, courage, and journalistic principles necessary to take on this task—and furthermore she had absolute trust that her reporters, Bernstein and Woodward, were making a fair assessment of what was going on, and with the likelihood of the president’s involvement. She was heavily criticized throughout much of the process, but she stood strong, always absolutely insistent that her reporters were not only honest but fair, with a very good sense of where the truth was.

     Without her unstinting support, Bernstein and Woodward could not have maintained their investigation, because the legal and political forces being brought to bear against them was massive. Nixon was a powerful president and had enormous influence in Washington and beyond, and he declared a vendetta against the Post, forbidding his press secretary to let any member of the paper into the White House for any reason. In that sense she had enormous courage to support them. And of course, history bore her out. Nixon was a corrupt, dishonest, and vindictive leader unfit to be president, and the work of journalists was crucial in bringing about his well-deserved demise.

     At the time of this writing, it is almost inconceivable that the US has a sitting president who by comparison makes Nixon look almost respectable. They share negative qualities—vindictiveness, abuse of presidential power, gross distrustfulness of the press, a tendency to nurse a grudge, chronic dishonesty. But Nixon had positive attributes that Trump does not share. He was decisive, strategic, and highly intelligent. Trump is notoriously indecisive, chaotic, and without question the most poorly educated and unintelligent president ever to sit in the Oval Office. His vendetta against the press has been compared to Nixon’s. In an article in the Florida Times-Union about Trump’s threat to rescind broadcast licenses from any news station providing presidential coverage that he didn’t like, the reporter noted Graham’s recollection of similar threats, writing: “Graham said former Attorney General Richard Kleindienst contacted the Post in 1971 ‘threatening us with a campaign against the press and with criminal prosecution if we did not return the Pentagon papers after the Supreme Court decision allowing their publication.’”

     Rarely has the world, and the US in particular, had such a need for strong and courageous leaders in politics, media, and business. Nelson Mandela, Frene Ginwalla, Lee Kuan Yew, and Kay Graham were all very different people with several key qualities in common: they were all intelligent, practical, and profoundly ethical people who could communicate effectively, who had an intuitive sense of leadership, and who had world-class levels of power. Each of them in their own way rocked their nation’s foundations a little, and each one of them left the world a better place than they had found it. The link between leadership and journalism is complex and interconnected. Ethical leaders cannot endure without ethical journalists.

Chapter 8 – Alliance - On Volvo and Norway

     In late 1977, I approached Norway’s prime minister, Odvar Nordli, saying, “You have massive oil finds off your coast, so it is very likely more will be found. But your industrial growth is too narrow, and it has to expand beyond the energy and fishing sectors. I want to propose an alliance between Volvo in Sweden and you here in Norway that will also help you build and expand industry, particularly into engineering.”

     Nordli was fascinated by this idea and invited me to a series of private meetings in his home in Oslo, where we were joined by Bjartmer Gjerde, recently appointed Norway’s first minister of petroleum and energy. The alliance I proposed was a quid pro quo in which Volvo would establish manufacturing plants in parts of Norway, giving Norway Swedish lumber and approximately 40 percent of Volvo’s share capital, and in return Statoil would give Volvo oil concessions on the continental shelf.

     Both in the private meetings and after broaching the idea with their parliament, Norway was very enthusiastic about the potentials of a Norway-Volvo alliance. I also had the preliminary support of the Swedish prime minister and the Volvo board. This was an unprecedented opportunity to create a new page in the history of Swedish business and industry, to have a company (as opposed to a nation-state) open the door to cooperation with Norway in a completely new and different way.

     The Swedish public had admiration for the sheer audacity of the project—I was then still very popular as an individual in Sweden, somewhere in the midst of my eight years as the country’s most admired person. The people were used to my adventurous nature and trusted me. But there was a growing opposition to the deal from Swedish big business and leading industrialists, because most could only focus on the fact that Volvo would bypass them and become too big as a result of the Norwegian project. The argument against the alliance began to play out in the press—critics claiming it was too risky, that there was likely no more oil to be had from their territory, in spite of the fact that Norway’s oil fields were now among the richest on the continental shelf.

     The story managed to hit the newspapers almost every day for months, and we held an extra shareholders meeting to address the deal. There was enormous speculation in the press from moment the Norway alliance was announced. The most common spin on the story was that the resistance stemmed largely from the Sveriges Aktiesparares Riksforbund, an independent association of Swedish shareholders, and that the increasingly organized campaign to discredit the alliance had been orchestrated by the Aktiesparares’ chairman, Hakan Gergils.

     I found it very naive of the Swedish press to believe and perpetrate this story, when it was clear to me that the stockholder association was little more than a puppet organization whose strings were being pulled by a powerful family dynasty of industrialists. I would have had more respect for the Wallenberg clan if they had been open and straightforward about their move against the Volvo-Norway alliance. As it was, it took the form of backroom talks to sabotage the deal, using someone else to act as a go-between to reverse the course. I felt then and still feel today that was a pretty dirty maneuver.

     The Wallenbergs had dominated Swedish industry for decades, but they also represented the establishment, as I resolutely did not. The Norway deal was a significant departure from the norm, and with establishment resistance to the mere suggestion of anything Swedish being ceded to Norwegians, many shareholders could be and were persuaded to vote against the venture.

      The meeting of Volvo directors to ratify the deal was scheduled for the end of January of 1979. I wanted the vote to pass by a qualified majority—meaning more than 67 percent rather than just over 50 percent. We held a proxy vote count a week before the scheduled official vote. The numbers fell short. We had more than 50 percent in support, but were about 7 percent short of a qualified majority. It was over, and the shareholders meeting was quietly canceled.

     I had lost, and the opportunity was gone. It would not come around a second time. We had been in a unique moment in which many things aligned—with the leaders of both countries ready and willing to work together, and in a time before the oil money began to pour into Norway as it did later. The time for the alliance was now or never, and the necessary vote had fallen short.

     We had, in essence, lost Norway. Of course, Sweden officially lost Norway in 1905 (which in retrospect was for the best) but we lost it again as a cooperative partner in that January day of 1979. At that time, it was Volvo—not Sweden—that I was fighting for. But nonetheless, I thought the Norway deal was a good way of helping Sweden expand in Norway when they had more or less given up. It was something that would have benefited so many, in so many ways. I felt very disappointed in my country, and it brought up some of those latent feelings of unease that I’d first experienced as a child during the war.

Chapter 9 – Organization On Davos

     With its soaring popularity, Davos became increasingly elite, almost grotesquely so. Today, Davos is a supreme status symbol—it is a conference where “everyone who is anyone” attends, a reputation so widely known and accepted that Donald Trump felt it necessary to show up in 2018, lest the world suspect he did not occupy the top tier of all elites.Exclusively elite organizations are unsurprisingly distanced from the reality of life for most people. They are also more prone to the idea that the have-nots find themselves in that position through a flawed character or poor decision-making. As Nigerian LGBT advocate Adebisi Ademola Alimi wrote in a 2017 article for the Independent, “Arriving in Davos, it was very clear to me from day one that 90 percent [of the people] there are disconnected from the people of the world they are trying to save and, frankly, [are] more interested in proving to each other their own worth.” For the average or even above-average person, the exorbitant price of admission is simply prohibitive. WEF membership and a basic-level entry ticket to the Davos event are a staggering $70,000, and 80 percent of attendants are white men. To maintain its ultra-elite reputation, Davos will likely become more expensive in the future, not less. Given its trajectory, it is hard to imagine how any substantive and beneficial program for the masses could possibly come of a symposium that is effectively acting as a forum for the wealthiest citizens of the world to assert their status. At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t believe that any organization can independently endure in keeping with the vision of the individuals who founded it. There must be active and consistent input by directors or formally appointed supervisors to safeguard the original vision, and to prevent the organization from veering off course. The Davos vision is described on its website: “The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance. Moral and intellectual integrity is at the heart of everything it does.” In reality, I think this institution has come to the point where it is governed by one thing: money. Today, Davos overshadows its own organizational body of the World Economic Forum, like the tail that wags the dog. In a 2012 New Yorker article, Nick Paumgarten writes, “Today, the W.E.F., with lavish headquarters overlooking Lake Geneva, has more than four hundred employees, who churn out reports and convene conferences around the world. You get the sense that they sometimes regret the attention paid to Davos, and even to Schwab. ‘Davos is less and less important to the organization,’ Adrian Monck, the W.E.F.’s media director, told me. ‘It’s no longer the best example of what we can do.’”

Chapter 10 – Integrity, Donald Trump

     The revered American three-branch democracy with its system of checks and balances and its constitutional core has often been seen as infallible. Within months, in actions including a series of executive orders, a barrage of statements and claims, unrelenting streams of blatant lies in interviews, speeches, and tweets, Trump established that he intended to simply bypass both Congress and his own staff and do, say, and order more or less whatever he wanted (preferences and intentions that often changed from one extreme to the other and back again). He then reinforced his own actions with blatant lies that began with his insistence that the crowd at his inauguration was a record-setting 1.5 million, when it is plainly evident that only 250,000 attended.

     In American politics, honesty and character are closely scrutinized. For many a politician, a single bald-faced lie or character lapse has been enough to scuttle a career. Americans were completely unprepared to deal with a leader who lies on a daily basis, displaying the egregious levels of duplicity whilst simultaneously laying siege to the free press and the right of free speech. It is a tragic caricature of what a president can do. But somehow, his hold on power is sufficiently strong that his GOP colleagues, with a very few exceptions, refused to revolt or even to speak out against him.

     Donald Trump, who has no moral compass and operates with a severely limited understanding of facts, has nonetheless managed to acquire leadership power and hold on to it. What has paralyzed the country on a mass basis is our very basic inability to handle the kind of sustained and unapologetic dishonesty he has unleashed. When a public figure is caught in a lie, we cannot see beyond it, and usually it is a foregone conclusion that the individual caught in that lie will step down. This American president’s behavior has been different—he neither feels nor displays any sense of embarrassment or shame when faced with evidence that he has said something untrue. This is akin to being an otherwise below average athlete who happens to be impervious to physical pain. With no reluctance to being caught in lies, he has been able to continue unimpeded. If the equation for an exceptionally great leader is (as I’ve said) integrity plus vision multiplied by communication that disseminates the value of ethics, current events demonstrate an inverse version of this equation for an exceptionally dangerous leader: lack of integrity and tunnel vision multiplied by communication that disseminates the worthlessness of ethics. When an individual who does not experience or acknowledge shame acquires power, the capacity for destruction is almost unlimited.