Paul Levy is CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Massachusetts. What sets him apart from other CEOs blogging today is that he has thoroughly embraced the ideas of transparency and authenticity. He writes a blog called, Running a Hospital and does so with great skill.
Shel Holtz’s article, “A Clear Case For Transparency,” describes one example of his frankness. In one post Levy asks the one question you would never expect to hear from a CEO, “Do I get paid too much?”. He actually outlined on the blog how much he was making and a how the board of directors had come to this sum. While his salary is a matter of public record, it is refreshing to see a CEO who is willing to raise the topic himself and offer it up for discussion. While there were a wide range of comments to this post, most people were just impressed that he was willing to talk about it.
Which brings me to the point that candidness is an important part of transparency. Levy’s salary was already public knowledge. But the way in which he handled the topic himself, was impressive. It is not enough for companies to put important information out there to their stakeholders, the delivery is just as important. You could put up salary information, but if it is confusingly organized, or poorly explained, how is this helpful to stakeholders?
By explaining how the decision was made for his salary, Levy gave stakeholders a clear understanding of where the money was going and why. By opening this up as a topic of discussion on his blog, he is truly transparent. Looking at his blog as a whole, the sheer magnitude of posts he writes a month and the candid way he writes is very impressive. CEOs should use his blog as an example to look at, if they are thinking about blogging, or taking their blog to the next level.
I was fascinated by this blog. I recently watched the feature film “Confessions of a Shopaholic” and in this film, the protagonist acts as a financial advisor to a financial magazine (despite being $16,000 in debt) that makes finance easy to understand to the “normal American”. The protagonist goes to a conference and asks “all the hard questions” in an attempt to expose the truth about corporate executives’ salaries. I equate the protagonist with the author of this blog because I feel like they both are asking “all the hard questions” while making it easy for an uneducated reader like myself to understand. Keep up the good work!
I feel that transparency within a corporation is extremely important to maintain. Especially in this case where it was about a hospital and its success depends very much on the trust it has with its patients. So I find it really interesting to hear that a CEO was opening starting a discussion on how much he makes and why especially since it is very touchy topic in today’s current economic state. It really shows that the CEO is trying to establish a mutual trust with his stakeholders but being honest about how much he makes. If I was a stakeholder it would give me a lot more confidence in how the hospital is run because if the CEO is willingly to discuss his salary then he is obviously going to be more open about the policies and practices of the hotel.
[...] to know. If you think it is something relevant to them you can bring it up on your blog (like CEO Paul Levy did about his salary). It also needs to be in clear language that they will be able to [...]