Perspective
From Wayne Reaud

TRIAL ATTORNEY

I’m a trial lawyer, and this book could put me out of business. Nobody would be happier about it than me.

Over the past 30 years, I have taken some of America’s biggest corporations to court, calling them to task for behavior that threatened people’s health and livelihoods. From asbestos makers to tobacco purveyors to computer manufacturers, I have fought to make big companies more accountable in their business dealings.

Ordinarily, you would not expect a trial lawyer to be particularly close with the CEO of a big corporation. So when people hear that Jon Huntsman and I are good friends, and have been for 15 years, they tend to scratch their heads. In the ecology of the business world, aren’t we natural enemies? Don’t our respective jobs put us at odds with each other? The answer to both questions is no. And the reason is simple: Jon Huntsman is not your average CEO.

Jon is a true rarity in the corporate world: a hugely successful entrepreneur whose conscience is as sharp as his business sense, whose word is known as an unbreakable bond. From his very first job, picking potatoes in rural Idaho at age eight, to his current position of running one of the world’s largest chemical companies, he has always put ethical concerns on equal, if not greater, footing than his business concerns.

I could give you a laundry list of things Jon has done—donating record-setting amounts to cancer treatment and research, tithing to his church, giving millions to colleges and universities—but that still wouldn’t give you a clear idea of why he’s so unusual. His ethics go far deeper than simply making donations and glad-handing for good causes. They are at the core of his being. They are, for him, a way of life.

In Plato’s seminal work, The Republic, he gives us the notion of the ideal leader: the “philosopherking.” This is the man who possesses the perfect marriage of a philosophic mind and an ability to lead. As Plato wrote: “I need no longer hesitate to say that we must make our guardians philosophers. The necessary combination of qualities is extremely rare. Our test must be thorough, for the soul must be trained up by the pursuit of all kinds of knowledge to the capacity for the pursuit of the highest—higher than justice and wisdom—the idea of the good.”

Jon Huntsman has pursued “the idea of the good” all his life and, as his corporate track record underscores, he’s more than able to lead. But the true test of ethics comes not when a person gives with nothing to lose. It comes when he gives with everything to lose. That’s why Jon Huntsman is the right man to do this book. And there’s no question that he’s doing it at just the right time. In this age of Enron, Tyco, insider-trading scandals, and rampant corporate malfeasance, we need Jon Huntsman’s voice and leadership more than ever.

I hope Jon’s book will remind us all that, like him, you can do well and do good at the same time. As a trial lawyer, I want every businessperson in America to read this book and take to heart Jon’s example. Maybe then my fellow trial lawyers and I would have nothing left to do.

There’s nothing I’d like better.