Cheating is par for CEOs' course
By Del Jones
USA Today
Chad Struer has played golf with almost 20 Fortune 500 CEOs. One in three cheats, he says.
Struer finds that rather peculiar because those same CEOs hire him and his Salinas, Calif., company, USA Diligence, to investigate the honesty of startup companies so the CEOs can decide whether to invest.
One CEO, who Struer calls "good-hearted," so habitually shaves strokes that he consistently scores in the mid-80s when it is obvious he would never break 100. Another, in the middle of a frustrating round, intentionally drove his cart over Struer's ball.
"They're used to having things their way," Struer says. "He who holds the gold makes the rules."
This might pass unnoticed in normal times, but in these post-Enron days of rampant skullduggery and the taking of the Fifth Amendment, it may be fair to wonder whether golf cheating is another symptom of an anything-goes mentality.
Moreover, if a survey being released today is any indicator, Struer might be low in his estimate of one in three cheating. In that survey, commissioned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts, 82 percent of 401 high-ranking corporate executives admit to being less than honest on the golf course.
The margin of error in the survey is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Separately, a dozen CEOs interviewed by USA Today in the past month say they personally bend the rules sometimes, but they say they witness other CEOs doing it constantly. The other guys improve their lies, hit do-over shots (called mulligans), seem to forget the whiff or the missed 3-foot putt, kick their balls out of the rough or kick their opponent's balls into the sand.
"Do I cheat? No," says Ken Winans, CEO of his own investment-research firm in Mill Valley, Calif., who sometimes breaks 100. But then he recalls intentionally stepping on a friend's ball. "One time a guy poured beer on a ball to make it sticky. It's guerrilla warfare with certain people."
While the score may not matter in a friendly game of golf, executive golf often involves wagering, meaning that more than bragging rights are at stake. Eighty-seven percent of executives wager on golf, according to the Starwood survey. When asked what was the biggest bet they ever made on golf, the average was $589. For executives making more than $250,000 a year, the figure jumped to $1,947.
Jeff Harp, former president of Summit National Bank in Fort Worth, says he has declined a loan or two after seeing CEOs cheat on the course. Companies borrow money for two reasons, he says. Either they have an opportunity, or they have trouble. It's up to the lender to get at the truth, and Harp says he is dumbfounded when CEOs cheat just as he is weighing their honesty.
"When you see what they'll do for a $10 bet, it makes you wonder what they'd do on a million-dollar loan," Harp says.
The most blatant cheating is among duffers. No one is going to turn in a scorecard with a 130, even though there are many who are that bad, says Brian Sroub, former CEO of Chipshot.com and now CEO of Aqui in Cupertino, Calif. "Cheating is very much a part of the journey of golf," he says, and those with the highest scores have the most opportunity to shave strokes.
"I suspect that CEOs as a class of people have a need to appear competent at a lot of things," says Tim O'Mara, a collegiate golfer who once considered going pro and maintains a four handicap as CEO of MountainZone.com in Seattle.
Starwood CEO and golfer Barry Sternlicht says he doesn't see the survey as an indictment of executive character. Every foursome comes to a silent understanding about the rules of the round, he says.
When it's not tournament golf, it would be seen as poor etiquette not to concede short putts to opponents or grant a mulligan or two. It's often simple courtesy to fill in the score of another player and forget a stroke.
"Aren't CEOs getting picked on enough these days?" asks an e-mail from Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, once named by Golf Digest magazine as the CEO with the lowest handicap: 3 (compared with an average 14 handicap reported by executives in the Starwood survey). McNealy says he never sees other CEOs cheat.
"This is a social thing, not a corporate report card," Sternlicht says.
He says that explains some very contradictory responses in the survey. Eighty-two percent of executive golfers say they under-count strokes, improve their lie, or participate in other activities considered cheating. Yet when asked in a separate question if they are honest at golf, 99 percent said they are. Another 82 percent say they hate it when others cheat. Two additional questions found that while 67 percent believe that a person who cheats at golf would probably cheat at business, 99 percent say they are personally honest at business.
The disconnect doesn't surprise Ken Siegel, an organizational psychologist who has been interviewing executives for 25 years. He says executives who lie do not consider themselves liars. It's not unlike all the CEOs who say their biggest strength is working with people, when their subordinates almost always say it's their greatest weakness.
"They lose the ability to distinguish what is honest and what is not," Siegel says. "Lies are getting bigger and bigger. We're seeing this played out everywhere now, from Tyco to Enron."
