CEO, Psychopath

Reading this article in Fast Company, I suddenly realized that as a CEO, I am very likely a psychopath.

No, really.

Apparently you can't be a CEO without being a psychopath, at least if you believe the authors of the article. Many corporations are apparently also clinically psychopathic (whatever that might mean when applied to a legal construct).

Can we do a quick reality check?

To begin with, "psychopath" is a clinical diagnosis, and making the diagnosis is supposed to require a two-hour interview with a trained clinician. I seriously doubt that anyone involved in the article did much more than rely on media reports of bad behavior for most of their "diagnoses."

But even assuming that the diagnoses are correct, something like two percent of the population are psychopaths (which is basically defined as someone who utterly lacks empathy for others but fakes it well). If there are 2,000 companies in the U.S. of reasonable size--probably a low estimate depending on your definition of "reasonable size"--then there are 2,000 CEOs of good-sized companies around, and you would expect to find around 40 clinical psychopaths among that group even if they mirrored the population as a whole.

Coming up with a handful of examples is hardly proof that CEOs are more likely to be psychopaths.

But even stranger is the idea of "corporate psychopathy," the notion that corporations can be clinical psychopaths. Corporations are legal constructs, groups of people working towards some common goal, so it is hard to see how a corporation can exhibit empathy (or any other emotional state) to begin with, much less some deranged variant.

The idea that corporations are inherently psychopathic is even odder. That's like saying V.W. Beetles are inherently friendly, or kindergarden classes are inherently happy. They may exhibit outward signs that we would associate with friendliness or happiness, but the car itself, or the class itself does not have an emotional state (even if kindergardeners are, on average, happier than the population as a whole).

But for the sake of argument, let's accept the idea that a corporation could possibly exhibit something like what we would call the emotional disorder of psychopathy. You can certainly cite examples of companies which behave badly, but I can cite counterexamples of companies which behave very well.

For example: Target and General Mills, both of which give 5% of pretax profits to charity (and actively encourage volunteer work by employees). Medtronic, which places more emphasis on saving lives than making money (though the company does both very well). Costco, which pays its employees above-market wages despite pressure from competition and Wall Street. And I could go on. These are all big companies which have done well by doing good.

Companies are not inherently good or evil: they are collections of people working toward some common goal, and their actions are determined by the collective actions of all the people in the company.

So if you're going to make a claim like "Corporations are inherently psychopathic," or the more nuanced "Corporations tend to exhibit behavior typical of psychopathy in people," or even the clinically testable "CEOs are more likely to be psychopaths than the population at large," you should back that claim with actual hard research, not anecdotes and hand-waving. Otherwise you're just blowing hot air.

Meanwhile, I need to go work on my evil laugh.