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Virtu, Virtue, and Success
T
HE RU 486 DECISION
represents the most complex
type of defining moment. Edouard Sakiz, the chairman of
Roussel-Uclaf, had to choose among many compelling re-
sponsibilities: to his conscience, shareholders, employees, women,
physicians, scientists, government health agencies, and—in the
minds of his vigilant, well-organized critics—to the unborn. All
these right-versus-right tradeoffs converged on Sakiz’s desk.
At the same time, the RU 486 decision was a defining moment for
Sakiz personally. He had responsibilities as a physician, a scientist, a
manager, a shareholder’s agent, a citizen, and a family member.
Like Steve Lewis and Peter Adario, Sakiz’s actions would indicate
which of these responsibilities had the deepest roots in his life.
The decision would likely be Sakiz’s legacy as an executive, as a
medical researcher, and perhaps as a human being. In Nietzsche’s
terms, it would define ‘‘his way.’’
The RU 486 decision would also be a defining moment for
Roussel-Uclaf. Within the company, there was passionate disagree-
ment on what its commitment to ‘‘the service of Life’’ meant in this
case. Some believed the company was morally obligated to
104
Virtu, Virtue, and Success 105
introduce the drug; some employees were circulating letters encour-
aging others to become ‘‘conscientious objectors’’ to the drug; others
feared the political vortex into which the company was being drawn.
Even the executive committee was split: two members favored
introducing RU 486 and two opposed it. Everyone was watching
Sakiz intently. His actions would be decisive, for RU 486 and for
the company.
The contest of interpretations within Roussel-Uclaf parallels
Peter Adario’s battle with Lisa Walters, albeit on a much larger and
more complex scale, because Sakiz was also engaged in a high-
stakes power struggle involving his boss and his subordinates. While
the management board of Hoechst, the 55 percent owner of Rous-
sel-Uclaf, was split on RU 486, its chairman was a Roman Catholic
who opposed abortion in general and RU 486 in particular. At the
same time, two of the executives who reported to Sakiz also opposed
introducing the drug. Sakiz, like Peter Adario, could get caught in
the middle.
Sakiz’s decision on RU 486 would be a defining moment in a
third important sense. It would be a critical juncture in the long
process that would define his company’s role in society and its
relationships with its many stakeholders. Government bodies, the
media, and interest groups would all react to whatever the company
did. Their reactions would in turn influence the company’s ability
to carry out its decisions—on RU 486 and, in years to come, on
other products. Some of Roussel-Uclaf’s stakeholders were friendly,
others were hostile. Each had its own agenda. Hence, Sakiz could
not unilaterally define his company’s role in society. It would emerge
over time from the company’s dealings—cooperative as well as
adversarial—with many other parties.
Sakiz’s decision was extraordinarily complex. He would be re-
vealing, testing, and in some ways shaping his own ethics. Like
Steve Lewis, Sakiz had to make a defining personal choice, one
that would form an important part of his life and his career.
At the same time, his decision would define some of the basic
values of his organization, as well as its relationships with its
stakeholders.
106 D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
‘‘
S
USPENDING
D
ISTRIBUTION’’
In late October 1988, a month after the French government approved
RU 486, Sakiz and the executive committee of Roussel-Uclaf made
their decision. The New York Times described the decision in these
words:
At an October 21 meeting, Sakiz surprised members of the management
committee by calling for a discussion of RU
486. There, in Roussel-
Uclaf’s ultra-modern board room, the pill’s longstanding opponents repeated
their objections: RU
486 could spark a painful boycott, it was hurting
employee morale, management was devoting too much of its energy to
defending itself in this controversy. Finally, it would never be hugely
profitable, because much would be sold on cost basis to the Third World.
After two hours, Sakiz again stunned the committee by calling for a vote.
When he raised his own hand in favor of suspending distribution of RU
486, it was clear that the pill was doomed.
1
In an interview after the vote, Sakiz said, ‘‘We have a responsibility
in managing a company. But if I were a lone scientist, I would have
acted differently.’’
2
The company informed its employees of the decision on October
25. The next day, Roussel-Uclaf announced publicly that ‘‘it was
suspending distribution of the drug because of pressure from anti-
abortion groups.’’ A Roussel-Uclaf official explained, ‘‘The pressure
groups in the United States are very powerful, maybe even more so
than in France. We see that in the American presidential campaign
abortion is a major subject of debate, but in France people speak
less and less of it.’’
3
The company’s decision, and Sakiz’s role in it, sparked astonish-
ment and anger. The company and its leadership, critics charged,
had doomed a promising public health tool and set an example of
cowardice. For example, a colleague and friend of Sakiz’s, Dr.
Etienne-Emile Baulieu, whose research had been crucial to devel-
oping RU 486, called the decision ‘‘morally scandalous’’ and accused
Sakiz of caving in to pressure. Other critics suggested sarcastically
Virtu, Virtue, and Success 107
that the company’s decision was no surprise, because Roussel-Uclaf
had decided, in the face of controversy during the 1960s, not to
produce contraceptive pills.
Three days after Roussel-Uclaf announced that it would suspend
distribution, the French minister of health summoned Roussel-Uclaf’s
vice chairman to his office and said that, if the company did not
resume distribution, the government would transfer the patent to a
company that would. (Under French intellectual property law, the
government could take a patent from one company and give it to
another if this served the national interest.) After the meeting with
the minister of health, Roussel-Uclaf announced that it would distrib-
ute RU 486 after all.
These events suggest that the RU 486 episode was something
considerably less than a profile in courage. In his defining moment,
Edouard Sakiz seems to have protected his job by sacrificing his
convictions. There was, to be sure, strong opposition to RU 486,
both inside and outside his company, but Sakiz made no effort to
mobilize and lead his allies. He gave up without a fight. As a defining
moment for the company, Sakiz’s message seemed to place political
caution and returns to shareholders above research and ‘‘the service
of Life.’’
W
HAT
I
S
S
UCCESS
?
Machiavelli would have shaken his head in dismay at these criticisms.
They would have sounded superficial, sentimental, and naive to him.
Of the critics who called Sakiz a failure, he would have asked, ‘‘Just
what is success?’’ Machiavelli had a clear answer to this question,
one that would have led him to judge Sakiz in a different light.
Machiavelli celebrated secure, far-sighted rulers who presided
over prosperous, stable, peaceful states. They provided his image
and ideal of success. One of Machiavelli’s foremost contemporary
observers, Sir Isaiah Berlin, wrote that
Like the Roman writers whose ideals were constantly before his mind, like
Cicero and Livy, Machiavelli believed that what men—at any rate superior
men—sought was the fulfillment and the glory that come from the creation
108 D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
and maintenance by common endeavor of a strong and well-governed social
whole.
4
But how does a leader accomplish this? Machiavelli’s answer is
fascinating and acutely relevant to turbulent times. It is also complex
and therefore easily misinterpreted. Elizabethan dramatists, for exam-
ple, selected Machiavelli’s most alarming precepts to create the image
of the ‘‘murd’rous Machiavel.’’ Many others have followed their exam-
ple. But the simple, one-sided Machiavelli would not have intrigued
so many powerful minds for more than four centuries. Worse, the
standard stereotype ignores important aspects of Machiavelli’s writ-
ings. He did not condemn morality or Christianity. In fact, he writes
explicitly that deception, betrayal, and murder are no cause for glory,
and the princes he admired were hardly narrow, self-interested figures
grasping at power.
Machiavelli’s central insight was that successful leaders have to
follow a special ethical code, one that differs from their private
morality and from Judeo-Christian ethics. ‘‘Public life,’’ in Isaiah
Berlin’s words, ‘‘has its own morality.’’
5
He explains Machiavelli’s
view with an analogy:
To be a physician is to be a professional, ready to burn, to cauterise, to
amputate; if that is what the disease requires, then to stop half-way because
of personal qualms, or some rule unrelated to your art and its technique,
is a sign of muddle and weakness, and will always give you the worst
of both worlds....There is more than one world, and more than one
set of virtues: confusion between them is disastrous.
6
Virtu was Machiavelli’s word for the moral code of public life.
The word is not an antiquated version of virtue, for it means some-
thing quite different. Virtu is a combination of vigor, confidence,
imagination, shrewdness, boldness, practical skill, personal force,
determination, and self-discipline. Machiavelli acknowledges with-
out hesitation that virtu would be irrelevant if everyone were virtuous
and cooperative, but that was not his experience. One authority on
Machiavelli’s era writes, ‘‘Cities were torn by feud and vendetta....
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