Ethics, Street Smarts Bring Business Success, CEOs Say

When it comes to business success, going to college and making good grades may not be as important as a person’s integrity.

Looking a person in the eye, having a firm handshake and being trustworthy are characteristics that will land a person a good job and help him keep it.

That’s according to three CEOs from Arkansas who participated in the fourth annual Business Giants Forum on Feb. 20 at the University of Arkansas’ Sam Walton College of Business in Fayetteville.

“You can work for years building relationships with customers, but you can see that destroyed in five minutes if you don’t do what’s right by the customers,” said Charles D. Morgan, company leader of Acxiom Corp. of Little Rock, a “global leader in customer data integration.”

“Whatever your ethical behavior is now, that is what you are going to carry forward,” Morgan told the crowd of about 200 students in the auditorium of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development. “If you have an ethical flaw as a student, you probably need to work on it pretty hard.”

Patricia P. Upton, president and CEO of Aromatique Inc. of Heber Springs, echoed Morgan’s statements about trust.

“If you have people you don’t trust in your company, you need to tell them to hit the door,” she said.

“You may get by with something unethical for a short period of time,” Upton said, “but believe me, you won’t get by with it for long.”

“Just ask the Enron people,” Morgan quipped.

Upton was Miss University of Arkansas in 1960. She said she never earned a bachelor’s degree, but college helped her learn how to interact with people and that made her a better business person.

Upton said she “studied people” while at the UA. Morgan referred to it as “street smarts.”

“I came up here for two years, and I didn’t buy books,” Upton said. “I got my degree at the student union … There are other ways to learn. Don’t tell anybody you’re dumb because you could be working for them someday. Study hard and work hard, but everything is not in books.”

Aromatique manufactures scented potpourri and other home décor items.

Morgan seemed primarily to be concerned with a job applicant’s work accomplishments.

“I really look at the results a person has had,” he said. “[I want] no B.S. [I want] directness and honesty about things.”

“I’m more concerned about the results of what an individual has done, not their transcript,” said Tommy Boyer, CEO of Micro Images of Lubbock, Texas, referring to college grades.

Boyer graduated in 1964 from the UA in Fayetteville, where he was on the Razorbacks basketball team. He went to work as a salesman for Eastman Kodak Co. that year and remained with that company for 26 years until he purchased Micro Images in 1990, taking about 30 Kodak employees with him.

“I went from a position of controlling my own destiny to buying a company where everybody else controls my destiny,” he said, adding that the feeling was “uncomfortable” at first.

But, Boyer said, he has hired good people he can trust.

Morgan, who graduated from the UA in 1966, said he returned to his alma mater to interview potential employees once, and a student said, “I made Cs and Ds at this university, but I’ll work so hard for you, you’ll never regret hiring me.”

“So, I said, ‘You’re hired,'” Morgan recalls. He said the student was right.

Upton said business people knew the economy was going south before September 11, but the terrorism made it worse.

Morgan, who has been with Acxiom since 1972, said there have been pay cuts and layoffs at the company as a result of the economic slowdown.