New york city where i met and interviewed a stranger that i track down on facebook. I have learned more than i ever thought i was capable of learning. I have met people i never would have met, and i have gotten to do a lot of relief on things like being here tonight. This is such an honor for me on my campus with my colleagues and students and former students. It is a real pleasure to be here, and im thrilled. All of these good things happen to me because i did one small fang, i asked question. Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you dont know what to do next . You have questions that you dont have answers. This could be when your boss gets you a project that you are responsible to complete. Youre not sure what to do or an assignment to your professor gives you and your little lost and not sure what the first up with the next step should be. Anyone ever been in a situation . There have been many, many, many times. Why is it so difficult for us to ask questions . Does anyone else other than me ask questions . I hate to ask for help. Selfesteem problems and that i dont think i am worthy of someone elses time. When you ask questions of the people your asking for the most valuable resources, their time, knowledge, skill. And so it feels like an imposition. I dont know if that is why i and others have a difficult time asking questions and asking for help. I dont know if it is because we feel the need to be polite and it feels impolite to ask others to help us when we are having difficulty. And sometimes i wonder if it might be arrogance. You have heard the old adage, if you want something done right doityourself. So we think we can figure it out all by ourselves. We dont need anyone and also to help. And i am probably one of the worst offenders in this category i dont like to ask for help. I rarely do it. In this case i did reach out and asked a simple question. And it led to the largest and most significant accomplishment in my professional career thus far. And it has been work that i am proud of and throw that i have had a chance to work on. Its a very important goal in my career and a very enriching experience. Have you ever had a goal . You could see it baton not get there. And i think that that is a situation that we all find ourselves in in either small or large waves, and our lives and careers. Sometimes when we get there it can be paralyzing. You dont know what to do next. And so you stop. I think it is easy to resort to the scarlet ohara method of problemsolving. We stop. I wonder how many great ideas have ended at this stage. A great idea but dont know what to do with it, dont know what to do next. And so what ive learned over the past three years. The process of researching and writing are some valuable lessons that i think are applicable and usable by everyone in helping to get you to the goals that you set for yourself and helping you achieve what you want to achieve for yourself. That is what i want to share with you tonight, what i have learned about asking questions, how fast, when to ask, who to ask. I was sure that as a chilly about the process of writing my book. I started working on this project because i had some nagging questions about a case study in my Business Ethics course given i have been teaching a case study about the International Corporate scandals as the fall of 2005 which is when i began in the college of business here. My first semester talking about the International Corporate scandal. At the time the criminal trial related to that scandal had just ended in the summer. The executives who were charged and convicted have yet to be sentenced. I have been talking about this case from the beginning. For anyone in this room knows a former student of mine you know why often have students presented the case studies and outclasses, not because i am lazy. It is good for you to do that. And so for a few years i had students presenting the corporate scandal case study. And it really focuses on the former ceo, manned by the name of Dennis Kozlowski. So the students that present the case study to a great job. I was finding myself every semester spending 30 or 40 minutes after students presented saying, i dont really understand this case. With the facts that were available in the textbook and other resources i kept looking and and looking at it. And there would be other Major Corporate scandals that i could make sense of what went wrong, or the bad decisions were made. But in the scandal i just could not make sense of it. On its face adjusted not make sense to me. So eventually because i found myself real explaining or explaining that i did not understand it after the students groups presented a case study had decided to take the case to the back and do it myself every semester so that i could say i dont understand it and said of students. And so this was a case that night get me for many years. A little background about the case. Tyco international began as a small New Hampshire company in 1960 doing some on glamorous types of work like electronics, no offense to anyone in the room who is in these areas of business or industry, electronics, eventually rans the you might know like adt security systems, brolly the most wellknown subsidiary. The company was a small company, grew somewhat from its beginnings. And there was a man who became the ceo. The most closely associated person. You might have heard of him. He has been covered to broadly by the media. You pro with if you know of his name you probably are most familiar with the fact that he bought a 6,000 shower curtain and through a 2 Million Birthday Party for his then wife for 40th birthday on the island of sardinian just off of italy. He flew Jimmy Buffett to the party. 250,000 if he as a looking in that. So these are the facts that most people know. But theyre is a lot more significant facts that help us better understand what happened in this case. Kozlowski grew up in a very modest background, newark, new jersey. As parents did not have a college education, neither is mother or father. He was a firstgeneration college graduate. He grew up in a four room apartment. He shared a bedroom with his two younger sisters. They shared a bed and decide on a cot. He worked from the time that he was a child delivering newspapers and he worked throughout his life, never stopped working until you went to prison. And then he actually worked in prison, but thats a different kind of job. He went to college at seton hall university, live at home with his parents with some of our students here can relate to, lived with his parents, paid his own way through college, worked in a pharmacy and played guitar and a band for several years which is how he paid all of his College Expenses including room and board to his parents. And he graduated with a bachelors degree in accounting in 1968. So it sounds like he intended to have a career in business, major in accounting. He really did not want a career in business. He wanted to be a pilot. In fact, he wanted to fly jets in the military in vietnam, 1968 when he graduated from college. The United States is involved in a war in vietnam. Kozlowski try to join all the arms of the military and was turned down by all of them for a variety of reasons. To be a pilot and the air force and navy, as i said was not good enough. The army would not taken because of flat feet. So its a guy trying to get into the military during the war and they would not taken. So right after college she went to arizona to do pilot training. He did that for almost a year. When he finally figured out he was never going to get into the military and go to vietnam he decided he did not want to be a commercial pilot. Back to as parents home in newark. Move back in with them and look for a job. The attic couple of jobs in new york city with companies they might have heard of, smith corona for those of you remember what typewriters. And in 1975 when he was 20 years old at hunter cam looking for an and told him about a Company Called tyco. He went and interviewed with the ceo and he was hired as an internal auditor, lowlevel. He remembered what the starting salary was because the sea of said his salary by his age. Twenty years old to the sea of paid and 28,000. And he started with tyco, lowest levels working his way up the ranks. He was the hardest working guys in the company. He is one of these people who naturally work 18 hour day six of seven days a week for decades he was very successful. He ultimately in 1989 was named chief operating officer, ceo and was given a spot on the board of directors. And in 1992, lost the was named the ceo. When he joined the company in 1975 tyco had annual revenue of 20 million. By the time he finished his decade s ceo in 2002 the company had 40 billion in annual revenue. And most of that growth happen during the decade that tyco was undercut lost his. So he was known as a very successful manager, started receiving calls lot of media attention, attention from analysts of people on the streets or of the way seger the company was by acquiring other companies. He did so aggressively and frequently. During this ten years that he was this deal he acquired about 1,000 companies. Under the leadership ended pretty abruptly. Now if you remember the 1990s, the strongest economy in history for almost a decade. It was the decade that he was a ceo so he got to grow the economy during an economic boom. Its not as bad as other companies that suffered somewhat in other companies suffered severely. Then we had the terrorist attacks in september of 2001 and that was a devastating blow to the economy as well. On top of this, there was a wave of scandals that began at the end of 2001 when enron began bankruptcy and at the time it was the largest bankruptcy in history. I dont know if you remember the story of enron, but it was tens of thousands of employees lost their jobs, tens of thousands of retirees lost hairpin turns in a few days time. People were angry, upset, suspicious. All the large corporations and their theaters. After enron was worldcom declaring bankruptcy surpassing the size of the bankruptcy and in the same time frame you might recall that Martha Stewart faced criminal charges in the same six month period. So the environment is hostile for the large corporations and the leaders and especially for corporations that have experienced very rapid growth when people were suspicious and that there was extra scrutiny for the company like tyco. They just made a 10 billiondollar acquisition in may the 2001 and because of all of the problems with the economy and the corporate scandals, the Credit Rating drops, the acquisition was going very poorly and they had a stellar record of having them go well. This one was going badly and they knew almost immediately that they would have to spin off the company of the board of boaf directors isnt happy about that and shareholders are not happy about that. That. There began to be internal disagreements between members of the board o board of directors e board of management. I strongly believe that things had been going well. The price is up instead of down. When people are under pressure it tends to be some conflicts. As i said the price was down for the first time in a long time and there have bee had been a gt decade everyone was happy. Under the leadership of tyco experienced 40 quarters of significant growth. So everyone is happy and everyone thought he could do no wrong and the board of directors kept saying please do what youre doing anyouare doing ands perfect storm of 2002, that ended abruptly and the big blow happy and in june of 2002 when he was charged with evading sales tax on the purchase of pieces of art. In new york city if you buy the goods outside of the city you have to pay 8 sales tax. The Manhattan District Attorney prosecutor in new york city found out that many people were buying expensive art bringing it in to pay a sales tax so they were watching the galleries and large purchases and happened to see where the sales tax wasnt paid in to solve the name that the prosecutor recognized so this was someone that had been on magazine covers and had a presence in new yor new york cid the so they brought the sales tax charges against kozlowski. Think about when you make a purchaspurchase do you submit ts tax to the state for everything you buy . The vendor submits the taxing authority. You are told that the Purchase Price is in the u. S. Whom they are submitted to the state. That is what he thought about his art when he was told of the Purchase Price. The gallery or the art agency submitted the sales tax when in fact the sales tax was never submitted. The obvious thing to do would have been to charge the agent for the gallery. But he gave them in the nab and instead went after the highprofile chairman and ceo of a large multinational corporation. Littleknown fact almost anyone that knows something about the case be leads that he is in prison for evading taxes. Not true. The charges were dropped by a judge later. There is no crime for the sales tax so the prosecutor overstepped a bit on the indictment and the charges were dropped. However for kozlowski, the damage was already done. Remember things are not going well so as soon as he informed the board of directors he was going to be indicted they found out on a friday and called for direct or is it told them im going to be indicted because he is the ceo of the corporation that has the duty to report this to the board of directors even n though it isnt reported to the property they are of interest to the shareholders. They fired him the day before he was indicted. No innocent until proven guilty. He was out. Shortly after, the company hired an attorney to come in and perform an internal investigation. And in a very short number of weeks, this private attorney found evidence of some serious Crimes Involving the ceo and cfo at the time they and mark swartz. The most was granted larceny. He was accused and convicted of stealing about 100 million from tyco. Most of that was in the form of bonuses. Kozlowski was and to this day continues to be a strong believer in the payforperformance and he thinks the next way to motivate people is incentive pay with no caps. You can have an infinite amount of money depending on your performance. Thats how he paid people in the company and how he was paid. There were executive years when he made over 100 million a year. That is a lot of money. Out of that amount about a Million Dollars was in the salary that was guaranteed. A lot of that was paid because the pay for performance in the company. There was a writein policy about how the bonuses would be calculated. Now these bonus is that he was convicted of stealing were all mathematically correct. The amounts were correct. The problem was the board of directors were supposed to improve those before they were paid to be executed and there was no documentation of the approval of the board and directors across on the stand in the tryou trial and either saidy didnt approve the bonuses or in fact they did not approve the bonuses and that is how kozlowski and the former ceo were convicted. The media was the ceo that turned on him very quickly. New york city is the largest media market in the world and they look for stories and they turned on kozlowski pretty quickly and he was called all kinds of their auditory names like pig and a dennis the menace and he became the face of corporate greed and everything that was wrong with corporate america. Overpaid executives, poor decisionmaking, unethical behavior all the attached. There were two trials. The first one ended in a mistrial after six months. At the second trial lasted five months at the conclusion of which they were convicted of 22 of 23 felony counts against them and sentenced to eight and one third of 25 years in a hardcore state prison not you sometimes hear the federal prisons were white collar criminals servers daily kos served time. Ive been to the prison they serve time and i saw no Tennis Courts were swimming pools. I talked about the case to my students. For a simple reason we look at the mistakes others have made it so we dont make them in the future. This case i kept trying to find out what students should be taking away from the case and what mark swartz did so they wouldnt repeat the mistakes and end up in prison. Seeing one of my former students picked church on the newspaper mugshots where they had gone to prison for unethical behavior, im sure that will never happen. So i had some questions that made it a case of confusing to me. In almost every corporate scandal at that time to this day the charges are almost always brought by federal prosecutors and the esteemed president used to be. And they are tried in federal court. Its federal law. They take a look at it. It is highly unusual for the charges to be put off by a local District Attorney which is what happened in this case. I knew the u. S. Attorneys investigated taiko and Dennis Kozlowski and the federal authorities declined to charge anyone. They didnt see any triangulated coke crimes. They came up with this original indictment about 90 pages, and it read like the script of the Television Show of law and order about the first 50 pages were charges that were the new york state equivalent. They accused kozlowski and swartz of running an enterprise out of the office when they were dropped before the trial but it makes for a very germanic indictment certainly good reading. Interestingly, they charged Robert Morgenthau he was the manhattan da from 74 until he retired at the age of 90 in 2009 and in fact he was the inspiration for the Television Show mall in order. So that was confusing to me. The evidence was confusing to me because nothing was heading. All had been audited by Price Waterhouse cooper. One of the respected counter firms in the world. If the prosecution was presenting evidence and the defense would have used the same evidence. There was no second set of books and employees said they were told to hide or lie anything. So just these circumstances. Another difference between tyco intand the other scandals at the time is that it remained a strong company. Global crossing went bankrupt but tyco remained strong to this day. No one lost pensions so it was a different circumstance that made the case. In january of 2011 i was in my office here on campus putting my syllabus together and i thought i really wish i could figure out what happened here so i was bored that day in my office and the mosat the most random thingi thought i would love to ask Dennis Kozlowski was really happened. So i got online and you can find any piece of information out there somewhere. It looked to see if i could find an address and i found a prison in upstate new york and it said thats where he was at the time so i put together a simple letter, send it to that address and just asked him if he would answer my question and its pretty straightforward. What happened. Stuck it in the mail and really didnt think about it again. I didnt know if he would open an unsolicited piece of mail, put it in the mail and didnt think about it. Three weeks later i walked into the Department Office and the academic coordinator and said you have a letter from a prison in your mailbox. So it was hand written below with a onepage letter from Dennis Kozlowski and in my letter i offered to debate over the telephone or through email. He informed me that he didnt have a luxury as the state of new york so we had to do all the communicating through hand written letters so for several months thats what i did. He had wrote the answers and send them back to me. It became burdensome. Why dont we cover a lot of more facetoface . So i did. I went to the prison which was quite an experience in this process and it was one of those experiences in the middle of nowhere you have to get there early in the morning and for me 6 30 is early in the morning and its very foggy detail on the treelined lane. Its like driving into a horror movie. You know that part of the movie who would go in there why would they do that and thats what i felt like who would go in here when you start driving down the line in t into see the wire in e guard towers and being processed in, hearing the gates behind me which is a new feeling for me going in as a visitor it is disconcerting to hear those shots behind me. Before i went in he could only have visitors on the weekend, saturday and sunday so he set aside a whole weekend. Seven hours on saturday and the seven hours on sunday. It didnt have any other friends or family coming to visit so they decided it just for me. I wasnt allowed to take any notes, no paper and no pencil. I thought this is my only shot to get all of the information i want. I studied for that physics like i was studying for the bar exam. I couldnt have any notes and i needed to know the cases very well. These are the questions i wanted to ask off the top of my head so i sat there for seven hours on saturday, got in my car had a digital recorder and record everything that we talked about. I dont know if you remember the last time that you had a seven hour conversation with someone uninterrupted face to face, seven hours uninterrupted. You can cover a lot of ground with uninterrupted conversation. So it was hard to remember everything we talked about in those hours. But as we talked it was actually kozlowski that discussed i might want to write a book. No one had written a book. There were several written about the corporate scandals and there is one called it the smartest guys in the room that you may have seen the documentary that was based on that book but no one had written a book about kozlowski or the type of scandal so he had been approached by people that he never agreed to cooperate with it they agreed to cooperate with me so this was the first question i asked he agreed which was shocking to me. Why would he agree to work with me . So i began researching. I wrote the book at my kitchen table. My house became covered with all things taiko for about a year and a half the surface was covered with all things taiko to the movie a beautiful mind. I began to look and feel like that. We would sit down and i didnt change out of my pajamas for two or three days in a row. It was a bit frightening especially for my family that had to survive that. Really got into it and because i know hes controversial, my research was meticulous and i wanted to make sure i got it right which was my primary objective. I wanted it to be accurate. My first draft of the manuscript i sent to the publisher had almost 1500 notes because i wanted the information to be sited so the reader could see where i got my information from because again, i just wanted it to be the true story. Throughout this process, the crazy years i like to call it i was eligible for sabbatical at that time. From the university of and head and i couldnt have completed. I simply couldnt have done it. It was a godsend for me and a great benefit of being a faculty member and its a luxury tax orr an employee or give you to work on a special project. Its a really wonderful benefit. So i worked between 15 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week for months. I have thousands of documents and the transcripts that totaled more than 28,000 pages. I spoke to anyone i could think of who might be able to get the information that talked about the person i met in the corner cafe who i tracked down on facebook and he was before man of the jury that convicted him. He was 20yearsold during the five months that he served as the foreman. I became a good private investigator and i talked to him and everyone and it surprised me over and over when i asked people to talk with me they agreed. I was shocked how willing people were to help me out when i asked for documents and evidence during the trial they gave it to me. So i kept asking. So heres what i learned about asking people for questions asking people for information to help me. Its important how you ask. First big important thing to remember, do your homework before you ask area dont expect the person youre asking to do the work for you. You have to know what youre asking for and what youre talking about. And i did that. I made sure i was prepared before i asked anyone to help me. Be prepared before you ask. Be polite. And i know this may be seems simplistic ai honestly be beaten any of these people spoke to me because i asked them professionally, politely, and here is my secret weapon. Hand written note. I think everyone with a handwritten note. I know its antiquated that especially in the day of email im telling you if you go to a Job Interview send a handwritten note afterwards. If someone helps you out in your career and gives you information you need, send a handwritten note. Im telling you it works. Its a simple thing but it works. Thank peoplthanks people for heu and be persistent. One o person i really wanted to talk to was the general counsel at the time the scandal happened. So the high profile litigator in new york city joined just a year before or couple years after the scandal broke and he was charged criminally and tried separately. Found out where he was at Pepperdine Law School in california, kept contacting him through email, link didnt, followed up every few weeks. At one point he replied to me and he said he would call me but he never did. So i kept contacting him very politely. And one night after midnight it wasnt in california so it wasnt a time difference. After midnight he called me. I picked up my phone and he said okay i get it your persistent. I will talk to you. So i was getting in bed and again this is a person i talked about over and over. I feel like i should know these people because ive spoken to them so many times. But he said it was because i was persistent and kept asking so i would suggest be persistent. In the law we have the best evidence rule. Its the original copy and i suggest the same thing when youre thinking about who to ask help you were asked questions of go to the person that has the most information that can help you start there and thats what i did. Another person i went to was Robert Morgenthau. At the age of 93 still sharp as a tack. We disagree about the case but he spent an hour and a half speaking with me and discussing the case issue in a variety of things. I found out after the fact email, facebook, telephone calls, handwritten letters. I contacted Robert Morgenthau 93yearsold through email. When i found the email address i thought does he really used email and he does or at least his associate who is also 93. He told me shes been my assistant for 38 and a half years. They were both very suspicious because the specific about the 38 and a half years. She said mr. Morgenthaler wouldd be happy to meet with you the next time you are in new york city. Knowing he was 93 i thought i shoulshould book the flight andt there right away just in case. So i spent an hour and a half and ive met many attorneys in new york working on this project and they said how did he meet with you he doesnt meet with anyone . Interestingly he told me why. After an hour and a half i was walking out the door and he said to you want to know why i met with you . Ashore. Why because my charm, i am delightful . He said because you are from Northern Kentucky university. Thats why he met with me. He has people contact him from Ivy League Law schools and Business Schools all the time. We sometimes think that might be a disadvantage we are coming from north Kentucky University but in this case it was a great advantage. Thats one of the reasons koslosky spoke to me and asked me to write the book. They trusted me. They looked at my credentials and Northern Kentucky university and they spoke to me. The most frequent question ive been asked is why did i write this story. Its a fascinating story even if you dont like business or law. Its fascinating to see someone go from humble beginnings, selfmade Business Executive with making as much as anyone leading a Successful Company and then bottoming out. He went to this prison the day that they imposed the sentence they handcuffed him and took him to a prison and he spent eight and a half months at a facility called downstate correctional maximumsecurity prison, 23 of 24 hours a day in his cell and i didnt go outside eight and a half months or have access to a telephone for eight and a half months and slept on a 1 inch match race then he was moved from that facility to where i visited him. Same thing. He was in protective custody because they felt he would be at risk because of his profile person and he had lots of money that they were afraid he would be exported as the heroes in protective custody and stayed on the second floor for more than six years. I had neve have never seen a pet pale still alive. He hadnt been outside. It was literally steal floor, steal walls into the match race where he did tell me he had egyptian cotton sheets his former housekeeper sent him twice a year, luxury he got in the prison. Think of the shift in your lifestyle i dont know how you adjust psychologically. I asked him how he kept from going insane and he said how do you know i didnt . So i looked at the case and when i started digging into it i found so much of it had been misreported. I looked at the evidence produced in the trial and be evidence and i just didnt see enough to support the charges. I dont know how he was convicted. I wrote the book because it was the church and that no one had written the truth about the case and its quite rewarding even though no one rioted the book was read the book. It was a great project because it matters that someone wrote the story down accurately, looked at the facts, took the time to find out what the facts were and unfortunately we have become more and more a short headline type of readers into the internet doesnt help that. A Google Search is not thorough research. You dig deeper than that it takes time and effort and i think that is what happened in this case. I think journalists were lazy and didnt understand the materials so they only wrote about the things they understood and how ridiculous it is to pay 6,000 shower curtain or throw a 2 Million Birthday Party. Thats what the journalists wrote about. Now luckily for me it did surprisingly i had a chance to share my work to the broad audiences and thats been great. National television and some of the best outlet thats been great for me and some of the best moments for me were the first time i saw the book in hardcover all that work and the picture on the right i was in new yornew york city today thats released and i slipped into a barnes and noble and i saw on the shelf that is pretty awesome too. So my advice to you and what ive learned in the project and i can tell you it continues to pay off to this very day there is another huge corporate scandal ive thought about for years, a Southern Company and the ceo was charged with crime and he was convicted of crimes. But he was equipped of the charges related to the corporate scandal. A couple weeks ago i met the producer at fox business because i was on the show a couple times ive gotten to know the producer pretty well and he has been helpful to me. A couple weeks ago they were working on a case study about my business and he said i might be able to get you access from when i was on in january. I set it to you think that he will answer questions from students and i said probably if you ask him. God told him from new york and my phone rang as soon as i walked in the door and i didnt answer. We study these people, id say their name hundreds of times and for them to call me up his beard and its a learning experience that came from asking a question. Im asking questions all the time now. You have a business you want to start or a revolutionary product or service you want to be more innovative in your career can ask questions and ask people to help you. It worked for me and it will work for you as well. I am happy to answer any questions that you might have. [applause] questions . [inaudible] dot customers were coming to the party and it was an entertainment event just like the super bowl or something. Something. Isomething. It was reported that the company paid for the Birthday Party. Dennis kozlowski exercised poor business judgment in number of times and i told him so. My first visit i was like did you make any mistakes and he said probably. I said i have a list so we can discuss them which is easier when hes animated than a ceo. He was in europe that summer to create a new business so he was spending several summer in europe and he was going to the Paris Air Show so he was there and many people were in europe. He had thrown a Birthday Party for his girlfriend then wife by 2001 when the Birthday Party took place, hed thrown it for her every year at their home and they decided to bring the party to him instead of going back to nantucket for the party so he planned this party in italy. The instructions were in the testimony and his instructions were any person would be charged so there was the Board Meeting of the subsidiary on the same island. Poor business decisions. There isnt enough separation between personal life and business and personal expenses and business expenses. According to all of the testimonies and i have seen the accounting for the party he was charged with all of the expenses and the company was charged with the expense in the Board Meetings and other meetings happening and the people who flew over for the party paid theipaytheir own travel it spens but it did appear there wasnt enough separation heres where i think that happened and this isnt the only incidents, the party was only one incident. The company grew very quickly but he was proud of the fact he kept corporate operations very small. The same 140 people ran operations even after the company grew to 250,000 employees but it still ran like a mom and pop shop everything was informal so when he came in and said do something there was no record of a stressed bob said to do this or steve said to do that so it was informal and he didnt have the line between business he associated himself with the company at looked like hed be leaved it was his company and not owned by shareholders so the party was ridiculous and they played video of the party in both tribals even though there wasnt a charge in the indictment related to those expenses but they played 40 minutes of the video and he thinks he wouldnt be in prison today if it were not for the video. It was a woman orgy themed. The birthday cake was a lifesize woman with a sparkle purse on her breasts. It was very classy. A lifesized sculpture of david that year and needed vodka and he flew in Jimmy Buffett. So it was extravagant and his wife divorced him as soon as he was convicted as it was lose lose for him. Any other questions . They wouldnt have been able to tell you what the charges were and even as i spoke to him he didnt understand what it had convicted him of. He was 22yearsold. Too young to have that responsibility with the most sophisticated business evidence that you would see anywhere. He said it to me there were jurors that were unsure. They were going to vote guilty and they said to me i reinbold of them and he said once we reached the first guilty verdict the rest of them so like dominoes so it sounded like there wasnt much consideration of each individual charge and even as i was explaining to him the we met for more than three hours he said why didnt they explain it like that to us in court . He was convinced they made the right decision and he understood the evidence and he felt like the sentence was a life sentence so those are his feelings about it to this day. He was the only person on the jury with a College Degree also not saying they were not intelligent people that i spend twspenttwo and a half years tryo make sense of this and im an attorney and a professor and it was difficult for me so i wonder how much they absorbed. Given the answer to the last question and the jury had trouble understanding this what is your opinion when it comes to business tribals like this . He isnt someone that is a sympathetic figure. There have been 70 cases convicted in the last couple of years in new york so how do you feel having the jury as people that dont understand the evidence and should there be a change in that . Whether the system can handle this type of case isnt even limited to just business cases but where there is technical sophisticated evidence you need a certain background. Taking a step back one of the questions i asked is wh us why e didnt waive his right to a jury. He said i could have wanted a jury i didnt want them to act as the judge and the jury. You might not want a jury and lets face it hes a very wealthy executive he is not a sympathetic defendant and if the subject matter is very complicated in this case it would have been the perfect case for the jury but they didnt. I talked to Robert Morgenthau about this. I asked this and he went off and had a moment of fidelity. I had the case in 1970 and she did. A telling me about the case that she tried and it happened to have two africanamerican women on the jury which in 1970 was very unusual and she said thats your the jury had six or seven businessmen that were kind of a click and should be the jury makers and then they heard one of the africa the africanan women saying to that businessman dont you know what this case is about a . Jurors dont have to understand the details as long as they get the gist of it. With all due respect if im on trial i want the jury to understand the details. I dont want them to just get the gist. In this case you are in manhattan and think some people will show up on the jury or some other Business Executive. The trials were set for six months. Who can walk away from their job or who would. Thats what happened in the jury pool. They had better backgrounds to understand Corporate Governance and the responsibility of the directors and officers of the corporation but they all said Financial Hardship and they were dismissed and then the people on the jury had no background or education experience that helped them understand. And this is not limited to just business cases and your example of the inside trading cases is the same thing. I dont know that our system is equipped to fairly and to dictate those cases. I dont know what the answer is that i read an article where someone suggested that there could be some type of intermediate charge that isnt criminal but it isnt simple. Civil. Something in between as a kind of hybrid to solve the problem of thank you for giving me the floor. I will preface my question by being fair to do. Im a former employee of mr. Kozlowski. The company i ran for i was a ba manager for at t capital corp. I was involved in the production force in the direct relationship so my question is what basis do you have to state that there were no job losses as a result of mr. Kozlowski during this timeframe . He was known when he acquired companies thats the first thing he often did is try to combine forces. His explanation is that companies were already struggling. Thats why they acquired them. And so ultimately, they would cut jobs within the company would become healthier. The individual but loses the job that is little comfort. But my point as it is related to the scandal that company didnt bottom out and they were completely viable during the trial. So, you know, i have sympathy for anybody that gets caught him out and he was willing to do that hundreds of times. He would require companies and the first thing on his list was as many jobs as he could. That was his heated. Ive spoken about that multiple times and he justifies it by saying we never acquired a Healthy Company. They were already struggling in the long term. We made it a Healthy Company and there were more jobs created but yes, for the individuals i could see where that is a problem and it is hurtful. Yes. A company that you referred to a moment ago the it was the acquisition that went very badly very quickly. And shortly after they left the company they sold the group that turned out to be a very costly mistake for the company. You touched on the Top Executive to the prison inmate. How have you personally been able to handle the transition with this becoming an allconsuming part of your life . And the last few years of my life have been abnormal. I have to give props to my family that have tolerated my strange schedule and house covered with research. And i checked out for a long time the baby that was sitting here earlier cheering for me. She was born before july last summer i took two days off which is a big break for me. But other than that, i was pretty much buried and it was tough and since then the book has been released and i thought it would end once it was finished. But the attention has received the national and International Attention as a surprise to me. I didnt expect it and it is outside of my comfort zone. I am not really a fan of being on television. I like to watch television. But having the chance to talk about my work, it was a huge adjustment. Adjustment. The sabbatical itself is an adjustment when you are used to going to the Office Every Day seeing people and then use you y home for months and months and months. I might have gone insane as well. But yes it has been quite an adventure. I have to say it has been the most rewarding experience i have learned more about the business and law and people than i expected. In the hours it took you write the book i underestimated significantly. Its been a great experience. Any kind of project like this the advice i would give you as entrepreneurs, dont do anything you are not passionate about because you will give up if you dont love what youre doing and if it isnt something that you love studying and learning and doing, find something that you love because if you dont you will never finish. If i didnt think this was important and i didnt have interest in the subject matter he leave me, i would have quit. So, you know, make sure you have people around you that are a great support system, because you need it. By the way, he was on parole a month ago. I should have finished the story. After eight and one third years in prison he was on parole january 17. He still has a pretty restricted schedule. The dean invited him to be here tonight but he wasnt allowed to leave new york city. So, he was not able to be here. He was looking forward to doing something productive with his life. You might find this difficult to believe that but i found many journalists have written things since he was on parole like who would hire him . He received job offers daily. He has proven himself as a brilliant business person no matter what, you know, if you are convinced or not by my conclusions. So he has a long line of people that want to hire him to consult or work for their business and thats what he wants to do is get back out there and he did make a comment about we still have it. So he is still the same ambitious guy that he has always been. Thank you so much for coming. [applause] we are looking for ways to get Martin Luther king who is considered a radical at the time and they wanted to discredit him in front of his followers. And one way of doing that was by finding out what kind of Sexual Activity he might have, and then using that to either blackmail him, export or basically just discredit him in front of his followers and that is what this document was. It basically said the same thing
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