Forbes - Building A Culture Of Trust

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A risky weapon. Multiple safety protocols. A series of actions and circumstances that apparently made people ignore those protocols. And now questions over who is to blame in the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust.

While Alec Baldwin pulled the trigger of the prop gun that killed Hutchins last week, attention has shifted to the ecosystem around him. There’s the assistant director who handed the weapon to him and yelled “cold gun!” to declare it was not loaded and therefore safe. There’s the young armorer in charge of gun safety, who had talked about feeling insecure about her experience in the gig prior to this one. The production company and director face questions about safety conditions and deadline stress on the set. As a low-budget production, there was a lot of pressure on everyone to stay on time and on budget.

At its heart, this is a story about a tragic accident that killed Hutchins and put director Joel Souza in the hospital. It’s also an example of the cycle of blame and crisis management that kicks in when terrible things happen. We saw this play out during the subprime mortgage crisis when politicians blamed greedy bankers who blamed ratings agencies who blamed the underwriters of risky mortgages who blamed the customers who were approved to take on mortgages that they ultimately couldn’t handle. (In the end, companies that bet big on risky products, such as Lehman Brothers, paid the heaviest price—as did the people who lost their homes.) There’s rarely an easy villain to blame.

That’s one reason companies and leaders often pay a price. Under the principle of respondeat superior, an employer can be held liable for the actions that employees take while doing their job. That could include a delivery driver who hits a pedestrian, a journalist who makes up harmful lies about a source, a banker who makes a disastrous trade or an actor who accidentally shoots someone. Concern about safety protocols and pay apparently prompted  some crew members to walk off the set of Rust prior to Baldwin’s fatal mistake.

While the scope of liability may depend on the degree to which those involved were following the rules, there’s a good reason to look to the top when a tragic accident occurs. Almost 200 people have died or suffered life-altering injuries on movie and television show sets since 1990. In 2019 alone, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 5,333 fatal work injuries. I wonder if the cooperation and communication that happened after these deaths was present before they happened.

It’s not easy to build a culture of safety and trust. It’s even harder to build it back. If a high-profile death on a Hollywood film set causes leaders to reassess the conditions they’re willing to tolerate, perhaps other tragedies can be averted.

Diane

Food For Thought

In the push to retain and delight employees, some companies are now offering sabbaticals to their workers. The latest is consumer bank Synchrony Financial, which will let employees apply for up to one year off at reduced pay, starting in 2022. Jena McGregor has more on the rationale and risks in this approach. If you’ve seen any innovative or intriguing ideas to attract and retain talent, drop me a line at dbrady@forbes.com. Have a great week.

Comings & Goings

Jonathan Akeroyd will start as Burberry’s new CEO in 2022, the British luxury brand announced on Thursday. Akeroyd currently serves as the head of Versace, where he took the reins in 2016.

With Jared Kushner moving to Miami to open an investment firm, his family company has replaced him as CEO, filling a role that has been vacant since he joined the White House in 2016. Laurent Morali, a longtime company executive, will take over.

Leadership & Strategy

Jena McGregor reports that a third of newly added corporate directors last year were Black, up from 11% of new appointments the year before. That report comes from search firm Spencer Stuart, which tracks diversity and moves in the boardroom. While that threefold increase is heartening, it’s worth noting that only one in five S&P board seats are now held by directors from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups, while women occupy roughly 30% of the seats. The prime culprit, as Spencer Stuart’s Julie Daum knows all too well, is the lack of term limits. As she and Diane discussed in 2012, to get more women on boards, you need to make men leave. Almost a decade later, only 6% of boards currently have term limits, and those that do typically set them at 15 years or more.

Diversity cuts both ways. Maggie McGrath recently wrote about Isabelle Friedheim launching her second all-female SPAC. Those are special purpose acquisition companies that raise money from investors through a public listing with the goal of acquiring another company, enabling the latter to go public more quickly by moving its business into the shell company.  Having an all-female team is arguably as risky as an all-male one. That said, Friedheim’s goal is not just to make money but to give women leaders more capital markets experience, enabling them to launch more SPACs. Maggie also writes about Kendra Bracken-Ferguson’s new Founders Studio to help Black-owned beauty brands scale sustainably.

By The Numbers

$12 million

Average prior-year revenue of companies on Forbes’ 2021 list of next billion-dollar startups.

You don’t need to make much money to earn unicorn status these days. The average estimated 2020 revenue for companies on the latest Forbes Next Billion-Dollar Startups list is $12 million, compared with an average prior-year revenue of $30 million for those on the 2020 list. Investors may be betting that a new wave of innovation will fuel future growth.

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