A Balancing Act

Ed Ludwig ’73, CEO of Becton, Dickinson, and Company, a Fortune 500 company, received high praise in the July-August 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review in a feature titled “The Uncompromising Leader.” The article featured 22 CEOs, dubbed “High-Commitment, High-Performance CEOs,” whose ability to balance quality performance of their company and a strong commitment to the people of their company make them stand out as superior to their colleagues.

These CEO’s are described as being motivated by more than financial success.

Commenting on his business style, Ludwig is quoted: “Being a CEO is like answering a call to bring the organization to a better place than where you found it…Maybe it was my conservative Catholic upbringing….You can never try hard enough. Your mom is always there telling you, you can do better.”

The article specifically points out the essential nature of earning trust from both employees and shareholders through honesty. “This honesty extended to acknowledgement of a CEO’s own imperfections,” explains the article, a quality which Ludwig displayed when he headed a major project that turned sour. As the then CFO responsible, he had a decision to make.

“That was the first and most brutal thing I had to confront myself,” Ludwig recounts.  “We had already [poured] a hundred million bucks into this thing. And my name was all over it.” Instead of shirking his responsibility and evading blame, the magazine reports that Ludwig “publicly acknowledged that the program was broken and that he bore significant responsibility. He and his team shut the program down for nine months to fix the identified problems. The relaunched program is now a foundation of the company’s success.”

Ludwig has served as CEO of Becton, Dickinson for more than eight years. Based in Franklin Lakes, N.J., the company specializes in medical supplies, devices and diagnostics.

By Lauren Lanzon ’09