Several recent analyses of business greed in our time havereferred to Leo Tolstoy's story "How Much Land Does a Man Need?"
A related question should be "How many jobs does a man need?" I'mnot talking about someone who has to hold three jobs to pay themortgage, or even two because he knows he's about to be laid off fromone.
I'm talking about executives who take on scads of top-level jobsall at once. During the Internet frenzy, CEOs were regularly on theboards of half a dozen other companies; some were even running othercompanies on the side.
John W. Sidgmore is a prime example of a man with much to do. Whenhe was vice chairman of WorldCom, he was also chairman and CEO ofECI2, a Vienna software company that employs 240 people worldwide;chairman of MicroStrategy's Strategy.com unit; and a director ofZhone Technologies, an Oakland, Calif., telecom company.
The Strategy.com role disappeared when the division was shut downin September. But even after becoming WorldCom's CEO -- a full-timejob -- Sidgmore kept the other titles.
Just recently, Sidgmore gave up most of those roles. He steppeddown from the board of MicroStrategy, a company that settled anaccounting-fraud suit filed by the government. He also has left theCEO role at ECI2 -- although he remains chairman -- and is off theboard of Zhone. ECI2 President Paula Jagemann says she has hiredanother experienced executive to give her some of the advice she'dpreviously counted on Sidgmore for.
"I felt like I had to focus all my attention on WorldCom,"Sidgmore says of his recent resignations. "There's no way to do thispart time while [the company is] in bankruptcy."
But Sidgmore says he couldn't step down from the ECI2 chairman'srole. "There was no way I'd abandon ECI2. It's Paula's and mycompany."
Although Sidgmore's dance card has been particularly full, heisn't the only one. Venture capitalists have become known for sittingon 10 or 12 boards at once. Add a few pro bono positions atnonprofits or associations and you have a person who is theoreticallyresponsible for an extraordinary number of businesses. Money comeswith the titles, too; tens of thousands for serving on the boards ofthe biggest local companies. Some additional compensation is tied tothe stock of the company, so if the stock begins falling, as hashappened to many companies over the past few years, the attraction ofsitting on boards falls as well.
Today, with the economy less sure and board members are being heldaccountable for the books at the companies they are supposed tooversee, it's certainly time for these executives to focus.
How many jobs can a person have without something giving way? Notas many as some have held, apparently.
Entrepreneurs like to have influential colleagues on their boards,and business people like having a seat on the board of the "right"companies. This often leads to interconnectedness -- some saycronyism -- between tech firms.
At ECI2, for example, other board members include venturecapitalist Peter Barris from New Enterprise Associates, Pc Orderfounder Christina Jones and Mory Ejabat, who is CEO of ZhoneTechnologies.
ECI2's founder is Jagemann, who was Sidgmore's secretary at UUNet,now part of WorldCom. Jagemann became a multi-millionaire throughUUNet's IPO, wrote her college thesis on the company and then startedher own firm, recruiting her friend Sidgmore to help fund and run it.Sidgmore and Barris, meanwhile, are buddies from their days at GEInformation Services.
There are others who have laundry lists of responsibilities. WhenGary Greenfield was chief executive of Merant, he was also a directorof Hyperion, Mobius and Managed Objects, as well as chairman of theInformation Technology Association of America.
Ted Leonsis is one of the area's best-known multi-taskers. He'sstill a high-level AOL executive, but he's also the majority owner ofLincoln Holdings, a sports management company that owns the NationalHockey League's Washington Capitals and has stakes in the NationalBasketball Association's Washington Wizards and the MCI Center amongother properties. Leonsis calls his vice chairmanship of AOL his "dayjob."
Leonsis did resign from all of his outside boards in 1999 when heinvested in sports teams.
"AOL is my primary job, sports team ownership is a private passionand a great outside investment," Leonsis said in an e-mail yesterday."I am fully focused on helping to turn around AOL."
Leonsis says he has found this system works for him. In the early'90s he was simultaneously the CEO of Redgate Communications, whichhe sold to AOL, and mayor of Orchid, Fla.
Dolores Ebert, president of Atlas Employment Agency in Rockville,specializes in placing high-level executives in companies,particularly in chief financial officer roles. She likes the idea ofsharing expertise and connections through board seats but cautionsagainst taking on too much, and especially against trying to run toomany companies at once.
"To be that fragmented is tough," says Ebert. "They need to be ontop of the numbers."
Shannon Henry's e-mail address is henrys@washpost.com.
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