In this interview, Jim Bouchard addresses concerns from CEOs and HR leaders about the return on investment (ROI) of human‑centric, character‑based leadership. He explains that ROI is not a quick quarterly boost but a long‑term outperformance, citing the book Return on Character which reports a 500‑700% advantage over competitors for organizations that embed character‑focused leadership. Bouchard emphasizes the need for disciplined, continuous reinforcement of fundamental values and cultural teaching to sustain this advantage. He contrasts this with negative examples—Enron, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, and other tech‑boom firms—that suffered catastrophic failures due to short‑term, self‑serving cultures lacking human‑centric leadership. The conversation underscores that while short‑term profit metrics are often demanded, true ROI manifests over time through resilient, adaptable, and people‑focused organizations.
Chapters
Uh, Jim, we are planning for a CEO Leadership Forum at the end of this year. Looking forward to having you in Nairobi. Um, one of the CEOs, one of the HR directors told me that the CEOs do not see the return on investment on human centric leadership or training. I think in a nutshell, Jim, show me the money. How is human leadership tying directly to the bottom line profits of any organization?
That's a very common problem. And it, you know, it's hard to get into all the specific data. We've done a couple of white papers and a couple of blog posts, blog articles for this. So we'll, we'll make sure that those folks get those links, right? And, but I can tell, I can summarize it, I can summarize it very neatly. First of all, too many people look for a strong ROI improvement, right? They want a big uptick in profit, and you're not going to get it with this. And I'm deadly serious about that. For one thing, it's because we tend to work with good organizations, right? They're already doing a lot of things right. Now they need to keep doing it. That's the trick. It's a discipline. These fundamentals need to be reinforced. They need to be taught all the time. They need to be taught to the next generation of people coming into the organization. That's how you preserve and keep that culture strong. And the best companies know that. The best companies that we work with, they don't hire us to fix things, right? They hire us to keep them strong, to help good companies be great or better than they are, and to keep that upward trajectory going. Now, as far as ROI though, there are some interesting studies that have been done now. There's a book called Return on Character, and that's a terrific book to look to for this data. And they show that companies that have this type of mindset, that embrace this human-centric, character-based leadership, will outperform competitors who don't by as much as 500% to 700%. Now that's an impressive return, you see. Wow. You're not going to see it quarterly though. That's the other factor. I think too many people today are looking short-term all the time, right? They want that quick turnaround, they want the quick return. You look at companies, any greatly successful company, and I'm probably preaching to the choir. Over time, those companies have ups and downs. They have drops, they have troughs, but they've weathered those. They've weathered them, and a lot of times, they've come out stronger than before, as opposed to some companies, and we've seen this a lot with the tech boom over the last 10 or 20 years. There are a lot of companies that have very quick upward trajectory. And then what happened, right? They imploded, or they didn't embrace this type of leadership, so they weren't ready to adapt. They weren't ready to counter and move with changing conditions. They weren't able to respond to the different needs of different people coming into their organization. So that's it. So let's look at it from the other side as well. You can definitely see it in the negative. And one of the big examples we use is, you know, it was a global company, one of the biggest companies in the world. And almost destroyed the American economy and heavily impacted the global economy when they went under, and that was Enron. Now when we look at Enron, and it's interesting because one of the principals who created that disaster was just released from prison just a few days ago. Most of the others actually have killed themselves over this whole debacle. But anyway, that's an example of what happens when you don't pay attention to human-centric leadership. This company, we can trace it to specific offices where individuals got greedy and they created a culture that was focused on only short-term and very selfish returns with no regard to the people around them. And like I said, the impact, not only did they destroy their own company, which was a wonderful company for years and years, but they also impacted people across the United States and across the world with their bad behavior. So that's, that's probably the most extreme example. We also talk a lot about the Wall Street fraud things, Volkswagen fraud, Wells Fargo, another global bank that has a lot of issues in that area right now. And you can always trace it back to that lack of human-centric leadership, the lack of caring, of compassion, of that long-range vision of caring for people. And, you know, they focused instead on, on the mechanicals. Which are important, but you can see when you do that, you're headed for disaster. So you have to— and again, to imprint— so nice to be able to borrow from my martial arts life, right? If you are not disciplined as an individual or as an organization, if you don't constantly reinforce these fundamentals, right, and support the people who, who live these fundamentals, uh, then your ROI is going to go straight down. And it happens quickly when it does, doesn't it?
