According to Dan Hesse, the CEO of Sprint, leadership is a vocation, and he’s certainly not doing it for the money. Kevin Maney asked him why he took the job, and he gave a very long answer. Here’s a chopped-down version:
A presentation that I have been giving for years — I really feel very passionate about it and it was really an opportunity to kind of walk the talk — was this speech I call Leadership as a Vocation…
A lot of people don’t think of business leadership as a vocation and really a lot of times you choose a vocation because you have an opportunity to improve the lives of others and almost nothing, if you think about it especially in terms of a large company, do you have the opportunity to impact as many lives in a positive way…
We had lived in this community and knew how important Sprint was to the community and Sprint was in trouble. To be perfectly honest at the end of the day, that was it more than anything else. That was the issue…
It wasn’t a financial decision at all. I was making plenty of money over there and there wasn’t anything I could possibly want that I couldn’t buy. I don’t mean that like I’m not rich – I don’t have grand taste…
But it was that opportunity to make a difference in the lives of a lot of people and I knew a lot of people at Sprint. I knew they were in pain.
This is the same Dan Hesse who joined Sprint as CEO in December 2007. And how much did he get paid for his first month’s work?
Hesse was paid a 2007 compensation package valued at $28.3 million. It included $23,077 in salary, $2.65 million in a one-time signing bonus and stock and options valued by the company at $25.6 million on the day they were awarded.
Funny how Hesse didn’t feel the need to inform the compensation committee that he wasn’t doing it for the money. They might have saved themselves a good $25 million, at least.