When I first saw the opinion piece, I forwarded it to HARDI leadership and the basic tenor of their replies were first a sarcastic, “With content like that, it’s hard to believe the publishing industry is struggling,” before reaffirming that HARDI needed to “keep doing the right things.” HARDI’s 2013 President, Brian Cobble of the G.W. Berkheimer Co., was kind enough to write a brief reply and outline why HARDI continued to pursue a better legal result, but more importantly the HARDI board of directors never allowed a little negative press to cloud their judgment on the best way to serve our members.
It’s this last piece that I have been most thankful for, because I know that from the time HARDI first formally opposed the DOE’s Direct Final Rule, which established the Regional Standards, until the time a settlement was filed with the court, that many distributors, members of the HARDI board of directors, and officers were often faced with significant external pressure to make this thing go away, and yet they never wavered. To me this is the essence of leadership. Doing the right thing even if it might be in your own self-interest to do otherwise, and to do so in the face of criticism and pressure.