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we can continue to promote a better understanding of the African-American story, including the unique struggles, triumphs, and contributions of African-Americans, and their important role in America’s past and present,” the company said.26 Also in early 2005, another large U.S. bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co., did the same, admitting that two of its predecessor banks accepted thousands of slaves as collateral against loans. It apologized for contributing to “a brutal and unjust institution.” 27 When the stock option backdating scandals broke in mid-2006, Apple Computer conducted a three-month internal investigation and published its findings on its web site. It included an apology from co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, who took full responsibility for the issue. “I apologize to Apple’s shareholders and employees for these problems, which happened on my watch. They are completely out of character for Apple,” said Jobs. “We will now work to resolve the remaining issues as quickly as possible and to put the proper remedial measures in place to ensure that this never happens again.”28

In a dramatic gesture that underlined his sensitivity to the values of other cultures, Citigroup’s chairman and chief executive officer, Charles Prince, traveled to Japan, where ritual apologies are deeply ingrained in the culture, and bowed in public to show regret for the company’s regulatory wrongdoings there.29 Speaking at the Japan Society in New York a few days later, he said, “We’ve had some examples where people thought very short-term without considering the need to extend the legacy of the organization. . . . It is not the Citigroup way, and it is not reflective of how we do other business. . . . How we do business is at least as important as how much business we do.”30

To apologize is inherently a dangerous act, but one with latent power. To apologize is to accept responsibility, this we all know, but it is also to cede power to the wronged party. You place in their hands the decision to forgive you or not. Apologizing requires willful vulnerability. It is the ultimate act of transparency, which makes it an extremely interesting example of turning the new realities of the hypertransparent world in your favor. Apologies always follow wrongdoing, and that means loss—loss of respect, loss of credibility, and loss of trust. Apologies, by their nature, are remedial; they seek to mitigate damage that has already been done. When admitting wrongdoing can cost an organization significant revenue or an individual his or her job, life, or liberty, the temptation to avoid this gesture is enormous. Since the damage is done, the reasoning goes, why expose yourself to further liability by admitting your wrongdoing? The old cliché from the CIA rings in the ears: “Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counteraccusations.”31 (That is another relic of fortress mentality brought to us by an organization whose primary purpose is to control information.) The structure of law in highly litigious societies, however, disincentivizes apologies. The rules are written so that both sides deny responsibility and then go to court, where each forces the other to prove fault. That’s the position Jenapharm took in its suit with the former East German Olympic athletes.

In a transparent world, the truth will win out. “All of us must recognize that there are now hundreds of thousands of watchdogs out there who can gain access to what we write and what we say,” Robert Steele, of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in Florida, recently told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “All of us will be held accountable more quickly and easily because of the scope and reach of the Internet.”32 This puts a higher premium on the ability to stanch the flow of loss that results from a misstep, to be proactive in the face of error. In Chapter 5, we saw how University of Michigan Hospitals and Health System, one of the most respected medical establishments in the United States, decided to train its doctors to apologize, lowering its litigation and malpractice costs. That’s an important and