EXORCISE THE EXECUTIVE GHOSTWRITERS Businessmen cheat their audiences, and themselves, when they rely on others to pen their words.
By DAVID FINN DAVID FINN is chief executive of Ruder Finn & Rotman, a public relations firm based in New York.

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Virtually everyone assumes that top executives cannot afford the time to write speeches, articles, press statements, or even their autobiographies. Public relations people welcome this belief because it provides us with plenty of employment and an important responsibility. But the time has come to ask whether this is a practice that may, if we are not careful, border on deception. When I was a boy, my father was a ghostwriter for a public figure whose books were best-sellers. The joke in the family was that the supposed author never read his words of wisdom even after they were published. Ghostwriting was less common 50 years ago than it is now, and my father's role was a carefully guarded secret. Today, while few are so callously uninterested in the words they sign their names to as my father's inarticulate friend, the public figure who writes his own material is considered an oddball. Most executives believe that writing should be delegated to specialists, just like accounting, law, marketing, and other business functions. But history should teach us that writing is different. Nations can be roused to greatness by leaders who have a command of language, as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently demonstrated by composing the Declaration of Independence. Three factors have contributed to the custom of using professional writers for busy executives. First, writing is difficult and time consuming. It is painful for even the best writers to go through the wrenching process of ordering their thoughts in a logical sequence and searching for the words to express their ideas accurately and forcefully. Second, executives have grown accustomed to cutting up their workday into small time segments in which decisions can be reached quickly. Taking hours for something that might be handled expeditiously at lower levels is considered inefficient. Third, top executives in the U.S. have become distressingly uninterested in the world of letters. The last factor is evident not only in the lack of interest in writing but also in the decline of serious reading. The New York Center for Visual History, a nonprofit organization that is producing a series of television films on great American poets, came up empty-handed when it tried to find a top executive of a FORTUNE 500 company who reads verse. I recently asked a number of chief executives of large corporations about their reading. I met ! one who was rereading Henry James and Dickens, one Civil War buff, one reader of popular biographies, and one mystery fan. But I had the feeling that the chief executive who told me he had not read a book in five years was speaking for most of his peers. As William Woodside of American Can told me, ''Executives often abandon their intellectual interests in the course of their careers, and this can take a terrible toll.'' Because they rely on others to write for them, the words spoken by or attributed to business executives are unlikely to be expressions of their own well-thought-out ideas. For the most part, executives simply lend their names and voices to texts prepared by specialists who write what they believe the executives should be saying. This makes it difficult for the world to know who is who. When future historians scrutinize the records of our time, they may well be reading a business version of Potemkin villages. Potemkin was kidding Catherine the Great. We are kidding ourselves. CHIEF EXECUTIVES I talked to were candid about how their writing is done. Willard C. Butcher of Chase Manhattan says he sometimes spends five, six, or seven hours working on drafts of speeches. ''But to be honest,'' he said, ''I don't think I have the time to write and still be able to devote myself to other responsibilities.'' The routine is pretty much the same in other companies. ''I did a lot of writing for the first 15 to 20 years of my career,'' says Irving Goldstein of Comsat. ''But as you go up the ladder, you're not supposed to write anymore.'' The attitude that writing is a wasteful and unnecessary use of time has become so standard in the business world that it may seem strange to criticize it. But two executives I talked to are shocked by the practice. One is Edwin Land, the founder and former chief executive of Polaroid, who has shown as much originality in his writings over the years as he has as a scientist. He says the idea of making a speech or publishing an article with words written by someone else is unthinkable to him. However, he adds, if someone has nothing to say, it would not matter who penned his words. Sir John Harvey-Jones, chairman of ICI, one of the largest corporations in Britain, is equally forceful on the subject. He gives an average of two speeches a week but refuses to use a speech writer. ''It would be incredibly rude,'' he told me, ''if people came to hear what I had to say on an important subject and heard someone else's views.'' Some executives are extremely good on their feet and do better on their own than with a prepared text. Arthur Levitt Jr., chief executive of the American Stock Exchange, once had two speeches to make on the same day. One was to a technology group about changes in processing information at the Amex. The other was to an alumni group at the Princeton Club. He arrived at the alumni meeting and discovered he had brought the wrong text. Levitt calmly confessed his error and spoke extemporaneously to a delighted and unusually attentive audience that undoubtedly enjoyed his remarks more than they would have his prepared text. I have heard similar stories of improvisational success from other executives. Peter Grace of W.R. Grace told me that sensing what the audience wants to hear helps him decide what to say once he gets to the podium. This is not to say that winging it is the best way for executives to handle writing assignments. Articulate and thoughtful leaders know that organizing ideas from paragraph to paragraph and page to page helps one discover the complexity that lies behind simple -- or simplistic -- concepts. Not infrequently, this difficult process leads to a conclusion entirely different from the writer's initial point of view. SOME BUSINESS LEADERS have worked hard to achieve a practical compromise in which staff work saves them time without creating a substitute for their thoughts and words. Thornton Bradshaw, the chairman of RCA, has researchers and writers prepare drafts, but what finally emerges is his own. The same is true of John H. Bryan Jr., chief executive of Sara Lee, who likes to get input from members of his staff but invariably spends a good deal of evening or weekend time producing final drafts in his own words. Top executives are invited to speak or write on a topic because their views, not those of a staff writer, are thought to be significant. At the same time, few executives enjoy the prospect of starting to write a speech or article from scratch. It is much easier to find a public relations person who can at least produce a draft. But if an executive wants to be known publicly as he really is, he should follow a couple of guidelines. One is to put a tight limit on speeches and written statements. Willard Butcher of Chase points out that executives too often accept speaking engagements and then try to figure out what they're going to say instead of having something to say and looking for an opportunity to say it. The danger, he says, is that by making too many speeches ''you either end up saying nothing or you have to devote so much time to it that you're unable to take care of your primary tasks.'' Writers should use a tape recorder when they discuss ideas with executives. Tapes enable them to draft texts using the executive's words. And executives should ask themselves whether the words on paper, regardless of who wrote them, truly reflect their point of view and contain a message they believe is worth delivering. Writing takes time because thinking carefully is time-consuming. The more time executives spend writing, the more time they will spend thinking. Executives do not have to be polished writers to be successful managers, but they should be clear thinkers. They are more likely to be if writing -- along with reading -- is given a higher priority than it is now. Reading and writing should be recognized as requirements for thoughtful and intelligent leadership.