Lyn Brown, ICD.D — how financial gravity weakens 'truth-telling systems inside an organization'

Brown holds the Institute of Corporate Directors designation and has spent a career in HR and communications. Her review reads Incorruptible from the HR seat: she takes Ries's Johnson & Johnson asbestos case and Enron's wall of values as evidence that stated values fail once promotion, measurement and what gets said out loud stop matching the words, and she casts HR as the function that builds the accountability systems that keep them aligned.

“In his book Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad... and How Great Companies Stay Great (Penguin Business, 2026), Eric Ries makes the strong case that as companies scale, 'financial gravity' — investor and budget pressures — quietly pull even principled leaders toward decisions that weaken the truth-telling systems inside an organization.” — Lyn Brown, ICD.D, MBA on LinkedIn