The new economy has brought about an open season on CEOs. So why aren't they listening?

When John Huey was a featured speaker at the 1992 Page Society Annual Conference, he talked about Sam Walton's "down home global vision," a subject that he was intimately familiar with, having written a Fortune cover story on Walton as well as a best-selling biography of the billionaire retailer. Walton was one of many famous CEOs that Huey has written about over the years as a senior editor at Fortune and then managing editor, a position he has occupied since 1995.

It's not surprising that Huey used his return appearance at the annual gathering of the Society to tell a few more stories about CEOs he has known. This time, however, the stories weren't quite as flattering. "We're living in an era right now," he said, "when it really is open season on CEOs. They have very short windows in which to operate...if someone hasn't done the job in 18 months, they start appearing on lists."

Reeling off the names of deposed CEOs from companies like Coca Cola, AT&T, Bank One, Compac, K-Mart, Xerox and Mattel, Huey said he has a list that goes on and on. "And in my office, I have a list of those I think are about to go. We talk about them every day; sometimes we publish them." Huey went on to say that a lot of people who get on Fortune's list have complained that the magazine is out to get them. "I tell them, we don't fire 'em; we're just reporting it."

Many of the problems that CEOs are experiencing, Huey believes, are a result of not listening. They may be brilliant strategists, great financial engineers, he said, but if they "fail to listen to what others are telling them, particularly about where the power lies," they may soon find themselves in trouble.

He added that one of the things that really surprises him -- and he hears it a lot -- is statements that the CEO "got some bad PR advice." That shows a complete misunderstanding of the situation, Huey said. It's not PR; it's a failure "to listen to the people who own the company."

As a business journalist, Huey sees other examples of what he calls "incorrect listening." He recalled the time the CEO of a Fortune 100 company that had long enjoyed good press because of its financial success became angered by a negative article and the accompanying photographs which he considered purposely unflattering. He wrote a scathing letter in which he said Fortune was out to get him. "I was stunned that his advisors would let him send a letter like that to an editor of a major magazine," Huey said. "It turned out they didn't let him. They told him not to and he did it anyway."

By contrast, Fortune did an article on another company that also upset the CEO. But in this instance, Huey received a humorous e-mail in which that particular CEO complimented him, tongue in cheek, on the fairness and openness of the story. It turns out that was not the e-mail that the CEO wanted to send. Fortunately, Huey said, he heeded the advice of his spokesman who said, 'Why do we want to go south from here?' So it was a case of one CEO who didn't listen to his advisors and one who did.

Huey frequently hears from CEOs, including some of the best in the business, who complain that the press is not listening, that the press just doesn't get it. "I want to tell them: It's the stock price, stupid. It's not the press. We don't care if you have a brilliant strategic mind. If your stock goes to 80, you're a hero. If it goes to 20, you're a goat. That's just the way it is, that's how they keep score. I didn't invent the game."

Why is it so hard for companies to listen and do things that the Street wants, Huey asked?

"I think it has to do with not looking at where the customer is going and listening to what they are saying." Referring to Gary DiCamillo's presentation, Huey said, "He seemed to be very aware that his customer is fickle, on the move and very much a moving target."

Turning to his own experiences at Fortune, Huey related how not asking the right questions and not listening carefully almost did in the magazine. During the early 90s, Fortune was losing market share and advertising and circulation were shaky. The venerable business publication was in Huey's opinion, "a fading brand." It was decided to hire a market research firm to help reposition the magazine.

"They interviewed a lot of our customers," Huey said, "but they had strict rules about what they would ask. I would say, why can't we ask this question, we might learn something different? And they would say, no, that's not part of our process. These are our questions and this is what we're going to ask."

The result, Huey said, was a presentation that said, "Your readers don't want to read about famous CEOs and rich people. They want to read about people like themselves. So we started putting people like themselves on the cover, anonymous workers in the middle ranks of corporations. Newsstand sales plummeted."

What had happened, Huey explained, is that the researchers had asked questions like, did you like this story, did you read it? If the reader answered no to such questions, it was interpreted as "don't run any more stories like this." They never asked questions, Huey said, like, "Did you not read it because you weren't interested in the subject or you thought it was a bad story? So by the time I came along as managing editor, we had eliminated every subject of interest we could write about. . .And we almost went out of business."

Under Huey's direction, they began to renew and reinvigorate Fortune. They stopped all market research and began to listen to themselves. "By that," Huey said, "I mean you're listening but you're not listening directly; you're listening intuitively." And by asking the right questions, he added, you're more apt to give your customers what they really want.

Since he entered the business of business journalism in 1975, Huey said, it has changed dramatically. "Business news today is a commodity and it's everywhere. There's also never been a better time to be a business editor. Computing power has led to the advent of the Internet, e-business, wireless technology, the race to harness broad band. So we have fabulous fortunes, fabulous stories, fabulous disasters to write about. And the fact that it's open season on CEOs makes it even better."

In the past, Huey continued, business journalism was writing about a few unknown people; today it's writing about everything. "It's about our lives, how we work, how we shop, how we invest, how we buy, how we sell, how we educate, how we entertain our kids. It's a great story. And a hell of an environment for you all to have to work in. I don't envy you."

His advice to public relations people was "to figure out how to get your boss to listen to you, once you've figured out what's actually going on. Because in the end, if he goes down -- and probably you with him -- you don't want them to say, as they sometimes do, that he got bad PR advice."