Golden Oldies: If the Shoe Fits: Fairness, Trust and Authenticity
by Miki SaxonIt’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.
Expediency seems to be the lens through which everything is viewed these days. Not that that’s new; this post dates to 2011 and it wasn’t new then. Flexibility is a great trait, but there are things it doesn’t enhance — such as company values. In fact, it destroys credibility, as described below.
Join me tomorrow for a great take on trust from the inimitable Wally Bock.
Read other Golden Oldies here.
Do clichés annoy you? There’s a good reason some of the tired, old clichés stay around—namely, they work. They say what needs to be said in a way that isn’t left open to interpretation, like ‘walk your talk’ as opposed to ‘authenticity’.
I was reminded of this after listening recently to an entrepreneur.
Here are the salient points of the conversation,
- he had built a culture based on fairness, trust and authenticity;
- he worked hard to hire the smartest people available;
- salary and stock options were based on necessity, i.e., he did what he had to do to land the best candidates.
I asked him what would happen when people learned of the discrepancies between their package and a peer’s; that the approach seemed to fly in the face of his “fairness, trust and authenticity” statements.
He replied that
- people trusted him to do what was best for the company;
- he was fair to each person based on their individual expectations;
- any effort to implement a uniform compensation (salary and/or stock) policy would hobble his ability to hire stars; and
- it was a non-event because nobody knew anyone else’s package.
I have to admit, the naiveté of his final point cracked me up (I managed to control my hilarity).
Basically, he seems to believe that fairness, trust and authenticity have flexible meanings and that expediency trumps them all.
What do you believe?
Image credit: kevinspencer
