If the Shoe Fits: Fairness, Trust and Authenticity
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts 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?
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Image credit: kevinspencer