Have you heard of Dov Seidman? The man who built and runs a multimillion dollar global company around the idea that the most principled businesses are the most profitable and sustainable.
That’s hard to believe in a world where every day stories bombard us proving over and over that ‘ethical leadership’ has attained the dubious honor of being an oxymoron, whether in business, politics and even in religion.
In a world focused on ‘how much’ and ‘how many’ it’s important to remember that what we choose to measure is an accurate reflection of what we value.
Seidman offers a cogent argument that the more important question is ‘how’, as he discusses in his book, “How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything” and the following video.
Here is the fourth installment of comments about politics; if you missed the previous ones you may find them here 1, 2, and 3. You’ll notice I named the third one “I Hate Politics 3,” which was actually an error, but one I like, so I’m going to continue using it.
Politicians come from varied backgrounds; in times past most were lawyers, but these days they are truly anything; or, as Robert Louis Stevenson so aptly puts it, Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
Gore Vidal adds a telling comment to that with which I totally agree, Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
As campaigns heat up the zingers always fly thicker and faster; one of the best came from Adlai Stevenson, in a 1952 campaign speech, I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
Some lies never die (even when they should) and some of the nastiest seem to hang around forever (BTW, nasty isn’t a new trend as some seem to think, but more on that another week.) Our old friend Anonymous made a good point when he said, Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.
It’s hard to argue with the wisdom of Will Rogers, especially this little gem, If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven.
Have a great rest-of-the-weekend and I’ll see you tomorrow.
Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.
Also, because there have been/will be so many elections around the world this year ‘leadership’ is in the news even more so than usual.
What responsibility do leaders—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?
A lot.
Not just the age old race and gender intolerance, but the I’m/we’re-RIGHT-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else.
The ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ attitude is as old as humanity and probably won’t ever change, but it’s the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.
And leaders aren’t helping; in fact, they are making it worse.
During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.
Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.
We are no longer entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door, the other end of the country, or the far side of the globe.
I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill.
Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t impinge anyone else’s right to be selfish.
Leaders aren’t responsible; we are because we go along with it—as did the Germans when Hitler led them down the hate and intolerance path.
Dan McCarthy, along with Jim Stroup and Wally Bock, are of the rare breed that write on leadership, but don’t see it as an elitist function, genetic gift or an ability defined, let alone guaranteed, by position or promotion.
Tuesday Dan wrote one of the funniest (and shortest) posts I’ve seen in quite awhile—and turned me green with envy.
The post was truly “ripped from the headlines” and I offer it in full with Dan’s gracious permission.
Come on now, how hard can it be to be a great leader? It seems the bar keeps getting lower and lower every day.
All you need to do is browse the headlines and you’ll easily come up with examples of what not to do as a leader. Just follow these hopefully easy to adhere to rules, do a reasonable good job, and you’ll be running your organization in no time:
9. Don’t lie about your education (let’s hear it for New Hampshire!). Or about your ethnicity (Hey, if I’m going to mention NH, I couldn’t spare Massachusetts). Better yet, just don’t lie, period. It’s easier to remember things when you don’t make them up.
Last, but not least – and I’m sorry to have to mention this in a family leadership blog – don’t ever, ever, have sex at work, under any circumstances. Asking “was that wrong?” will not save you from being fired.
Hope you enjoyed this tour of leadership ineptitude headlines. Anything you’d like to add to the list? By the time this post is published, I’m sure we can come up with 11 more.
Seeing as how four days have gone by since publication I’m sure there are far more than 11.
To make it interesting, add your own link and comment for a chance to win a copy of Claudio Feser’s Serial Innovators. Winner chosen by random drawing.
Surprisingly, in spite of scandals and lawsuits people still seem to have trouble understanding that they are different—not joined at the hip.
I could write a lot on this subject to go along with all the articles and advice already out there, but I’m a believer that stories, especially true stories, carry more power.
Such is the story of MetLife that, along with Prudential and John Hancock, will pay out more than a billion dollars for their completely legal but totally dishonorable actions.
The difference between an annuity and life insurance is that the former is paid to a live beneficiary, while the latter is paid to the dead beneficiary’s heirs.
A live beneficiary makes a fuss if the check doesn’t arrive on time.
Heirs only make a fuss if they know abut the insurance policy.
MetLife and the others were very careful to check to see if annuity beneficiaries were among the living, since they could stop paying if they weren’t.
But they saw no reason to cross reference deaths with their life insurance holders, because then they would have to pay.
An absolutely legal decision—but…
“There is simply no reason why insurance companies shouldn’t be scrubbing their policy lists,” looking for matches with the Social Security Administration’s master death index. (…)They stressed that insurers had generally checked the Social Security death index regularly to see whether other customers, who bought annuities, had died. In that case, the insurers stopped sending payments.
Stories are powerful teaching mechanisms.
The difference between legal and honorable should be crystal clear.
“Don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of Google, originally suggested by Google employees Paul Buchheit at a meeting. Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he “wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out,” adding that the slogan was “also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.” —Wikipedia
Google formalized the idea by making “You can make money without doing evil” the sixth point of its 10-point corporate philosophy.
“This change [the new privacy policy] violates Google’s prior privacy policies, which deceived and misled consumers by stating that Google would not utilize information provided by a consumer in connection with his or her use of one service, with any other service, for any reason, without the user’s consent,” the three plaintiffs, represented by law firm of Grant & Eisenhofer PA, said in the filing.
Take another look at Buchheit’s words, “in our opinion, we’re kind of exploiting the users to some extent.”
I’m sure that Google, like everyone else, believes that these and similar actions aren’t exploitation, they are “improving/enhancing user experience.”
The problem, of course, is that phrases, such as ‘don’t be evil; and words like ‘ethical’ are fluid, i.e., their meaning changes in conjunction with various cultures and societal changes within each culture, so there are no absolutes to rely on. (I’ve addressed this quandary and ethical fluidity many times.)
What do you think? Does Google’s new approach to privacy violate its ‘don’t be evil’ philosophy?
If you are in touch with any media, traditional, new or social, you are probably aware that Greg Smith resigned last Wednesday from Goldman Sachs; resigned very publicly in the form of an op-ed piece in the NY Times.
The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.
Smith was executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, but for years he was deeply involved with Goldman’s recruiting efforts.
I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.
Because of the recruiting video he wasn’t quite the anonymous 33-year-old midlevel executive described, but now his comments and opinions are on everybody’s mind.
(You can read Lloyd Blankfein and Gary Cohn’s response to the resignation here.)
Backing up one’s ethical beliefs means putting your money where your mouth is, which may be a difficult concept for many players and commentators in the financial world to understand.
Mr. Smith is making a considerable financial sacrifice in publicly criticizing Goldman. Most Wall Street employees sign nondisparagement and nondisclosure agreements before they join a firm. If Mr. Smith did, Goldman may take legal action and refuse to release stock options he has accumulated. Mr. Smith may also find it difficult to find work on Wall Street after such a public resignation.
But if I were an employer I would work particularly hard to bring Smith into my organization.
After all, how often do you have the opportunity to hire a moral compass that has already been tested and proven accurate?
Ask anybody with a blog and they will tell you that while Akismet does a great job of catching spam, making sure that real comments weren’t also caught is a nuisance; especially if you let it go too long. Most spam comments are stupid, meaningless or boring, but lately one spambot has been leaving quotes, so I copied the last batch to share with you today; Plato’s and Asimov’s were pure serendipity from other places.
With the Republican primary in full throttle I thought this comment by Edward R. Murrow was very appropriate; note that it applies equally well to the Democrats, “When the politicians complain that TV turns the proceedings into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there, and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained.”
Politicians on all sides of the spectrum have been providing a constant supply of sexual peccadilloes and we can than Henry Kissinger for providing a succinct explanation of why, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”
Throughout history sexual peccadilloes have been dominantly the province of men, which may have led to Lady Nancy Astor’s scathing judgment, “I married beneath me. All women do.”
Centuries apart, Plato and George Dorsey offered similar opinions on the same subject,
Plato “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”
George Dorsey: “Play is the beginning of knowledge.”
That’s an attitude that ties closely with Dale Carnegie’s thought, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”
Finally, whether globally or locally, humans had best take heed of Isaac Asimov’s words or nothing will be solved in time, “If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.”
In a series of studies, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely found that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative people. Furthermore, they showed that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior.HBS Working Knowledge
Not good news when your goal is to increase creativity in your people, but not really surprising.
When we think actively, we see more possibilities, and that includes ways to gain an advantage – a survival mechanism. When we think passively, we don’t see the possibilities, so we follow the rules. –Deb Pekin, Change Manager, Kraft Foods Inc (from a comment)
Creativity isn’t a faucet that can be turned off when it’s inconvenient—it’s part of a person’s MAP; it’s who they are, so they will apply it across the board.
“Dan and I are of the hope that managers will start thinking about how to structure the creative process in such a way that they can keep ethics in check, triggering the good behavior without triggering the bad behavior.”
That’s one approach.
Perhaps a better one is to build a strong ethical culture first and overlay it with a culture that encourages creativity and innovation.
One of the most important things is to make sure that unethical behavior is not tolerated, let alone rewarded; in fact, in some cases it should be terminated.
Of course, that means ethics would trump expediency; not the most common scenario in modern business.
With News Corp’s culture making headlines around the world (and links to plentiful to choose) I was reminded of something I read recently about a new ethics compliance study (free registration required).
The new outlook has permeated the boardroom. In fact, only 22% of ethics and compliance leaders worry about senior management’s ability and desire to demonstrate and promote ethical conduct. Sixty-eight percent of the respondents stated that promoting an ethical culture creates long-term value for the business.
In fact, 45% of respondents are concerned that middle managers are not as invested in ethics initiatives as their superiors.
Think about this; senior management is ethical, but the guys in the middle area are the problem.
Funny, in almost all the ethics cases over the last few decades it’s been senior management that was the driving force and found to be at fault.
Most people respond to the tone and example set by their leaders.
But too often the goals and the pressure to achieve them reflect an unwritten message from senior executives—use whatever means necessary, just get it done.
I’ve never seen any statistics, but I’ll bet that if middle managers are guilty of anything it’s going too far to produce the results demanded of them by their bosses who are, in turn, responding to Wall Street.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Here is the fourth installment of comments about politics; if you missed the previous ones you may find them here 
Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.
Such is the story of 
I’m sure that Google, like everyone else, believes that these and similar actions aren’t exploitation, they are “improving/enhancing user experience.”
If you are in touch with any media, traditional, new or social, you are probably aware that Greg Smith resigned last Wednesday from Goldman Sachs; resigned very publicly in the form of 
Ask anybody with a blog and they will tell you that while Akismet does a great job of catching spam, making sure that real comments weren’t also caught is a nuisance; especially if you let it go too long. Most spam comments are stupid, meaningless or boring, but lately one spambot has been leaving quotes, so I copied the last batch to share with you today; Plato’s and Asimov’s were pure serendipity from other places.
In a series of studies, Francesca Gino and Dan Ariely found that inherently creative people tend to cheat more than noncreative people. Furthermore, they showed that inducing creative behavior tends to induce unethical behavior. 
