Today’s articles are focused on executives, but, as usual, the content is applicable to all levels of management, as well as non-management.
Let’s start with a question; is it possible to effectively manage electronically? Research going back to the 1940s shows that it’s not.
Managing is not a science; it is a subtle and nuanced practice, learned mostly on the job, through paying close attention to gestures and tone of voice. (…) Information technology can and should expand your range of communication, but cannot be a substitute for interactions that build trust, share vision, and enhance community..
“But we humans have found ways to not feel so bad about it when we behave a certain way — we basically disconnect these self sanctions.” (…)”If you were to go to church or temple, that’s a moral domain. People tend to not think about business as a moral domain.” — David Mayer, management professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business
For leaders to establish those policies, they’re going to have to fear the consequences themselves. (…) By paying attention to how the environment affects our choices, people can begin to treat their ethics as a skill to develop and continue developing, even as students graduate, enter the workforce, and become executives.
But [after two decades] Beth Brooke was growing tired of hiding, particularly after being tapped to head Ernst & Young’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
“Um, isn’t changing the visibility of something actually changing the privacy setting?” I [reporter] asked.
“No,” Ms. Schopflin said, explaining that they are two different things.
You know the old saying that a rose by any other name?
Gaming words, no matter how you do it, is manipulation—if not an outright lie.
People aren’t stupid; you will get caught.
Whether you play word games internally with your employees or externally with your investors, vendors or customers eventually the result is the same.
They will leave.
Option Sanity™ inhibits gaming the system.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Last summer I wrote about the damage done by misrepresenting the real facts of your company culture.
Today I want you to think about the damage that can be done by misrepresenting your past—as was done by Yale football coach Tom Williams.
Williams said he had chosen to pursue a career in professional football at the expense of a possible Rhodes scholarship — and never regretted the decision. Witt leaned on his coach for advice, and eventually decided to play in the game. Yale was crushed, 45-7.
But Williams’s story was a lie.
Bottom line, Yale lost the game, Witt lost the scholarship, and Williams lost his job.
It doesn’t matter if the lie is large, like Williams’ was, or a minor tweaking of the facts; these are personal lies and they go beyond damaging cultural touchstones, they damage lives.
Too many entrepreneurs believe there is wiggle room as long as the words or actions further company goals or land rare and needed talent.
These entrepreneurs are willing to sacrifice not only everything, but everybody, to their vision.
Are you one of them?
Option Sanity™ isn’t for liars
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process. So easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Option Sanity™ is not recommended for micromanagers, manipulators, or politicos. Founders and CEOs with large egos, or a sense of entitlement, should avoid prolonged exposure to Option Sanity™.
Use only as directed.
Excitement and a strong feeling of virtue are expected; contact your Option Sanity™ rep at the first sign of smugness or if you experience any difficulty explaining Option Sanity™ to others.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
Have you been following the News Corp phone hacking scandal?
Obviously, as a corporate culture maven I find New Corp’s endemic culture fascinating—in much the same way that a snake fascinates a bird.
The phone and email hacking, dumpster-diving and snooping are disgusting in themselves, but it is Rupert and his son James’ denial of any knowledge despite extraordinary proof and testimony to the contrary that amazes me.
Moreover, I find the idea that ignorance excuses bosses from responsibility for the actions of their organizations to be ludicrous, whether country, conglomerate, company or team.
I felt that way when Nixon denied knowing about Watergate; when Reagan denied knowing about Iran-Contra; and when Beech-Nut President Niels L. Hoyvald denied knowing about the fake apple juice; the list goes on and on.
In my mind it doesn’t matter if the top person knew or not, because as top person he (a pronoun of convenience) should have known.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Do you lie?
When you hire you assume that what you see is what you get.
In other words, you expect the person who reports to work to be the same person, with the same attitude and interests, which you interviewed and hired—a reasonable expectation.
It holds true on the other side, too.
Candidates expect you, your team and your company to be the same people and culture they learned about during the interview.
If you presented yourself as a motivator, innovator, team-builder, mentor-type during the interview, but in reality are a micromanager without an original thought who screams at your team you lied.
If you presented a cohesive team that supports each other and shares knowledge, but in fact it is filled with backbiting and out-of-control egos you lied.
If you presented a culture that’s about fairness and merit, but promote your friends and play favorites you lied.
If you shaded anything to be more appealing to that candidate you lied.
If you used words such as ‘trust’, ‘transparency’ and ‘authenticity’ to close the candidate you lied.
Those three words are cultural touchstones that are sacrosanct. Once broken they are nearly impossible to mend.
Lies don’t just break them, lies shatter them.
Do you lie?
Option Sanity™ protects cultural touchstones
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process. It’s so easy a CEO can do it.
Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.
Do you lie? Do your colleagues, bosses, friends, family lie? Before you hotly say an emphatic NO, storm off in a huff or write a snarky comment read Geoffrey James thoughtful take on how/why everybody lies.
The lies to which James refers are the lies that move and smooth human interaction and move things forward, but, as we all know, there are many other lies that aren’t benign. Why? Why do so many find it necessary to lie, especially at work?
As dozens of studies have proved, corporate culture is the best way to ensure that there’s no reason for the ‘real’ lies and minimize even the social lubricant lies. Once you have good culture the real challenge is how to keep it.
That said, at times culture does need to change. Change is also needed as markets, technology and the economy changes and to this end change agents are some of the most valued, albeit uncomfortable, employees any company has. (Be sure to grab a copy of the ebook with the full study.)
A little here, a bit there, year after year and that longevity often leads to more and more outlandish claims until your house of embellished cards comes tumbling down.
Research has shown that the human animal is prone to embellishing anything—maybe not everything, maybe not all the time, but it’s all possible.
What is the ethical line that separates a normal human frailty from a true breech of trust?
At one end you have the obvious black—outright lies and claims of things (degrees, experiences, etc.) that never happened.
At the other end you have white—the person considered a social misfit through total honesty.
And between them the various shades of gray.
How do you extricate yourself from an embellishment in the past that has become part of your history?
How dangerous are embellishments in these days of instant fact checking and the immortal nature of everything on the web?
A fascinating article in Knowledge@Wharton discusses all this and more along with the social implications, the effect on trust and various views on the subject of embellishment.
Please read the article, then come back and share your thoughts.
Do you wonder what’s happened to people over the last century and into this one?
Did something change or was it always this way?
When did fudging, dissembling, dissimulating, equivocating, falsifying, fibbing, inventing, misleading, misrepresenting, misstating, and prevaricating become business as usual?
Call it what you will, it is still lying.
Leaders, followers, parents, kids; religious or not; whether business or personal, everybody does it.
We lie to avoid confrontation; improve results; sidestep repercussions.
We lie to our friends, parents, kids, congregations, clergy people, bosses, workers, colleagues and service providers.
From why something/someone is late to income tax to stock option backdating and corporate results to campaign promises and disagreeing ideologies—the list is both endless and all encompassing.
Most of us don’t see ourselves as liars, usually because there are “valid reasons” for it.
But ‘reasons’ don’t change the bottom line and Plato’s words ring as true today as when he spoke them,
“False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
That infection has become a pandemic, spreading from one to another in both obvious and insidious ways.
It’s doubtful that there is any way to actually eradicate lying, but the next time you deviate from the truth think hard about your reasons; most of the time they won’t hold up.
Today was a super cool day for me. I met my Russian business partner Nick Mikhailovsky, CEO of NTR Lab, for the first time, although we’ve worked together for a decade.
So when I started thinking about today’s quotes Russia was on my mind. And when I think of Russia I think of proverbs.
I find proverbs to be fascinating proof that no matter the color, culture or time there really is only one race on this planet—human.
The basic concepts of human action and interaction span the globe. In fact, I’ll bet that your culture has a saying that embodies the same concepts as these do.
War has been around as long as the human race as has the desire for peace, which only proves the truth of this proverb, “Eternal peace lasts only until the next war.”
Common sense underlies this proverb, “as long as the sun shines one does not ask for the moon,” but people rarely follow it.
Real Estate people are fond of saying that the there are only three things that matter, location, location, location, but I’ll bet that this proverb predates that by decades, if not longer. “Don’t buy the house, buy the neighborhood.”
It is well know that age is no guarantee of wisdom, knowledge or smarts, but “long whiskers cannot take the place of brains” is a more elegant way of saying it.
My next offering is one that has always been true, but has been proven in spades over the last couple of decades. “With lies you may go ahead in the world – but you can never go back.” Bernie Madoff has decades to think that one over.
“There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.” This is one that all of us need to take to heart. We need to find out about our politicians, financial managers, corporate chieftains, religious leaders and any others we choose to trust.
Speaking of politicians, we should never forget that “when money speaks, the truth is silent” and we have condoned a culture of political silence.
There is a universal applicability and truth in this proverb, “When you meet a man, you judge him by his clothes; when you leave, you judge him by his heart.”
Maybe the reason for the universality of these thoughts is found in my final offering, “Proverbs are the people’s wisdom.”
(Today continues a conversation initiated last Thursday and added to yesterday.)
Everybody lies about sex. Those who aren’t getting any say they are and those who are getting it where they shouldn’t deny it.
Governor Mark Sanford followed the same path of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston, Rudy Giuliani, John Ensign, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Helen Chenoweth (the first woman) and many more.
But you know what?
I don’t care. At least, not about the sex—or even the lies. Even the lies under oath, because I don’t believe that an oath is going to change someone’s attitude about admitting something they don’t want to admit, it just adds another layer to the lie.
As Becky Robinson pointed out in her comment I could have just as easily used the Evangelical community—Jimmy Swaggart, Marvin Gorman, Jim Bakker, Lonnie Latham, Earl Paulk, Paul Crouch, Douglas Goodman, Frank Houston, etc., etc., etc. and, of course, the Catholic Church.
In his first comment he said, “If you reframe the context from leader to bureaucrat, then the ethical expectations change.”
Amen, Dan. To assume that an elected official or any person-out-front automatically possesses all the sterling qualities of a “leader” as defined by the media, pundits and leadership industry has no basis in fact.
The second point that hit me was, “The notion of “standards” etc. is often a set-up for failure.”
This is getting closer to what angers me so much.
Not the sex, not the lies, but the standards.
Standards that they defined, preached and worked so hard to shove down everyone’s throat—standards that not one of them has even come close to practicing.
Mark Sanford voted for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment citing a need for “moral legitimacy” as his reason. Now he cites the Bible and the story of David and Bathsheba as his reason for not resigning.
As to the apologies, are they for the action or for getting caught? Americans are so focused on the sex and accept the apologies so readily that the hypocrisy becomes mere background noise.
It’s the Richard Nixon mentality all over again. As Nixon said in 1977, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal,”
The reigning slogan these days for too many “leaders” seems to be “do as I say, not as I do,” which both angers and confuses their followers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan also said, “No question but what they’re hypocrites…of the worst kind. They made claims they didn’t follow through on. However, the issue parents (and grandparents, too) have to deal with is the education of your children.”
We’ll explore Dan’s thoughts and personal example of this in the next Leadership’s Future on Thursday. Please join us.
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,
Today’s articles are focused on executives, but, as usual, the content is applicable to all levels of management, as well as non-management.
Is changing your settings without permission in order to display your email address a privacy issue?
Last summer I wrote about the damage done by misrepresenting the real facts of your company culture.
Have you been following the News Corp phone hacking scandal?
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts 
Research has shown that the human animal is prone to embellishing anything—maybe not everything, maybe not all the time, but it’s all possible.
Do you wonder what’s happened to people over the last century and into this one?
Today was a super cool day for me. I met my Russian business partner Nick Mikhailovsky, CEO of 
As to the apologies, are they for the action or for getting caught? Americans are so focused on the sex and accept the apologies so readily that the hypocrisy becomes mere background noise.
