How low can you go?

Donald Trump is an infinite source of inspiration for people like me who write about business ethics. While he manages to break just about every accepted rule of business conduct, he has been particularly generous with his disregard of conflicts of interests.

So it is not entirely surprising to learn that his chief of staff (his 4th and last), in the days after the November 2020 elections, was strategizing, over text messages, with the wife of Supreme Court Justice Thomas, on how to overturn these elections, while Justice Thomas was hearing cases involving the very same election results. In one such case, Justice Thomas had to decide if specific White House records, which included his wife’s texts, should be turned over to the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. Thomas did not recuse himself and was the only Justice on the Court of the opinion that the White House records should not be turned over.

Conflict of interests rules are simple: (1) disclose the conflict and (2) recuse yourself from the decision-making process. Even grade-school students understand the common sense underlying these rules.

Yet, a sitting Supreme Court Justice seems unwilling to honor them.

No surprise that the Supreme Court approval rating is down to 40%.

Advice from Tim Ryan

I had the pleasure of listening to Tim Ryan yesterday, as part of the Executive Lectureship series at Bentley University’s W. Michael Hoffman Center for Business Ethics.

If you click on Tim’s name above, it will bring you to his LinkedIn profile, where you can read his articles and posts on the importance of building trust. Tim grew up in a modest blue collar family, worked hard from a young age, paid his way through college, and paid attention when life lessons showed up at his door.

Highlights from my lecture notes:

  • Work hard and be kind to everyone.
  • Let people know how you make decisions.
  • The best leaders listen – to all stakeholders.
  • Corporations need to be more humble and admit to their mistakes – that’s how you regain lost trust.
  • No one will remember that you grew revenues by 6% or 8% during any given year. They’ll remember how you treated people.
  • Embrace this mindset:
    • Be a problem solver, not a problem pointer-outer
    • Be a bridge builder
    • Celebrate the small wins (lest you want to run out of steam)

Find your tribe

What percentage of your employees care so much about your ethics and compliance program that they have read your code of conduct, cover-to-cover?

Let’s be very generous and say it’s 1%.

In my company, that’s nearly 1,800 employees.

How many employees would that be in your organization?

There is something special about them. They are part of your tribe, whether you know them or not.

Find them, and empower them.

They will attract others.

HT to Seth Godin

On customer service

Seth Godin wrote an insightful post today about corporate culture. I highly recommend you read it.

Because he picked on FedEx, it reminded me of a post of mine I wrote about three years ago. I’m reposting it below but you can find the original here.

My 11-year old daughter has been using an old iPhone 4 without a SIM card for a few years now. It’s more like an iPod with a few games on it.

The phone is so old that we can’t update the iOS on it anymore. And it only has 8 GB of storage on it. Which means she can’t download the latest games or store more than a few pictures.

So on Tuesday, she used her money to buy a refurbished iPod. Apple shipped it by FedEx and delivery was scheduled for Thursday. On Wednesday, she bought an iPod case on Amazon, with overnight Prime delivery.

Both items arrived on Thursday. FedEx left the $200 iPod in my driveway, near the street, in plain sight, begging to be stolen, despite the fact that several neighbors have complained to FedEx of missing packages in recent months.

Meanwhile, Amazon delivered the $8 case all the way to my front door mat, out-of-sight, took a picture of the delivery and sent it to my phone. Just 12 extra steps.

Technically, both companies delivered their product. But Amazon showed a greater degree of care for its buyer than Apple and FedEx did.

Caring is a competitive advantage. Caring for our employees improves retention and recruitment. Caring for our suppliers improves quality. Caring for the communities where we operate enhances our brand.

If we care for the right things, profits will come.

Division weakens us

The news that Russians see on their TVs about the war in Ukraine is different from the news the rest of the world sees.

When the US decided not to send Olympic officials to the last games in China, the reason behind that decision wasn’t shared on Chinese media.

When a Democrat searches for climate change on Google, she doesn’t get the same results as a Republican would.

All of this leads to confusion and division. A divided world is a weaker world.

How is information shared in your organization? Do all corners of the company get the same message? Do some things get lost in translation? Do the answers change based on who asked the question?

Code gaze

Today I simply want to share a comic that explains the dangers of algorithm bias and what we can do to avoid them.

It’s important for E&C professionals to understand this danger because almost every organization in the world is now directly using, or affected by, artificial intelligence.

Two years ago, I completed a free online course on the ethics of AI for business. You can find a link to the course and read my notes on data collection and bias here.

Who is it for?

I often sit down to create a document that will be helpful to the ethics and compliance officers (ECOs) that I support. It could be a policy summary, an FAQ, or a quick reference guide.

In the middle of it, I’ll sometimes realize that the information I’m including could also be very helpful to the employee population at-large. So I’ll change the focus and try to write a document for all employees that my ECOs could also use.

I’ve learned that this is usually a mistake. When you try to write for different audiences in one document, the needs of one audience (or both) will be neglected in the process. It might be more work, but writing a separate document for each audience is better.

The first casualty of war

In the last few days, Russia has restricted its citizens’ access to social media and made it illegal to publish news that contradict information provided by the Kremlin.

Truth is the first casualty of war, as they say.

In some organizations, gentler but similar tactics are employed by leadership. Employees are not allowed to use social media at work. When they use it at home, they can never mention their employer on their profile or their posts. Articles published on the company’s intranet have no comment section for employees to chime in. Employees cannot ask questions before, during or after town hall meetings. I could go on.

The message is clear: the company has one voice, and it will not be contradicted.

Is your company at war with its employees?

When is a leash necessary?

Early in the pandemic, two complimentary things happened: thousands of people adopted dogs, and thousands of school yards, sports fields and municipal parks went empty.

This situation allowed owners to let their dogs run loose where leashes would normally have been required. And now that little (and not so little) people have returned to sports fields and municipal parks, police officers are stepping up the enforcement of leash regulations.

Something similar is bound to happen at the office, as millions of employees who got used to working from home are now being recalled. Just like leashes, some work rules will have to be enforced anew. But all rules?

The single mother, who was working on her laptop from 6:00 to 7:30 AM, and then taking her kids to school, running a few errands in town, and returning to her laptop at 9:45 AM – will she now be able to arrive “late” at work?

The employees who wore t-shirts on team Zoom calls – will they have to revert to collared shirts, even on days when they have no meetings?

The dad who went to see his daughter’s after-school volleyball game at 4:15 PM, and made up the work time after dinner – will he be able to skip out of work early?

What is the workplace for? Who is it for? Why do we have offices? Why do we need people in them? Those are the questions we need to revisit before we blindly apply the old, pre-pandemic rules.

High-flying JetBlue pilot

It was a cold morning yesterday in Buffalo, NY.

I’m sure that the JetBlue passengers were not happy about the 4-hour delay to their Floridian destination.

That is, until they learned that the delay was cause by the detention of their pilot, who had attempted to board the flight to take command while drunk (at more than four times over the FAA’s blood-alcohol limit).

I wonder what would have happened if the TSA agent had not noticed the pilot’s drunkenness. What if a flight attendant had noticed? Would he have spoken up? What if the co-pilot had noticed? Would she have spoken up? I expect they would, given how safety-focused everyone is in the aerospace industry.

Well, not everyone, evidently.

I also wonder if airline employees receive training on how to respond when they see a pilot willing to operate the aircraft under the influence? I wonder, because that type of training is not commonplace in most organizations. We tell employees about the importance of reporting, and we remind them of the channels available, but we rarely tell them exactly how to report. It’s an important gap, especially when the wrongdoing is committed by an intimidating person in authority, like a pilot or an executive.