Soul purpose

In 1970, Milton Friedman wrote the following in his famous essay:

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

Like many, I am left completely uninspired by this statement. I would never want to devote my life – I’ll say that again – my LIFE to an organization with such a meaningless purpose.

Of course, my being uninspired is a selfish proposition. There are more noble arguments to criticize Friedman’s position, better expressed by the following business experts:

Right now, it’s 6 AM where I live. I will soon head to work, parting with my wife and three children for twelve hours or so. And I am grateful to work for an organization that doesn’t seek to increase profits as its sole purpose.

Do you have a culture of ethical conversations?

Today, I would like to recommend Rashmi Airan’s latest blog post on creating ethics conversations.

One sentence made me pause. As she reflected on the many scandals of the previous decade, she wrote “The problem is that none of these organizations had a corporate culture of conversation focused on ethics.”

I have written many times that culture is an outcome of our processes. How we hire, recognize, compensate, incentivize and fire determines much of our culture. But I have never thought about processes in terms of generating conversations focused on ethics.

Well, in one small way I have. I believe that when we communicate about these processes we need to explain the “why” behind them. When we do, employees don’t feel that these measures are arbitrary and mindlessly imposed. And I also believe that we must encourage employees to speak up, not just when they see something wrong but also when they have an idea. But these two types of communications – explaining the “why” and speaking up – appear to be two one-way conversations compared to what Airan is proposing.

If we were to make a list of all the processes that lead to true conversations about ethics in our respective organizations, what would it look like?

Pleasure in the process

One hundred years ago, when most of us waited months for our food to grow, and spent weeks building an annex to our home, and took days to to sew our clothes, we better understood the power of daily effort over long periods of time.

Today, so much can be done faster – or by others while we spend our time doing other things – that we often dismiss ideas that can’t produce results quickly. We don’t take pleasure in the grind like we used to, so our pleasure with the results has diminished. When we used to sit on the porch every evening looking at the crop fields, our bread tasted much better in the morning.

Recent social science studies have discovered better ways to write our policies, train our employees, communicate our ideas, and create ethical cultures. While many of these ideas leverage new technologies, they don’t promise immediate results. They ask that we take steps in a new direction, day after day, and exercise patience. Results will come in a few years, perhaps in a few months if we are lucky.

Ethical organizations need a good program and a good culture. Elements of a good program can be implemented quickly but a good culture requires grit and grind.

It’s time we re-learn the pleasure of admiring our day’s work, even if we only created potential.

Carthago delenda est

Cato the Elder was so convinced that Carthage had to be destroyed that he called for its destruction at the end of every speech he gave – whether or not the speech was about the city. That’s what I call focus.

What should E&C professional focus on? What is our Carthage that must be destroyed?

For years, I have argued that it should be retaliation. When retaliation occurs, employees no longer speak up. Risks become invisible. The organization become vulnerable.

But what gives any employee the temerity to retaliate against another? Beyond a twisted sense of justice, there is often a belief that the victim will not speak up, and that even if he does speak up the perpetrator will get away with it. In other words, the organizational culture supports retaliation.

Perhaps retaliation is our Carthage. If so, its destruction will require a special weapon: a strong ethical culture.

It’s time to suit up.

Building trust

There is only one right answer to 2 + 2. Any answer other than 4 is wrong.

In the world of laws, there are plenty of answers that are fair, just and reasonable under the circumstances. But each answer isn’t necessarily right at the exclusion of others.

In the ethics realm, things get even fuzzier. What is right is not even measured against an objective standard like the law. Two people who agree that a certain thing can be done will argue the question of whether it should be done.

As E&C professionals we must, of course, avoid the wrong answers. But we, and our business colleagues, must understand that there is no right answer.

The answer that builds trust is usually good enough.

HT to Seth Godin.

The occasional tuxedo

People experience decision fatigue. So leaders like Jobs and Obama once decided to wear the same thing every day and save their decision-making powers for more important matters.

Organizations are vulnerable to decision fatigue as well. So leaders make rules to simplify decision-making for their employees. When employees face situation A, they need to take action X.

Leaders must be mindful not to create rules that remove judgment completely. Rules of that nature destroy trust and can lead to harmful consequences. For example, a rule prohibiting employees from accepting gifts from suppliers will work well 99% of the times. But once in awhile it will insult a supplier and damage a key relationship. Employees must be trusted to make judgment calls.

Even Steve Jobs wore the occasional tuxedo.

Who are we?

When we think of philosophers, many of us think of preachers and thinkers and theorists, people who ask questions like “What are numbers?”

Which is why I have a preference for stoicism. The Stoics thought of philosophers as doers – individuals who lived the philosophy.

So, who are we as ethics & compliance officers?

Preachers or doers?

Weapons of influence

These are my reading notes and thoughts on the book titled Influence by Robert Cialdini.

Chapter 1 – Weapons of influence

In this chapter, Cialdini prepares us for what’s to come. The book will be about weapons of influence, tools that provoke automatic, preprogrammed and involuntary responses in human beings.

In other words, tool that make others comply.

These automatic responses, originally created for our survival, now exist to help us cope with a complex world and allow us to make the best decisions in the shortest amount of time. For example, we tend to believe that an expensive item is of higher quality than a cheaper one. It’s not always true, but following this rule over a lifetime will net positive results.

Employees often complain that E&C programs are burdensome and get in the way of business. Of course, we disagree. So the question is, could we use some of these weapons to make employees believe what we believe?

That’s the question I will try to answer as I read this book.

May the force be with you

Star Wars was released forty years ago today.

An epic story. The eternal tale of good against evil.

A reminder that hate cannot conquer hate. Only love can overcome.

As ethics & compliance professionals, most of us don’t have to fight evil.

But we do witness hurtful behavior on a regular basis.

Respond with kindness, we must.

Blame the process

Unless we work in a perfect organization, there are workplace situations we don’t like.

In fact, there are situations no one likes. It could be how people are onboarded, how expenses are reimbursed, how approvals are obtained, the safety of the parking lot, how strategy is (not) communicated, etc.

In these situations, we tend to blame the person responsible for the lengthy approval or for the poor communication, when in fact a process is to blame.

For sure, people are responsible for processes. They create them. But it’s much easier to change a process that it is to change a person. In fact, one way to change a person is by changing the processes they are subject to.

When we dislike a situation, we ought to blame a process over a person. We can rally others around our fix more easily.

Culture is an outcome of our processes, of how we do things. If we want to change culture, we need to change how we do things.

Pretty simple.

We can all look around today and find a situation we really don’t like. Then, we can identify the process at the source of our dissatisfaction. How can we tweak it to generate a better outcome, a better culture?