The Ethical Edge: Integrity's Competitive Asset #1
By Russell T. Williams, PASSKEYS - inspiring ethical excellence (www.ethicaledge.org, www.passkeyspublications.org)
WHO'S RESPONSIBILITY IS IT FOR ACTING ETHICALLY?
I was a fourteen-year-old high school Freshman when I learned that I was no one's Howdy Doody doll. You remember Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody don't you? If I have dated myself, The Howdy Doody Show was America's original kid show in TV's 1950's childhood. Buffalo Bob was the ventriloquist. Howdy Doody was his dummy. Howdy Doody did not think or act. Buffalo Bob pulled all the strings!
It was September, 1960, when I became a Howdy Doody doll to my friend, Don, as we arrived at the high school football game. Don said, "Let's jump the fence and get in free." I jumped. We got in free. The next morning, feeling sheepish about my actions, I sat at the breakfast table with mom and dad. I blurted out, "Guess what I did last night? I got into the game free." My dad did not blink, nor did he get mad. He looked at me and said stoically, "Next week you pay double."
The next Friday night I stood at the ticket booth and put down my money. The Ticket Taker looked at me stating, "Why, son, you have given me too much money." I responded, "I gave you exactly what I owe you." That moment marked the beginning of a journey of ethical focus, striving never to allow myself to be a Howdy Doody doll of mindless manipulation by anybody, any organization or any circumstance. It was a performance character decision-of-a-life-time.
The Ethical Mind
Howard Gardner is a Harvard Graduate School Professor on Cognition and Education. His seminal work is Frames of Mind, written in 1983. In his book he presents research and insight into the theory of multiple intelligences. The March 2007 Harvard Business Review conducted an interview of Professor Gardner in which he spoke about his continuing research on intelligence, distinguishing Five Types of Cognitive Minds, the last of which Gardner describes as The Ethical Mind. The Ethical Mind, Gardner states, asks the questions, "What kind of person, worker and citizen do I want to be?"
In the interview, which was also featured on the Business Ethics Forum blog, Gardner states, "The Ethical Mind grows at home and in the surrounding community. Bad behavior of others can undermine it, thinking that it is more difficult for businesspeople to adhere to an ethical mind than it is for other professionals, because business is strictly not a profession, has no guild-structure, no professional model, no standards and no penalties for bad behavior. The only requirement is to make money and not run afoul of the law."
Gardner goes on to ask a compelling question, "What if businesspeople were constrained by a code of professional ethics? What if every executive and manager took a corporate equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath, vowing to never do harm, to act for 'the good' of my customers and shareholders and to not play God with people's lives. Embracing this type of credo would make business stronger and more successful. Embracing it would allow business leaders to overcome the perception that they are exploitative opportunists, driven solely by greed."
Gardner does not leave business life in the gutter with these confrontational musings, but, instead, advises business leaders to apply Ethical Mind thinking to their organizational cultures by:
- Taking time to step back and reflect about the nature of their work.
- Undergoing 'positive, periodic inoculations,' being forced to rethink what you're doing.
- Using consultants, which should include a trusted advisor within the organization, the counsel of someone completely outside the organization
- Believing it is essential for the good of an organization ( i.e. its integrity) to purposefully pursue this strategy of observation, especially in difficult times.
The Ethical Mind... Everywhere Present
The reality is that the business community is a culture shaped by Top Down and the Bottom Up. If such imagery does not define your understanding of organizational cultures, then you may view business organizations as a circle of shareholders with each representative in the circle presenting himself as a meaningful, purposeful player-practitioner of the Ethical Mind.at work everywhere.
Regardless of the imagery you may hold, how does the Ethical Mind present itself everywhere in an organization? How does it behave? How is it perceived? What does it mean? At its most fundamental level the Ethical Mind is a culture that has no place for Howdy Doody doll organizational workers. There are no Buffalo Bob managers pulling the strings of compliant, dutiful, mindless workers. Such organizational cultures do exist. They thrive in the atmosphere of shared trust that is played out through individuals operating like Craig's List where the rules of engagement are everywhere present because the mind of the organization is alive and active with everyone engaged as the center of ethical thinking in the organization.
Behaviorally, how does such an atmosphere of responsibility operate? In an article entitled, "Respect, Responsibility, Results" appearing on the George S. May International Company website, such organizations have cultures where statements like the ones below are left in the organizational trashcan as unacceptable thinking and action:
- "Everyone else does it."
- "They'll never miss it."
- "Nobody will care."
- "The boss does it."
- "No one will know."
- "I don't have time to do it right."
- "That's close enough."
- "Some rules were meant to be broken."
- "It's not my job."
Managing Choice: A Competitive Ethical Asset
As behaviors like these exit organizational cultures, the Ethical Mind shows in what the ethical edge defines as the first value proposition of self-governance: I practice personal responsibility for my thoughts, feelings and actions. The actions of personal responsibility continuously operate from the fulcrum of managing choice. Ethical thinking that shapes organizational cultures is not discovered in a sterile environment. Human behavior is organic; it functions constantly from moment to moment encounters of choice making. Every individual is a Choice Making Manager of present time where common ethical themes continuously masquerade in different events.
Ethical edge leaders, managers and workers understand the skill of managing choices as an ongoing experience of seeing the strong, steady thread of integrity showing up with the use of an ethical mind observation: Does this present choice that I /We are making serve lasting results that reveal trust and respect or is this choice governed by short term gain that will likely translate into long term harm?
The Ethical Mind: Working Beyond The Fray
Peter Wuffli wrote, "It is only individuals who can act responsibly. A company is as ethical as its people... every single one of them. Wuffli hits the ethical edge Bulls Eye of personal responsibility.
Have a comment on this issue? Speak out on our blog. Click here.
