I speak all the time with executives and managers who tell me about their wish to develop a culture of ethics and values as well as the depth of their frustration in trying to do so. Far too many tell me that it just never seems to work for them. Generalizations are always a slippery slope but here's is what I find to be true in the overwhelming number of those cases - they have no real plan!
Developing a culture of ethics is exactly like any other plan - it needs to be formal, strategic, written and supported. You wouldn't, I hope, try to improve leadership or management or customer service simply by hoping that it will get better. Again, it takes a formal and supported plan.
As a place to start in developing a plan, here are four of the essentials that I see missing most frequently where a plan actually exists:
- You haven't articulated your values in such a way that they are both absolutely clear to every employee and in such a way that every employee knows precisely how to bring those values to life in everything they do every day.
- You have somehow confused ethics and compliance. Your employees know all the rules, maybe, but they don't reliably know what to do when there isn't a rule for something. (Besides, simply following the rules not only still allows for unethical behavior but it sets the bar really low for management, leadership, and customer service. If you're looking for exemplary service, simply following the rules isn't going to get you there.)
- You haven't developed a formal, written, supported plan that clarifies your goals, your intended actions to fulfill those goals, and steps to monitor and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your efforts. (Again, you are presumably doing this for every other essential part of your business, why not for ethics and values?)
- You have succumbed to the fantasy that a one-time training session on ethics and values is all you'll need. (You may have also succumbed to the fantasy that an annual fifteen minute review of the ethics code online is going to magically allow your employees to really understand how to recognize and appropriately respond to often ignored or overlooked ethical challenges around them.) Are those kinds of training activities better than nothing? Absolutely - as long as you are realistic about their limitations and don't use them to create a false sense of security about the level of your employees' skills in the areas of ethics and values. Training and reinforcement needs to be on-going, live - at least in part - and focused on real-world, immediately applicable ideas and tools. Training also needs to be responsive to hearing what employees feel the barriers are to putting their training into use. Without giving them the tools they need to overcome those barriers, how could the ultimate outcome possibly be maximally effective?
If we were talking about any other type of training or culture-change initiative, each of these ideas would likely seem eye-rollingly obvious and you would already have a plan of action dealing with each of them. Yet, these lapses and oversights are seen in failed ethics and values initiatives all day long.
So, what's your plan? If you can use help in developing one, I hope you'll let me know.
Are Your Claims of Ethicality Either Ethical or Legal?
An extremely interesting post on the Conflict of Interest Blog caught my eye this morning and I appreciate Jeff Kaplan for posting it. In that post, a case is described in which Goldman Sachs is reported to have defended some of their inappropriate activities, in part, by claiming that their promises of ethical behavior were merely "puffey" and not actually intended to be a promise of ethical behavior. Therefore, as the logic goes, they shouldn't be held legally liable for breaching their promise of ethical behavior. Besides perhaps setting a new low water mark for indefensible defenses, it also got me thinking about the hollowness of so many promises of ethics from a wide range of organizations.
For example, how many companies have an ethics code which, among other things, prominently states that ethical behavior will be expected. In essence, the ethics code simply promises ethical behavior. Besides the awkward circularity of that logic, how can you possibly assure - or, really, even adequately support - ethical behavior if you don't provide specific guidance regarding what that ethical behavior actually involves. Without such guidance, might not your organization's claims and promises of ethical behavior be just as likely to be viewed a "puffery" as were Goldman Sachs'? After all, an empty promise is largely what puffery is all about, yes?
The court has now held that false promises of ethicality are not a legal shelter and I suspect we can all agree that any type of false promise is a defacto ethical violation as well. So, is your organization prepared to show that its ethics code represents a genuine, concerted, persistent, effective effort to develop and maintain a culture of ethics? Remember, you need to be able to demonstrate all four of those qualities and the need to be able to do so has always been an ethical mandate. Now, however, it appears as if it might be a legal mandate as well.
Posted at 02:17 PM in Current Affairs, Ethics and Values, Ethics Commentary, Ethics Training | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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