Business Ethics… is it a beachfront eroded by time?

Why Today’s Direction may give rise to Tomorrow’s Dereliction??...

We all love our “hard chargers”, the guys and gals whom cannot seem to fail at anything they do leaving us to wonder, “how do they do it?” Most of us charge ahead in life with an unmistakable sense of ethics and morality but what about the guys and gals we look up to, the ones whom cannot seem to fail… do they hold dear the same values and ethics that we embrace? They maybe kindred spirits of ethical conduct in part, full or not at all???…  A perplexing statement you would agree… which leads us to explore what impact it all may have on us if any at all?  Also, if it does, how to we recognise it and what we can do about it?

‘Business Ethics’ is defined by Investopedia as “The study of proper business policies and practices.” ‘Ethics’ is defined simply by Business Dictionary.com as “the basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human conduct.” It appears that the concept of proper business practice infused with common decency is nothing new to write about which stands to reason given society’s longevity and apparent ability to change with the times.

However, are darker forces with designs that leave no room for common decency eroding the “beachfront” of ethical behaviour of late? I would say mankind has always struggled with this. As individuals, we should know who really lies to our left and to our right in the workplace. Also, do we associate with a company that satisfies our personal “ethical policy” with “proper business policies and practices” which creates a sustainable future for both the business and the employee?

We have many questions that leave no room for grand assumptions given our need to be happy in life, which is not a right, but an opportunity in the making. People in my observation tend to have intent driving their motives, which drives their decision-making process and over time, it defines who they are as people aswell as professionals. In my view this singular process aggregates into a powerful force impacting business ethics and influencing the ethics of others whom might not embrace certain aspects in better or worse conditions. In appraising your situation, I would focus on the following elements, which I believe to be relevant to good business ethics and a sustainable future.

• ·      Know your “inner self”. Don’t be afraid to self reflect on who you are, your values, your ethical beliefs, your sense of morality noting boundaries and limitations. Also, what are your needs and wants are in life and what kind of work is suited to your personality, your passion and your sense of purpose?
• ·      Contextualise your employment.  Don’t be afraid to investigate your company culture and understand what it actually is versus what it may appear to be initially. Also, a business culture phenomenon known as the giver taker culture should also be understood. Are you a team player giver type or an individualistic taker type? A point to note is the effect ‘takers’ have on ‘givers’. This should be understood before assessing where you would fit into the work environment and its corresponding impact on your life.
• ·      Feel your passion for your job.  If you don’t derive satisfaction from what you do, then you will never to it as well as you could! This denies both employee and employer of potential and thus incurring opportunity cost. Role match is all about the power of employee potential! A business will increase its longevity chances and an employee will increase his or her chances of being happy if passion is felt for his/her work. This is one aspect of sustainable capitalism that applies to all walks of life, not just in business and not just for the lucky few.
• ·      Know the landscape. Business ethics are about doing the job right, but what if the operating environment is making good business ethics ‘restrictive’ or impossible. Big decisions that save the day don’t always get made and the results can inadvertently strangle industries as much as companies. Unethical behaviour and the lack of effective regulation in financial markets gave rise in 2007/08 to a globally impacting shock wave, which hit multiple industries and societies at large. The serious lack of ethics in some quarters had a huge impact on the financial services industry with lower levels of high-level talent entering the industry afterwards and serious questions remain over regulatory approaches to try and make sure it does not happen again.  In the energy industry, oil rig and refinery disasters have raised serious regulatory and safety issues, which are not for the faint of heart.  What if good business ethics drove the big decision in the right direction at the right time? Where would we be today?
• ·      If it doesn’t feel right at all, don’t do it. There is nothing worse then being promised the sun, moon and stars and then be asked to do something that you are not comfortable with. You may have a charismatic leader pushing you into it but don’t be fooled, its your ethics, not his/hers that‘s in question if you don’t put the brakes on. In such cases, seek clarification, slow down the process of request to acceptance to allow you to map out the consequences of such a request. If it’s reconcilable with your core values and beliefs, then I would proceed cautiously, if not, then I would decline. “A stitch in time saves nine” and seeing into the consequences of our actions can save us untold misery into the future even if it comes at a price in the present.
• ·      What do others think of your company and its business ethics? When the opportunity arises, I advise folks to build their digital brands, which gives an individual good navigational skill in social media. It’s a great vehicle to see how others perceive your company’s business ethics. Glassdoor is a dedicated site to employee reviews of their employers and one worth visiting even as a current employee to see how others view your company’s good practice and policy conduct. There are many other resources to investigate your companies current ethical standing which I advise all to use including mass media news sites and social media sites like LinkedIn, Google plus, Twitter, Facebook and U-Tube. I would also look up company earnings reports and hear about plans for the future as presented to potential investors. Does it chime to what you know about the company and what kind of picture does all your research present to you?
• ·      Once is never enough. Repeating this exercise at least once every two years is advised to account for the one certainty in life, which is change. It excuses no one from its grasp and leaves nothing else ‘fixed in the sand’.

The net result of your research is the positioning of the company on business ethics to your personal ethics, values and beliefs. Is it closer or further way then it was the last time you researched it? Do you see the latest result laying out a future path that will make you happy, content, sad our outright miserable? Can you adjust making any negative effects temporary? Do you want to adjust? Companies are like people, if the ethics are good, the person is good… if they are bad or just incompatible, the only real solution is for you to change, or they/it to change. Practicality has to determine your next steps, which should be carefully considered.

When you know, then you are then in a position to think “beachfront” at your current company or a new company where your company’s business ethics are good enough to have an operating space where you can work with the sun shining warmly in your face and fair winds guiding you forward through your career in life.

Giver/Taker Cultures... the misery trap hitting your company’s bottom line?

Attitude!!... What inspires some is despised by others...

I always loved the motto in the three musketeers movie “all for one, and one for all!!”… Hooray for good ethics, collaboration and professional skill winning out the day!!... I cannot say “the Cardinal of the Red Guard” character in the movie would agree though!!... Apparently, in his world, collaboration and fellowship are ugly words!

  

So, what is giver/taker culture, why is it important for sustainable business and how can we manage the cultural concepts? The Giver Taker culture is a ranged cultural focus on collaboration and mutual assistance or self-interest and manipulation to achieve goals and objectives in a group setting. In 2008, Bill Gates said, “there are two great forces of human nature—self-interest and caring for others.” He was right as it describes the giver taker culture, which has being defined after 9/11 to try and capture the reasons for the US Intelligence failures that led to the single largest loss of life due to a foreign attack on United State’s soil. The team of Harvard psychologists led by Richard Hackman investigated the phenomenon and in their findings, the “giver take culture" was born.

One of the more notable characteristics of the model is its effective simplicity. The model is designed into three main classifications as follows:

Giver (team player/contributor/assist without expectation of reward/collaborative)

Matcher (will assist for equal reward or return assist/never gives more then they receive/fearful to support any action against “taking” behaviour)

Taker (individualistic/always looks to take ungratefully/no feeling of obligation to assist/self centred/autocratic)

The model based on the Harvard research goes into to say that givers are recessive to the value exchange with takers and thus become targeted by takers. It also says that givers do not do well in a “taker culture” whereas takers tend to do well for a period of time in a giver culture at the expense of givers, which can seriously damage and disrupt a company with a giver culture. Matcher's tend to do well in a taker culture given their adversity to team assistance for fear of being targeted by takers. They also can do well in giver cultures given their more relaxed but matching behaviours that provides limited team support based on the environment as they see it.

Professor Adam Grant

A foremost expert on giver taker culture in my view is Adam Grant, a Wharton Professor and Psychologist who said in a McKinsey & Co article about giver teams “In the highest-performing teams, analysts invested extensive time and energy in coaching, teaching, and consulting with their colleagues.” He is very correct, the human touch in leadership, strategy and operations makes for the utilisation of employee potential in a collaborative group setting leading to higher performance, outputs and sustainable results over time. Conversely, a taker culture is more inward and self-centred leaving little room for actions that don’t lead to gain for the individual in a taker environment. This suits more hierarchy and market based organisational cultures where taker cultures tend to be less focused on the person and more on the vertical structure or the transaction. The giver culture on the other hand is more relevant to adhocracy and clan cultures where collaboration and people are the cultural focus. The resulting cultural blends lead to very impacting performance levels especially in organisations that have service or quality aspects to their product range and/or internal infrastructures.

Shall we do some research on your company to see if its giver or taker culture works in the wider company culture? Ok, let’s do this! So starting out does your company culture generally focus on:

• 1.     Transaction processing by any means possible at lowest cost (Market Culture)?
• 2.     Focus on process and one-way communication from the top down in a command in control type structure (Hierarchy Culture)?
• 3.     Focus on collaboration and flatter structure of management with scope for project management being done efficiency (Adhocracy Culture)?
• 4.     Focus strongly on people and relationships to the point where strong bonds of fellowship exist in definable social groups throughout the organisation (Clan Culture)?

No company just does one of the above; it’s a game of averages in any estimation. However, if your overall sense of what your company does fits into one of the above, then you are in business to proceed to see how the human element inputs into the culture blend [giver/taker]. So do you and fellow employees generally:

• a.    Assist each other without thinking about what you get in return on a regular basis?
• b.    Feel and display concern for your fellow employees seeing the business in people terms as much as process and results terms?
• c.     Interact informally with ranks above and below you in a two-way communicative collaborative style?
• d.    Resolve differences through mutual negotiation and respectful dialogue?

If the above answers to questions “a” through to “d” are positive and match your identification of your companies overall cultural focus in question 3 and/or 4, then there is a good chance you have good cultural alignment to people behaviours and thus can expect sustainability and productivity to be of a good standard. You enjoy a giver culture in a flexible, service and/or creative/innovative oriented industry. The biggest threat to a giver culture is takers. The best defence against takers whom can act like a cancer of negativity and distrust in a giver culture is exclusion. Keep them out at selection stage by developing a selection process that effectively identifies the personality traits through psychometric testing, competence based testing and at least 2 rounds of competence based interviewing. Scenario tests are recommended for selection testing in a giver culture, which should be led in a consultative manner in my view. Bear in mind “matchers” can also do well in the above setting.

On taker cultures, do you and fellow employees generally:

• a.    Wait for the boss on all “real decisions” whether big or small for fear of making a mistake or upsetting the boss?
• b.    Rarely see each other as friends and bonds of fellowship, which are formed, are often founded on respect for negative actions to others in your career path? Is this seen as contributing to a ‘powerful’ reputation?
• c.     Have little concern for the bad luck, plight and distress of others as it’s a “dog eat dog world”?
• d.    Place greater weighing on what your boss tells you then what you did historically or how it can be done in a better and more efficient manner?

If the above answers to questions “a” through to “d” are positive and match your identification of your companies overall cultural focus in question 1 and/or 2, then there is a good chance your have good cultural alignment to a market culture and/or hierarchy culture which is focused on one way communication, command in control type tasking with your role being more a fulfiller rather then a value adder. This is suitable in industries that change slowly, are consolidated and have a high transactional focus in their day-to-day business, which can clearly be procedurally driven. Once again, selection processes for taker cultures can accept matchers as functional to the success of the organisation. Personality testing should be part of the process to ensure the balance between giver, matcher and taker is enough to add an extra layer of sustainability to the employee mix in your organisation.

In my article on Sustainable Capitalism, I talked about capitalism needing an upgrade to match the faster moving environment of today and the refocus on people in context to the organisation, which should be every company’s no 1 focus. This is relevant when you think how the proliferation of “takers” in teams across the US intelligence community led to information hoarding, inefficiency and mistrust that in aggregate created a material breach in US national security and 911. Companies face a similar sustainability threat from too many takers or any at all depending on the overall company culture.  With awareness of the above, the path ahead and what they want to be as a company can be chartered making sustainable capitalism an attractive proposition for the employee, not to mention the company’s bottom line, longevity and top line growth into the future.