Benchmark Ethics is taking ten months to describe ten basic characteristics --- “core values” --- of healthy corporate cultures. The fifth characteristic or value is the unbreakable habit, the unquenchable desire, the ironclad resolve to do the right thing and to do it right.
This fifth characteristic shares the passion and activism of the first one, “loyalty.” Loyalty was about passion and tenacity vis-à-vis the core mission, vision, and team. What the fifth trait adds is a passion to do the right specific things in pursuit of that mission and vision. Everything we do, we want to do it because it counts, because it is right. And we want to do these things in the right way --- with excellence and ethics.
The second, third, and fourth values, the ones between “loyalty” and “do the right thing” may feel more passive but it is best to think of them as “preparatory” for doing the right thing. Openness, responsibility, and freedom are the three core values that create the capacity in our organization to best see what really are the right things to do, what really are excellent and ethical. Without openness/teachability, responsibility/accountability, and freedom, we cannot figure out, we cannot see, the right way to do the right things.
Ethics and Excellence Go Together
The classical term “justice” (Greek, dikaiosyne), much like the term “virtue” (Greek, arête), suggests both “doing the right thing” and “doing it right,” both the “ethics” side and the “excellence” side. This is a close, intimate combination, best not seen as two different concepts on our list. From this perspective excellence (in the sense of high quality) is a moral/ethical imperative — and ethical integrity/virtue is a core aspect of all individual and organizational excellence. You really can’t have one without the other.
You can score 100 on an examination (excellent!) --- but if you cheated (unethical!) to achieve that result, it is no longer excellent. You can set the standard for excellence and quality in a product --- but if customers are harmed or mistreated, or the natural environment is plundered or polluted in the process, the whole thing no longer represents true excellence.
On the other hand you can show real care and concern for a boss or customer (nice ethics!) --- but if you fail to deliver the quality of service or product promised, your ethics (not just your excellence) is compromised.
Do you see why the two have classically, traditionally gone together as an inseparable combination? Why did we ever think they could be separated?
Detailing Out What is Right
This cultural trait or core value really stands at the heart of any great business. It is about how we spend our time, what we do, what we focus our detailed attention on throughout our day on the job. Why do we want to be teachable, responsible, and free? So we can figure out and carry out the right things, the things that will be critical in helping us fulfill our mission and vision.
This can’t just be a characteristic and a passion of top management, though it must start there. It needs to be embedded throughout the organization. Leaders need to talk it and walk it themselves. They need to describe it, recognize it, praise it, and reward it if they want everyone to buy into this habit. And when any member of the team, no matter what their role or title, has a suggestion on how we can do things even better than we do at present, they need to be heard and rewarded.
Don’t you love the way Toyota is so committed to excellence throughout their organization that any employee can (and must) pull the cord and stop the assembly line if they see a defect. Toyota creates a culture, a team, with a passion for superior quality at every point.
What is the right way, the best way, the ethical way to do marketing, or research, or sales, or design, or testing? It is the practitioners and veterans in each of those practice specialties that know best. It is in motivating, unleashing, and rewarding their passion to do the right thing the right way in their specialty area that the whole company will take things to the next level in the industry.
Mediocrity Is Easy
Mediocrity is easy; excellence is hard work, and there are many temptations for short-cuts. But a deeply engrained habit of searching for excellence and high ethics always inspires, both inside and outside an organization.
Harris & Associates (Concord CA) captures this double message in its six core values by making “integrity” their first value and “quality” their second. These are synonyms for “ethics” and “excellence.” Starbucks is another company making both ethics and excellence core values in the culture. Cisco, Chevron, HP, Trader Joe’s, In-N-Out Burger, Costco . . . the list is long: these are businesses that are excellence leaders and ethics leaders at the same time. Nobody, no company, is perfect, including these companies. But these companies care about it. They and their leaders have a simultaneous passion for excellence and for ethics.
It starts with a leadership that is not satisfied with second-best quality or compromised ethics. This is where we can let our perfectionist streak run wild. We aim as high as possible and go for it.
-David W. Gill
© 2010 David W. Gill.