There is a world of difference between managing a business and leading a business. You probably know this already. Even when you’re a sole proprietor or a small shop, you still switch hats between manager and leader. You want to have systems in place to avoid getting too panicky or too complacent. But maybe we’re missing a more important question?

Should you be the CEO (even if de facto) of your business?

It’s tempting for some to say “but I’m not a CEO“, particularly when you run a very small business. But that’s just shortsighted. You’re already setting the stage with your vision, your pace and emphasis on certain initiatives. The thing that may be missing here is trust.

Trust or no movement forward

No matter how much experience you have as a leader, trust plays a major role in how far your people will go with you. In such difficult economic times as we’ve experienced over the last four years, you need that trust to be strong. Given that change is an integral piece of the “new normal”, what resistance is present in your organization?

Trust is earned and some styles of leadership depend on it more than others. However, trust is not easily rewarded. Sure, just having a certain position gives you the basic level from most people.Titles do that.

So, you have to ask yourself, am I demonstrating…

• consistency in my words and actions?
• consideration for others’ schedules and abilities?
• respect for others when I have requests and directives?
• honesty in how I present myself?
• that I believe I have a good team in my staff?

 No movement forward if you haven’t built more than a baseline of trust

You probably have your own war stories of working for someone that you could trust to be harsh, confusing or just plain infuriating. How did this affect your productivity? Don’t be that guy! You already know how it feels. And it’s important to remember that how people perceive that you “feel” is what determines the level of trust you’re given.

What do you notice creates breakdowns in the day-to-day tasks?

What do you do that makes you a trustworthy leader?

Have you ever caught a glimmer of how wise and remarkable a person you truly are? The experience can be disorienting, upsetting, humbling or awe-inspiring. It shows up in your work, your play, your leadership, truly in all aspects of who you are. And yet, there is such temptation to downplay what skills, talents and values we bring with us.

Perhaps your distractions are really upriver

There were two men sitting by a river when they  saw someone float by in the water thrashing and calling for help. One of the men jumped in and saved the person. Next thing they knew, another person floated by thrashing and screaming for help. Again, one of the men jumped in and saved this person as well. To their great surprise and consternation, more and more people coming down the river and needed help. After both men were catching their breath after saving these people, one man turned to the other and said, “We better get some help if more people come down the river.” The other man replied, “We better go upriver and see who is throwing them in.”

Loads of data to analyze and competing ideas to include in your business goals

It’s easy to get caught up in ideas or wishes of how we want things to be. There are so many priorities and distractions that we may forget to go upriver and see for ourselves. For yourself, you can use a Wheel of Life (WheelofLife PDF) which allows you to rate all aspects of your life. If you want to rate your performance as a leader of your business, you can use the Management/Leader Wheel (MgtLdrWheel PDF). These tools are great ways to get a snapshot of where you are in your life.

For your business, you can do a SWOT analysis,  PESTEL analysis or pore over your financial statements with charts and graphs galore. And you should. Otherwise you may as well be shooting darts at balloons. The key thing with getting the right information is checking out what is real.

What does wisdom or trust have to do with it?

It doesn’t have to be any fancy woo-hoo stuff to be wise. Consider how many times you follow a “feeling” or trust your instincts. When you’re leading during times of great change or just facing a challenging set of circumstances, it isn’t always clear what is your best choice. If you have a team to help you design a strategic plan, you already have a separate set of eyes and ears to interpret data with you. However, you still have to trust yourself (and them) to steer the business in the “right” direction.

3 tips to access your wisdom while goal setting

1. Know what you do and don’t want. Sometimes it’s easier to identify what you don’t want. Negativity is easy. The more interesting list here is what you do want. Go on, what do you really want?

2. Your wisdom needs affirmation from hard cold evidence. When outside stuff challenges us, it stirs up our inside stuff. Make sure you include some way to measure the progress of your goals. If you plan on increasing your revenue by 25% by year’s end, write it down and check it regularly (quarterly is good). This will remind you that you know what you know.

3. Don’t go it alone. As the leader of your business (and your life), it’s a tough environment to do business in. It may be tempting to isolate or get busy with day to day stuff among other things. Use your team. They are an internal resource of your design. having a confidant, mentor, coach or mastermind group can keep you in touch with your wisdom.

So,  what’s up your river?

What suggestions do you have for accessing your wisdom when setting goals for your business?

 *Join us on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog this Friday, January 6th at 12pm ET/5pm GMT/9am PT as we have our 2nd annual Goal Setting Convo. We’ll be exploring the topic of goal setting and declaring our top 2012 goals to one another.

While I was doing my graduate degree, I worked at a jewelry counter. During the sales training, they explained that many customers could appear rough around the edges and not well dressed. They emphasized that the most unlikely people could be the big spenders. The organization training me was based in the the middle of the country so they spoke about farmers and factory workers. The community I lived and worked in included old time New England types, immigrants from India, Central America, Russia and transplants from other US states.  Unfortunately, the trainers didn’t explain how we were to make a connection with these particular customers so we were left to our devices.

Smiling seemed a natural way to start building rapport. It was fun to hear the back story and look for an everyday watch or that perfect set of earrings with my customers. Creating these mini-relationships seemed logical to me and it certainly was a positive strategy as I was a top commission earner in the department.

We’re all in customer service

No matter if you’re selling jewelry, consultancy services or smartphone apps, we are all customer service representatives. Tom Asacker has written extensively about how everyone in an organization communicates the brand. This exhibits the authenticity of an organization.  We have so many potential moments to connect with another person when we speak with prospects, colleagues and other professionals. Some, if not all of these moments could have you smiling at another human being. Jeff Toister has a great post of what happens when you leave the smile out, even over the phone. We are all points of reference for people outside of our organizations.

So all I need to do is smile, right?

Partly, yes. Are you seeking to engage with the other person and why? Answering this question reverts you back to your organization’s executive summary. Yes, seriously. It’s about the organization’s values. Are you smiling at this person because they are a revenue source or something else? Is it inauthentic on your part to want to make the sale?

Authentic customer service is more than a smile

The current messages about authenticity state that people are seeking “real” people to do business with. We’re told how to write content, biographic profiles and frame sales pitches so they build relationships. There is nothing inherently wrong with these messages. But we might be creating something that doesn’t exist in business. Perhaps we’re faking authenticity the way we fake our smiles. The face moves but we’re left feeling like something is off base. (Want to see if you can spot fake or genuine smiles? Take this test on this BBC site.)

Tom Asacker writes, “engagement is the first step in an evolving process that ultimately leads to belief, adoption and support of the organizations’ brands.” Feelings prompt purchases. This is true whether you’re selling business to business (B2B) or to consumers. The way you make me feel is what prompts me to want to do business with you. And…how you make me feel, particularly during a conflict, prompts me to want to continue doing business with you.

Conflict is the greatest test of authentic customer service

At some point, you will have a clash with someone over your product, service, ideas or price. Smiling may not be literally the most appropriate response to a situation but bear with me for a moment. Your value system includes how you want to be treated by others. This is the human element that is a potential chaotic agent. When someone approaches us with a complaint, it is natural to feel defensive and attacked. This complaining person has attacked our value system. Chaos is introduced when we forget how we want to treat others.

A real smile may be worth a lot of money…or not

The current emphasis on being authentic may be a trend and not significant in the long term. On the other hand, there is a lot of energy in conversations about making work meaningful and more human-centered. As we interact with customers, prospects and other professionals, we are the snapshot of our organization. A real smile could be an invitation and gift embedded in your authentic customer service.

Beyond the  current vogue definition of “authenticity”, how would you honestly describe it?

How do you train customer service representatives to naturally exhibit organizational authenticity?

What are our choices really saying when we fail to treat our clients/customers as if they matter?

If businesses are ultimately about making money, could authenticity be irrelevant?Why or why not?

*Consider yourself invited to join us as we talk about customer service & authentic connection “Is a Smile Too Much?”” on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, October 14th at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT so I hope you can join us. If not, please add your thoughts below.

*Join us for this topic on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog. We’ll start the discussion on Friday, October 28, 2011 at 5pm BST/12pm ET/9am PT or add your comment below.

Recently, I had the pleasure of presenting a business planning workshop to small business owners. While talking about  living business plans , I urged the participants to identify what needs to be eliminated. We don’t talk enough about how to let go of the parts of our businesses that are half-alive. And quitting? Forget about it!

For the sake of this conversation, I’m going to use the word, quitting. It’s a word with so many negative nuances. Without critical thinking, we accept these nuances without knowing if they are true to our experience.

What’s not working as well as you would like?

When you set your business goals for 2011, you had certain things you wanted to achieve by December 31, 2011. There were positive results to celebrate. But what produces lackluster results?

• Holding onto a product or a service that very few purchase
• The marketing plan didn’t produce the expected results
• People just didn’t want what we offered
• You fell in love with your product or service and didn’t allow for adaptation or iterations of your product or service

Could you let go of something you loved developing?

Some of what we offer to our customers means more to us than simply a revenue source. Maybe all is good for awhile and then you’re doing your quarterly review. You notice  it’s not moving the way you expected. After a couple more quarterly reviews, you’re seeing a downward trend.

By letting go, it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go.

But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning. -Lao Tzu

When letting go becomes quitting…

There’s an interesting behavior among entrepreneurial business owners. When someone decides to close their business and return to working for someone else, entrepreneurial colleagues often respond with suggestions to keep the business on the side or urge him/her simply to not quit. Failure still seems to be taboo, for all those who claim that this gives you some kind of street cred.

Imagine quitting isn’t failure.

Of science and the human heart

There is no limit.

There is no failure here, sweetheart

Just when you quit

-“Miracle Drug”, U2

That’s the premise of the Freakonomics podcast, “The Upside of Quitting”. They state that there is a fallacy of weighing sunk costs. This concept is that we’ve sunk too much of our time, money, and/or energy and we can’t leave without getting something back for our efforts. One of the people interviewed for this podcast is Justin Humphries, a former baseball player, who now assists baseball players outside of Major League Baseball decide when it’s time to quit playing. Many baseball players who are at the end of their career struggle with accepting that they aren’t good enough or too old. Part of this seems to stem from lacking a broader sense of identity. Instead of seeing how they might transfer their skills to another part of baseball or find another career entirely, many players keep playing baseball.

Knowing when to ” shut it down”.

Stephen Dubner captured underlying belief for these baseball players, “Wow, that’s particularly poignant in my view… because baseball’s one of those rare sports that because it doesn’t have a clock, no game is ever out of reach…You could be behind a thousand runs in the bottom of the ninth and theoretically you can still come back and win. So that’s part of the ethic of baseball is never, never, never, never quit. Quitting is  not an option.”

The dissonance between “science and the human heart”

Entrepreneurs and business owners are often like these baseball players. With the recent severe recession and snail-like recovery, many startups and businesses are at a decision point. There are glimmers that things are just beginning to ease up and it’s exhausting trying to keep things afloat. And yet, quitting may not be seen as one choice.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we derive much of our identity and a sense of competency from our business. We see the financial reports spelling out the science of our business. But, in our hearts, the challenges evoke emotions of grief, helplessness and powerlessness. We’ve put too much in to close the doors. We’re given so many messages that shames us out of quitting. And yet, quitting may turn out to be the best decision we could ever make for ourselves and our businesses. As it is urged by the “The Upside of Quitting”, imagine “there is no failure here.”

Setting goals for 2012

No one would ever say that letting go or quitting are easy or even pleasant experiences. Nonetheless, it is essential to identify any deadweight or mediocre performers. These could be things (or, ouch, people) you are fond of or just have out of habit and these are compromising your business vision. There is an intersection between deciding to let go or quit and your business goals. Aligning your metrics and your heart is an essential task when setting business goals.

What messages do we hear when we’re at the decision point to let go/quit/continue?

How are these messages helpful or  harmful?

How do you let go of a product/service in your business that’s not performing well?

How can “science and the human heart” become resonant with choice to quit?

As you plan your business goals for 2012, how could letting go or quitting assist planning?

*Join us for this topic on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog. We’ll start the discussion on Friday, October 28, 2011 at 5pm BST/12pm ET/9am PT or add your comment below.

*I’m delighted to introduce you to guest blogger, Ritu Raj of  ORCHESTRATORMAIL . He is a senior executive, entrepreneur, consultant. Founder and CEO of Avasta, Wag Hotels and OrchestratorMail. Executive at TMP Worldwide, Partner at Accenture and prior to that different positions in the outsourcing market out of India. He will be our guest host on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog this Friday at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT. This is his guest post for this week’s topic.

First, let’s define collaboration-people working together on something. They could be collaborating in real-time in a meeting or using tools like Webex, or even micro-blogging. Or they could be collaborating asynchronously (not real-time) using email.

Collaboration, as we are using it, includes working together, brain storming, creating a common vision, bringing people on the same page or coordinating with each other to fulfill an objective; a mission where tasks are interdependent, or, the last category, that they are all cooperating. This sounds easy until you add each person’s understanding of the world as informed by his or her culture.

Culture is more than simply your nationality or ethnicity.

Culture, in this conversation,  is not limited to different ethnicity or different countries but also the culture of east coast vs. west coast, people working in engineering firms to people working in a design firm…all of them different cultures. Even if they all speak English, they have different interpretations of what they hear.

Moving beyond the Industrial Age mindset

In the US, we have been moving from an industrial economy where it was all about personal productivity (how fast can you make a widget or bolt a nut) to a very collaborative economy. In this collaborative economy, to fulfill an outcome, you have to work with others (knowledge workers). Your personal productivity cannot fulfill the outcome and you need to learn and develop skills in collaborating with others.

Collaboration has its stumbling blocks.

In most cases, the “others” that you “have” to collaborate with are a mixture of different cultures. You cannot depend upon being a great communicator but have to start recognizing and learning how others interpret what you are saying and what are their cultural differences. I have seen many examples of this coming from India 15 years ago and working in the San Francisco Bay Area where everyone is nice and polite. Consider this scenario: Sally and Ram work for the same organization.  Sally is in the Bay Area, Ram is in Bangalore, India. Sally says “Can you please send me the report as soon as possible”, Ram interprets the request as “oh, Sally is not really in a hurry for the Report.” This is an example of classic mis-coordination. The use of language carries importance.

So, the big question is how do we close the gap between the speaker’s intention and the listener’s interpretation in a multi-cultural collaborative economy?

*Consider yourself invited to discuss this topic of “Collaborating In a Multi-Cultural Environment” on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, September 30th at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT so I hope you can join us. If not, please add your thoughts below.

The recent economic turmoil has triggered a lot of change for many of us. Whether you are seeking the change or it has been imposed on you, it is important to know how to handle any fear that accompanies your change process.

Read more about Do What Scares You…

I’m coaching a client who is transitioning from senior technical expert to CEO of his small business. We’ve discussed his leadership style before. The catch here for him is that his understanding is evolving and he was at a loss for words to describe his current style. He has always been clear that he is a visionary but what about using high touch, collaboration, inviting truth telling and clear communication? So, we started to talk about the CEO’s and business people that he admires and wishes to emulate.

And that’s when I got to wondering…are roles models really useful on a daily basis?

Don’t get  me wrong. Role models serve an important purpose. They provide us with both inspiration and a roadmap. Basically everyone has a biography of some sort. You can read a published account of someone’s life, Google the person and/or ask questions directly. But how do they really do that thing you are aspiring to?

People aren’t perfect

It’s so easy to put someone on a pedestal. Think about the people you admire. We don’t really know that person. Take someone like Donald Trump. Sure, he’s on television and is well known for his real estate acumen. You might read about him, listen to what he says and take a class from Trump University. People tell me that they admire how he acts so confidently even when he is so close to bankruptcy. But what do you really know about him? Would it matter if he were rude or cruel?

What happens when you learn something unpleasant or ugly about your role model? There is that moment when one is faced with the idea of the person and the real life person. Can you overlook the fact he or she is human and not perfect? It may be possible to extract what is meaningful to you and suggest that your role model works very hard to behave in a certain way. Then again, the transgression may be too abhorrent to you.

Looking for a role model

So what makes us identify certain people as inspiring to us? Certainly, their story can be one possible starting point. We’ve heard so many rags to riches stories and each person who has accomplished this has qualities worth of emulation. Could it be that we see role models to get us through certain stages of development? If you founded a business and emphasized innovation, you might want to learn about Bill Gore, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Maybe you are a woman in business and aspire to rise to the top of the business world or politics so you might read lists like Forbes Power Women. Perhaps there is a boss who is so adept at his/her profession that you felt as if you are apprenticing to him/her.

Throughout our lives, we find people who are extraordinary and study them so we can be like them. This is part of how we form our identities. Over the years, we have different experiences and different choices and seek to navigate them successfully. It makes sense to add and subtract to our list of role models. They may be fictional characters, celebrities, known industry experts or people within our sphere who embody greatness.

But I’m back to my original question…how are they relevant to our everyday performance?

We know the big stuff they have accomplished. What did they do on Tuesday morning at 9:08am? When we are working on an audacious goal, there are moments when we are discouraged. We may lose faith (even for a moment). We may even encounter obstacles we didn’t anticipate and this throws us off track. And it could be that we just don’t know how to act or execute a particular skill and this slows us down. Do our role models give us the big picture or a how-to manual?

So, I’m opening up these questions to you. We’ll be discussing this topic on the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog on Friday, September 16th at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT so I hope you can join us. If not, please add your thoughts below.

1. How do you identify someone as a role model? What qualities do you look for?

2. What is the difference between idolizing someone and using them as a model?

3. What role does gender play in your choices of role models?

4. Are we more likely to seek role models in good times or bad? Why?

5. How do you use a role model when for everyday performance?

*This coming Monday, September 12th, I will guest moderating the Twitter chat, #UsGuysChat during which we will discuss culture, gender and leadership. The #UsGuysChat will start at 3pm ET/12pm PT/8pm BST. I hope you can join us and add your perspective to this conversation. This is part 2 of a discussion started in “Does Gender Matter In Business Leadership?”

If culture had nothing to do with gender and leadership, Lois Frankel wouldn’t have a job. Ms. Frankel is the author of the Nice Girls Don’t Get…” series.  Whether you agree or not with her recommendations about how women should act in the workplace, she highlights the cultural/gender tension embedded in the workplace. Let’s be very clear…there are expectations about men and women that are set in social norms exhibited in the workplace. In a recent meta-analysis from Northwestern University, it was noted that leadership is less tied to masculine qualities now but still women face two perceptual obstacles.

1. There is a prejudice that they are less able than their male leader counterparts.
2. The personality characteristics of leadership are masculine and therefore inappropriate for women to exhibit.

Alice Eagly is quoted in this article about the study as saying, “Cultural stereotypes can make it seem that women do not have what it takes for important leadership roles, thereby adding to the barriers that women encounter in attaining roles that yield substantial power and authority.” Given all this, it can be challenging to find an authentic  leadership style and make gender as unimportant as the color of our hair.

You may be harboring stereotypes learned in childhood

Take a moment to consider your childhood years. Where did you grow up? What did you do during your playtime? What were you “allowed” to do? How were you parented? While the messages are less delineated now than say 30 years ago, girls and boys are acculturated to accept stereotypes as facts. If you aren’t sure about this observation, try arguing with a 4 year old about how girls can have short hair and still be girls. Have you ever noticed which toys are designed for boys or girls? Notice which ones are active versus passive. What colors are used to decorate the toys? How are movies marketed to boys or girls? It’s even possible that your national educational system may be more geared to favor one gender over another.

This stuff seeps into our belief system and stays there until we flush it out.

As  C.S. King has noted in her research, “…sex roles and gendered roles are institutionalized as a part of a culture and reflect important aspects of the culture itself.” If you come from a society with clearly defined roles for men and women, you may have to accept or reject which behaviors fit your leadership style. Indeed, not paying attention to where you come from could be a blind spot.

And yet, are things changing?

Just this week was the news about Carol Bartz and how she was fired by Yahoo. This is a woman who doesn’t mince words at all. Although there are some people writing about how she is a powerful female leader, there is far more commentary on her job title, her performance at Yahoo and how she revealed the process of being fired. In reading the comments on various posts, there are themes about how she is admired and bitterness that resulted from some of her decisions at Yahoo. There are very few comments about her gender.

It’s interesting to note that there is far more explicit research on women, culture and leadership than there is about men. There are some that would say that this is because men are considered the default for most of what we know about culture and leadership. Given the changes exhibited by both genders across the globe, this may be in flux.

To encourage more thought and discussion, consider these questions:

1. How can we support each person to become an authentic leader and fit in an organization?
2. What are real examples of women hitting obstacles because of patterns they adopted or organizational expectations?
3. If women perceive “male” behaviors reflect poorly on them, how should they respond?
4. Are there times to openly recognize gender style differences?
   
5. Conversely, are there times to ignore gender style differences?
6. Does Carol Bartz’s famous strident style exemplify ideal leadership? Is it different because of gender?
   

Please consider yourself invited to join in this conversation on the Twitter chat, #UsGuysChat on Monday, September 12th at 3pm ET/12pm PT/8pm BST. We’d love  to have you share your thoughts on this topic.

Have you ever really stopped to think about capitalism? How do you define it? Some definitions are more loaded than others if you look at the various links in this Google search However, if you own or lead a business, you are definitely participating in this system.

Describing the system to ourselves

There are so many words to describe the way we think about capitalism. There are variations on how capitalism is expressed if you start looking at how some corporate entities are state-owned to the mixed economy type.There are advocates for free markets, laissez-faire or free enterprise as if they are infallible. Other people raise questions about how money is distributed, how workers are treated by their employers or the potential for creating instability. No matter where you fall philosophically, the flaws in the system brought a great deal of havoc in 2008 and we’re still dealing with the consequences.

The flaws are the issue.

There are fierce debates in many countries about how to regulate this system. Certainly one of the most famous critique of capitalism is Das Kapital by Karl Marx. When we are faced with troubled companies that are “too big to fail” and they can harm a national or even global economy, something is amiss. It’s easy to blame the elite rich or labor unions or whomever is your target but at the end of the day, we’re still participating in this system.  There are ethical questions about what happens to the widening gap between each economic class, unemployment and consumerism. How do we talk about the flaws of capitalism?

The process of redefining capitalism

Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say it’s a process of redesigning capitalism. One movement has been sustainability. While it is often associated with green technology and environmentalism, sustainability also includes developing business models that can respond well to stressors and successes. Even in Nouriel Roubini’s post, “Is Capitalism Doomed?” the question lies in how we think about people and what makes them productive more than exploiting markets. There is also more expressed desires for a flexible work-life balance and work that has meaning and purpose. Where does this fit in?

Join the conversation.

It behooves us to not ask ourselves what we believe about capitalism and how we want to create businesses that are sustainable. This is the business climate we’re in and the turbulence isn’t going away in a hurry. We can choose to continue supporting current practices, foster a revitalized system or eliminate capitalism as we know it altogether. It may not be a clear answer but your answer is part of conversation.

In the next #kaizenblog (Twitter chat) on Friday, September 9th at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT we’re discussing this topic. Please join us and add your thoughts and expertise. If you can’t join in on Twitter, please add your comments below.

Which aspects of capitalism are still relevant to the current economic climate?

What trends are you noticing in discussions about capitalism?

What is changing on a micro-level (within your business community) that is sustainable?

This is our topic for this week’s #kaizenblog, a weekly Twitter chat that uses the concept of kaizen to critically think about various aspects of business, enhance our skills and deepen our self-understanding. You can join this conversation every Friday at 12pm Eastern.

Do you think you know right from wrong? Are you consistent every time? We’d all like to think so. However, recent research on self-discipline and decision fatigue makes one wonder if there may be a slippery slope we didn’t take into account. It’s easy to identify corporate scandals that involve blatant greed and social pressure. But are there smaller moments when ethics are placed aside?

Everyday temptations

• Conflicts of interest are probably the most common situations any of us encounter. Competing loyalties and desires can make us squirm. Sometimes we want to please someone. Sometimes we are in an uneven power dynamic and feel we must comply. Maybe we’re in a culture that is foreign or opposed to what we believe.
• The weight of our values change. Over time, how we value things changes. It isn’t so much that you throw out your “old” values as change the level of importance. Our values can clash with one another as well causing cognitive dissonance. If you haven’t reviewed your values recently, here is a ValuesInventory that I often give to my clients.
• Who or what in our environment entices us? Many times we are confronted with situations where we want to be in with the “cool kids”. The desire to compete, show off or be part of the glamour tempts us to put our integrity aside. Other situations include using an excessive amount of company time for personal calls, shopping, social media (unrelated to your job) or chatting with co-workers.
• Expediency can undermine our integrity. How many projects have you been a part of that included giving a customer a product with defects. Maybe it really doesn’t affect the  product is a major way and maybe the customer won’t notice? It’s also fairly common to tell someone what they want to hear so they stop bothering you. The old “the check is in the mail” is a great example of this.

But what makes us put blinders on?

It would be nice to say only “bad” people make unethical choices. It’s not that simple though. Fatigue and stress undermine our ability to make good judgements. Since self-discipline is a finite resource, we might compromise ourselves (on a small scale, I hope) because we just don’t have the juice to see through the more challenging choices.

Maybe it’s the system of capitalism? It’s so easy to say “let the market sort things out”. Although sustainability and social responsibility has become a bigger piece of the business landscape, old habits die hard. The idea that it must be “winner takes all” creates an environment where cutting corners or simply avoiding certain choices makes money. It’s hard to beat that kind of reinforcement. Not that it can’t be done. It merely is a challenge. And as long as there are bubbles in the market (think the dot.com, housing and maybe gold right now?), people will ride those waves and build businesses to answer perceived needs or wants for these markets.

So, how do we encourage ourselves and others to act with integrity?

We could leave all this ethics stuff to academics, ethicists or philosophers. However, the most effective way to get this stuff out in the open is to talk about it. Frankly, a code of ethics written in the employee handbook is not worth much if it is never actually tested with conversations and critical thinking. There are some great suggestions on how to create these conversations on the HBR Blog Network by Francesca Gino. It’s been noted by Dan Ariely and other researchers that we are adept at rationalizing our choices. By stopping to examine our behavior, even if the conversation isn’t about us directly, we are given the chance to build up our ability to act with integrity and courage.

What other everyday temptations occur in business settings?

What do we  risk by making ethical choices?

How would a common code of business ethics work in real life?

What would help each of us to act with more consistent integrity?

Join us for the Twitter chat, #kaizenblog, this Friday, August 26th as we take a look at this topic, “Ethics, Blinders and Business.”  We meet every Friday at 12pm ET/5pm BST/9am PT .