If I had to choose one word that captures the spirit of this day, it would be transformation. Business, industry and commerce are in a period of tumultuous decadence. The winds of change are blowing everywhere.
We learning pros are witnessing a transformation with marvelous possibilities. Open the newspaper and behold the decay of corporate leadership development. Our culture is gaining the courage to admit a necessary truth about leaders and their gilded development: that rarely has so much been given to so few with such dolorous consequences.
As the social science of leadership development wilts, I sense a Phoenix rising in its place: ethics training.
By ethics I mean corporate citizenship and responsibility, social justice, stewardship and sustainability: what former Coca-Cola CEO (and Becker Multimedia client) Neville Isdell now calls “connected capitalism.”
I prefer to call it righteous conduct in business. That’s an easier phrase to translate into behavioral learning and performance objectives.
Knowing (as we do now, beyond the shadow of a doubt) that organizations may discover and equip leaders but not “develop” them, I wonder if it’s possible to train everybody to behave ethically.
Why wonder? Because in an ethical organization, it should be impossible for replicants to be mistaken for leaders. On the other hand, it should be possible for ethical leaders to create virtuous and sustainable value. Wasn't that the main point of leadership development after all?
As I thought about this nascent transformation, my survivor mentality began to doubt that learning pros can actually train business leaders and their minions to behave ethically. Experience and scholarship show that we cannot get them to do anything that transcends narrow self interest. (Hello, Ayn Rand.)
But I’m a novice when it comes to ethics training, so I asked an expert: Dr. Steven Olson of the Center for Ethics and Corporate Responsibility at Georgia State University.
Steve’s mission is to transform the classic MBA into a herald of ethical reform. Does he believe we can effect ethics training for those who have kissed the ring on the “invisible hand” of Adam Smith?
Yes, he does.
Citing the seminal writing of Harvard’s Michael Porter, Steve explained that organizations are beginning to acknowledge that they are deeply involved with society, in so many ways that it’s impossible to separate transactions from their social and natural consequences. It’s counterproductive even to try.
It's becoming the norm to admit that everything a company does produces a reaction in the world outside the company. Likewise everything society does has an impact on a company. The value chains are connected.
In Steve’s view, ethical organizations try to manage these internal-external interdependencies for the benefit of all. They work for a win-win.
And that’s where ethics training can help. Once self interest is reframed to include the well being of the other as well as the self, there will be a basis for ethical reform of organizations. Leaders and employees will act ethically because it enriches and sustains them; and their ethical behavior will enrich and sustain everybody from shareholders and consumers to frogs and bats.
But how should we do ethics training? Here are a few basic principles.
1. Never use the word “ethics” in your learning strategy; do not teach standalone ethics courses. Nobody will sign up or benefit.
2. Do not juxtapose ethics and self interest. This is not an either-or proposition. They are mutually reinforcing.
3. Have the vision, courage and generosity to separate self interest from selfishness. Kill selfishness. (Good-bye, Ayn Rand.)
4. Make your organization’s core values clear and concrete; they are irrelevant if they are not tangible.
5. Fire leaders and employees who are unethical; zero tolerance even in the C-suite and boardroom.
6. Embed ethical objectives in every instance of corporate learning; no exceptions, even in the driest technical training.
7. Embed ethical objectives in every instance of evaluation and compensation; no exceptions.
If the word ethics is never uttered in your classrooms and boardroom, but everybody receives frequent reinforcement of ethical behavior, then your learning strategy will be successful. It will deliver something that leadership development rarely (if ever) has: righteous conduct in business.
Recent Comments