Rick Maze, a reporter for Army Magazine, was kind enough to quote me extensively in his article, “Candor: Can the Army Handle the Truth?” which is available here. He also includes an extensive reference to the Rationalizations List.
organization ethics
Ethics for Bureacracies—On An Index Card
Ethicist Bob Stone has proposed a useful and perceptive solution to the perplexing problem of lax ethics in government bureaucracies. Calling on them to adopt “a strong sense of mission and a culture of trust, with authority and responsibility shifted from the few at the top to the many front-line workers,” Stone declares that too often “what passes for ethics is merely another set of rules to comply with, and ethics training usually consists of badgering workers about bribery, conflict of interest and favoritism.”
As a solution, Bob proposes a statement of ethical principles, so brief that it would easily fit on an index card:
I will:
- Do my best at work
- Avoid conflict of interest
- Speak truth to power
- Be a good citizen
- Shun any private gain from my employment
- Act impartially
- Treat others the way I would like to be treated
- Report waste, fraud, and corruption
When in doubt, my test is can I explain my actions to my mother or to my child.
Stone recommends that leaders and managers customize this to their own organizations, print it, distribute it, and then–and this is the most important part—regularly use events and decisions to discuss ethical lessons and principles with the staff, using the Statement of Principles as the starting point.
You can read his entire essay here. I recommend it. Bob has a long and distinguished background in that Mother of All Bureaucracies, the Pentagon. He knows what he’s talking about.
Nomar, Beantown, and the Legacy Obligation
Organizations have histories, and that means they have debts to pay. Time moves on, and personnel changes, but the organization that neglects the human beings who played major roles in defining their image, goals, achievements and success has breached its integrity, and violated its Legacy Obligation.
For nearly eight seasons, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra was the face, heart, and soul of the Boston Red Sox. A spidery gymnast in the field who completed the Holy Trinity of Hall of Fame-bound shortstops—Jeter, A-Rod and “Nomah” —who lit up the American League in the mid-Nineties, Garciaparra was a home-grown fan idol. He did everything wonderfully and with panache; Ted Williams, the city’s reigning baseball god, pronounced him his official successor.
Then, suddenly, it all unraveled. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 