First Post

(reposted from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/first-post-steven-noels/)

Topic for today is values and ethics – the softer side of business, and unfortunately not always the one that is proactively prioritized and related against shareholder value growth. As businesses go through challenging phases, long-term concepts such as values and ethics sometimes have to make place for shorter-term focus or concerns. Or, worse, values get victimized by the main fuel to the economical apparatus: us, the people. To get a better chance at getting that promotion, or to sell to that hot prospect, or even to get rid of an annoying co-worker, us people sometimes can go at length victimizing values and ethics to our own shorter-term benefits.

I use the word victimizing deliberately, as values and ethics are by definition defenseless and humble, their own value to the balance sheet often hard to quantify. So it’s intellectually easy to justify breach of value to compensate for short-term loss or when optimizing for short-term gain.

However, I feel a sense of change on the horizon. As a happy parent with smart and healthy kids in their late teens and early twenties, I have the immense honor of witnessing the rise of a new generation. It’s a generation unfortunately with less access to the riches we have grown accustomed to: increasing global prosperity, comfort upon retirement, clean water.

It’s a generation which has grown up to be slightly dispassionate about lifelong employer loyalty, and we can’t blame them for that. It’s hard to be motivated by corporate government principles set up by the same generation that ruined the climate for you, that created a well-fare society where young people have to work hard to maintain the comfort of an older retired generation while at the same time getting no guarantees that the same comfort will be made available to them when they grow old.

We are in need for corporate values that inspire and motivate people for the long run. Ones that are undebatable, cannot be cheated upon in dire times, values which unite generations and allow companies to build for good, for great, for real.

I’m past your attention span now, but allow me to conclude with a list of possible values and ethics to come back to in my next post:

  • Relentlessly focus, obsess even, over customer experience and satisfaction
  • Aspire to become data-driven to remove unconscious bias from your decisions and behavior
  • Honesty, trust, empathy, respect, co-ownership, transparency, and fairness are your long-term ethics instruments
  • Never underestimate the intelligence, resilience and self-motivation of your colleague / manager / customer, for better or for worse.

I’m sure I’m missing out on a good deal of other important ones; please let me know.

Happy 2019!