Long-term Ethics Instruments

Long-term Ethics Instruments

(reposted from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/long-term-ethics-instruments-steven-noels/)

“Honesty, trust, empathy, respect, co-ownership, transparency, and fairness are your long-term ethics instruments.”

In my first post on ethics and values, I mentioned this top-of-my-head list of ethics instruments. In hindsight they might appear a little internal-focused, while as ethics don’t stop at the border of the organisation’s firewall of course. So let’s try and revisit.

But first, why do I call these instruments, you might ask?

Well, catastrophic nature events put aside, I believe companies have the luxury of complete makeability – as opposed to humans. Companies are far more adaptable, hence less susceptible to sheer luck, than their key resources, aka us, human beings. Companies above all have the ability to master their destiny through manufactured serendipity, like a well-practiced magic trick where everything falls together so precisely, so elegantly, so effortlessly that it seems pure magic – however myriads of un-seen preparatory decisions have led to this magical inflection point. Companies can do so as their character, their brand, is much more malleable than the human character – we all know one fatal flaw in human character is its resistance to change. Companies not so, as everyday tactics, decisions, strategy shifts, lead qualifications, hirings, firings and more general prioritisation moments happen much more frequently than life events affecting the human character.

Ethics instruments are the rail guards of this continuous maker process. They are what define company culture at its core, and good culture is the most efficient way to nurture organizations into long-term effectiveness, growth and success.

With that in mind, let’s look at the list of ethics instruments once again:

Honesty

Humans in general are smart, and in my opinion quite capable of detecting lies – and everybody hates being lied at. Honesty is your long-term unvarying asset – it’s the easiest strategy to maintain – to just tell things like they are. Especially in external-facing interactions, such as presales, being straight upfront can be truly trust-inspiring. Honesty also paves the road for transparency as you shouldn’t need to worry accidentally sharing a lie.

Trust

There’s NO VALUE in working with people you can’t trust. Conversely, you need to establish a trust relationship with your colleagues, partners, customers, friends. Trust is a multi-faceted thing – it’s about being able to confide with someone, it’s about delegation and believing things will turn out well, it’s about good-honest improvement feedback and being open for it. People will feel when they are distrusted, and adapt accordingly (becoming the worst alter ego of themselves), turning their backs to you. If you can’t trust people you work with, fire them, or fire yourself if you need to fire them all.

Anti-pattern for trust: micro-management.

Empathy

Empathy is about the small, unspoken-for things. It’s not about the Mister Simpatico conversations during lunches and company dinners, it’s about the small gestures invisible to others – “Is your kid/partner/pet better?” “Are you stressed out, do you want to vent about it?” “I see you’re busy, can I get you something?” – a profound interest in the backstories of people, more even so for these aspects of human nature that people like to hide behind their professional facade.

Empathy is king in customer relationships as well of course: it’s so much easier to understand the true drivers of your customer if he or she has opened up to you as he reciprocates your empathic gestures.

Respect

What respect adds onto empathy is intellectual recognition, or appreciation for someone’s professional abilities. People who feel respected thrive in self-confidence and will perform better. Respect sits between the soft and the harder ethics instruments in the sense that it will directly appeal to someone’s core self-awareness, and inspire for greater ownership and action.

Respect is about topics such as work/life balance, about arriving on-time for scheduled meetings, about true interest in (and sometimes patience for) the message someone’s trying to convey, is about eager and early communication or feedback to make sure people don’t go off on the wrong track, and it is about not second-guessing or “competitive-parallel delegation”.

(A favourite management interaction malpractice where the same question or task is asked in parallel to two or multiple people or teams, to inspire some peer competition and to be able to pick the more amenable outcome. Exists since ancient times: divide et impera.)

Respect is something you earn of course, but we oftentimes tend to forget that our peers won’t earn it if we don’t give it to them. Respect and trust are reciprocal things.

Co-ownership

So do I really need to hand out shares or stock options to all employees before they feel and behave as co-owners? To be honest, I think long-term ethics/values alignment and market-rate compensation is the more effective (and dilution-wise cheaper!) retention and empowerment method. The benefit of soft ethics instruments is that they are often low-cost.

Co-ownership is not just about self-guiding and empowered teams, it is also, and more importantly so, about giving the opportunity to tangibly share successes and failures. Co-ownership is about actually delegating decisive authority and making people stand up for it. Achieving co-ownership is only possible with complete transparency on all parameters of the lease: operating cost, business benefits (monetary & strategic), drivers, alignment with goals, strategic value, etc… very often employees are owning only the challenges and the actual labor, but are not provided with enough insight on the surrounding business context, and have to work within overly restrictive boundaries.

Transparency

Achieving complete transparency is not the same as being open. Complete transparency is not just about sharing info, often only on a need-to-know basis, it is about making as much information accessible as possible to all stakeholders, to inspire co-ownership and self-direction. Transparency in decision making, a basis for fairness, makes the decision process auditable and establishes trust within the company.

I’m never sure if Buffer’s approach to transparency is only genuinely real, or also a little bit of a marketing / recruiting / branding trick, but there’s a heck to be learned from Joel’s insights on running a transparent organization.

Fairness

I think this one is easy, and probably the most ethical one of the list – and actually the one that should be the easiest one to align with.

Trust rhymes with just. Being transparent is a no-brainer if people feel treated fair, and a lot of brutal honesties can be more easily understood and accepted, if based on principles of fairness.

I’m well below the fold now, but hopefully you got this far – happy with any feedback, even stylistic as I’m still finding my writer’s voice. Two NY resolutions: at least a monthly cadence, and from next article on a mix of business culture, tech and policy.

Be well.