Integrity is an outcome

Integrity is an outcome of actions. Established over time, not overnight.?And an individual’s or a company’s integrity can best be observed in the little signals. The day-to-day stuff. Do they have integrity in those circumstances where letting it slide is the path of least resistance? These are indicators that are apparent to those paying attention, well before any colossal blowups occur.

When I read, I like to make notes of specific passages for later reference. Here are a couple that I’ve gone back to recently while the topic of integrity has been on my mind.

Corporate culture can be a mushy marshland of vague language and incomplete, ambiguous definitions. What's worse, company values--as articulated--rarely match the way people behave in reality.?The slick slogans on posters or in annual reports often turn out to be empty words.?

For many years, one of America's biggest corporations proudly exhibited the following list of values in the lobby of its headquarters: "Integrity. Communication. Respect. Excellence." The company? Enron. It boasted about having lofty values right up to the moment it came crashing down in one of history's biggest cases of corporate fraud and corruption.

?Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer - No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention - P. xiii

For values or guiding principles to be truly effective they have to be verbs. It's not "integrity," it's "always do the right thing." It's not "innovation," it's "look at the problem from a different angle." Articulating our values as verbs gives us a clear idea.... we have a clear idea of how to act in any situation. We can hold each other accountable to them measure them or even build incentives around them. Telling people to have integrity doesn't guarantee that their decisions will always keep customers' or clients' best interest in mind; telling them to always do the right thing does. I wonder what values Samsung had written on the wall when they developed a rebate that wasn't applicable to people living in apartment buildings.

?Simon Sinek - Start With Why - P.?67

What is written on your wall? Is it practiced? Reinforced? Reflected in actions?

People frequently ask me for indicators of a looming crisis. For both companies and individuals, saying one thing but consistently acting in a completely different manner is as red as the flag can possibly get.