Me Too

A company's vision, mission, and values, seriously manifested by the top executive team, went into oblivion long ago, despite the founder, from his heart, recommending—a decade before he passed away—that his followers cherish the ‘Code of Good Conduct’ that built the company into greatness over an entire century. Its business culture was so strong that it withstood two world wars.

What happened? The followers who cherish, protect, and strengthen the ‘Code of Good Conduct’ either do not understand or, out of a disturbing ego, reflect a poorly hidden, muddled insight into the dramatic importance of satisfying all stakeholders, emitting a blurred sense of understanding regarding the core of the business processes and structures. It also includes a loose grip on quality, safety, precision, and delivery standards, manifested in the fact that only a few employees can recite the company's vision, mission, or shared values. Even fewer can see its impact on the business's descending results as they advance. More often than not, this portrays the executive’s lack of protection of a robust business culture – out of sight means out of mind and vice versa.

The consequence is easy to observe. Upscaling human collaboration, skills, and attitudes is non-existent despite the competitive forces transforming manual work into knowledge work to remain competitive. In addition, there needs to be a thorough plan to improve exploitation and exploration and satisfy customers, suppliers, diverse social encounters, and employees. Corporate human resources administer ‘high performance’ with a meaningless Bell Curve evaluation of humans on a scale of 0 to 5. They attempted to evaluate each employee’s degree of honesty, collaboration, best-in-class quality, skill development, diligence, etc.. They allowed devastating ego-centred management styles that belong to a Russian coal mine 800 metres beneath the surface.

What is the ‘Code of Good Conduct?

A successful ‘Code of Good Conduct’ means encoded convictions, attitudes, and behaviours that everyone, from the Board to executives and towards managers and leaders, has regarding the aims and concepts of how to lead a specific company. The encoded convictions spring from wisdom, humility, ethical attitudes, and vital moral behaviour as preparation to achieve supreme outcomes and sublime collective learning experiences regarding foresight, initiative, and reliability into perpetuity.?

Encoded means a specific ‘idea’ framed and installed in our brains, functioning as a conviction. For instance, we take for granted the conviction that personal freedom, individual rights, and humanised guidelines are foundational to an upright and prosperous company framework. We are also convinced that this allows humans to live together in peace and for their mutual advantage without agreeing on common concrete aims, bound only by abstract ‘codes of good conduct’. Everyone knows the right thing to do and has the motive to act on it – without explicit directions, overly detailed work rules, or hierarchical-ranked - masterminds.

This thinking turns out to be the most significant discovery of social encounters that humans have ever made. This is the foundation of a ‘code of good conduct’ made of stones that fit, with eight legs to run fast and wings to fly high.

Endless human diversities foster the chance for infinite variations of ideas and cooperation, to the mutual advantage of every stakeholder. We may pick the flowers of limitless human diversity and enjoy the beauty of collective contributions to progress.

The Mississippi River has 38 diverse origins throughout North America and Canada; for the last 400 miles, one cannot see the individual tributaries’ and distributaries' contributions. Cooperation between diverse humans will work only when we accept the free flow of each individual’s holistic contribution.

It ought to be acknowledged that a company's progress depends on thousands of small, diverse contributions, from operational excellence, from sales and purchasing, from 95% satisfied customers, from a persuasive strategic process, from a humanised people process, and from leaders who act as human asset developers. Given the 'code of good conduct' it benefits everyone to create a work environment that fosters both individual and collective creative intelligence. I am not talking about 'IQ' but the bio-intelligence that a flock of migrating birds demonstrates.

As a striving and expanding business, we must honour our origins, guard the diversity, and protect a beautiful image, which must always be spotless. With foresight, initiative, and reliability, we position ourselves as a leader in our field, upholding the highest imaginable social standards. We emphasise human convictions, attitudes, and behaviour, with modesty in our wishes, ethics in our actions, and solid moral behaviour that supports sustainable growth. Our vision for having no rivals and our mission to benefit all stakeholders, with a firm customer focus and care for diligent humans - Me Too - is expected to set a clear standard for long-term business success in perpetuity.

Siegfried W. Andersen, Helgen?s, October 2024.