The Warrior of Yin & Yang

There is a story of two wolves inside us. One is good and the other is bad one, which always fight each other. Which wolf will win?

During giving career advice for young talents and career starters in LinkedIn, I have received  many questioned asking about the real trade-off between business accomplishment vs sustainability & compliance: Is it true … by having business mindset, a C level shall have guts to cross the “red” border, sometimes, and do whatever it takes: “the ends justify the means”. Other question took example from accounting misstatement done by a national company lately. Questioning whether the Board really did not know accounting standards or they really did by intention and full awareness to cross boundary. More and more came questioning ethic and morality. What is the key driver. Only for Company? Or for Personal Intention?

The same topic was explored during Finance and HR forums in countries and regions lately how far in the name of business, profit and/or cash achievement, could they “bit” compromise to deliver better result, even though from ethic and morality they are bad one.  

I wrote this article as a continuation of my previous article: “Leadership Talk, Leadership Walk”. I think:

• If they lead by example and maintain highest integrity…
• If they had “anchor” as their ethical and moral compass…
• If they kept their own authenticity,  not faked or posed to be someone else…
• If they showed empathy and personal touch with “genuine sincerity” in building trust with people. 
• If they embraced failure acceptance culture…

…then the main questions in the first and second paragraph are not difficult to answer.

I used three core premises: The Basic of Organization, Consequentialism, and Becoming a “CEI” Chief Ethic & Integrity to build the story and make it more easy to understand my personal view. Let me start with the first core… always back to basic.

Basic of Organization

Wise people always say “Something made for the reason”. A position is made for a specific purpose/ reason as part of a large scheme design that correlates with another position. This is not a silo thinking. If silo is about egoism and selfishness; this is to maximize every resources in accordance with skill & competencies, job requirement & capability. 

Could you imagine if a CEO embraced all C-members to pursue sales; CFO/ CHR spent more and more time to prepare strategy to convince and win prospective customers even retention; COOs chased new prospective customers rather than thinking how to deliver the SLA (Service Level Agreement) and giving the best customer experience for contract retention; and CCO continued struggling for seeking clarity for her true core. In this situation,  it is not collaboration. Collaboration is a partnership, having same purpose by combining all resources with different skills, competencies and capabilities. The leading entity in collaborative action is the true holder of accountability.

The basics of organization shares the same fundamental with the basics of soccer. The general positions are forwarder, midfielder, defender, and goalkeeper; equivalent to senior management or C-level in organization with CEO, CFO (Finance), CHR (Human Resources), CCO (Commercial), COO (Operation), and varied position in different organisation, companies and industries.  Each position has a specific area of the field that they cover. This includes how far back or forward and how far left or right their territory spans. Forwarders, midfielders, and defenders are split into more specific positions based on their coverage of the left, centre, or right sides of the field. The difference on how far forward or back each position covers is determined by the strategic position. It is very important to know what each position does and what they are responsible for. If players either do not fit for purpose OR do not follow the guidelines of their positions, their team will not function properly. 

In organization, CEO is Coach, CCO is a Forwarder, COOs are a Midfielder, CHR is Defender, and CFO is Goalkeeper. 

In above story, CCO asked for Coach decision to remind her peers their true core responsibility, so she and the other peers could work properly based on their functionality. However the CEO omitted and just let the situation continued. After full year, all target was not achieved: new sales fail, retention fail, margin fail, most of all country target fail. CCO left.

Basic of organization is very important. It creates balance, make works becoming more efficient & effective, maintain high focus, and significantly reduce office politics. It creates healthy company culture by nurturing healthy environment that support productive works to highest degree.

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is the class of normative ethical theories holding that consequences of one’s conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgement about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct. Thus from consequentialist stand point, a morally right act is one that will produce a good outcome, or consequence. Consequentialism is primarily non-prescriptive, meaning the moral worth of an action is determined by its potential consequence, not by whether it follows a set written edicts or laws or it has legal form (contract etc). In the other accounting terminology, we are familiar with term “substance over form”. Every action is measured by the real purpose and intention.

Consequentialism helps to distinguish two common sentences in business world: “whatever it takes” and “the end justifies the means”. Both sentences share the same meaning. It can be good or bad depending on the true intention and purpose.

My professional friend from other company shared his story. His company was in big tender project with prospective new customers called X. It became common knowledge that in order to win this project with high scores, the internal person from X always asked for money for each different tests. They recommended an agent/ broker to be a mediator, called Y. Problem persisted when to appoint Y as an agent, the agency contract must be validated by Regional Procurement and Group Legal. CFO suggested the agent/ broker to be hired as employee and the money could be packed lump-sum to Y compensation and benefit’s payment as it could not be checked/ traced by Accounting/ Treasury. Senior Sales person and the Sales Excellence person were forced to take Y directly by CEO, they did not know how to answer. Instead, they were told “not having business mindset”. Finally, based on approval from CEO, CHR hired the agent/ broker as employee and parked Y under Sales division without CCO approval.

From above story, the real outcome was to win the customer whatever it took whatever it costed due to incapability to get high scores in order to win big tender. Therefore they thought by hiring and camouflaging the agent as employee was a “clever move” that justified all the means with well-deserved outcome (big revenue with good margin – maybe). The purpose and intention since the first very beginning was wrong.

Another parallel story happened in different organization. A Head of Internal Audit and Head Accounting were challenged by Country Leadership Team after covering up regular payments made to public officials to support the business. CFO challenged the Head of Internal Audit and Head of Accounting to think the business impact (business loss) and come with effective solution. The CFO reminded that every leadership position especially department head shall have business mindset, including Head of Internal Audit and Head of Accounting. “Don’t give us only problem, come with effective solution instead” said. In that case, by stopping payment to interim official it would lead to possible business loss. However Head of Internal Audit only requested Country Leadership Team to make it transparent to Region and Group – seeking for advices, did proper assessment by involving competent parties; and in the meantime putting payment on-hold until further written notice from Group.

In the second story, avoiding business loss was the main outcome. Whatever it took, even though by continuing payment to public officials. 

Being a “CEI” (Chief Ethical and Integrity) 

Living day by day battling for clarity and transparency, for the right trade-off between business result and compliance, for being ethical and holding morality; a senior leadership team or the C-team is also Chief Ethical and Integrity (CEI).  Being CEI is not only CFO and CHR duties, but also the duties to all C-s. Compliance is not only the responsibility of CFO and CHR as caretaker; as long as the common goal is sustainability. It is everyone duties sitting in senior leadership team. Sustainability only can be achieved by demonstrating highest integrity and ethical standard. The most easiest thing and the quickest way to earn trust from customers, vendors, government institutions, financial institutions is compliance; especially nowadays sustainability and compliance have become increasingly important as they affect cost capital and brand value.  

Compliance, indeed, should not kill the business; but we should never compromise.  We should find the right way and guide our team to do the right thing. Only by then, in long term we would have strong winning and high compliance team.

Therefore all above narrations, examples and stories should not happen as they were if everyone in senior leadership team acted their role as Chief Ethical and Integrity, by heart. The righteousness, ethic and morality become the foundation in every comments, guidance, and decisions:

• CEO would say to CCO: “Thanks for raising this, Mrs. CCO. I get your point. I know and understand your difficulty to start the Sales Division with most of all people left in the beginning and starting from the scratch since September ago. Dear All, from now on I am not expecting to hear this escalation anymore. We need to get back to our core responsibilities and give full support to our CCO. Please put it in the minutes and we review again in the next meeting.”
• CFO would say to Head of Internal Audit and Head of Accounting: “Thanks for reminding and raising this to me, I will bring this to next leadership meeting to discuss and decide what the next move because there is possibility to lose the business. I like your solution to bring this to Group level and involve expert to review the situation better. Until everything is clear and put the right transparency, we would put on hold all the payments immediately. I will tell CEO about this. From now on, let me continue this to Country, followed by Region and Group. I will call and involve both of you only if we need some detail information. Well done team”
• CEO and CFO would say: “We would not win the tender by giving bribe. It is illegal and against our Company Code of Conduct. Please do not mention and ever bring to us the idea to appoint agent nor hiring as our employee for flowing the bribery money. Let us play fair”.
• Or, CHR would say: “My deepest apology. We would not hire this agent without involving proper and thorough hiring process and adopt our compensation & benefit standard. If necessary I would seek advice to my Regional or Group P&C line for more clarity.” 

Becoming a C-level is like receiving mandate from “heaven”. The incumbent needs to be a good role model and lead by example with utmost highest ethic and integrity. Both are base ingredient to run their strategic positions and functions effectively.

However, it is easier said than done.

Being ethic and demonstrating highest integrity, especially in the middle of high corrupted environment not only in small organization but also the nationwide, maybe is similar like a sane people entering the mental hospital. The common languages that usually popping up are:

• “If we did not this like others, we could lose opportunity and be beaten by competition..”
• “As long it covered by contract and we did not directly involve, we are safe”
• “We could not win the tender, if we did not do this...”
• “Make sure no trace…”
• “Don’t involve people from Group, they would drag the process too long and at the end they would not accept this..”
• “I thought Group and Region wanted us to do it.. silently. They’re only care we delivered result and not how to get done..”
• “We were not living in Europe or US..”

However what should be done, it should be done. Even though like sane people entering mental hospital, we should be a small light that slowly and progressively shining the darkness. Believing in ourselves that even small person could make big differences. Our “Leadership walk” and willingness to stand out the crowd, dare to cross extra miles and ready to go all the ways thru the hardships by holding the righteousness in maintaining balance is the key differentiator.

Therefore people like that live like a “Warrior”. They are different because they withstand on what their belief. They live their life thru hardships by not simply taking easy way nor short cut. Unfortunately, those people carry the stigma of the society as “not flexible” people, “theoretical” people, “no-common sense” people, “not a business-man” people. There is the reason why they are called “Warrior Yin and Yang” because they always find the right balance by maintaining the righteousness, even though going thru the hardships.

Understood how difficult to live like that. 

At the end, it is our choice to make. 

Back to wolves story,

"The one" we feed the most will win

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Writer's Note:

(1) If there are similarities in the story, the characteristic and the situations described in the article is mere coincident.

(2) The Warrior of Yin and Yang picture is under courtesy of Andi Saputra.

(3) The story of two wolves inside us is under courtesy of Stanislaus Atol.