|
The
Enron debacle has proven to be a wake-up call, arousing financial
markets and nearly every other segment of American society
from its naivete about not only what could but what actually
has happened in our increasingly complex and interconnected
economy.
That
a group of arrogant executives at a single company could manipulate
the system for personal gain in such a perverse and pervasive
manner is shocking to most of us. But, the rumblings
from other publicly-traded corporations signal that we may
have just seen the tip of the iceberg.
Almost
a year ago a client described to me a situation at another
mega-corporation for which he had served as vice president.
It was as if the company had “lost its conscience,” he lamented.
The
truth is that a company does not have a conscience except
as the aggregate of the individuals that it employs.
Columnist Tom Ehrich has written, “For something obviously
wrong to proceed, multiple consciences must stop working.
Entire communities must grow numb and choose not to see any
connection between abusive behavior and oneself.”
Losing
consciousness
I
have been accused of being overly optimistic, but I believe
that most individuals bring high standards into their careers
and the companies for whom they work. Yet in workplaces
upon which our livelihoods depend, we struggle to put those
principles to work in day-to-day, hour-to-hour, rubber-grips-the-road
decisions.
Individuals
rarely lose their integrity at work in the blatant goings-on
demonstrated so flagrantly at Enron. More commonly virtue
erodes in what I call “pinpricks”--the seemingly trivial or
insignificant acts that we perform which don’t feel quite
right. Over time, and often a very short period of time, we
find ourselves doing things, that if we really thought about
them, we would not do. We seem to shelve our values
for use in other places and convince ourselves it doesn’t
matter.
In
the 1960s Stanley Milgram conducted ground-breaking psychological
research in which participants believed they were administering
electric shocks which could kill or seriously injure a subject
in another room. When they believed the
action had been sanctioned by authority, and when the amount
of shock they were asked to deliver increased incrementally,
participants consistently inflicted the life-threatening jolts.
Like
participants in Milgram’s experiments, we dismiss culpability
in our workplaces if the system endorses activities that our
consciences reject. For several years I analyzed client
companies by interviewing employees at all levels. I
observed that often within a month of the onset of employment,
an individual, who we might otherwise be characterized as
being of both high intellect and character, was anesthetized
into “don’t rock the boat” mentality by subtle corporate “programming.”
Although company officials often suggested that it would be
a waste of my time to talk to newcomers, I often found that
those were the only individuals who had not yet succumbed
to what I referred to as “the corporate trance” in The Alchemy
of Fear.
Although
attempts at organizational transformation over the past 20
years have sought otherwise, ask an employee in most any company
why they are doing what they are doing, and more likely than
not, they will not have an answer, or even have given it much
thought, since they were newcomers. “It’s just the way
we do it,” they will say. Such automated responses in
even the most mundane of situations signal the first low-grade
violations of individual Truth. Each time we fail to
listen to our conscience allows the next lapse to be easier.
For
most, the failure to speak the Truth over time has extracted
both our acuity and our vitality, robbing us of the energy
and commitment to make a difference. We excuse the negligence
because our jobs or maybe even our lives, are at stake.
Whistleblowers give witness to the reality of these fears.
Movies such as Silkwood, The Insider, and A Civil Action demonstrate
how hard it is to fight the corporate power structure, but
perhaps leave us believing that these cases are rare publicized
exceptions. Yet bring up the subject in almost any group,
and one or more will be able to relate stories in which either
their livelihood or that of someone they personally knew was
threatened because they refused to yield to pressure to cover-up
wrongdoing, inefficiencies or incomplete decision-making processes.
Such is the way we have rewarded “right action” in our culture.
As
I have travelled the book signing circuit, individuals of
virtually every faith tradition have confided to me that while
their places of worship have taught them principles, they
have no survival skills for implementing their values at work.
Fatigued and fragmented, my readers seek courage and insight
about how to reflect their Truth at work. For them,
it is a daily battle to avoid succumbing.
Righting
the corporate ship
Great
moral courage is demanded to speak up in environments of such
threat. Every corporation has their Sherron Watkinses
and Jordan Mintzes. The question is how do we right
a system that is badly listing to encourage them, to value
what they have to share, and to use it to improve our companies.
We can write tighter accounting rules and SEC reporting requirements.
We can exercise more oversight. Yet as long as short-term,
opportunistic thinking and action are rewarded, creative minds
will figure out how to beat the system.
The
very stockholders who force corporations to live or die on
quarterly reports are the ones, such as those at Enron, who
stand to lose most as the consequence of their demands get
further and further out of whack. Almost every executive
makes decisions that he or she knows are not in the best long-term
interest of the company because they have to make the numbers
look good this quarter. The pressure to get the stock
price up isn’t unique to either Enron or its accounting escapades.
Quarterly-thinking penetrates nearly every function of most
companies. In many ways, it has been the investors who
have let the unwritten rules of the market evolve to the extreme
and are now screaming at the results.
If
we are to right this corporate ship, stockholders must first
accept responsibility for tipping it in the first place and
begin to reward honesty and candor at least as much as accounting
and management tricks which produce the illusion of profitability.
Imagine a market that adds a few points to a stock’s value
when the CEO announces that returns are down this quarter
because of prudent planning and action or that a new product
release will be delayed to ensure safety to the consumer.
The
second thing that we must do if we are to right the corporate
ship is to build cultures where revelations like those of
Watkins and Mintz are encouraged and valued--where serious
concerns are strenuously investigated. Unlike what happens
now in too many cases in which purveyors of such revelations
are charged with not being team players, receive poor evaluations,
and see careers dead ended, cultures which value honesty and
integrity might actually reward those disclosing problems.
They may even be described as team leaders because of their
courage to risk action which fosters the long-term health
of the enterprise.
In
the years since my books were first released, many brave individuals
from around the world have confided in me the challenges of
the upstream battle for principled employee performance.
Hungering for support and encouragement, they have given rise
to a rapidly expanding spirituality at work movement that
cultivates workplaces which advocate personal values and wholeness.
Third,
we need to recognize how interconnected our world really is
and to act as if we truly can’t injure others without hurting
ourselves. Nonchalance about what is going on in someone
else’s backyard or quid pro quo locker room wink and pat on
the backside, “I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell
on me” must be exposed.
If
we are ever to expect a higher standard of conduct in society
at large, we are all responsible for ensuring integrity everywhere,
including in the companies with whom we do business. The coffee
vendor who saw half of his annual revenue evaporate, the hospital
or arts organization that lost a valued contributor with the
demise of Enron, or the CEO of any corporation should be just
as concerned about keeping companies honest as should be the
auditors and SEC. As we shed more collective light,
there will be fewer shadows in which the unscrupulous and
unthinking can hide.
And, such vigilance shouldn’t stop with bookkeeping and operations.
It is time to honestly admit the long-term impact of short-term
driven decisions on the environment, our communities, and
the moral fiber of our society. We are all in the same
boat in this world, and as we have seen with Enron, the ripple
effects of corporate action or
inaction extend far beyond what we could have imagined.
Chief Consciousness Officer
If
we believe that values and principles are important to us
as a global community, a strong statement is needed which
makes it clear to all inside and outside the corporation that
its values will drive it from the highest level. For many
years, I have contemplated what that would look like.
I
envision a “wise elder” with most senior status who would
have no personal or functional agenda or vested interests.
Charged with awakening in each member of the organization
what is right and true for the individual, this executive
will be obligated to expose norms which undermine honesty
and integrity while encouraging those which support it.
The name I have given the position is Chief Consciousness
Officer (CCO.)
The
solitary responsibility of the CCO would be to increase the
company’s exploration of its values in every decision.
Fostering openness, faith, and trust among and between stakeholder
groups, this executive will listen deeply and expand learning-oriented
dialogue. Rather than exercising the overworked habit
of using neatly prepared answers, the CCO will ask questions
that others have been reticent to raise, provide a safe harbor
for the likes of Watkins and Mintz who want to help grow the
organization through truth and virtue, and supply various
resources to assist people throughout the corporation to access
their own individual Truth.
Where
our money and power lies inevitably determines what motivates
us. Our corporations have Chief Executive, Financial,
Operating, Information, Technology, and in the case of Enron,
Accounting Officers, but no senior role has been designated
which is devoted exclusively to the integrity of the company.
Should we be surprised that greed and money have driven decisions?
Yet, as Enron has so graphically shown us, a company which
has lost its integrity has lost everything.
Enough?
As
strongly as I believe a Chief Consciousness Officer is an
essential bridge, it is just that--a step toward a more conscious
organization. Just as accounting rules and SEC reporting
requirements and oversight will never guarantee credible corporations,
a single officer of any rank can never ensure that our individual
consciences are awake, alert, alive, and active. That’s
an inside job, and it happens inside each and every one of
us--the stockholder, the mutual fund manager, the broker,
the senior executive, the accounting clerk, the middle manager,
the production line worker, the coffee vendor.
Can we
assure that something terribly wrong will not occur if all
of us are not vigilant and courageous? The true Chief
Consciousness Officer resides in each of us and always has.
Most of us just haven’t ever been given guidance or direction
about how to acknowledge our conscience at work.
Desert
Storm commander General H. Norman Schwarzkopf advises young
leadership students to act, “Not so much doing what the policy
wants, but doing what you feel is right in your heart and
what’s right in your mind.” I wonder how many of us
stop during the day to think, “What is right in my heart?
What is right in my mind?”
I
have been a business person for over 35 years in a career
that started early and I hope continues much longer.
In every fiber of my being, I believe in business and its
potential to positively impact the world in ways which cut
across race, region, and religion as other institutions simply
cannot. For business to realize the moral imperative
with which globalization has gifted us, we must reflect the
highest standards of character and interaction.
Perhaps
we should be grateful to Enron for providing a much needed
wake-up call. We now have the opportunity to rebuild
corporate cultures into ones in which integrity is the bottom
line, enabling business to successfully step into its potential
as responsible global citizen. Who will be courageous enough
to shed light on a situation that they have been ignoring
or avoiding? Who will open a dialogue about bringing
life to the values on the plaque in the lobby? What corporation
will be the courageous first to install a Chief Consciousness
Officer? Will stockholders accept their responsibility
to support that decision in escalated stock value?
There
is much to be done, and there is something that every single
person reading this article can do. What will you personally
choose?
Kay
Gilley is author,
speaker, spiritual teacher for executives and professionals,
and founder of Intentional Leadership Systems®.
She may be reached at (919)572-2879 or
http://www.intentional-leadership.com.
Copyright Pending Kay Gilley – Use With Permission
|
