My experience is that growth is best achieved through managing the business model to provide outstanding service to our customers and to their customers. That is not to be confused with the “customer is always right” syndrome. In many cases, by understanding what your customer’s customer needs, you may have the expertise to make a disruptive technology available to your customer that would almost always NOT be seen as needed or even wanted, by your customer. In other words, many times our customers are just as reluctant to change as we are. But we sometimes have an advantage as the “expert” in our field and can see where disruptive technology from our research will or could render our customer’s product obsolete if they do not embrace the change. More likely though, is if we are in touch with our customer’s customer, we will see that THEY are changing their business model and can assist in all that is implied by that change.

When we find ourselves focusing on growth only for the sake of growth of one business metric (say revenue), without regard to the business model, we will almost certainly create unintended negative consequences. Therefore all the business metrics, bonuses, rewards, and incentives should support the strategic goals, continuous business model innovation, and growth at a rate that is supportable through outstanding customer service rather than simply sales bonuses. In this regard, many companies are now re-evaluating the balance between salaries, commissions, and long term customer relationships. The balance seems to be tipping in favor of doing everything possible to foster the long term relationship with customers rather than short term advantages of booking a few more orders. That means building trust and trust, put simply, is “I get that you have my best interest at heart, not just your own.” If this long term relationship is highly valued, then we will look for ways to continue to further our customer’s best interests within our own company. This mindset will surely lead to new business models, new products, and new services. That in its self will create new and growing revenue streams.

It is important to look at all the costs of growth in the business, just like any other project. And, just like any strategic plan, we need to evaluate implementation to assure that all the incentives line up with achieving the goal and that the unintended consequences are discovered quickly and evaluated to avoid failures. Complex systems, such as our business organizations, are best shaped to evolve in our rapidly changing environment through response to those changing requirements with business model innovations. It’s survival of the most adaptable, not the strongest.

If, for example, one of the moral values espoused by the corporation is that “people are our greatest assets,” (and what company isn’t saying that in one form or another?) and when things get tight the first thing the leadership team does is cut training, conferences, and lay off employees to “make the budget,” then we know that the integrity of the budget as well as the credibility of the leadership team is suspect. Another common disconnect is the usual statements about being a “good corporate citizen” and then providing little or now time, money, or effort into philanthropy, service, or participation in the communities in which the company operates.

The budgeting process itself has to support the statements being made about the value of employee participation. If, for example, we ask the managers in the various departments or groups to participate by developing a “bottom up” budget, but then provide no logical explanation for revisions by the leadership team, then there is no perceived value in doing such a budget. Explanations of the invariable cuts, rearrangements, eliminations and additions are critical to the integrity of the process. Communication on exactly how the budget supports the stated goals and values of the corporation ensures that the budget process will be viewed as integral to the life of the corporation. Anything less causes managers and employees to assume that the process is only window dressing, unimportant, and does not require much effort or thought on their part.

Nowhere is this budgeting process more important than on the setting of the revenue budgets for the sales and marketing teams. If budgets that are set seem truly unreasonable (beyond the normal “negotiating stands”), then again they will become disincentives and de-motivating for those remunerated on those goals. Of course stretch budgets are necessary to motivate people to grow the business base at each customer and to gain new customers where possible. But if the budget is set too far out of reach, it will quickly become a negative incentive.

The budget must become part of the measurement culture of the company. Once goals are set, then the periodic review of those goals becomes a requirement to reinforce the significance of those goals to the corporation. What gets measured and reported gets done. The progress toward meeting the budget needs to be highly visible to those responsible and accountable for reaching revenue and cost budgets. The same is true of all resource allocation from raw materials to finished goods.

Employees come to work wanting to perform well, achieve the agreed upon goals, and be thought of as successful. So what de-motivates them? Not having the tools to do their assigned task; not being heard when they have suggestions; no positive feedback on their accomplishments or areas for improvement; remuneration that is significantly lower than their peers within and outside the company; lack of support from the leadership team; and inconsistency between the stated goals, mission, vision and the actions of the leadership team. Employees come to us with a full complement of motivation, it is up to us to make sure we remove all the things which de-motivate them and nurture those things which keep their motivation level high.

The rub, of course, is that which de-motivates me is something that you don’t even notice! Perhaps I need to have a clean, neat, well supplied office and surroundings in order to feel comfortable and able to concentrate on my work. You on the other hand couldn’t possibly care less about the work environment as long as your phone and computer are up and running. You may put a great deal of emphasis on having the authority to go along with your responsibility and want to exercise that authority frequently to feel you are adding value to our enterprise. I may want to do things in a facilitated group manner making sure no one person has that authority which you cherish. I may want a stable work life so that I can feel secure about knowing what to expect in life. You may be excited by the constant chaos of change and new challenges. Find out what inspires your employees; it is often things other than actual money or cash. Daniel Pink, in his book Drive, has a lot to say about this topic.

The task of the leadership team is to make sure that despite our differences, we are both motivated to complete our tasks in the most reasonable fashion possible while at the same time keeping the organization moving forward through continuous innovation and improvement in the goods and services provided to the end user. So we must work within the given limits of conducting business today. Constant change in the business model means that we have to have a solid, relatively stable Ethics Process upon which to evaluate all the potential changes and innovations. An attractive office environment will not be a distraction to those who do not need one so perhaps that is the common denominator. Certainly we can work to have competitive benefits and salaries. And certainly we can focus on removing the de-motivating policies, procedures, and environmental issues whenever possible. Leave the motivation to the individuals.

This section would not be complete without mentioning the highly de-motivating executive pay and benefits of some companies these days. It will come as no surprise that very few people other than the CEOs, COOs, and CFOs themselves can justify the more exorbitant perks, benefits, stock options, and salaries being pulled down by executives while others are being laid-off and corporate profits are “in the tank.” Not only is this wide disparity in pay de-motivating to the employees in general, it opens the door to those who would violate their own moral values in order to “get their share” of the goods. It fosters a sense of entitlement that is extremely dangerous to our companies and employees.

As corporate leaders, we should look very hard at pay differentials between employees, functions, and executives. Those differentials may motivate a few individuals and de-motivate the rest of the organization as they see themselves becoming the victims on whose back the opulent are making ill-gotten gains. While it is important to have some differentiation in pay that is directly commensurate with the value added for all the stakeholders, most would not disagree that things have gotten out of hand at a few highly visible companies.

The latest unemployment figures being revealed as I post this are not encouraging. After restating previous unemployment numbers and stating that more than 9% of the workforce is idled or underemployed, we are faced with an economy that has not created jobs at a rate that will relieve the downward pressure on consumption. Faced with these statistics, it is no wonder why the average American worker feels a bit exercised at Chief Executives earning multi-million dollar and corporations earning record profits. Regardless of what one may believe the justification for executive pay packages, the perception is that many are simply greedy and selfish. Perception is reality.

To my way of thinking, we now have to look at BPR as being continuous business model innovation so that we get away from the stigma of the “right sizing” activities that are a result of the normal shift in jobs from a manufacturing economy to an information and service based economy. Technology too gets an unfair rap in this process. Yet the difficulty lies with individuals keeping up with the changes going on around them. Mr. William Ellermeyer teaches that “You are the Enterprise.” Just as we update the skills needed in an enterprise to stay competitive in the world markets, so must we as individuals manage our own skills and niche markets to make sure we continue to add value. Otherwise, we too become obsolete or overpriced.

All of this means that we need to look at the “Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and How Much” for our product or service to determine what the business model is now. Then we need to aggressively pursue information about our customer, our customer’s customer, all the way to the end user in order to determine how to improve the use of our product or service to the end consumer. This will force innovation of our business model. This process is as important for individuals as it is for corporations of all sizes assuming one wishes to be successful in business (profit or non-profit business). Even those of us in supposedly lower levels of the organization can and must add to this process by always being cognizant that continuous process and business model improvement is required to survive in today’s world economy.

To the organization, this means that chaos will reign; never ending change is the order of the day. To the individual this means that at no time will we be able to sit back and get a handle on our job; it will always be changing at one level or another. For everyone, it means getting use to employment being a series of short term (18 to 24 month) projects rather than the hope of lifetime employment. There will no longer be many jobs that are similar to what I grew up with—ten or more years in the company, or perhaps even retire from the company you joined out of high school or college.

So BPR, by whatever name you wish to call it, is a way of life for the organization and for the individual. We need to learn how to deal with constant change for the purpose of process and business model improvement as well as product or service innovation. While this seems logical and clear to most people, when they are faced with actually doing something different, becoming a different person, they fall back to their old protective ways. They evaluate their willingness to participate based on their perception of how the changes will enhance or diminish their power, sense of control, or status in the eyes of their peers. Sadly, not being positive about and part of furthering organizational change only ensures the demise of the company, department and/or employee’s job. Today the word is; “Change or die.”

Traditionally, middle managers were required to receive and summarize information from the people in the organization below her and pass it up to the executive teams above for decision and/or action. With the advent of information technology, just now starting to pay-off in a big way, we do not have to have people gather and summarize data. Instead, we depend upon the systems to do that for us. In large part, that is why the business slow-down (recession if you like) in the 2001 through 2003 time-frame is so difficult to understand. Productivity of the large investment in technology over the previous decades is now finally hitting the bottom line. We are doing far more with far fewer employees than ever before.

Some believe we have gone a bit too far in this regard, and perhaps they are right. Time will tell the story. Meanwhile, with revenues scarce, businesses have no choice but to work on minimizing costs in order to stay in business. To the extent that they can do that while not decreasing their customer service, they will be not only successful, but in many ways better off than they were, We can no longer wait for a steeply hierarchical business model to function. Customers and their customers demand quick, accurate responses.

The Harvard Business Review (Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA, Published Monthly) is replete with case studies on the many different ways companies have found to re-organize their firms to make them more responsive to customers. Almost all projects of any size involve the application of technology to reengineered business processes to improve customer service. At the same time, efficiencies are gained by the organization as the installed or modified systems take over the function that was originally performed by legions of people. Perhaps the best analogy comes from the recent armed conflicts. As we watched in amazement, the use of technologically improved weapons allowed a relatively small army to dismantle a whole governmental infrastructure with efficiency, effectiveness, presumably the least possible casualties. Things don’t always work out that way, even with the proper application of technology. But more and more we are seeing the effects of applied technology to minimize the number of people in our organizations while improving the delivery of customer service and product innovations.

There is no reason to believe that this trend to flatter, leaner, more technology driven companies won’t continue. Even the smallest business finds that the need for internet connectivity, e-mail, electronic invoicing, file sharing, and electronic fund transfers are a way of life. And along the way, they find that they are made more efficient in their own operations as they respond to the demanded technology. The challenge then is to manage the changes required by our companies and our employees while at the same time maximizing the return on our efforts. We are all stakeholders in the success of our economic system and so it is in our best interests to figure out how we, as individuals, will contribute to the new world of business.

The characteristics of such an organization may not always be observable to those outside, but those within invariably describe the business as progressive, innovative, always changing, chaotic, responsive to customer needs, supportive of employees, and a great place to work. The leadership team ensures that the necessary skills training for employees are high on the priority list. They do not cut back on this training in hard times because it is a vital part of serving the customer. The model organization also has pushed decision-making as close to the customer as possible.

The front-line employees are encouraged to gather as much information about the customer and the customer’s customer as possible. Armed with that information, continuous business model improvement becomes part of the process. The innovations are designed to further serve the customer and bring added value to the relationship. For this process to consistently take place, the leadership team has to make sure that the continuous business model innovation is part of the corporate culture. The leadership team must be prepared to accept mistakes, learn, and move on without recrimination for trying something new.

Similarly (as discussed previously) ethics must be treated as a business process to make sure all employees understand how to manage the business model innovations and keep the innovations in line with the vision and mission for the company. Trusting the employees with this critical task of continuous improvement requires a leap of faith for some managers, but it is vital to the survival of our business in this high speed, world market environment in which we now operate.

All of the above implies that we will have lean, flat organizations with many tasks outsourced so that there is flexibility built into the model. According to recent trends in employment, our companies are utilizing contractors, temporary employees, outsourced services and independent consultants more than ever. Functions being outsourced include but are in no way limited to: supply chain management, Human Resources, accounting, payroll, manufacturing of established products, and even some design and development. The average length of time in a executive position seems to be between 18 and 24 months. Employees are finding that they can be loyal to their profession or skill but need not be loyal to a particular company. In fact, it is often not possible to be loyal to a particular company but instead they are forced to be free agents through efficiency efforts by their employers.

The semiconductor industry is learning just how to balance the ever increasing cost of fabrication facilities (fabs) for integrated circuit (IC) production with the efficiencies of outsourcing that work to others who can leverage their facilities, keep them full, and reduce the per IC cost of manufacturing. The trade-off is one of advancing the production methods with the now $2 Billion price tag for owning and maintaining an advanced production line for state-of-the-art semiconductor fabrication. It is difficult for most established semiconductor companies to accept putting the fate of their production in the hands of a third party, yet the cost of building new fabs for successive generations of product.

After hearing him speak at a University of California at Irvine Management School of Business lecture, I spoke with him afterwards about his presentation and implementation of his program. I shared with him my view of ethics as a business process, and he agreed that we were saying essentially the same thing. Actively managing the corporate culture and implementing ethics as a business process are very much the same systematic implementation of decision making and establishment of values for the corporation and employees.

Edwards strives to inculcate its values throughout the organization utilizing the vision and mission statements as well as procedures and policies. Management teaches by example the values embodied in those documents. Edwards makes products to correct heart disease, and they are the number one heart valve manufacturer in the world. Let me show you Edward’s credo. (By the way, do you know what a credo is? It is a statement of principles, in other words, a creed.)
Our Credo:

At Edwards Lifesciences, we are dedicated to providing innovative solutions for people fighting cardiovascular disease.

Through our actions, we will become trusted partners with customers, colleagues, and patients—creating a community unified in its mission to improve the quality of life around the world. Our results will benefit customers, patients, employees, and shareholders.

We will celebrate our successes, thrive on discovery, and continually expand our boundaries.
We will act boldly, decisively, and with determination on behalf of people fighting cardiovascular disease.

Helping Patients is Our Life’s Work, and Life is Now.

Every mechanical valve Edwards makes has a serial number. Each valve is manufactured by one individual. Each patient who receives a valve can, if they wish, know which individual at Edwards made their life saving valve. From time to time, the leadership team at Edwards will arrange a meeting between the patient and the person who made the valve. The meeting will often take place during work hours right on the production floor at Edwards. There is NEVER a dry eye at these meetings. And you can rest assured that once a patient tells everyone on the floor that day how important his or her new heart valve is, how precious their new lease on life is, that there will never be an Edwards worker who purposely chooses to ignore the quality of a product for the sake of expediency or economy. That is how an ethical company works; that is actively managing the corporate culture. This is ethics as a business process.

Edwards is also rightfully proud of their “Owner’s Manual (see below).” This document is the roadmap for employees describing how Edwards is committed to continuous improvement and living out their ethics process. This document also shows the commitment to a much more robust approach to the art of growing a business—the commitment to continuous business model innovation. In their recent book The Ultimate Competitive Advantage, Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles point out how important it is to continually develop a more profitable business model. The case studies they provide are compelling and their approach to achieving the necessary performance is straightforward practical business. Edwards exemplifies continuous business model improvement.

Edward

Buddy, can you spare the change?

No, you cannot spare the change and neither can your organization! You are in fact changing and your organization will also change. You and it will change or you will die and even death is a process of change. And in today’s modern business world, to focus on the business issues, the pace of change has accelerated to the point of almost blinding speed. It continues to accelerate.

We all know that this is the case, and we all know that it is technology that is driving the acceleration of change. Advances in communication have made our world one global market. We face competition from the same global markets in which we seek the lowest cost labor for our own products. Many of our customers and employees purchase products and work to design products and services from the comfort of their homes. Information (and disinformation) is readily available to all who have access to the internet, and in the industrialized nations of the world, a majority of the people have gained that access one way or another.

We also know that disruptive technology provides leaps in competing products which totally transform the markets in which we move. The classic example is that of the buggy-whip. While focused on making the best buggy-whip in the world, the manufacturer does not see that automobiles will soon obviate the need for buggy-whips. The whole market disappears. Personal computers have totally changed the corporate information system market and have gone on to fuel the changes in how we as individuals use information and communicate in our personal lives. To not anticipate these disruptive technologies, or at least recognize and respond to their impact, is to invite corporate obsolescence.

Why do we fight change?

While intellectually we all know that change is inevitable, that there is no such thing as security or stability, we often have a difficult time accepting that things must change. My experience is that as long as someone perceives that a forthcoming change will increase their authority in the organization, they will embrace the change. If the perception is that authority or power will be lost due to a change, then all stops are pulled to avoid the proposed changes. Rarely do employees willingly make a personal sacrifice in stature, authority, or power for the general good of the organization.

Sometimes the opposition to change may be due to change overload. Perhaps an employee is dealing with an overwhelming amount of change in his or her personal life; children moving away to school, divorce or simply dealing with relationship strains at home, illness in the family. Under these circumstances, employees may well look to the workplace as the only point of stability in their lives. They spend fifty percent of their waking hours at work, and if everything else is in turmoil, they want desperately to have work be the haven from change.

Institutionalizing Change

As if it isn’t enough to deal with the outside forces of technology and globalization of markets, we now have to deal with the institutionalization of change within our corporations. Management initiatives such as Six Sigma and the ISO9000 programs demand continuous improvement. It’s impossible to imagine improvement without some level of change. Relentless pressure to increase human productivity demands changes in our business and management practices even if we determine that our products and markets are well defined and viable.

The essence of Business Process Reengineering (BPR) is alive and well today. The name, BPR, has been misappropriated for those who would simply downsize their organizations. Yet the original intent of a careful study, measurement, and radical reorganization of a company is still employed today; we just call it something else! Leadership teams have also recognized the need to make continuous incremental rather than radical changes for many of our business processes. Regardless of how we make the changes, change we must if we are to survive and thrive.

Shaping the Corporate Culture

How well change is managed in an organization depends on the skills of the leadership team. Not only do they need to understand the organization and the requisite changes, but they must understand their employee’s capacity for change and the capacity of the organization itself to support and promote changes.

Mr. Michael Mussallem, Chairman and CEO of Edwards Lifesciences, often speaks of “actively managing the corporate culture.” Part of the company credo is that; “We will celebrate our successes, thrive on discovery, and continually expand our boundaries.” Continually expanding boundaries implies not only technological but organizational change. To actively manage the corporate culture means not only ensuring that the corporate ethics is understood and managed as a process, but that the leadership team affirms and promotes an environment that encourages individual responsibility and a capacity to change the business processes.

What is Ethics?
We can start with some definitions as found in a dictionary:

1. Study of morality’s effect on conduct: the study of moral standards and how they affect conduct (takes a singular verb) Also called moral philosophy

2. Code of morality: a system of moral principles governing the appropriate conduct for an individual or group (Encarta World English Dictionary © & (P) 1999, 2000 Microsoft Corporation.)

This is a slippery issue, especially for business folks trying not to “harass” employees, or to force “moral” values upon them that might be contrary to their own culture. So this is a very difficult topic to discuss openly. I propose it is time for a hard look at the definition of ethics, and come up with a way to discuss this in our business communities. Here is a proposed definition:

Ethics is the process whereby we choose between competing moral and/or economic values.

Moral values involve judgments of right and wrong whereas ethics is the process for choosing between competing moral values. Moral judgments most often are based on what somebody’s conscience suggests is right or wrong, rather than on what the law says should be done.

I am proposing that we re-define ethics for the purposes of business. The reason for such a careful definition is that we have a bit of a problem with the “moral” aspect of this definition and we need to tread very carefully around how we develop our business culture. If we look at the second dictionary definition above (2.), we see why this is a difficult topic in the business world. Some would say that the second definition fits their concept of religion. And this is where the problem lies. So, I am proposing a new definition in order to put in place a “code of conduct for individuals,” that achieves our business goals and at the same time avoids the Enron and WorldCom debacles.

There is no way that a company is going to avoid deciding between competing moral and/or economic values. The difficulty is getting our individuals, who all hold different moral values, to comply with the culture of the company so that we do not have to micromanage every action every day. When we have other physical processes, we codify the individual’s response as much as we can. We do that with detailed policies, processes, and procedures. I am suggesting that we do the same with our Ethics Process. Training, communicating and consistent application apply to the ethics process just as they apply to any other process.

Ethics is a process because:

• The series of actions are the decisions we make between competing values
• Can be optimized by “codifying” the decision making procedures – policies, vision statements, etc.
• Can be revised with new technology or information

Notice that our corporate hands are tied more than an individual’s hands in that the corporation cannot condone breaking the law. Yet one of the definitions of “moral” clearly says doing what someone’s conscience suggests is right regardless of the law. So, we may say someone is ethical when they decide to run a red light in order to rush a severely injured person to the hospital emergency room. Another definition of ethics comes from a phrase penned by Lord Moulton, a British jurist in the 19th century, who described ethics as simply “obedience to the unenforceable.” If we merely follow the enforceable, that is, the law of the land, then we are not necessarily going to act civilly or ethically in matters that are not enforceable.

So if we combine the previous definitions, we can identify ethics, as a process because there are a series of actions; they would be the decisions we make. And we can prescribe how we want the process to be carried out, even optimizing it as we put it into practice.

Further, if we make sure that the process is focused on corporate goal achieving activities then it is certainly a business process. It must be clear from the Mission and Vision Statements right down to the detailed desk procedures

Ethics is a Business Process because:

• One can focus the “Ethical Process” on business needs
• Can be strategic and competitive advantage
• It’s “good business” – especially now

Why view ethics as a process or model?

• Processes can be revised, optimized, and simplified
• It minimizes or directs some of the unwanted individual “morality” beliefs on the business
• It is less judgmental as a process

But is this a compelling way to look at ethics? I submit that it is in several important ways:
First, we are all used to revising, optimizing, and simplifying our processes. By identifying our “ethics” as a process, we should be more willing to accept that actions from previous years may not be acceptable moving forward since we have new information saying that the consequences of our decisions have changed. There were no serious competing moral values to consider when using Freon in our air-conditioning units until we discovered a high probability that it hastened the destruction of the Ozone layer above us.

Second, if ethics is left to individuals, we may or may not get compliance with the unenforceable part of the business culture. Remember, that is a shorthand definition of ethics: Ethics is compliance with the unenforceable.

Third, all the MBAs tell us that we need to flatten our organizations and move decision making as close to the customer as possible. “Organizing for innovation means flattening the organization hierarchy, giving more responsibility to the lower levels, and scuttling discipline-oriented departments in favor of ad hoc mission-team groups.” — MIT Productivity Study, Made in America. If we are to follow this advice, we must make sure that the decision making process is in harmony with the corporate culture or ethical process.

Fourth, and perhaps most powerful for us in the business world, by looking at Ethics as a process whereby we choose between competing moral and/or economic values, we are not making any negative statement about those moral values. In fact, we are lifting them up as being worthy of consideration. This gives us a language for explaining our decisions that is respectful of many different views. We no longer have to say some one or some company is unethical or immoral. We may question their process but as long as they have one and follow it consistently, they are ethical in that sense.

The perception of the public seems to be that companies will do anything they can get away with in order to increase stockholder value. But companies comprise individuals. Companies cannot take action; they are only a legal entity. The public sees that companies (individuals) will even knowingly break the law. Polluters, for example, often knowingly violate the laws and ordinances because the fines are smaller than the cost of compliance. This is questionable business practice because it usually has only a short term gain.

By letting the law be the decision making process, we turn control of the company over to the law makers and are more at their mercy than we are today. We will invite more laws and restrictions (such as the Sarbanes-Oxley act). Another, more conservative approach would be to make sure that the decision making process holds employees to a higher standard – that the company will be seen as a good corporate citizen.
So the question here is simple: faced with a similar predicament, would your managers understand the “corporate” culture? Would they understand the Ethics Process? Would they, because you as the leader cannot make all the decisions, carry out their duties and choose the right competing moral values based on that ethical process?

Despite all this discussion, there really is no such thing as Business Ethics. That is why I chose my words carefully; that Ethics is a process, and it can be a business process, but it isn’t a business process alone, segregated from the rest of our existence. There is, finally, only ethics as a process whereby we choose between competing moral values. We cannot separate this process from our personal and business lives. I offer as a thesis that we cannot be ethical in one and unethical in the other and say that we are ethical – that is, have thought about, understand, and consistently apply our decision making process.

When the culture of an organization is too rigid to allow for honest and open discussion of choices between competing moral and/or economic values, then employees will be faced with uncertainty in how to respond to new situations. When the moral and economic values of the corporation are not articulated, employees will make decisions that seem to be best to them based on their own sense of justice. The task becomes one of defining the organization’s values and the process used to chose when those values compete with each other, as they often will.

Employees must be able to decide for themselves exactly how they will “fit” in the organization in order to judge how effective they will be. If the culture is not immediately and openly obvious, we take a chance of a mismatch that will be costly for both the organization and the employee (or volunteer).

I’m sure we can all site examples of how a rigid focus on one or two business parameters, either through a conscious effort or perhaps unintended consequences, has caused a company to go astray. In our own lives, we may secretly admonish ourselves for letting a lapse in judgment cause us to set off a chain of consequences that put us in a position of lost credibility. This is, perhaps, because we do not stop to seriously think about how we choose between competing moral and or economic values in our lives. Even the simple things can chip away at our own credibility. For example, how often have we been given too much change and decided to simply keep it? After all, the store won’t really miss it; will they? And what if you decide to tell the proverbial “little white lie” in order to make life easier for yourself or to avoid hurting someone else’s feelings? Without making any judgment about your choice or my choice in these small, everyday examples, I wonder how many of us actually stop to think about the process we use to choose between the many possible actions in these cases. How often have we really thought about what drives us and from where our sense of moral value comes?

Our companies and organizations comprise diverse people. It is the culture of those organizations, built up over time through a melding of individual sense of morality that allows or punishes certain actions. But again, is the building of that culture an accident left to chance or is it a conscious shaping of the corporate culture with forethought, direction, and an ability to adapt to new information and outside forces?

That is what this book is about: the conscious shaping of the corporate culture to allow our companies to respond in a predictable way under similar circumstances. More importantly, a well defined set of moral values combined with a know process for evaluation and selection when those values compete among themselves or with economic forces, will give direction when new circumstances arise. It is through a carefully articulated culture, one that is open and obvious to all, that will allow new employees to know ahead of time whether or not they will fit into the company. And it is all about “fit” when it comes to happy employees.