Ancient Romans used integritas to describe pottery. Saying a ceramic piece had integritas meant the quality that appeared on the outside existed throughout the entire piece. There were no hidden weaknesses or imperfections covered by an attractive glaze. A vessel with integritas will hold up under stress.
In many cases, speaking out of turn, encouraging debate, rethinking a strategy, is frowned upon, while maintaining the status quo is well received. But what happens to all these yes men when the dark clouds loom and the firm gets into a whirlpool of its own created problems and that were ignored?
What ONE trait has been shown to impact career and overall life success more than any other?
(No, not that.)
Fans of Stephen Colbert are probably familiar with the term Truthiness, which he introduced in the inaugural episode of the now extremely popular Colbert Report. He explains the word as what we feel to be true rather than what’s factually or arguably true. For instance one might argue that it’s okay not to report a little side income to the IRS because it was insignificant and not from one’s primary employment, and it just feels like found money rather than real taxable income. Your gut tells you so!
Who’s more honest, you ask?
Wall Street or Madison Avenue?
Blondes or Brunettes?
Boston or Chicago?
During the summer the firm Honest Tea conducted experiments in 30 cities to test people’s honesty.
They set up unmanned pop-up stores and asked people to pay $1 per bottle on the honor system.
Data was collected and compiled into their National Honesty Index.
Interesting. View results at http://www.thenationalhonestyindex.com/
Creative individuals are more likely to be arrogant, good liars, distrustful, dishonest and maybe just a little crazy—OK, let’s say eccentric.
We hear a lot about the benefits of being creative but less about the dark side of creativity.
Do organizations pay a price for creativity?
In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they had observed or had firsthand knowledge of wrongdoing in the workplace, while 24 percent said they believed financial services professionals may need to engage in unethical or illegal conduct to be successful.
Sixteen percent of respondents said they would commit insider trading if they could get away with it, according to Labaton Sucharow. And 30 percent said their compensation plans created pressure to compromise ethical standards or violate the law.
I have worked with CFOs who leave the issue of ethical conduct to the HR and legal functions.
But others have taken a different view — they take a significant interest in ensuring that management and employees always behave in an appropriate fashion, consistent both with laws and regulations and the expectations and standards of the organization. They realize that not only can inappropriate behavior lead to compliance failures, fraud, and theft, but the consequences can adversely affect employee morale and the firm?s reputation.
The bottom line is that ethical failures can affect operational and financial performance and share price.
The Ethics Resource Center recently a business ethics report, based on a survey of 4,800 employees. I was surprised by some of the statistics and suspect most CFOs will be too.
Since the economic implosion of 2008, the news has been littered with accounts of questionable behavior in boardrooms, corner offices, and other gold-plated spaces. What’s not clear from the headlines, however, is whether white-collar criminals like Bernard Madoff are bad apples or extreme examples of a widespread trend. A new study may offer a clue…
The Financial Services Roundtable, the lobbying group for the biggest financial companies in the U.S., has a new “white paper” out with the rah rah title, “Financial Services: Safer & Stronger in 2012.” A few of the bullet points:
•Banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have $1.5 trillion in capital — the highest capital levels in the history of American banking.
• The largest U.S. banks have increased Tier 1 capital — the core measure of a bank’s financial strength from a regulator’s point of view — by nearly 50 percent over the last four years.
• Executive compensation has been reformed significantly to align with long-term performance.
• Banks have developed fortress balance sheets, improving credit quality by 54 percent, increasing net income and, restoring aggregate lending to pre-crisis levels of nearly $7 trillion.