The Sisyphus Chronicles

We call them many things, from adages and aphorisms, to maxims, proverbs, old sayings and memorable quotations, but regardless of how we’ve labeled these sage old saws, they all deliver exactly the same thing. They are all, snippets of wisdom, lessons learnt, sometimes at great expense through hard won life experience. Together they provide a large library of life lessons, all neatly encapsulated into pithy phrases. Sometimes they’re repeated so often, they lose meaning through excessive exposure.

Somewhere along the line we arrived at a point where we shun the simple in favour of the complex.

We’d rather take a long, expensive University course on Ethics, than adhere to the ancient Golden Rule, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”

We’d rather invest in extensive quality programmes, than follow the advice of an old carpenter, “Measure twice, cut once.” And we need to be beaten into submission before taking regular backups, rather than remembering, “An ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure.”

Despite our proven reluctance to follow these inherently simple bits of advice, all of them demonstrate a remarkable ability to survive in our global consciousness. Every country, every culture has a variation on, “Look before you leap!”, “A stitch in time saves nine” and “Slow and steady wins the race.” They persist from one generation to another because, even though we don’t always pay them any heed, we offer them as our best possible advice. We practice a bizarre contradiction, we know these sayings contain deep truths, but we choose to ignore both our own knowledge and the wisdom of the past.

While there are many management (and personal) challenges, the most important of them all, and perhaps the most intractable, is the answer to the question, “Why don’t we do, what we know we should do?”

While I don’t think there’s a simple answer to the question as to why we ignore what we know, I do believe there’s a proven strategy to overcome this human flaw. Pay conscious attention to what we’re doing, and compare what we’re doing, to what we know we should be doing.

That’s so obviously true that it’s almost one of the maxims we’re discussing. In a sense it’s nothing more than a verbose variation of “Look before you leap!” or even “An ounce of prevention, is worth a pound of cure.” Is it any less true because of that similarity?

One could examine our organizations and identify problems solvable and avoidable if only we consistently followed a set of simple maxims, but that could get awfully complicated faster than we could blink. Imagine having a “Department of Aphorism Audits & Accounting”, or an “Administration of Adept Adages”? The mind boggles and things just get silly.

A simpler approach, (and that’s the goal… right?) is to adopt a personal motto and measure all our actions against its succinct guidance. No, my personal motto isn’t, “Keep it Simple Stupid” (although it could be as evidenced by this article), mine is a little more suited to the world’s laziest man, “Never do today, what you can put off until tomorrow!” (Consider this advice carefully, it doesn’t necessarily mean what most people take it to mean. As an exercise for the reader, think of it in terms of Pareto’s 80/20 Principle and a rationally prioritized to-do list.)

The obstacle to all of this sage advice (the traditional proverbs and maxims, not my ramblings) is still the point identified in the second paragraph; we shun the simple, and insist on elevating the importance of the complicated, and costly. The phrase, “This can’t work, it’s too simple” is heard frequently in most organizations, along with another thought, “If it costs more, it must be better.” (The retailers of the world salute this thought process.)

So? If all the accumulated wisdom of the world is to have any value, we have to pay attention to at least one small snippet of it. What truth will you make your own? What one bit of advice will you measure all your actions against?

If you get comfortable enough with that concept, what one truth would you select as the foundation of how your team, department or organization operates? Start with just one, and if that becomes second nature, then add another one, move slow and steady and win the race. Remember big trees fall under small strokes. Aw heck… you get the idea.

Regardless of our circumstances we often share the same thoughts. The notion “It can’t happen here”, is such a common way of looking at disaster, that even Kissinger got into the act with his famous “There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.”

Humor aside, disasters happen regardless of what you had planned for the week. How badly they affect us, is determined by our ability to respond without warning to crisis situations.

The traditional approach to disaster planning is to create a methodology, install contingency plans, ensure that proper backups of crucial data are made, and place all this documentation in yellow binders on a shelf. If we’re diligent, we take it out once a year for some exercise.

This way of planning for disaster, while it provides many benefits, also contains a serious flaw. It’s not so much the cost - insurance of any type always costs money. The flaw is more subtle, but it is potentially serious enough to scuttle the best laid plan.

It is this, Disasters by their very nature, happen unexpectedly. Our success on the day is based upon how we react when we’re confused and don’t know what’s going on. Planning allows us to think through the process of what to do if (when?) something happens, before it actually occurs. That thought process alone is the central core of any contingency plan, but just thinking about it, isn’t enough. We have to go into the water before we know how to swim. We have to live it, to learn from it. Planning for the experience is not the same as experiencing the plan.

How to improve a disaster recovery plan? Given the stated nature of disasters, ‘unexpectedly and without warning’ seems like the right approach.

At 9:00am on a Monday morning, inform 50% (or a mere dozen if that would be too disruptive) of your management team, individually and personally, that they’re leaving immediately for an off site location for an emergency meeting. No prior warning. No details provided. No excuses accepted. All meetings regardless of importance are ignored. No notification to secretaries/assistants or clients allowed. All cell phones and blackberries collected. In other words, just like a real life crisis.

When they arrive via the waiting bus, they’re told of the ‘disaster’ that has taken place. They are to respond to this ‘disaster’ over the next day or two. What is the ‘disaster’? That depends on how severe you want it to be and what you think would provide the best information.

There’s a certain beauty to this exercise – NO PREPARATION IS REQUIRED. (except possibly for the bus) The Exercise starts at 9:00am when your employees are informed. NO hotel is booked – no coffee pre-ordered, no Flip Charts on site.

I already hear the objections… we need to book the hotel in advance otherwise…

Question… on the day our building is on fire, bombed, flooded, the senior exec team all killed in an air crash, captured by ninjas etc. etc. will we already have a room booked? If we cannot manage this minuscule exercise in crisis – then we are fundamentally incapable of handling a real emergency.

Back at the office the remainder of the management team can take the exercise one step further and pretend the entire off site team are victims of a disaster. This secondary exercise might be more than your organization can handle without severely impacting day-to-day operations. The alternative is to merely explain what is going on and cope with their unexpected absence for two days (week?). There is learning even this minimalist approach.

The exercise provides two benefits. First? An immediate and relatively inexpensive evaluation of how well your management team responds to an unexpected crisis.

Secondly? In a very short period of time, with minimal impact to your organization, you highlight those areas most vulnerable to the ‘disaster’ you selected. With that in hand you can now move forward to a ‘real’ contingency plan with specific objectives in mind.

The objections to this exercise are many and obvious. You can’t afford the time. The board would object. You can’t afford the negative impact to the business. Your schedule is full next week.

Something different.

A few weeks ago I had the distinct pleasure of being interviewed by George Torok for his radio show Business in Motion.

It’s a one hour conversation on the topic of Change Management, you can listen to it here:

Asimov’s classic “Foundation” is the purest form of SF. It takes a fundamental desire - our need to predict the future - then presents a “What if?” scenario and pushes it to the boundaries of belief. Whenever I’ve read “Foundation”, I’ve always spent more time wrestling with the central idea than actually enjoying the story line.

Is it possible, will it ever be possible, to predict how people will react to a specific event, to any useful degree of accuracy? Are there rules, perhaps waiting for a Seldon to discover and formalize for human behaviour? Will it be possible to use an understanding of those rules to shape the future? Could our tomorrows become manufactured products of calculated action?

I first read “Foundation” during my second last year of high school. I was, by any reasonable definition, a ‘geek’… not quite of the pocket protector crowd, but I owned a slide rule and knew how to use it. My buddies at the time were also addicted to SF and we spent many hours arguing over the possibilities presented by the science of Psychohistory.

We were then presented with an opportunity to use our high school as a grand experiment.

Like most high schools we had a Student council, elected by the students, and responsible for school activities such as parties, fund raising, proms and concerts. We also, like many other schools, had a raging case of student body apathy. Nobody attended school functions, sports events or concerts. School spirit was non-existent.

We, a cadre of invisible students, devoid of popularity, suffering from a dearth of cool, decided to fix this problem.

While the formal tools of Asimov’s Psychohistory were beyond our reach, there were some basic rules of human behaviour we could use in our social re-engineering project. The rule which best fit our situation, was the concept of the swinging pendulum. The notion that popular opinion/behaviour swings from one extreme to the other. The ‘trick’ is to identify the extreme ’states’ and then apply just enough ‘force’ to nudge the system into one of these ’states’.

We ran for student council on the platform that student councils were a tool of the administration to distract our attention from the real problems of poor education, over-crowding etc. etc. If WE were elected we would abdicate our responsibility, we would shut down the council, we would do nothing for the following year, and we would ban all future student councils… Anarchy would Rule!

The administration hated us… therefore the students loved us. We geeks won by a landslide. We abandoned the student council. Phase I of our project was complete. Now we waited.

Winning this election was an accomplishment of sorts. We had no prior status or influence within the student body, yet we beat much more popular and influential jocks, cheerleaders and divas. Rule #1? It’s easy to get elected if that is your ONLY goal… Just promise the people whatever they want. Some of our politicians are very good at this.

Throughout our elected year, we threw not a single party, flew no banners, we raised no funds. The first 2-3 months everything was ‘fine’. Then slowly but surely, discontent festered in the land. The value of a student council grew conspicuous by its absence. It grew in importance, because it didn’t exist. Phase II of our project was well on the way to completion.

That was our final year before we scattered to our universities, but we kept an eye on our little experiment to see if it would develop as we expected.

It did.

At the end of our last year, the students demanded a student council election. We knew someone, would step into the breach at the appropriate time. A full council was elected. The next year our school experienced a huge increase in student involvement. Parties, event attendance, fund raising all reached historical highs. The Pendulum had swung from abject apathy to total commitment. Phase III complete. Mission accomplished. Apathy defeated. Hari Seldom would have been proud.

Were there unintended consequences to our little experiment? Two of them come to mind.

Fact: The individual who became student council president… went on to become a Member of the Canadian Parliament.

Fact: I now speak for a living. My topic? Change Management.

If you don’t recognize the tail end of this quote from Robert Burn’s ‘To a Louse’ then here it is in its entirety, “Oh wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursel’s as others see us!”. Why am I waxing poetic this month? Mainly because a sad incident a few months ago that has stuck in my mind.

I’d just given a presentation on Change Management and was afterwards approached by a contingent of a half dozen dejected looking employees from a company which shall remain nameless in this article. They wanted to have a private and confidential discussion about some changes going on in their organization. They wanted advice on two things; how to cope with the changes and how to communicate to management that they were on a path to destruction because of how the changes were being implemented.

None of this is unusual, I get asked these types of questions all the time. What was different this time was some of the language used in their responses to my standard information gathering questions. I could easily comment on their queries on coping with Change, as the techniques are the same regardless of the Change, company, person etc. etc. Change is Change is Change.

To offer advice on how to communicate with management isn’t as easy. To offer advice without knowing the culture first hand, is presumptuous. To dispense communication strategies without knowing the details of the existing Status Quo and the Change being implemented isn’t only naïve, it’s dangerous.

So when I asked if could come into the organization to gather this information their responses were as follows;

No – management isn’t listening to anyone who takes issue with their policies
No – the powers that be, won’t listen to anything that might change their actions.
No – that’s pointless – they only hire those who agree with them.
No – they shoot the messenger on a regular basis – I can’t risk my job.
No – upper management is convinced there isn’t a problem.
No – the dark overlords know best. (Their words… not mine)
No – management has no interest in people issues.

Now, we all know that ‘gaps of disagreement’ between staff and management are not unusual, but their choice of words, combined with the deer in the headlights look of desperation on their faces in front of me – suggested that this was more than the normal amount of disagreement. Other comments described management as a ‘not very nice people’, ‘bullies’ and ‘interested only in themselves and not the organization’.

Here’s the question, and the purpose of this particular article, are we certain we know how we’re perceived by others in our organization? Do employees really know how they’re perceived by management? And even more importantly (in my opinion) does management really know how they’re perceived by the rank and file?

Regardless of the accuracy of the above statements by this post-presentation contingent of employees, is management aware that they are not seen as leaders? Do they care? Should they?

That that question is even asked is a symptom of something wrong. We all know people who literally do not care what employees think of them. Why is that wrong? If we can’t answer that question, then we’ve lost touch with what it even means to be a leader. I can’t imagine how an organization can excel if employees don’t respect, and even admire, their managers.

I’m not a great fan of most Human Resource management instruments, many of them seem more like Astrology and tea leaf readings than anything I’d use to manage either myself or others. That personal quirk aside, there is one I’m willing to treat with great respect, primarily because it’s nothing more than a process by which the feedback loops between ourselves and everyone around us - which should take place on a regular basis - do take place, at least from time to time. I’m referring to the class of HR tools known collectively as “360-degree feedback”.

The 360 concept is simple. Your peers, subordinates, managers and even your clients provide feedback on a variety of your attributes – anonymously of course. Robbie Burns would love it.

All of us, regardless of where we sit on the organization hierarchy, need to know how others see us. Regardless of whether the impressions of management, such as the ones listed above, are accurate or not – it’s information we can use to our advantage.

There’s a risk of course. Ask for feedback and, guess what? You’re going to get feedback… can you handle the truth? What about the lies?

Not all the truth will be ‘pleasant’. Under the guarantee of anonymity (need I stress how important that is?) people are willing to provide both the good, the bad and the ugly.

And, under that same guarantee, there are those who will seize the opportunity to inflict some petty revenge. Luckily, these are usually exceptions and stand out as anomalies amongst the rest of the feedback. Good 360 instruments are designed to identify these aberrations.

Regardless of the feedback, it’s all information we can put to good use, unless we don’t care.
Frankly, even after a lifetime of experience with organizations of every stripe, I don’t know of more than a handful of managers who would pride themselves on a reputation as bleak as the one painted by the contingent that prompted this discussion. And even in those rare situations, would a competent board of directors support a management style worthy of the ‘Dark Lord’ comparison? Assuming they wanted the organization to prosper?

Putting the extreme end of the perception spectrum aside, are we seen as; fair; reasonable; competent; hard working; pleasant to work work with? If that’s what we believe, how do we know it to be true? Most people have trouble telling us we have something stuck in our teeth, never-mind anything really important such as our pet project is doomed to failure. Especially if we’re sending out unconscious signals that negative feedback is unwelcome.

The advantage of the 360-degree feedback process is the enforced anonymity of the feedback. We all enjoy both giving and receiving positive feedback – it’s the negative stuff that presents us with the largest difficult and the largest benefit. The amount about benefit depends entirely on our willingness to give more than a little credence to the negative comments we’re sure to receive.

So? Was Robbie Burns on the mark? Do we really want the power to see how others see us? Or is ignorance truly bliss? (ps. You do have something stuck in your teeth.)

I’m baffled… If I go to the Tim Hortons corporate site I read the following…

“The Tim Horton Children’s Foundation was established in 1974 by Ron Joyce, Co-Founder of the Tim Hortons chain, to honour Tim Horton’s love for children and his desire to help those less fortunate.”

And then I’m forced to contrast THAT worthy value statement with the article in today’s Toronto Star, where one of their employees in London, Ont is FIRED for handing a toddler a single Timbit…

Has Tim Hortons lost its mind?

Folks? From a marketing perspective alone this has to be one of the most incompetent management moves I’ve read about in a long long time. I don’t CARE if they have a corporate ‘policy’ against ‘theft’ - this isn’t THEFT, it’s called ‘Customer service’ and it’s the type of action that management should encourage in their employees. Instead she gets fired? For giving a customer a $0.16 Timbit? They put a person’s livelihood at risk for a Timbit???? Good grief.

It’s possible to try and condone, and even support the manager’s actions by pointing to the ‘policy’ and stating “The employee took a Timbit. She didn’t pay for it. It’s theft.” But when it comes to the negative PR? This is an unmitigated and totally unnecessary, disaster.

I sometimes wonder if the corporate world has forgotten what the term ‘customer service’ means anymore. It means treating customers as if you valued them. Handing a child a Timbit will likely result in the parent feeling grateful and spending a few extra dollars in the store. It’ll certainly prompt them to return to the store from time to time.

Be prepared for a backlash on this one. The best thing Tim Hortons could possibly do, is immediately re-instate the employee with a public apology and hold a ‘free Timbit’ for toddlers policy. If anyone should be fired, it should be the three managers involved in this PR fiasco.

Updated: 3:22pm May 8th 2008 same day the story broke:

Well, I tip my hat to Tim Hortons - common sense has won the day. The employee was rehired and is now working at another store. Full story here.

Okay… I’ll admit it publicly. I’m nothing but a kid at heart. I’m continually astounded by the world around us and tend not to take things for granted. I received a fax yesterday and despite it being an almost ancient technology, I watched with sincere amazement as an image magically appeared out of the little black box, sent to me by a wizard many hundreds of leagues away. (ok, it wasn’t a real wizard. Remember this is a kid writing this article!)

To me, the world is a fairy tale. Did you know that planes can fly? I mean those BIG planes, the ones that weigh hundreds of tonnes. The speed down the runway and make a magical leap into the sky. And more to the point. They stay up there! Must be them wizards hard at work again.

For someone who believes he’s living in a fairy tale, I also read fairy tales. They were around long before user manuals and quite frankly contain more information than most of the poorly written documentation that’s supposed to educate us.

Have you read the fairy tale about stone soup? If you have, then the wisdom it contains just might make you a better manager of technology.

Making stone soup is an old tradition. First you need a stone. Not just any old stone. A smooth stone, river washed until it’s about the size of a large goose egg. Make sure you don’t get one that’s covered in green algae, otherwise your soup will taste foul.

Place the stone in a soup pan and fill with water until the stone is covered by about 2 inches of water, and bring to a slow boil. Taste it. You’ll notice it tastes like hot water. So far? Not very impressive.

Now it’s time to bring out the flavour of the stone. This is not a simple task. A stone is hard and unyielding, it’s not going to present you with flavour unless you find the secret of extracting its natural juices.

First you must dice up some carrots, about 3 or 4 large carrots should be enough. Then 2 potatoes, washed, sliced into1 inch cubes. (Leave the skins on, being close to the earth already, they have a natural affinity to the stone and will entice it to give up a hearty flavour.) Now slice up a beef steak into similarly sized cubes. Finally sprinkle the brew with salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer for about an hour and viola! A hearty stone soup!

Warning! If you try to make stone soup without using the above instructions for extracting the flavour then all you’ll have is a lot of boiling water.

Now stones and sand are mostly silicon, and most technology managers know computers are also mostly just silicon. So we have the beginnings of a metaphor. (work with me on this, I’m working under a deadline here!)

What brought all of this to a boil for me (so to speak.) Was a conference I was fortunate enough to facilitate for Hewlett Packard many years ago. HP had achieved something significant, and was using this meeting to demonstrate that accomplishment. They’d placed some 82,000 PC users onto a ‘Common Operating Environment.’

Those working in a corporate environment know how difficult it is to implement any sort of standards into any niche of their computing community. Getting 1,000 users to use the same word processor is an achievement. Getting 82,000 users to follow any type of standard is nothing short of a miracle.

Here’s the catch. I know a market full of IT managers who’ll want to buy HP’s ‘technology‘(read ‘stone’ for those having difficulty with the metaphor) They’ll ask how much this PC COE costs. They’ll want to buy this stone from HP and they’ll expect the same remarkable results. They’ll want to make HPs stone soup, but won’t want to follow the instructions.

This observation applies equally well to dozens of other technologies from ERPs, to CRMs, from Client/Server environments to Knowledge Management systems to comprehensive Data Warehousing strategies.

They’ll spend the money, buy the stone, put it into their environment and turn up the heat. They’ll expect soup… All they’ll get is hot water. What they need to do to get the benefit from the stone is add the extra ingredients. eg. Leadership, Management, Change Process Control, Planning, Training, Marketing, and of course… Patience.

The IT industry is afflicted with a brain eating virus for which there is no known cure. The medical term for this highly contagious disease is Argotism. The incubation period of the disease ranges from one to eight hours, at which time the subject becomes highly, and permanently, contagious.

The primary symptom of this incurable malady is the ability to speak for hours at a time without uttering a single comprehensible sentence. A secondary symptom is the uncontrollable desire to display incredibly complex visuals using the most sophisticated technology available.

At first it was thought these visual manifestations of the disease, were failed attempts by the patient to overcome the impaired ability to speak plain English. However, extensive content analysis of more than 10,000 visuals has uncovered no evidence to support this hypothesis.

While medical experts admit to similarities between Argotism and certain aspects of Tourette syndrome - in particular the uttering of coprolalia - they have, as yet, found no biological connection between these two conditions.

Scientists are baffled by the contagion vector. The primary methods of disease contagion are typically inhalation, ingestion and physical contact. Argotism ignores these vectors and is instead, spread through the auditory and visual systems. The World Health Organization (WHO) headquartered in Atlanta, GA admits that this method of infection will lead to a global pandemic unless a cure, or at least a vaccine, is found.

Early onset of the disease is identified by a subject’s inability to raise a hand above their head and voice the words “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Could you please explain it to me?”

In the advanced stage of the disease, subjects repeat the phrases which first infected them, but which they still don’t clearly understand.

(In the interests of not spreading the disease further, this author does not wish to represent any of the “active” phrases in this article. Luckily there is one phrase which has lost most of its ability to infect, which will serve as an example of the virus. Please read it carefully and if you sense the urge to use it in conversation in the next 24 hours, please report immediately to your nearest medical facility. The phrase is “Web 2.0″.)

While it is possible to become infected after a single exposure to Argotism, it usually takes repeated exposure before the subject demonstrates full blown Argotism and becomes a carrier.

A recent WHO study found that being in the presence of a superior when first exposed to Argotism, greatly increased the risk of infection. This increase in the risk factor is assumed, though not yet verified, to stem from our natural reluctance to admit ignorance to management.

While there is no known cure for the disease, there is evidence to suggest that those already infected with Curmudgeonism, or those equipped with a technological advance known as a “BS Detector” (origin unknown), are highly resistant to all known strains of the Argot virus.

An additional finding which has researchers puzzled, is that all the inhabitants of, and everyone from, the state of Missouri are immune to the disease. While stumped by this finding, researchers do believe this anomaly could eventually lead to a cure for Argotism. The researchers are currently herding thousands of Missourians into medical facilities for extensive testing.

Citizens are warned the most likely places to contract Argotism are technology conferences. The most virulent strains of this disease are usually found in the keynote presentations. Members are urged, if they must attend these breeding grounds of pestilence, to bring blindfolds and earplugs to reduce the chance of infection.

There is another home remedy proving useful in isolated cases. Prepare a small tape recorder loaded with the sentence, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what you just said. Could you explain what you meant by that?” When a presentation drops into incomprehensibility, you know the presenter is falling into an acute attack of Argotism and is entering their most contagious stage.  Before you lose consciousness, press the PLAY button on the recorder and hopefully this will jolt the presenter back into a temporary state of comprehensibility, perhaps long enough for you to escape into the hall.

© 2003, Peter de Jager – Peter is an inoculated Keynote speaker and Management consultant, contact him at pdejager@technobility.com - This article first appeared in Computer World Canada 2003. Sadly - as of this posting, no progress has been made in the search for a cure. We are beginning to lose all hope.

Here’s a quick scenario. You’ve advertised a vacant position in your department and have received several hundred resumes — a dozen of which are excellent. You’ve decided one of them will become your next employee. Just before you call the lucky candidate, your boss comes into your office and hands you her niece’s resume. She makes it clear she’d like her to have the job. However, the niece is not as qualified as the candidate you were going to call. What do you do?

Welcome to the hard and rocky field of business ethics. Notice the question was “What do you do?”, it was not the far easier question, “What is the right thing to do?” Why? Because most (all?) of us know what we should do… “Sorry Boss, but your niece doesn’t have the necessary skills to fill the position. Perhaps next time.” The problem is, there is inevitably a consequence to such a stance. A consequence most of us would rather avoid if we could.

If you don’t hire the niece, will your boss hold a grudge? How will you know? The sad fact is that most, not all, of the ethical dilemmas placed at our doorstep, are placed there by people who know full well their actions are unethical. This is what causes the dilemma, not the difficulty of figuring out the right course of action. Doing the right thing is usually not what these people want you to do.

Ethical business behavior is important. How many of those resumes in our imaginary scenario would be from Arthur Andersen or Enron employees? How many would still be gainfully employed if even a small number of people had stood their moral ground and raised their hands in protest when they encountered dark deeds?

We could of course choose to ignore the issue of ethical behaviour. Most of the little dilemmas we encounter won’t bring our organization to their knees. Besides, as I’ve pointed out above, we usually know the right thing to do, even if we don’t always have the courage of our convictions. The issue isn’t one of ethical training — it’s one of responding to, or even better, avoiding unethical behaviour.

There is a technique available to those who’d rather not face these little problems. Make ethics an issue in your department. Talk about it, distribute articles on it, make a point of requesting that the training department offer at least one “Ethics and Management” seminar each year, devote some time to it. In short, become known as someone who places a visible value on ethical behaviour, one who asks the ethical question of every decision. At the very least it will prevent your manager from handing you resumes from relatives — for fear you might call them on it.

One of the reasons why we steer clear of ethical discussions is that how we respond to these scenarios speaks volumes about what we hold to be true. To be judged “unethical” is personal, because it is based upon the choices we consciously make. If you’re interviewing someone for a job and you ask them what they’d do if they found a wallet with a $1,000 in it, along with the address of the owner… would you really hire them if they said they’d take the money and throw away the wallet? If you were being interviewed, would you state proudly(?) that you’d take the money… and still expect to be hired?

The issue of Ethics is difficult to address in a corporate environment for exactly those reasons. The “wrong” answers bring with them harsh judgments. It is precisely because of these “harsh judgments” that ethical training, or at least awareness, is important to every organization and everyone with people responsibility.

Despite the catastrophic consequences of unethical corporate behaviour, how many “Ethics” seminars/workshops have typical managers/supervisors attended during their career? How many organizations have posted an Ethical Charter, or have an ethical review board, or a recognized method of safely airing an ethical issue?

Ethical behaviour is never a problem until it becomes a crisis, then the time to pay attention to it is long past.

In Lewis Carroll’s classic, Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen admonishes Alice with “in this place it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” So much for the concept of a self sustaining ‘Status Quo’.

Giuseppe de Lampedusa echoes this same idea in another, seemingly paradoxical manner, “If things are to remain the same, things will have to Change.”

All of this is true, there really is no argument. The status quo is a myth. The best we can do is identify what aspects of our organization we value today, and do our best to ensure that these attributes exist in our organizations tomorrow.

However, just because we have come to the inescapable conclusion that Change is necessary, does not mean that all possible Change is mandatory.

This is the great trap for those who embrace the idea that we must Change or Die. Unless we find some way to distinguish from good and bad Change, we are compelled to Change when faced with any and every innovation. In the already quoted Through the Looking Glass, there is sad character who has taken the Red Queen’s advice too literally, let me introduce you to the White Knight.

He’s an interesting fellow this White Knight. He believes in embracing anything that’s new. His mistake is to believe that all Change is mandatory. His sturdy horse is festooned with gadgets. There’s a little box in which he keeps his sandwiches, but it’s turned upside down, “so that the rain can’t get in” he says proudly. Until Alice points out that the sandwiches have fallen out, he was totally unaware of this flaw.

He’s also attached a beehive to the horse in the hope that bees will take up house and provide honey, not realizing that bees would never set up house on a moving horse. And then there’s the mousetrap he’s strapped on the horse’s back to keep the mice away, and anklets on his horse’s feet to keep away the sharks.

Yes we must Change, otherwise our organizations fall so far behind the competition, our constituency and clients, that we lose effectiveness and fade into obsolescence. On the other hand, to embrace every Change is the path to chaos.

Our problem, despite the many dinosaurs lumbering in the tar pits of yesterday, is not the lack of recognition that Change is necessary. It is that there is far too much Change to choose from, we suffer from too much choice and a scarcity of good decisions.

Organizations must become adept at three seemingly contradictory skills. We must become brilliantly effective at resisting bad Change, equally effective at embracing good Change and wise enough to decide between these two alternatives.

In case you missed my outrageous statement, I’ll repeat it in its pure form.

Organizations must become brilliantly effective at resisting Change.

Despite the Red Queen Principle, we should not and must not, for the sake of our organizations, embrace all the Change placed before us. Instead we must select the best Change from the panorama of Change facing us.

How do we do that?

The first step is to identify, as clearly as possible, why we’re here. What exactly is the role of our organization, and what must we do to continue fulfilling that role? We can give this a variety of labels, from “Statement of Purpose” to “Vision Statement” to “Services Offered”. It doesn’t really matter what we call this as long as it becomes something we believe in, and against which we can measure all proposed Changes.

This is the idea snuggled inside Lampedusa’s quote…

“If things(1) are to remain the same, things(2) will have to Change.”

things(1) – Refers to that which we do, which is important to our mandate.
These are the things which are of value to us, our constituents, and our superiors.

things(2) – Refers to all the other stuff that surrounds us, stuff we might become
attached to, but which in the final analysis, contributes little to the fulfillment of our mandate.

Therein is the key. Does a proposed Change reinforce, support and/or extend a previously established organizational objective? If it doesn’t, then enthusiastic acceptance, Red Queen Principle notwithstanding, is incorrect, improper and ill-advised. To paraphrase Lampedusa, to embrace the things we value, we must jettison what we don’t.

These are the first two steps. Identify what is valuable to us, and then measure every proposed Change against these core values.

The next step, is to determine how the proposed Change will fit into the context of our organization. In other words, what must Change in order to accommodate the new Change? If you’ve made it this far, then you are well into the first stages of implementing the Change.

At this point you know why the Change is necessary. i.e. what core values is it designed to protect, support or extend. This knowledge, properly communicated, will go a long way to reducing resistance to the proposed Change, especially if you are willing to make all the information which went into your decision public. Nothing is more effective at reducing resistance to Change than full disclosure… except perhaps being involved in the actual decision making process itself.

You now also have some idea what impact it will have on your organization. ie. What other things will have to Change to accommodate this Change. With all of this in hand, changing should not be too difficult.

The issue of Change is tricky. On one hand you cannot avoid all Change; on the other hand, you cannot embrace all Change. Which means we must resist the bad, embrace the good and know the difference.

Good luck.