Insights
Make time to see
It’s a wise leader who keeps his or her eyes on ‘doing business right’ as well as on all the other balls in the air. The evidence of people who have lost ethical perspective is abundant. I read this week (again) about Steinhoff directors’ failure to ask the right...
Showing integrity, competence, and respect
I’m mentoring some young professionals just entering the workplace. In thinking about guiding them, I wanted to clarify: What values do professions, and organisations, expect of their employees? What fundamental principles are these young people expected to display?...
Hold to what’s true and dear
Have you been watching the last few days as persons whose reputations are tainted have tried to reinvent themselves? An example is Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, claiming that she suggested Eskom get a new Board. Among numerous problems with this reinvention...
Extra-ordinary people
Going in to a crucial week in SA’s political landscape against the backdrop of State capture, and after a year of serious ethical lapses in business (Steinhoff, McKinsey, and KMPG SA are examples), it’s tempting to focus on the negative. But I was encouraged to read...
You, on the front page?
Isn’t it crazy, how, almost every day in SA we open newspapers to read of still more corruption or people who think only of themselves, acting only in their own interests? It amazes me that the Lynne Browns of this world don’t seem to care what the unethical actions...
Doing all right
[dt_quote type="blockquote" font_size="big" animation="none" background="plain"]CONTENT[/dt_quote]I’ve wanted to write about the ethical virtue ‘justice’ for weeks but got caught up in knots. The topic is vast, complex and fraught with all kinds of connotations in a...
About temperance, and learning from KPMG SA
Temperance, according to the Oxford dictionary, means the practice of controlling your behaviour so that it is always reasonable or moderate. On a weekend when commentators are analysing the fallout at KPMG SA over its failure to take appropriate measures in its...
On courage
Hackett & Wang (quoted in Elkington, 2017) list courage as one of the six values of an ethical leader, defining it as the ability to act in ways that rise above the expediency of the moment to capitalise on the power and impact of the long-term systemic view....
Ag, shame?
Is corporate shaming an effective way of changing the ethics of an organisation? Is fear of shaming, or fear of the results of non-compliance, the best way of getting people to act ethically? Not necessarily. I’ve concluded that putting the right people and structures...
How to do trust
Hackett and Wang (in Elkington, 2017) looked at 54 Confucian and Aristotelean values to come up with the six virtues every ethical business leader should exhibit when making decisions in a complex environment. Their six virtues of an ethical leader are courage,...
Trust trumps
Things are not as they seem. Everywhere I look, I read about fake news, government corruption, corruption in business, the failure of leaders, and attacks on the integrity of journalists. One of the big losses in this context is trust. Think about it. You believe X...