Integrity in the Workplace: If Not Now, When?
A luncheon speech to the Austin Wisdom at Work Community [1]
Oliver Markley , Ph.D.
Principal, InwardBoundVisioning.com and The Integrity Project
Emeritus Professor of Human Sciences and Studies of the Future
University of Houston-Clear Lake
August 24, 2007
Today I have two main outcome objectives. They are to make clear:
And I want to end in a way that hopefully will make the idea of Wisdom-at-Work more relevant than it has ever been for you.
But first a story. Integrity seems to be taking on new levels of meaning these days. Just yesterday I got an email that told the following story about how integrity is understood to work in Washington DC . And since it came from the Internet, you know it must be true.
It seems that a hole was discovered in the fence outside the White House. A governmental official, who shall remain nameless, when being assigned responsibility to get it fixed was given only only one instruction: “Do it the right way.” So it was that the governmental official publicly asked for quotes on getting it fixed, and ultimately found three men who were interested in getting the job.
One was a contractor from New York , one was a contractor from Tennessee and the third was a lobbyist from DC—who of all things decided that it would be strategic move to expand his portfolio to include fence mending at the White House.
All three of them go with the governmental official to examine the fence.
The New York contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well,” he says, “This is a small job but things are expensive in New York . I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, “Well things are cheaper in Tenessee. I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”
The DC “contractor” doesn't measure or figure, but immediately leans over to the White House official and whispers, “$2,700.”
The official, incredulous, says, “You didn't even measure like the
other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”
Our lobbyist turned contractor whispers back, “$1,000 for me, $1,000 for
you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.”
“Done!” replied the government official.
Now since I take very seriously the sorts of things they care about in Washington, and the taking of polls and surveys is one of those things, before I share with you my prepared remarks, just to make things interesting, let me ask you how you rate the level of integrity of the top leaders in body politic in which we live:
On a one to ten scale, with one being lowest and ten being highest,
Now before I ask the next question, here's the hook: There is an old adage that says: “Dishonesty can only prevail if honest people so allow.” With that in mind:
Thank you. At the end you will have a chance to think again about these ratings. But right now, in keeping with the great tradition that the Wisdom at Work community has of encouraging direct audience participation, I would like you to discuss what may have come up for you at the end of this little rating exercise we did just now. Please talk to only one other person—in dyads—to keep things simple. You'll have three minutes for this, and may begin now.
[Buzz Groups for three minutes]
Now let me say a few words as to how it is that integrity has currently become the major focus of my professional life. There is a short answer and a longer answer. The shorter answer is to point to Diane Carroll, the person who is standing behind the camcorder, and to say, “It's all her fault.”
The background here is that Diane is CEO of the Maverick Center from whom I recently experienced her training for mid-career people who want to become more effective as independently productive professionals. In the middle of this training, one day without warning she suddenly asked me, “On a one to ten scale, with one being lowest and ten being highest, what would you estimate is the current level of integrity of your life?”
With no hesitation, I immediately replied, “Oh, about a three or four…but I should hasten to add that for me, integrity is far more than just honesty or morality; it is about integrating all of the disparate parts of what you know and how you live into a balanced, effective lifestyle, and as a consciousness-oriented futurist, I have repeatedly looked outside the box of conventional thought and belief into some really far-out stuff—and much of it is far from being effectively integrated in my life.
Diane immediately shot back, “Well, however you define it, unless you bring your personal integrity up to at least a level of 8 or 9, I can promise you that you won't be able to achieve what you are wanting to get from this course.
A few months later, I was helping the Austin Chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives redefine their direction, in part by leading a two-session discussion of the (2006) book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Global Community, by David Korten, and when talking with Dr. Patty Stevens, President of the chapter about possible activist agenda, the idea of focusing on integrity seemed a natural for all people who care about fundamental values of honesty, justice and well-being, whether religious or secular.
And at this point, please allow me to digress with a commercial for this book
[holding book up for people to see]
by saying that for me it has become one of the two most important books of the many that I have studied during the past year. Like no other that I know of, it lays out the roots of the driving trends that now appear so threatening, and lays out an optimistic vision—albeit an idealistic one—regarding the long-term future. It is listed among the references on the second page of the handout.
Now about the longer answer about why integrity now seems so important
[and if what I just said was the shorter answer, heaven help us on what the longer one may be—laugh], it has to do with why I see the more complex definition of integrity as critical at this time in history. This stems from my work as a research futurist almost 40 years ago at the Stanford Research Institute.
In 1967 we awarded a large multi-year contract by the U.S. Office of Education to establish a forecast of plausible alternate futures pathways to the year 2,000—some 33 years ahead—so as to formulate educational policies that would be proactive, rather than based on what we sometimes characterized as trying to navigate when driving your car by looking in the rear-view mirror.
I should perhaps also mention what was the most popular topic among pop futurists at that time –- if only as a caveat to over-reliance on any pronouncements that any futurists may make about the future. In spite of such works as Alvin Toffler's Future Shock, you will be amused to hear that the most frequently discussed topic at conferences was about this question, “What will people be doing with all that free time in the year 2,000?
Future shock, indeed!!
Well, rather than focusing on free time, the first m ajor results of our research team at SRI indicated that of some fifty of the most highly plausible alternative future histories for society we could discern, only a small handful appeared by any stretch of the imagination desirable, and most of them involved either incredible good luck or else deep seated transformation regarding underlying attitudes, images and policies in response to emerging global problems involving run-away population growth, resource depletion, pollution, dangerous weapons build ups, etc.
As director of methodology development for our little think tank, I reasoned that if transformation is the keynote to good long-range futures, then almost by definition, “rational-analytic” modes of thinking are intrinsically inadequate, and need to be complemented by intuition-based creativity. After exploring various methods of approach for tapping intuition, I concluded that a variation on what is often called “guided imagery” was a best practice for this. This approach, which I call “focused visioning,” turned out to be so robust for many different purposes that it became something of a professional specialty for me in the decades that followed, especially useful in transformational change management, where almost by definition, you are trying to help people discern and embody “ideas whose time has not [yet] come.
As to what this has to do with integrity, let me read you a statement that using this approach led me to formulate after reading the prophetic conclusions of such visionaries as the great systems-oriented anthropologist, Gregory Bateson and the grandfather of visionary science fiction writers, Olaf Stapledon. I call this statement, The Central Challenge of Humanity.” You have it as the first item on the handout that accompanies this speech, where you can follow it as I read it aloud:
“When one species attains a position of dominance over all the other species in the ecology of its planet, if it is both egocentrically greedy, and has a powerful set of technologies through which to amplify the expression of that greed, then unless that dominant species can find a way to limit or to transform itself and its greed-based systems into something more wholesome, it will foul its planetary nest as surely as the night follows the day ... perhaps even to its own extinction.”
Okay, so if this a fair representation of what could be called, the Central Challenge of Humanity, why is integrity such a critical asset, and how well is the integrity of the body politic of our society doing?
In a very general sense, integrity is at the core of the systemic transformation that humanity needs to make if we are to protect the world not only for our children, but even more for our children's grandchildren, and even beyond the seven generations that we hear was the time horizon that native Americans are said to have used as the window through which to look at any policy proposal that would significantly deviate from traditional ways.
Most dictionary definitions of integrity stress words such as honesty, morality, decency, and adherence to a code of values and/or ethics. But to deal with mega-problems such as The Central Challenge and things like Global Warming that are but early warning indicators of things to come, we need a more extended definition.
From the theory of general systems can extend the definition to what we might call a “systemic” or “integral” definition of integrity as follows:
Integrity is when all necessary parts of a system are present and in their appropriate functional relationship to all the other parts.
And this includes not only substantive things like food, water, energy, machines and other physical systems, including our bodies and the ecology in which we live; it includes conceptual systems including economics, politics, religion and so forth.
Recall that the Greek root of economics meant “household management.
And consider the word “disintegrate.” It is as good an image as any I can think of for the long-term consequence of insufficient integrity using this broader and more systemic definition. For those of you who are familiar with his work, Ken Wilber's use of the phrase, “Integral Operating System” is quite relevant in this regard. If you are not familiar with this, check out the website listed in the references.
Ecologists tell us that nature is complex but not complicated, and it can be trusted to operate sustainably if not messed with too much by man-made systems. Human organizations, on the other hand, are complicated but not complex; and is especially true as we approach global limits to sustainable growth, they cannot be trusted to operate sustainably without heroic levels of cybernetic knowledge and the skill and the will to use it appropriately.
Which is why the concept of transparency, meaning the truthful communication about “what's going on” at all levels, must also be an essential part of any operational definition of integrity.
With that, let me shift to the question about how the body politic of our society is doing about integrity. In what follows, I will be sharing some of the most egregious examples of corruption taken from a booklet called “Getting Real About Integrity” that is listed in the reference section of your handout. I would be pleased to email it upon request.
As you listen to the following sequences of disclosures, please consider their longer term implications:
• Government documents released in 2000 through the Freedom of Information Act show that top Pentagon generals approved plans in the 1960s to foment terrorism in major U.S. cities and even kill innocent Americans.
• A CBS News report in early 2002, quotes U.S. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, "According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." That's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America .
• In early 2005 “The Pentagon Sought Greater Immunity from Freedom of Information" [ Click here for article]; and late in 2005, the requested FOIA exemption was granted. [ Click here for article.]
• Twenty leading journalists , including winners of several Emmys and a Pulitzer, have during the last decade described being prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting riveting stories on major cover-ups. Many more such stories are available from Project Censored, which you can find at their website, www.projectcensored.org .
All of these items were found in the WantToKnow.info website, which you will find under PEERS in the references. I highly recommend this suite of websites as highly relevant for anyone who is serious about wanting to support the shift to a sustainable society. Check it out!
On the health front, here are several items that Michael Moore did not cover in his recent SiCKO movie:
• A medical report in 1998 estimated that adverse reactions to prescription drugs—taken as prescribed—are killing about 106,000 Americans each year, roughly three times as many as are killed by automobiles. This makes prescription drugs the fourth leading killer in the U.S. , after heart disease, cancer, and stroke .
• Prescription drugs are the fastest-growing portion of health-care costs, having risen at the rate of 17% per year for the past few years.
• "[In 2002], The combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion). As noted by Dr. Marcia Angell [former editor in chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (and author of the best selling 2005 book The Truth About the Drug Companies ), “ this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the US Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself."
Is it any wonder that as recently stated the website of Congressman James E. Clyborn, Chair of the new Congressional “Clean House Task Force” [and this is a direct quote, the second item on the handout you have] [ http://clyburn.house.gov/pressroom-statements-detail.cfm?id=5 ]:
Finally, consider what the documentary movie, The Corporation made clear: that all of the five characteristics that the psychiatric profession now uses to define a psychopathic person are characteristic of companies for whom [and this is also a quote contained in your handout] “whether you obey the law or not is a matter of whether it is a cost-effective business decision. If the chance of getting caught and the penalty are less than it costs to comply, people think of it as being just a business decision.”
In most cultures and in most times, good parents try to socialize their children into the driving values of the culture. Now it seems to be the opposite.
With that, lets shift our focus to the workplace. To do that, I would like to begin by sharing a story that one of my colleagues in The Integrity Project who is a psychotherapist and executive coach shared with me last week. She said, “How interesting that, just as we are getting ready to hold our first Integrity Project workshop, I got a new client whose presenting problem was all about integrity in the workplace.”
The problem as the client presented it went something like this: “I really love my job, which is with a relatively new company that from its beginning has emphasized integrity as one of its key values and mission. The problem is that the company is growing so fast that in order to keep up with all the growth, there never seems to be any budget for quality assurance and staff development related to integrity. And things are really getting frayed around the edges.
The CEO always talks as if integrity is still ‘job one' and he really seems to believe it; but he and his circle of executives are impatient with anyone who wants to talk about actual problems that are coming up related to integrity—giving the feeling that anyone who tries to do so is somehow disloyal.
I really care about these things, and until I can figure out what to do about it, the stress is really getting to me. So I came to see you. What can I do?”
So … what would “Wisdom at Work” consist of for this person? How would you answer her request?
This could make a really fine discussion—especially over margaritas & munchies—but since I am the one giving this speech, let me briefly say about how I would go about responding to such a request.
When given an assignment like this, I usually first reflect on what my thirty or so years of experience consulting and teaching about future-oriented change management might suggest; and then I go to the Internet and the literature to see what new practices and practitioners are out there that I didn't know of before. And since future-oriented change management is all about dealing with ideas whose time has not [yet] come, it is an ideal context for dealing with situations when “speaking truth to power” is taboo.
Let me first speak about what I learned that is new, and then about what I know works from prior experience.
From the Internet, I found a new vein of behavioral science research that has shown integrity to be positively correlated with a profitable bottom line. Tony Simons, a professor at the Cornell University 's School of Hotel Administration, has focused his research on what he calls “Behavioral Integrity” – the degree to which a manager's words are perceived by employees as aligning with their deeds.
In his first study, with a sample of 7,000 employees at 76 Holiday Inn hotels, Simons found behavioral integrity to have a correlation coefficient of .32 with profitability. Essentially, the improvement of only a 1/8 th of a point in a five point scale of the behavioral integrity score of a hotel's managers led to a boost in hotel profits of as much as 2.5% of revenues. “For an average full-service hotel, that would be more than $250,000 per year, straight to the bottom line,” said Simons.
Another book, Practice What You Preach, presents research evidence of a similar sort. Integrity by managers is clearly relevant to other business settings as well. And integrity by the rank and file in speaking truth to power is also essential. The problem is, how to do this wisely not foolishly.
That having been said, it is important to mention a strategy that is almost sure to backfire, and that is to be an independent “whistle blower”—bringing the attention of top management (or, even worse, the public) to a problem that management wants to keep hidden. Almost all research I have read on the topic has concluded that, although the issue they are publicizing may well get handled as a result of their efforts, the whistle blower themselves almost never win. This is one idea where the concept of “Wisdom at Work” has real meaning.
As to what would be likely to work, here is an approach I have watched work well to stimulate a risky new initiative that works well in many settings. It is to identify and bring together people who are seen by their peers as being “opinion leaders”—the types of people who, when they get behind something, it will typically come to pass, whether they are in line management or are part of the staff.
In this situation an informal “Integrity Audit” could be done by quietly reaching out to first one or two people who you trust at work, and talking to them about your integrity concerns and finding out to what extent these concerns are shared by them. And if they are, then reach out to a greater number of people who they trust, and begin to meet periodically for breakfast or lunch at a quiet, confidential location, to talk of these things and to hatch a plan for collectively communicating to top management, both about integrity concerns and about any approaches you have come up with for handling them.
At this stage it is important to look for someone in management who is likely to be relatively sympathetic to your group's concerns, and who might be willing to serve as a “champion” for you by bringing your cause to the attention of top management without demeaning it. That doesn't necessarily mean that they will openly be your ally, just be an honest broker on your behalf. By all means, strengthen your case by citing all the research evidence you can find that integrity leads to increased profitability.
Suggest to top management, the possibility of a firm-wide “Integrity Council” that would do an formal “Integrity Audit” that wouldn't take a whole lot of time and money. I have seen this approach work, and know it can be done.
But I get ahead of myself. More needs to be said about the types of people that you should look for as you begin your quest.
There is a most interesting new demographic category described in a 2001 book by Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson, Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million Americans are Changing the World. Cultural Creatives are people who tend to be more forward looking, more altruistic, more willing to take risks and to stand up for what is right—even in difficult circumstances.
The point here is that when you are looking for kindred spirits who are also concerned about integrity where you work, be on the lookout for Cultural Creatives. And if you aren't too sure how to recognize them, either read the book or Google the term: there is a ton of items on this you can easily find, some of which are likely to be quite helpful.
And there is an additional category of person to consider. While preparing my notes for this talk earlier this week, I called Steven Fearing to ask how many of you are likely to be familiar with the Cultural Creative concept so I would know how much information to provide. He said he wasn't sure, but to definitely mention it; and he also suggested the term “Edgewalker” as being very similar. Edgewalkers, according to author Judi Neal, whose book and website defines the term, are people that take risks, build bridges, and break new ground. Clearly a concept that could be put to good use for wisely increasing wisdom in the workplace either in our case study or in yhour own workplace.
And as an edgewalker myself, let me also mention the one approach to change management that I am finding most exciting in the Integrity Project that I am now developing, because it is likely to be of interest to many of you as well: the use of focused visualization as a way to accomplish intentional manifestation. A recent book that is filled with highly credible research summaries validating its credibility is entitled: The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thought to Change Your Life and the World by Lynn McTaggart, author of a previous book titled The Field that much of the movie, What the Bleep do we Know? was based on.
Although it may seem a bit far out to consider using such an approach with others to help uplift the level of integrity of your workplace, that is precisely the type of thing that The Integrity Project is getting ready to experientially explore and validate. If you would like to be part of such an experimental group, let me know. The group will soon be forming.
As a final suggestion for our little case study, there is a powerful ethical standard embodied in the so-called “4-Way Test” of Rotary International—something else I learned from my Maverick course with Diane Carroll. Once again reading from the handout sheet:
This 24-word test is used world-wide as an behavioral guide for employees to follow in their business and professional lives involving sales, production, advertising, and all relations with dealers and customers:
In the things we think, say or do:
- Is it the TRUTH?
- Is it FAIR to all concerned?
- Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
- Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?"
Although clearly a high standard to live up to, this is exactly the type of thing that is required of all of us if what I earlier called “The Central Challenge of Humankind” is to be mastered without disaster.
By way of ending, I would like to briefly review what we covered today:
On the second page of the handout is a space where you can put the names of the people who come to mind in your own workplace who seem to you as Cultural Creatives Edgewalkers and/or opinion leaders—you can use this as a starting point in moving with some of the suggestions I have made.
By way of closing, you may recall what I said at the beginning—that we would return to the ratings you thought of concerning the level of integrity where you work. Please recall now how you rated the integrity of top management where you work and how you rated your own integrity and that of those around you—considering the old adage that dishonesty can prevail only if honest people allow it to. [pause]
With those ratings in mind, I would like you to consider the Three questions to help assess the risk of working to improve integrity at work that are at the top of the second page of the handout you have in front of you. They come from the UT activist professor, Robert Jensen who says were the focus of an entire workshop he attended. Here is what they say:
And please note that people in positions of privilege tend to exaggerate the risks in Question One and under-estimate the risks in Questions Two.
Since we have enough time for you to briefly discuss these questions with your seat mate and still have Q&A/Discussion, I would like you to connect with a person sitting next to you and discuss what Question Two bring up for you, and perhaps Question Three as well; but to keep things focused, please do not discuss Question One.
“What risks will you take if you don't actively work to increase integrity at work? And if you have any good ideas how the bringing Wisdom at Work might help, please feel free to share this as well.”
Then we can open it up for questions and general discussion.
You have about four minutes for this sharing, and may begin now.
[four minutes]
Okay … Let's open it up for questions, comments and feedback.
[about five minutes]
That's all we have time for. Thank you for your kind attention. It was a pleasure being with you today.
[1] A two-page handout was distributed to accompany this presentation. When reading this speech, it would be useful to have it handy if feasible. For convenience, it is posted separately at www.OWMarkley.org/WisdomAtWorkSpeechHandout.htm .