Business Ethics

I am watching the situation in Ukraine unfold in horror.  Many times I find myself in tears, watching people clutching their few belongings and leaving their home by any means possible, including walking across the borders to neighboring countries.  I am astounded by the generosity and kindness of those neighbors and of people all around the world doing what they can to support the Ukrainians.  To be fair, I also feel badly for the Russian people, whom I believe do not have accurate information about the war and who do not want this war but are tortured if they speak out against it.  In part my heart aches because this was my family’s story many, many years ago.  My mom →

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This is a tale of a leader amassing too much power in an organization and the ethical consequences that shattered people, organization, and the public trust, just to “please the boss”. Ah, you thought I was finally going to enter the political arena, right?  Sorry to disappoint.  On the few occasions where I did write or discuss something political I got nasty, ugly, mean-spirited comments.  I refuse to print those comments but let’s just say I choose my words carefully and my friends and clients even more carefully as a lesson learned from these experiences. Although there are parallels to be drawn with the current state of American politics, I’m talking in this article about Carlos Ghosn, former CEO of →

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Have you noticed that ethics is in the news everywhere these days?  This sometimes hugely unpopular and negatively perceived word is now the latest buzz word. Huh.  I guess I was 10 years ahead of my time when I invented e-Factor!®, originally conceived as the “ethics factor”.  I woke up with the idea in the wee hours of the morning after leaving the corporate world and an organization where actions and ethical values plainly did not match. As I developed the game and built my business I heard countless experts tell me to “lose the word ethics” because it wouldn’t sell – nobody wanted to be lectured about ethics and ethical conduct. In the early days at networking events I →

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Nine years ago today, in the wee hours of the morning, the concept for e-Factor!® was created. When the idea popped into my head and I said a mental “OK, let’s do this”, I had no idea how to create a game or how to deliver workshops. All I knew was that I’d just decided to leave the corporate world for good because of unethical people and situations. I had no earthly idea what was in store for me next. In the beginning, e-Factor!® was just a simple ethics game. It started from a desire to learn from my own experiences and help others avoid the ethical dilemmas I always seemed to find myself dealing with. The game has morphed →

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Meeting Scheduling.  It used to be easy and quick, especially if there’s an automated system involved. But it has become the bane of my existence.  It seems that lately the people I’m scheduling meetings with have needed to reschedule. Sometimes more than once. And the back-and-forth emails to try and find a common date fill multiple pages of my inbox. I’m not sure people understand this, but when someone asks to reschedule a meeting the message they I receive is that I am less important, less valuable, or less respected than some other opportunity that has just come up. I’m sure it’s unintentional, but it is an ethics issue for me.  It’s a lack of respect and integrity. And it’s frustrating as hell. If →

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My mom periodically sends me ethics articles.  Today’s article was absolutely unbelievable.  (Thanks, Mom!)  According to a Fox News Article Published 2/14/2016 a Spanish government worker got paid for six years without showing up to the job. He collected an annual salary of $42,000 for supervising the construction of a waste water treatment plant.  The water company building the plant thought the man was a government worker.  And the government thought he was a water company employee. They caught him when he became eligible for an award for 20 years of service.  The man was penalized $30,000 the maximum amount allowable under Spanish law. Aside from the fact that $30,000 is the maximum allowable under Spanish law (wouldn’t that be nice →

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You do not trust any of your staff to talk to clients because you do not know how they will respond to client requests for additional work. This scenario involves accountability and reliability, which either build or destroy trust. What would you do in this situation?

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Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you had a joyful holiday season and 2014 is getting off to a great start for you!  It’s going to be a fantastic year – can you feel it? I was reading a book the other day (gasp, actually having time to read a book??) and came across this question:  Which matters more:  intention or action?  It stopped me in my tracks, and I had to stop reading to ponder this question for a while.  The main character in the book was dealing with a crisis where he and the people around him were fighting for their lives.  These folks were tricked into doing something they knew was wrong, but they were tricked by →

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I was just interviewed last night on a radio show called I am U Radio.  The topic was the Energy of Ethics.  I was a little nervous, not having done much with radio, tv or broadcasting very recently. But the hosts, Dagny and Beth, started off the conversation by sharing some of their thoughts and experiences with ethics and ethical behavior. They could have been delivering my workshop – they were saying a lot of the same words I use in my own workshops and lunch-and-learns.  As I listened I thought to myself – well this is going to be easy!! And I was right.  It was just like having a conversation with old friends on a topic near and →

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