I was recently asked to review a book titled Negotiating the Impossible by Deepak Malhotra, who is a Harvard Business School professor. Given the bragadoci0us title and the worn out topic, I expected the worst. I am happy to say that this is a terrific book, full of good advice and fun to read – especially the historical examples of critical negotiations. I do recommend having a look at this one.
More on Ethical Influence
February 21, 2016 — MarkIf you are interested in strategies for ethical influence, you may enjoy this piece from CEO Magazine.
http://blogs.the-ceo-magazine.com/blog/markpastin
A Final Lie: Seek the Advice of Counsel
November 8, 2015 — MarkWhen confronted with an ethical issue, many people and companies will turn to their legal counsel. This is a mistake. A good lawyer is someone who will judge your actions according to a set of black and white rules and try to find the path most advantageous to you – which has nothing to do with ethics. When you are looking for ethical advice, it is typically because there are no black and white rules for the situation or the black and white rules seem to be giving you the wrong answer. Of course, many things that are unethical are also illegal. So if you are planning on doing something unethical, it is not a bad idea to have counsel at hand.
Another Lie: There Is No Progress In Ethics
October 25, 2015 — MarkIt does often seem that progress in ethics is hard to come by. But can anyone doubt that it is more ethical to live in a society in which slavery is not tolerated than to live in one in which slavery is tolerated? Is it not clearly more ethical to live in a society that allows participation by women than in one that prohibits it? What is true is that ethical progress is not easy or equal. But did anyone expect ethical progress to be easy, automatic or universally acknowledged? Ethical progress may come slowly and at great cost – but it does come.
Lies about Ethics
September 20, 2015 — MarkNo topic is more subject to lies than ethics. In fact, our thinking about ethics typically begins with a lie. Each of us tells our self that we are ethical while we are uncertain about the ethics of most everyone else. We are always the exception. Ethics is the subject of a lot of lies because it is very personal to us and is part of our self-esteem. If you do a lot of thinking about ethics, you may end up challenging the very foundation of who you are. But lies about ethics are not harmless. They keep us mired in endless ethical disagreement about some of the most important issues of the day such as immigration, executive compensation, and climate change. Over the next several posts, starting here, I will talk about some of the big lies about ethics.
You Can’t Teach People Ethics.
This is patently false since most parents teach their children ethical basics, albeit with varying degrees of success. Parents teach children ethics by using rewards, punishments, persuasion and example. And this mostly works. The goal of parental teaching is to equip us to make ethical judgments once we no longer have our parents to guide us. Since we know ethics can be taught, we have to ask whether we should be using the same tools to continue ethics education into adulthood. However, these tools are less effective with adults just because adults believe that they already know the truth about ethics.
Ethics, Compliance and HR
July 20, 2015 — MarkAs many of you know first hand, there has been a running battle over the years between ethics/compliance and human resources. This battle often focuses on the hotline and the idea that most hotline calls are about HR issues. But there are also battles over training, investigations, background checks – you name it. If anyone is willing to share stories about this battle, it would be most welcome. You can comment here or contact me directly at councile@aol.com. Don’t worry I am not looking for anything to be attributed by name or organization – just some of the experiences of ethics and compliance professionals. What I write about this will eventually end up on this web site.
5th and Final Surprising Truth about Ethics
July 11, 2015 — MarkYou can teach a person ethics.
This should be obvious since most parents teach most children ethics to some extent – although not as much as we might like. The reason we can teach children ethics is that children respond to incentives, whether it is a new toy for telling the truth or a pronounced glare for lying. Companies spend tens of millions of dollars trying to talk their employees into acting ethically. But they keep the same reward system that they have always used in which ethics plays no part. And so nothing changes.
5 Surprising Truths about Ethics in One Place
June 22, 2015 — MarkSurprising Truths about Ethics #4
June 21, 2015 — MarkHere is another surprising truth about ethics:
People are not getting less ethical. Every generation regards later generations as less ethical than their own. But the evidence is to the contrary. The Council of Ethical Organizations has conducted a highly tested survey in hundreds of organization since 1986. While particular organizations or industry segments get more or less ethical, overall scores on the survey have been stable for almost 20 years. There is no central tendency of decline. What sometimes makes us think ethics is on the way out is the fact that we learn more about ethical misdeeds than earlier generations did partly due to power of social media and the growth of news outlets.
Mark Pastin 