Issue 4, Tuesday July 18, 2000
Made in New Zealand - twice winners of the America's Cup

You can't manage change.
You can only be ahead of it.
Peter Drucker

Only dead fish swim with the stream
Malcolm Muggeridge

In matters of taste, swim with the current.
In matters of principle, stand like a rock
Thomas Jefferson


Welcome to the fourth issue of EDGE FIRST, an e-zine dedicated to making you a better leader. Our goal is to provide the two key ingredients of effective leadership:
- provocative thinking about what it means to be a leader
- the tools, techniques and best-practices that drive leadership improvement
In this issue
Ethics - much more than just keeping safe. Success too.
Diversity - the mongrel workplace. No longer a choice
Homework - Read. Reflect. Win Brownie points

Some of the resources listed below are Portable Document Format (.pdf) files. To access them you'll need Adobe's® free Acrobat® Reader.
Start
If you've been reading EDGE FIRST from the beginning, you'll have spotted that we're not talking much about heroic leadership. Stormin' Norman won't feature.

Leadership is about process as much as people, about how and why things happen as much as who makes them happen. That's why our extended, inclusive definition spans strategy, innovation and ethics, and why we wander off into diversity and the new economy and the role of women – the things that only 'leadership' can effectively deal with, and the things that if not dealt with as leadership questions, don't (oops) get dealt with at all.

So lets wander.

Workplace Ethics
Here are a handful of everyday ethics issues recently aired by pop ethicist Jeffrey L Seglin, (see issue 3) who's an assistant professor at Boston's Emerson College, business ethics columnist for the Sunday New York Times, ethics in business mentor at inc.com and author of The Good, The Bad, and Your Business: Choosing right when ethical dilemmas pull you apart (John Wiley & Sons, and – of course – at Amazon.com). Email jseglin@post.harvard.edu. Web site, click here.

In an email a few months ago Jeffrey wrote “when I last spoke to some colleagues at inc.com [the web site of the magazine], I was told that the word 'ethics' was among the top 5 words searched for on the site.”

Why is that? Maybe because 'values' – what an organisation stands for, and why, and how that shows up in it's day to day activities – is emerging as a key differentiator in the new economy. Stop for a moment and think about that. Read some of the 'Green' literature – and the Cluetrain Manifesto. What's going on here? Consumers are making value judgements about how 'good' products and services are, where 'good' involves a lot more than just fitness for purpose. How 'good' is your enterprise? Hand on heart now, and remember that the internet strips away the hype. We're back to values, and ethics, right?

“In today's demanding business world of global expansion, corporate downsizing, increased government regulations and new technologies, people at all levels of an organization must make decisions quickly and perform with high levels of accuracy, efficiency and success. If their company's core business processes are not grounded in sound values, such as integrity, respect, trust and fairness, these individuals are exposed to ethical vulnerabilities that could lead to fraudulent, discriminatory, even illegal activities,” says KPMG's Business Ethics web site (or at least that's what it used to say - this link no longer works, and I can't find anything like it at the KPMG site!).

What's more “unethical behavior among North American companies costs about $100 billion a year: to investigate and resolve the activities in question and to put mechanisms in place to ensure that problems do not reoccur.”

Business ethics, a very 90s thing, “can cover anything from hiring practices and customer privacy to harassment, discrimination, mishandling of confidential information and unfair competitive practices,” says Meredith Alexander, in TheStandard.com

Resources
- We've got a Baldrigeplus PDF document on this subject, click here, scroll down and click on Business Ethics to load the file – you'll need Adobe's free Acrobat Reader.
- July 03, 2000 Do You Need an Ethics Officer? Startups don't worry enough about doing the right thing. By Meredith Alexander, in TheStandard.com
- Email Seglin at jseglin@post.harvard.edu or go to http://business.inc.com/seglin to sign up for the WorkPlaceEthics listserv.
- Drama in the Workplace -- Now on Management General
A man rests his hand on the shoulder of a female co-worker, triggering a volcanic emotional outburst. An unthinking action, or sexual harassment? Drama in the workplace? You bet. And Management General (MG), The "New Ideas" Webzine , focuses on "Drama At Work" in its July issue.

With corporate ethics programs much more common in the workplace than just a few years ago (KPMG and others have done their marketing well), you'd expect a much more robust ethical environment. So run a test. KPMG (clever marketing) have, and here (according to Seglin - The Ethics Policy: Mind-Set Over Matter, The New York Times, July 16, 2000) is what it seems to show:

"Employees are observing widespread illegal and unethical conduct in the workplace despite the presence of ethics programs. Five out of six respondents said their companies had such programs; three out of four said they had observed unethical or illegal conduct on the job in the past year.”

Reading this, you'd think that the American workplace had plunged into a deep ethical malaise, Seglin says. Or maybe not – perhaps all those ethics programs have taught employees to recognize unethical behaviour when they see it. Either could be true.

Actually, you can't tell, because there are no historical data for comparison. But there are some useful conclusions:
- 80% of employees who felt that management would uphold company ethical standards also believed  that current customers would recommend the company to others. The figure falls by half among employees who thought management was not above giving the green light to a bit of impropriety.
- 81% of employees who see their management as arrow-straight would recommend their company to potential recruits; only 21% with more ethically flexible bosses would do so.
- Policy, by itself, won't change behaviour. What's needed as a minimum is a visible (walk the talk) commitment from the leadership, and a way for people to report ethical lapses without fear of retribution. A policy alone may be worse than no policy at all if it reveals a double standard – here's what we say, but this is what we actually do.

Diversity
On the face of it, you may not think 'diversity' is a leadership thing either. Leave it to HR. Or stay right away from it. We've got enough problems without buying into a United Nations workforce! Study the demographics, though, and you'll realise that hiding from diversity won't be an option for long.

Pascal Zachary, in Fast Company (July 2000, p 270, Mighty Is the Mongrel), puts it like this:

“What does it take to win in the global economy? A commitment to mixing people, experiences, and ideas. Companies and countries that embrace diversity to stimulate creativity will be the ones that own the future.

“Diversity defines the health and wealth of nations - as well as of companies and the people inside them. The mixing of races, ethnic groups, and nationalities - at home and abroad - is at a record level. In a world of deepening connections, individuals, organizations, and entire countries draw strength and personality from places as near as their local neighbourhood and as far away as a distant continent. Mixing is the new norm. The hybrid is hip. Mighty is the mongrel.

“Mixing … spawns creativity, nourishes the human spirit, spurs economic growth, empowers nations. Nothing can stop the rise of mongrels - of people who mock the very idea that union requires homogeneity or that victory depends on smothering dissent in a blanket of uniformity. Rich nations will go mongrel because it is right and good. They will go mongrel because it is the only antidote to stagnation, the only durable source of innovation, the only viable way to preserve their traditions while embracing change.”

Colourful. And probably right. Zachary's argument is that the ability to apply knowledge to new situations is the most valued currency in today's economy.

Creativity rewards those who exercise it. Divergent thinking is an essential ingredient of creativity. Diverse groups produce diverse thinking. Ergo, diversity promotes creativity. And it's just great for business. To summarise, Zachary says:
- Multinational corporations are hybrid hothouses and the best set the pace, with a mission to match people and needs, regardless of nationality, race, or ethnicity
- The best managers want employees to retain their differences to make the most of their uniqueness and the most of the creative tension spawned by those differences
- Hybrid teams are the new ideal. Indeed, careers are now made or broken over diversity. The triumph of English as the language of business has made it easier to hire the best and brightest from around the world
- The mongrelization of management goes all the way to the top. An unprecedented number of foreign-born CEOs run major companies in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere
- At the best companies, building diverse teams has become a routine part of business and a central piece of strategy. Take McKinsey, the global consultancy. In the 1970s, most of its consultants were American, and its foreign contingent came from about 20 countries. By 1999, the chief partner was a foreign national; only 40% of its 4,800 consultants were American; and its foreign-born consultants came from more than 40 countries.

Resources
G. Pascal Zachary (gregg.zachary@wsj.com) is a London-based senior writer for the "Wall Street Journal." This summary is from his forthcoming book, "The Global Me: New Cosmopolitans and the Competetive Edge -- Picking Globalisms Winners and Losers," to be published this month by Public Affairs.

Homework!
Leadership moment by moment
Ron Cacioppe
Leadership & Organizational Development Journal; 18: 7 1997; pp.335-345
Keywords: Intelligence, Leadership, Philosophy. Article Type: Theoretical with application in practice. Read it at http://www.mcb.co.uk/emrld/now/pdfs/200061.pdf

Leadership in the twenty-first century
Mike Bagshaw, Caroline Bagshaw
Industrial & Commercial Training; 31: 6 1999; pp.236-242 ISSN: 0954-478X
Keywords: Leadership, Learning, Personality, Personnel psychology. Article Type: Theoretical with application in practice. Read it at http://www.mcb.co.uk/emrld/now/pdfs/200062.pdf

When giants collide: strategic analysis and application
Ed Chung, Cam McLarney
Management Decision; 37: 3 1999; pp.233-248 ISSN: 0025-1747
Keywords: Decision making, Leadership, Management structures, Management styles, Organizational culture, Strategic management. Article Type: Theoretical with application in practice, Case study. Read it at http://www.mcb.co.uk/emrld/now/pdfs/200063.pdf

Temporal elements of organizational culture and impact on firm performance
Marina H. Onken
Journal of Managerial Psychology; 14: 3/4 1999; pp.231-244 ISSN: 0268-3946
Keywords: Competitive strategy, Corporate culture, Organizational behaviour, Publishing industry, Telecommunications industry, Work psychology Article Type: Survey. Read it at http://www.mcb.co.uk/emrld/now/pdfs/200064.pdf
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