For those of you who are interested in exploring the integration of your faith into your business I have a recommendation of an excellent book. Devotional Ventures, edited by Corey Cleek, is an inspiring read. It includes 60 entries by business people of all walks, including -- to my surprise -- my good friend Barry Landis.
Ethics and Values: March 2007 Archives
BusinessWeek Online has a story that profiles 18 women who have left high-power corporate jobs to join the ranks of start-up entrepreneurs. The reason -- "Only 2 of the 18 women on our list mentioned making more money as their primary motivation."
Building a different kind of organizational culture seemed to be a major driving force for many of these women. While still striving for high performance, these new entrepreneurs want to create a more collaborative and team-driven culture. It appears that they also want to create cultures that are more supportive of employees.
Cecelia McCloy, the 52-year-old co-founder of Integrated Science Solutions, a Walnut Creek (Calif.) science and engineering firm with $9 million in sales, says she specifically set out to create a company that was friendly to families. Her employees also get eight hours of paid time off per year to participate in civic or charitable activities -- say, to volunteer in their children's classroom. Last year, about 20 of her 75 employees took advantage of the option. And every month, she asks managers to give her information on employees who did something exceptional for customers or their colleagues. McCloy then writes a thank-you note to those folks.
From our own research for our new book, we have found that these types of goals are also shared by many male entrepreneurs. It is heartening to see entrepreneurs of both genders pursuing such rich and well-ordered definitions of success in their businesses.
(Thanks to Ben Cunningham for passing this along).
While Business Ethics is getting much more attention in the press, in the Board room, and in the classroom, I am concerned that our definition of business ethics is sliding into a legalistic world of rules compliance. I was reminded of this today at morning Mass. The priest was talking about the story of Jesus breaking the rules of the scribes about the Sabbath, through his acts of healing and teaching about the greater good.
We have to be careful not to boil morality, whether it be in everyday life or in business, down to a simple list of don'ts that serves as a checklist of how to be ethical.
Business ethics should so much more than a list of rules to follow. It should be a much broader set of standards of how we treat each other. It is the pursuit of being good in how we treat our employees, our customers, our investors, our families, our suppliers, and so forth. That cannot be boiled down to a simple checklist. Being ethical, being good, is having integrity in all that we do. It requires courage to do what is right toward others, no matter how hard it might be at certain times in our lives.
