What Happened To Integrity, Why Does It Matter and What Can We Do About It?

Clearly, America is under attack from two dangerous enemies: one is the external danger of terrorism, and the other is the internal cancer of a lack of integrity. For now, I'll focus on the cancer.

Over the past several years, a person took advantage of McDonald's version of Monopoly and handed the winning pieces to a variety of friends and acquaintances.

Over the past few years, executives at Enron developed a myriad of complicated and fake partnerships to hide debt and increase the value of their stock.

Apparently, a similar type of nightmare occurred at a Baptist Church in Arizona while under the guidance of Arthur Andersen.

Frank Gruttadauria, the former head of Lehman Brothers Holdings' Cleveland office, allegedly stole $125 million by creating phony statements and misleading investors as to the true worth of their balances.

Whatever happened to old-fashioned integrity? At one time, I thought that education would help people act with integrity more. Seems I was wrong. Education has helped some people become more sophisticated crooks. I grew up in a semi-rough neighborhood. Police helicopters would occasionally fly over our neighborhood to try to find thieves who stole from the nearby mall. I thought that was worst thing imaginable. However, these high level corporate crimes make these thieves look like amateurs.

Corporate crime has a devastating effect on our capitalist society. First, there are the customers who were robbed. Then there are the innocent corporate employees who lost millions of dollars from their retirement packages. Then there is the damage done to the corporations themselves in terms of a ruined reputation and the loss of customers, potential customers and stock value. Finally, and this is the biggest devastation of all, there is the lack of customer confidence in entire industries and in the stock market itself.

While it's impossible to compare, it seems to me that the financial devastation of the terrorist attacks of September 11th and the anthrax letters of last year are actually outweighed by the financial devastation of a lacking corporate integrity.

Then the question becomes, "Is the real problem a lack of integrity or the fact that they got caught doing it?" In other words, would things be fine if these people just hadn't been caught doing these crimes?

Aside from the ethical and moral issues, I would say that from both a business and personal perspective a lack of integrity does not pay off over the long run. Imagine if you had successfully stolen millions of dollars and no one else knew about it. Think about that for a moment. You were able to buy virtually anything you wanted and travel anywhere at any time. Your children could go to the finest schools in the world. However, you still had to live with yourself everyday. Everyday for the rest of your life you knew that you stole money. I don't know about you, but I know that the guilt and shame would gnaw at me and would grow stronger over time. I would feel like a fugitive everyday of my life in my own home. My self-esteem would be ruined. Every so-called achievement would be hollow. Looking at the alternatives, I would much rather work for my financial worth than gain it and lose my opportunity to truly live.

So the final question becomes, "How can we strengthen our integrity?" I think it happens in a hundred small ways everyday. Facing any situation, business or personal, we can ask, "In this situation, what do I believe is the right thing to do?" Every time we actually do what we think is the right thing to do, we strengthen our integrity muscle. Every time we don't, we weaken the muscle. Then when a huge business decision needs to be made that tests our integrity, we will either be ready for it or not.

If you want to read a longer article on integrity, go to my website, www.thecoughlincompany.com, click on The Top Performer's Series, and scroll down under "Enhancing Individual Effectiveness" and read "Maintain Long-Term Success By Acting With Integrity."

QUESTION FOR THE MONTH

Here is my suggestion:

Write down 10 situations you are facing right now in both your professional and personal life. For each situation, write down what you think is the right thing to do. Then do it.

You will be able to feel your integrity muscle growing stronger and stronger. As a result, your self-esteem will grow stronger. This is the foundation of your success as a top performing executive.

Also, I encourage you to encourage your colleagues to sign up for this free monthly electronic series. We have averaged one new subscriber everyday for the past three months. In case you forgot, all they need to do is to go to www.thecoughlincompany.com/newsletter.html.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCE FOR TOP PERFORMERS:

First, the three best books I've read on integrity our "A Man For All Seasons" by Robert Bolt, "My Experiments With Truth" by Mohandas Gandhi, and "The Autobiography Of Martin Luther King, Jr." edited by Clayborne Carson.

Second, I recently bought a new car that has a six CD player. Now I'm going to turn 40 in November so I thought it would be fun to listen to the music I listened to when I was a teenager. I've been entertained lately by Styx, Cat Stevens, The Best of Disco, The Carpenters, and even Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall. (Ok, no judgments on my taste in music please.) I encourage you to do the same. Get the music you listened to when you were younger and play it as much as you can. For me, I'm ready to go buy bell bottom pants again. (Well, almost.)

Finally, if you would like to read my column, "Tips From The Results Coach," go to www.projecthero.com and click on my photo at the bottom of the page.

Take care and have a great start to 2002.

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