Ethics, You and Your Organization
The Organization as a System
Ken Wallace focuses on the organization as a system including its procedures and processes and how they either encourage or discourage employee behavior that the company defines as ethical.
Ethics is a matter of choice, planning and persistence. Once you decide what matters most to you in life (begin with the end in mind first - what do you want on your tombstone?) you can more easily determine what needs to be done and how you need to act in order to create that kind of legacy.
Ethics is both personal and organizational. If employees' personal sense of morality and ethical behavior is significantly different than that of the organization for which they work, there will be an ethical gap that will result in ethically compromised behavior that will jeopardize the organization's future viability.
Outcomes You Can Expect:
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Culture of Integrity and Respect
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Strategies for resolving personal ethical conflicts at work
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Clarification of personal and organizational values and principles
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Plan for ethical congruence and effectiveness throughout the organization
Following are some questions your organization needs to answer:
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1. Do you have a code of ethics?
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2. Do you have written values and principles?
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3. What do you want people to say about the organization and its employees and trustholders?
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4. What does the organization look and feel like at the end of the next twelve months?
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5. What currently inhibits and discourages ethical behavior and decision making in the organization?
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6. What currently facilitates and encourages ethical behavior and decision making in the organization?
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7. What needs to start being done - stop being done - continue being done to enhance the climate of integrity in the organization? Who needs to be doing or not doing these things?
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8. In the absence of clear, written and unambiguous policy and procedure, what decision making process will help employees make an ethical decision that aligns their personal values and the organization's ethical principles that results in beneficial outcomes for all concerned?
Here are the steps to increasing ethical effectiveness and congruence in your organization:
1. Assessing the ethical climate
2. Clear organizational values and principles
3. Clear personal values and principles
4. Formal discussions on ethics - employee input
5. Ethics policies and procedures, code of ethical conduct
6. Measures of ethical effectiveness
7. Accountability structure, rewards and punishments
8. Guidelines for ethical decision making
9. Building support for ethical practices
10. Ethical leadership practices
11. Ethics education and training
Ken Wallace can assist in the development of consistent ethical behavior at all levels of the organization by helping you implement all the above steps.
The Ethical Organization: Organizing for the Greater Good
"Profit" can be understood in two ways:
1) the financial "bottom-line"
2) the beneficial results which accrue to both the service/product provider and the service/product recipient
The first instance is tangible and external; the second instance is often intangible and internal. Many organizations become "ethically impaired" by designing strategies centering around increasing the first aspect of profit while essentially ignoring the second. This presentation identifies the interdependence of both aspects of profit and how focusing on increasing #2 is the best strategy for increasing #1.
Among the presentation themes are the following:
1) Decide before you have to decide
2) Choose to act regardless of circumstances: create desired external effects from internal causes
3) The "Law of Naturalness:" everything "conspires" toward equilibrium, health, and balance -- and how we often unknowingly choose not to follow this law
4) The "mirror, the pebble, and the echo" rule - getting more by giving more
5) The power of words and your personal "ethic"
6) The Golden, Iron and Platinum Rules and how to observe them for maximum impact
The program deals with the interrelationship of ethics and self-esteem as well as ways to structure an organization so that ethical activity is clearly defined and encouraged from all its employees. Needs-based and values-based decision making models will be explored and applied to participants' individual jobs. Participants will learn how to develop personal and organizational models to foster and ensure ethical decision-making which results in actions based on personal and corporate values.
Benefits of participation include:
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Increased sales revenue
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Improved relationships among co-workers
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Increased satisfaction levels with job tasks
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Longer-term relationships with clients
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Decreased employee turnover
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Increased behavioral alignment with corporate vision and mission statements