The future of ethical business leadership
Recently, we had 12 representatives travel to New Mexico for the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative 2015 Ethics Consortium Summit to learn about ethical business leadership. Business leaders, faculty and students came together for a great Eccles experience. Their goals were to discuss how ethics are implemented in the business world.
Keith Darcy, the president at Darcy Partners Inc., spoke on the topic of ethics in the financial world. If you look over time, there have been downturns in the markets since the dawn of time. We looked at Enron, WorldCom, Royal Dutch Shell and now Volkswagen. You can see the loss of integrity. As we reviewed each of these corporations, we saw how business culture played a role. Within any setting, culture has a direct effect on the ethics of an individual. When are you a team player and when are you the whistleblower? We can be overwhelmed with the feeling of wanting to succeed and to build our resumes. But when do we cross a line?
Building a resume is necessary, but what is more important—resume, virtues or eulogy virtues? Eulogy virtues are the stories that show who you are as a person. The qualities reflect on your morals and how you treat your fellow people. When does it become more important to build your resume at the cost of cheating your colleagues?
From ancient philosophy to modern times, there has always been a struggle to be ethical. Dharma is a Hindu word whose origin includes a sense of duty as an essential quality. Buddha comes from the root word “budh,” which means to awaken, notice or to understand. Yoga comes from the root word yuj which means to unite. We have a duty to unite and awaken our communities to the loss of integrity and work to bring it back.
Another topic of discussion was that it is OK to fail sometimes. Michael Jordan said, “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games; 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.” His comment really cemented it in our minds that it is OK to fail sometimes.
In life, you can fail until you succeed. Don’t give in to the temptation to fudge results to make something look better than it is. This was the message from the Daniels Fund Ethics initiative 2015 Ethics Consortium Summit.