Ethics at a cross roads

A path branching into two paths

What makes the field of business ethics so interesting and so challenging is that as a term, and as a concept,“business ethics” means so many different things to so many different constituencies.

However, many of these constituencies often don’t communicate well together. The academic side of business ethics is often not seen as a resource for the practitioners. Within companies, business ethics is more often seen as a branch of compliance and legal than it is a partner of organizational behavior. Everyone wants everyone do “the right thing” yet we are often at a loss to define what exactly that right thing to do is.

Another dimension is that the perception of business ethics in the US is different than the assumptions of ethics in many other countries.

How do we make sense of all of these varied elements?

One place to start is by looking at the definitions of “business ethics.”

Ethics is often defined as “that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions.” (dictionary.com)

However, the origin of the word “ethics” comes from the Greek word, “ethos,” which we define as “the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period.” (dictionary.com).

In the business context it isn’t always helpful to see “ethics” as synonymous with “morality” or “goodness.” Instead, business ethics is more instructive if we look at it as a means to an ends: “the values relating to human conduct.”

In today’s business world, we are interested in understanding why people do what they do. Why do people do good things and why do seemingly good people do bad things.

From my 15 years of experience in helping companies address ethics issues, I see ethics as a function of behavior. Borrowing from the social psychologists, I see ethical behavior as a function of both the person and their environment.

When we look at the person, we look at how does that individual define what is the “right thing” to do. There is not a universal definition and I am hoping to encourage a dialog as to what in fact is the right thing to do and is it objective or conditional upon the circumstances?

The second determinant of ethical behavior is the environment that influences and shapes our perceptions. We will be actively discussing how the environment shapes behavior.

Our goal is to help practitioners be better equipped to create the kinds of cultures they want and need inside their organizations. Where should an organization be focusing its resources and attention in its attempts to influence employee behavior? On the person by reminding them of their ethical and legal obligations, or on the environment which shapes behavior of “ethical” and “unethical” people alike.

I am encouraging the readers and guest writers in this blog to open the dialog and be active participants in this exciting process.

Introduction — Relevant, Realistic and Flexible Strategic Planning

Business growth strategy graph

Simply put, strategic planning is about clarifying the purpose and most important priorities of an organization, and also about how the organization will address those priorities. Sometimes the priorities are about major issues and sometimes about exciting overall goals.

The strategic planning process has to suit the nature and needs of the organization in order to produce a useful strategic plan. Especially for small- to medium-sized organizations, the strategic planning process has to be realistic and flexible. Otherwise the plan ends up sitting on a shelf, collecting dust.

This blog is about doing strategic planning in a manner that is always relevant, realistic and flexible for the organization. We’ll discuss different models of planning, typical phases in a strategic planning process and some guidelines to conduct each phase. We’ll also touch on common pitfalls in planning and how to avoid those.

There are many books about the content that should end up being in a strategic plan, but there are few resources about actually facilitating strategic planning. So we’ll also cover some useful techniques in facilitating planning.

This detailed list of topics gives more detail about the types of topics we’ll be likely to cover and their likely order, as well. However, it’s not uncommon that the topics in a blog tend to follow the wishes of the readers — a blog should be about the readers at least as much as about the blogger’s opinions.

What topics would you like to read? What questions do you have about strategic planning?

Introduction — Removing the Mystique About Boards

People having a board meeting in a conference room

Many people have the impression that a Board of Directors is a group of very wise people who sit in a very special room and make very complex deliberations and decisions. Actually, most Board members are people just like us who are trying their best to understand what’s going on and what to do about it. However, recent history has shown that some Board members are not doing their fiduciary duties — they’re merely doing whatever the CEO tells them to do. The irony is that the law expects the CEO to work for the Board, not the other way around.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the role of a Board of a for-profit and nonprofit corporation. We’ll discuss Board members’ roles and responsibilities, how members are selected and trained, how they make decisions and how they are supposed to ensure their operations are always high-quality. We’ll discuss how the members and CEO can best work together. We’ll also review how members can accomplish strong governance of each of the most important functions in an organization.

There is an increasing number of laws and regulations about Boards and for a variety of reasons. Recent and very public scandals have resulted in massive layoffs and losses in investments, along with some executives going to prison. Also, there is public outrage at the sizes of CEO compensation. We don’t know all of these laws and regulations, so I’m hoping readers with that knowledge will chip in to enlighten the rest of us.

This list of topics gives more detail about the types of topics we’ll likely cover and their order. However, it’s not uncommon that the topics in a blog tend to follow the wishes of the readers — a blog should be about the readers at least as much as about the blogger’s opinions.

What topics would you like to read? What questions do you have about Boards?

The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications – Part 2

6. Anticipate Crises

If you’re being proactive and preparing for crises, gather your Crisis Communications Team for long brainstorming sessions on all the potential crises which can occur at your organization.

There are at least two immediate benefits to this exercise:

* You may realize that some of the situations are preventable by simply modifying existing methods of operation.

* You can begin to think about possible responses, about best case/worst case scenarios, etc. Better now than when under the pressure of an actual crisis.

In some cases, of course, you know that a crisis will occur because you’re planning to create it — e.g., to lay off employees, or to make a major acquisition. Then, you can proceed with steps 8-10 below, even before the crisis occurs.

There is a more formal method of gathering this information that I call a “vulnerability audit,” about which I’ll be writing more soon.

7. Develop Holding Statements

While full message development must await the outbreak of an actual crisis, “holding statements” — messages designed for use immediately after a crisis breaks — can be developed in advance to be used for a wide variety of scenarios to which the organization is perceived to be vulnerable, based on the assessment you conducted in Step 6 of this process. An example of holding statements by a hotel chain with properties hit by a natural disaster — before the organization headquarters has any hard factual information — might be:

“We have implemented our crisis response plan, which places the highest priority on the health and safety of our guests and staff.”

“Our hearts and minds are with those who are in harm’s way, and we hope that they are well.”

“We will be supplying additional information when it is available and posting it on our website.”

The organization’s Crisis Communications Team should regularly review holding statements to determine if they require revision and/or whether statements for other scenarios should be developed.

8. Assess the Crisis Situation

Reacting without adequate information is a classic “shoot first and ask questions afterwards” situation in which you could be the primary victim. But if you’ve done all of the above first, it’s a “simple” matter of having the Crisis Communications Team on the receiving end of information coming in from your communications “tree,” ensuring that the right type of information is being provided so that you can proceed with determining the appropriate response.

Assessing the crisis situation is, therefore, the first crisis communications step you can’t take in advance. But if you haven’t prepared in advance, your reaction will be delayed by the time it takes your in-house staff or quickly-hired consultants to run through steps 1 to 7. Furthermore, a hastily created crisis communications strategy and team are never as efficient as those planned and rehearsed in advance.

9. Identify Key Messages

With holding statements available as a starting point, the Crisis Communications Team must continue developing the crisis-specific messages required for any given situation. The team already knows, categorically, what type of information its stakeholders are looking for. What should those stakeholders know about this crisis? Keep it simple — have no more than three main messages for all stakeholders and, as necessary, some audience-specific messages for individual groups of stakeholders.

10. Riding Out the Storm

No matter what the nature of a crisis…no matter whether it’s good news or bad…no matter how carefully you’ve prepared and responded…some of your stakeholders are not going to react the way you want them to. This can be immensely frustrating. What do you do?

* Take a deep breath.

* Take an objective look at the reaction(s) in question. Is it your fault, or their unique interpretation?

* Decide if another communication to those stakeholders is likely to change their impression for the better.

* Decide if another communication to those stakeholders could make the situation worse.

* If, after considering these factors, you think it’s still worth more communication, then take your best shot!

“It Can’t Happen To Me”

When a healthy organization’s CEO or CFO looks at the cost of preparing a crisis communications plan, either a heavy investment of in-house time or retention of an outside professional for a substantial fee, it is tempting for them to fantasize “it can’t happen to me” or “if it happens to me, we can handle it relatively easily.”

Hopefully, that type of ostrich-playing is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Yet I know that thousands of organizations hit by Hurricane Katrina will have, when all is said and done, suffered far more damage than would have occurred with a fully developed crisis communications plan in place. This has also been painfully true for scores of clients I have served over the past 25 years. Even the best crisis management professional is playing catch up — with more damage occurring all the time — when the organization has no crisis communications infrastructure already in place.

The Last Word — For Now

I would like to believe that organizations worldwide are finally “getting it” about crisis preparedness, whether we’re talking about crisis communications, disaster response or business continuity. Certainly client demand for advance preparation has increased dramatically in the past half-decade, at least for my consultancy. But I fear that there is, in fact, little change in what I have said in the past, that 95 percent of American organizations remain either completely unprepared or significantly under-prepared for crises. And my colleagues overseas report little better, and sometimes worse statistics.

Choose to be part of the prepared minority. Your stakeholders will appreciate it!

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Introduction — This Blog is About Actually Doing Consulting

A businessman consulting with a young professional

There’s a lot of resources to help people think about whether to go into consulting and also about how to market a consulting business. However, there are very few resources about actually doing consulting — about how to work with clients to:

  • Identify and understand a) true causes of problems or b) how to achieve exciting goals.
  • Effectively solve those problems or achieve those goals.
  • Teach clients to address those situations themselves well into the future.
  • Learn about themselves and their organizations during the consulting process.

So this blog is about doing that. In this blog, I’ll be drawing heavily from my book “Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development.” Much of what I’ll write about will be relevant to any kind of consulting, whether technical, management or organizational consulting.

Here’s a detailed list of the kinds of topics we’ll cover and their likely order in this blog.

I’ve learned many times over the years that the deepest learning comes from sharing feedback with others, while also applying new information, materials and perspectives to current, important priorities. I’m hoping that this blog can contribute to deep learning for all of us. So join in!

What else would you like to read?

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

Introduction to Leadership

Three business leaders having a meeting

This blog is intended for people that are involved with, or want to be involved with, the “mobilizing, influencing, and guiding of others toward desired outcomes” (this is our beginning definition of leadership). This blog aims to provide learning and resources on all-things-leadership through the sharing of ideas, articles, theories, research findings, and opinions. But we also want to create a context for ongoing dialogue and generative conversations about leadership ideas and leadership practices. This means that we want to share existing information about leadership but also engage with our fellow bloggers in the co-creation of possible solutions and strategies to apply to your specific leadership related issues, questions, situations. In essence, we hope to differentiate ourselves from blogs that simply provide lists of the skills, values, beliefs, and attitudes that are required for leadership success.

Having said this, this blog is for everyone and anyone, from those new to the realm of leadership, as well as individuals with advance knowledge and expertise in leadership. So our plan is to begin the blog by providing an overview of a number of fairly common and general leadership topics. The idea is to then delve into more specific topics based on the expressed interests of the bloggers involved.

Schedule

In view of this approach, we have provided a schedule of topics for the first six weeks that are fairly broad.

Week 1: Possible Topics and Categories

Week 2: Definitions of Leadership

Week 3: Leadership and Management (Differences and Similarities)

Week 4: Theories of Leadership

Week 5: Leadership Development

Week 6: Competencies

This is week one and the topic is possible categories and topics that might be addressed in future blogs.

Possible Topics — Your Preference?

Below is a list of possible leadership categories and topics. I want to invite you to answer one or both of the following questions (of course other questions or comments are also welcome):

1) Which of the topics listed below would be most helpful (and/or intriguing) to learn about and discuss?

2) What topics are missing from the list that you would find helpful (and/or intriguing) to learn about and discuss?

Category: Leadership Models/Theories/Approaches

  • Transformational
  • Transactional
  • Servant
  • Adaptive
  • Charismatic
  • Neo-Charismatic
  • Authentic
  • Situational
  • Integral
  • Appreciative
  • Complexity
  • Primal

Category: Leadership Competencies/Skills

  • Overview
  • Competency models
  • Role in assessment, selection, and development
  • Competency model development
  • Critiques of competencies

Category: Leadership Development

  • Approaches
  • Case studies
  • Best practices
  • Pipeline development/Succession planning
  • Leader involvement in development
  • Nature and nurture
  • High potential
  • Action learning
  • Coaching
  • Feedback
  • Mentoring
  • Derailers

Category: Leadership Assessment

  • Approaches
  • Use in selection
  • Use in development
  • Personality
  • Cognitive
  • Simulations
  • Multi-rater feedback
  • Interviews
  • Assessing potential
  • Assessing readiness
  • Critiques of assessment

Miscellaneous Leadership Topics and Categories

  • Leaders as Coaches
  • Leading Organizational Change
  • CEOs
  • C-Level Leadership
  • Boards of Directors
  • Non-Profit Leadership
  • Leading Cross-Culturally
  • Global Leadership
  • Building and Leading High Performance Teams
  • Leading in Complex Organizations
  • Leading Self/Self-Awareness
  • Power and influence
  • Leadership Ethics
  • Leadership Typologies
  • Current and Emerging Research
  • Leaders and Family Owned Businesses
  • Non-Profit Leadership
  • Cultural Influences/Differences
  • Leadership and Gender
  • Use of Language
  • Leadership Styles
  • On-boarding
  • Expat Re-entry
  • Leadership in Times of Crisis
  • Graduate Programs in Leadership
  • Physician Leaders
  • Peer-coaching
  • Social Responsibility
  • Retention
  • Role in employee engagement
  • Strategic Thinking
  • Systemic Thinking
  • Situational Leadership
  • Leading from a Distance

Andragogy VS Pedagogy in Training

An-andragogic-system-of-training

As training professionals we all are aware of the real differences between the two learning styles. But do we really apply our knowledge of the effectiveness of andragogy in our programs? Malcomb Knowles, a predominant authority in the adult learning world, stresses the use of Andragogical style in adult learning programs.

This of course is important to trainers because we are predominately working with adults. It’s important in training to lead and direct a training, but let the group come up with their solutions and their own and keeping the training relevant to the problem we are trying to solve.

How many times as trainers do we put up a Powerpoint slide show, pass out some material and then start a lecture — pedagogical learning to the hilt.

Rather than this type of approach, lets get our folks into groups, present the current problem for that day and see what solutions or ideas they can come up with? This might be a little more time consuming but it’s so much more effective.

The principle difference in Pedagogy V Andragogy is that in Pedagogical style the teacher or instructor assumes full responsibility for what is taught and how it’s learned, and the teacher/instructor evaluates learning. In the Andragogical style: the learner is self-directed, the learner is responsible for his/her own learning and self-evaluation is characteristic of this approach. In the Andragogy style, the learner is the beneficiary, making the learning process much more fun, exciting and challenging. This in turn helps the training stick — and isn’t this why we train in the first place?

I am just pointing to the benefits of andragogy in adult learners. There are several more benefits and differences. For more information and an easy look at the differences between these two styles follow this link. http://www.floridatechnet.org/inservice/abe/abestudent/andravsped.pdf – it’s a nice chart showing the differences.

Comments to this post are welcome.

Next Topic will also be on adult learning and task analysis.

Any thoughts on topics you’d like to see here are welcome also.

Happy Training!

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

What to Expect from this PR Blog

Blog Letters on Brown Wood

Public Relations means different things to different people. While this blog is titled Public Relations/Media Relations, media relations is really a subset under the wide umbrella of PR. But it’s often the most critical piece of the process. This blog will work at understanding big picture PR/Media Relations issues and the “small stuff.” It’s designed to be interactive, so bump over your questions or concerns my way and we’ll get a dialogue going that will hopefully help you either do your own PR, or understand what to look for in hiring it out.

You can expect to find solid professional advice here based on my 15 years in the business — plus the occasional semi-censored personal opinions about issues related to media and publicity.

You can also expect insights into the many aspects of PR, which generally include these combined practices area and the following techniques:

  • Defining and developing key messages for target audiences
  • Providing strategic counsel and strategic planning for a PR campaign
  • Developing accurate Media Lists for your story
  • Looking at Editorial Calendars for the year in the publications you want to be in.
  • Conducting Media Relations
  • Special Events
  • Speech writing
  • Identifying Speaking Opportunities
  • Public Affairs
  • Corporate Communications
  • Product Publicity
  • Leveraging Social Networks Online
  • Placement of authored articles
  • Investor Relations
  • Crisis Communications (or Crisis Management)
  • Internal communications
  • Media Training

There may be a few other aspects of PR here (send me one if you think I have overlooked any that are essential. We won’t call it — or any of its tools or techniques — “spin.” As Nixon famously once said, “That would be wrong.” Tune into a future blog to find out why.

Is There “Best Practice” Project Management?

Is there any such thing as a ‘best practice’ project management?

I have a personal view but my aim in this blog is partly to pose and discuss questions of relevance and value.

It is certainly true that projects by their very nature can be very different and that drives some people to argue that trying to encourage or even “require” project teams to adopt any given practices may at best produce no benefit and at worst do the opposite – therefore they argue against the concept of best practices being appropriate in projects.

Others though, would argue that there are central principles that are fundamental to delivering projects well – often a very challenging task in itself. They might also argue that those principles are common to most if not all projects? Therefore the key question might be how can, or can these principles be translated into practices that support effective project definition and delivery?

One point of note you may wish to keep in mind before commenting – project management is a very broad topic itself and the aims and needs (and challenges) of project management can vary quite substantially from one business environment to another – therefore whenever we discuss questions such as this we need to be very mindful of this fact – in other words what may be fundamentally important in one environment may be completely irrelevant in another. Therefore it might be useful at times to qualify our comments.

Finally, please do contribute to the debate in this blog and by all means feel free to post questions. However, we must ask all to read and abide by the guidance on posting and participating – most importantly, no spam or similar.

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For more resources, see the Library topic Project Management.

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The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications – Part 1

People working as a team during crisis

 

Crisis: Any situation that is threatening or could threaten to harm people or property, seriously interrupt business, damage reputation or negatively impact share value.

Every organization is vulnerable to crises. The days of playing ostrich are gone. You can play, but your stakeholders will not be understanding or forgiving because they’ve watched what happened with Bridgestone-Firestone, Bill Clinton, Arthur Andersen, Enron, Worldcom, 9-11, The Asian Tsunami Disaster, Hurricane Katrina, Virginia Tech, Tiger Woods and Toyota.

If you don’t prepare, you WILL take more damage. And when I look at existing “crisis management” plans while conducting a “crisis document audit,” what I often find is a failure to address the many communications issues related to crisis/disaster response. Organizations do not understand that, without adequate communications:

* Operational response will break down.

* Stakeholders (internal and external) will not know what is happening and quickly be confused, angry, and negatively reactive.

* The organization will be perceived as inept, at best, and criminally negligent, at worst.

The basic steps of effective crisis communications are not difficult, but they require advance work in order to minimize damage. The slower the response, the more damage is incurred. So if you’re serious about crisis preparedness and response, read and implement these 10 steps of crisis communications, the first seven of which can and should be undertaken before any crisis occurs.

The 10 Steps of Crisis Communications:

1. Identify Your Crisis Communications Team

A small team of senior executives should be identified to serve as your organization’s Crisis Communications Team. Ideally, the team will be led by the organization’s CEO, with the firm’s top public relations executive and legal counsel as his or her chief advisers. If your in-house PR executive does not have sufficient crisis communications expertise, he or she may choose to retain an agency or independent consultant with that specialty. Other team members should be the heads of major organization divisions, to include finance, personnel and operations.

Let me say a word about legal counsel. Sometimes, during a crisis, a natural conflict arises between the recommendations of the organization’s legal counsel on the one hand, and those of the public relations counsel on the other. While it may be legally prudent not to say anything, this kind of reaction can land the organization in public relations “hot water” that is potentially, as damaging, or even more damaging, than any financial or legal ramification. Fortunately, more and more legal advisors are becoming aware of this fact and are working in close cooperation with public relations counsel. The importance of this understanding cannot be underestimated. Arthur Anderson lost its case and went out of business due to the judgment rendered by the court of public opinion, not the judgment of a court of law.

2. Identify Spokespersons

Within each team, there should be individuals who are the only ones authorized to speak for the organization in times of crisis. The CEO should be one of those spokespersons, but not necessarily the primary spokesperson. The fact is that some chief executives are brilliant business people but not very effective in-person communicators. The decision about who should speak is made after a crisis breaks, but the pool of potential spokespersons should be identified and trained in advance.

Not only are spokespersons needed for media communications, but for all types and forms of communications, internal and external, including on-camera, at a public meeting, at employee meetings, etc. You really don’t want to be making decisions about so many different types of spokespersons while “under fire.”

3. Spokesperson Training

Two typical quotes from well-intentioned organization executives summarize the reason why your spokespersons should receive professional training in how to speak to the media:

“I talked to that nice reporter for over an hour and he didn’t use the most important news about my organization.”

“I’ve done a lot of public speaking. I won’t have any trouble at that public hearing.”

Regarding the first example, there are a good number of people interviewed by CBS’ “60 Minutes” or ABC’s “20/20” who thought they knew how to talk to the press. In the second case, most executives who have attended a hostile public hearing have gone home wishing they had been wearing a pair of Depends.

All stakeholders — internal and external — are just as capable of misunderstanding or misinterpreting information about your organization as the media, and it’s your responsibility to minimize the chance of that happening.

Spokesperson training teaches you to be prepared, to be ready to respond in a way that optimizes the response of all stakeholders.

4. Establish Notification Systems

Remember when the only way to reach someone quickly was by a single phone or fax number, assuming they were there to receive either?

Today, we have to have — immediately at hand — the means to reach our internal and external stakeholders using multiple modalities. Many of us have several phone numbers, more than one email address, and can receive SMS (text) messages or faxes. Instant Messenger programs, either public or proprietary, are also very popular for business and personal use. We can even send audio and video messages via email. Depending on how “techie” we choose to be, all of this type of communication — and more — may be received on or sent by a single device!

It is absolutely essential, pre-crisis, to establish notification systems that will allow you to rapidly reach your stakeholders using multiple modalities. The Virginia Tech catastrophe, where email was the sole means of alerting students initially, proves that using any single modality can make a crisis worse. Some of us may be on email constantly, others not so. Some of us receive our cellphone calls or messages quickly, some not. If you use more than one modality to reach your stakeholders, the chances are much greater that the message will go through.

For a long time, those of us in crisis management relied on the old-fashioned “phone tree” and teams of callers to track people down. But today there is technology — offered by multiple vendors and also available for purchase — that can be set up to automatically start contacting all stakeholders in your pre-established database and keep trying to reach them until they confirm (e.g., by pressing a certain number on a phone keypad) that the message has been received. Technology that you can trigger with a single call or email.

5. Identify and Know Your Stakeholders

Who are the internal and external stakeholders that matter to your organization? I consider employees to be your most important audience, because every employee is a PR representative and crisis manager for your organization whether you want them to be or not! But, ultimately, all stakeholders will be talking about you to others not on your contact list, so it’s up to you to ensure that they receive the messages you would like them to repeat elsewhere.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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