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This Month's topic: Ethics and Management
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| This Month's Topic: Ethics and Management |
Each month, this area provides with a
number of my favorite and most helpful sites regarding the topic of the month.
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Management
Tip of the Month
Each issue, I start with a discussion
of my management perspective on the month's topic, and give you a few hands-on
ideas to consider.
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Recommended Publications
Here, I provide you with my
recommendations on the materials available that can help you
become more mission-capable in the area of Ethics and Management.
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Technology
I provide you with some good ideas for
uses of tech to better your organization in the area of Ethics and Management.
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Marketing
Tip
So much to say, so little space to say
it.....
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Next
Issue
In April, we'll examine an issue that is very important: Staff Satisfaction. How can you keep the people you pay happier? We'll take a look.
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Websites of the
Month
Here are my recommendations for websites of interest
on this month's topic, Ethics and Management
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Top
Management Tip of the Month
Ethics and Management
As regular readers know, I always ask for ideas for topics for future
newsletters at the beginning and end of this publication. I regularly
get a couple of suggestions a month, and they often track pretty
closely to the requests I'm getting at the same time for keynote or training topics.
But last spring, when I was in the midst of putting together my list of
topics for early 2006, I got call after call and email after email to
speak and write about ethics in nonprofit management. I was worried
(and wrote at the time in my blog) that this was just a trend, and
would soon go the way of interest/paranoia in outcome measurement,
social entrepreneurship, capacity building, and other buzz words that
have burned their way through our sector.
Fortunately, the buzz continues. And, I really don't care anymore why
it's there. It IS an issue that we need to examine and re-examine. It IS
an issue that the public has, does, and will care about. It IS one of
the key things that defines us and separates us from the for-profit
world.
We are, after all, charities,
and charitable behavior is, at its core, an ethical decision. Deciding
to help others, deciding to make a (often low paying) career out of
helping others is a decision we make based on our belief structure, our
ethics.
So, if we're already so ethical, ethical management behavior should
come naturally, right? It should not be something we have to spend
(our very limited) time on, right? Or not. One of the quotes (from the
list of links above) that I love the most is from Terry Hands, a
British Theatre and Opera manager: "We may pretend that we are basically moral people who make
mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise."
While overly cynical (because I think that the nonprofit sector is
evidence in the other direction) Hands is still on to something: we
give ourselves s too much of a break sometimes. We need to regularly
examine the ethical dimensions of our decisions, our policies, our
actions.
Ethics has always fascinated me for two reasons. First, although lots
of people moan about how hard it is to make ethical decisions, for
about 95% of the decisions we have to make, we KNOW the right
thing to do...it's the doing that's hard. As kids, we know stealing candy is wrong, but we want the
sweets so badly. As adults, we know that lying is wrong, but stretching
the truth so as not to hurt someone? It sure makes our life easier, and
who is really hurt? And, the vast majority of us learn to upbraid ourselves
and try daily to do better. So we know (and usually do) the right thing.
But then there is the other 5% of decisions, the questions that are really, really
tough ethical ones. Here are three, relatively simple examples:
-Should
our organization help everyone we can as soon as we can and not carry
over any funds from year to year, or should we build our organization
financially so that we can be sure to be here to help people in the
future?
-Should we help a
few people with very high quality services that can, perhaps, change
their lives for the better, or help lots with adequate services that
can get them by?
-Should we spend
more money on staff benefits so that we don't have the turnover we are
experiencing, or should we put the money into direct services? (Note-we
talked about this issue in August when we discussed Ethical Benefits )
In this issue, I'm not going to go into how to solve questions in the
5% set of dilemmas. I am going to make some statements and some
suggestions on how to deal with the 95% issues more actively.
Three things to think about:
As organizations, we have to be seen as ethical mainstays. Because we
have chosen the path of charity when we fall off the pedestal the
media, the public and our funders jump all over us, and frankly, that's
how it should be. We need to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
As a leader, what you say matters. What you do matters more. You have to walk the talk
every day in every way. You need to lead in the area of ethics by
openly discussing ethical behavior in your decision making, your policy
making. Letting ethics be "assumed" allows ethics to be undiscussed.
Letting ethics go undiscussed could give employees the idea that they
are unimportant. So talking is good. But if you act unethically, ever,
even for the smallest thing, you throw your ethical credibility out the
window.
Doing the right thing is always the right thing, and its always the smart thing.
This piece of wisdom came from my grandfather, who always added: "It
just may take some time for it all to work itself out." My memory of
him saying that encourages me in ethical choices constantly. I always
assume that he's one of the people reading that newspaper story about
my behavior!
That's all we have space for here--and obviously there is not a
three-point solution to behaving more ethically. My urging to you, your
staff, and board is to surface the ethics issue more often, to discuss
how your organization appears to be acting to the community, how the
management team appears to be acting the staff, how the board appears
to be acting to the management team. Keep the issue of doing the right
thing where it belongs: first in any decision making.
If
you found this hint helpful, there are lots more management, marketing, and
technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
And, remember to take a look at the
Mission-Based Management
Blog.
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Top
Print Resources
My recommendations for texts on Ethics and Management
are shown below. Note: literally dozens of good, solid management
books, from Good to Great to The 8th Habit to The Leader Within You all
discuss the key role of ethical leadership in successful organizations.
So, there is lots to choose from, but I think these books do a great
job of saying what needs to be said.
Ethical Ambition by Derrick Bell
Monday Morning Leadership by David Cottrell
Leading Without Power by Max DePree
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Technology Tip
Can tech help you operate more ethically?
Yes and no. In the most basic sense, of course your computers can't
make you more ethical, or pose philosophical questions like HAL in 2001, A Space Odyssey.
But tech can help you be more transparent, and that fact can and does
nudge many of us to think and act more ethically. I remember the first
time I was told by a philosophy teacher in high school, "Always act as
if whatever you do will be the lead story in the local newspaper
tomorrow....with pictures." Ouch. That set me back a bit, particularly
as a teenager!
Today's tech can help you distribute your policies (and policy
decisions) more broadly, allow you to bring more people into many
policy discussions, enable you to put things like your audited
financials, your 990s, your strategic plan, and even minutes of board
meetings on your website for everyone to see. I think that transparency
is an ethics accelerator. So use it.
One other thing on tech: you can operate your technology
un-ethically. This primarily has to do with looking at people's email,
reviewing the websites that they visit, etc. While some organizations
need to do this for other ethical reasons (they have medical
confidentiality issues, or are part of the criminal justice system)
others seem to do it just because they can, or for reasons of an
administrator's ego/paranoia. If you need to be delving into your
employees electronic communications, fine. But the ethical thing to do
is to let them know. "We have a policy here of randomly reading emails,
or of randomly checking IP numbers of websites visited. We do this
because...."
Make sure your tech is not an enabler of un-ethical behavior.
If you found this hint helpful, there are lots more
management, marketing, and technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
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Top
Training Schedule for Peter Brinckerhoff
Below you'll see the date, location, and topics
of public training I'm scheduled to do in the next few months. For more
information on a particular speaking engagement, get in touch with the contact
person listed in the right hand column, or
email me.
For more information on my availability throughout
the next 12-18 months, available topics, sample agendas, and fees go to
www.missionbased.com/training.htm
Marketing Tip
Marketing and Ethics
Should we be ethical for marketing reasons. No. As I said in the
management tip, the main reason to do the right thing is
because.....it's the right thing!
But, once your organization is there (doing the right thing), don't be
naive. Your markets, your community, your donors want to know that you
are ethically motivated and behaving with good organizational ethical
standards. So, if you are doing the right thing, let people know.
As I said in the tech tip, put things online (your policies, your
audit, your outcomes, your strategic plan). Show that you have nothing
to hide, nothing that is untoward.
And, ask people what they want to know and see in your ethical
management efforts. You may find things you need to tweak, or areas you
need to put in policy that you are already doing, or activities that
you can trumpet to your community that will give the community an
ethical comfort factor about your organization.
So, you have to have good ethics to market them (truth in
advertising!), but don't hide your good ethical practices. Let your
markets see you doing the right thing!
If you want to see more about this in detail, take
a look at more about my book
Mission-Based Marketing; Second
Edition
If you found this hint helpful, there are lots more
management, marketing, and technology ideas for you in the "Ideas" section at
www.missionbased.com. Check them
out--they're free.
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Top
Future Topics for the Mission-Based Management Newsletter....
| April |
Staff Satisfaction |
| May |
Boards who cross the
Policy/Management line |
| June |
Employee Rewards |
| July |
Saying "No" to Community Needs |
| August |
Board and non-CEO Relations |
| September |
Executive Transition |
| October |
Advocacy |
| Send me
your topic suggestions at peter@missionbased.com |
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You asked, so here they are:
Past Single-Topic Issues of the Mission-Based Management Newsletter...
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Copyright 2006,
Corporate Alternatives, inc.
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