The Ethical Framework

My mission in the corporate world was not odd, or fanciful. I hit that world at just the right time. The 1990s saw a great flourishing of such concepts as Business Ethics, teamwork and leadership development, Total Quality Improvement, Emotional Intelligence and the Seven Habits. These principles had the full endorsement of Corporate America. Or so it seemed, on paper. The reality was something entirely different. 

Having completed my rather frustrating and disappointing year in Texas, I was offered my second rotation in the MLDP. This would be in Nashville, Tennessee, at the US Headquarters of Northern Telecom, Inc. I would join the Management Training organization, in the group that designed, developed, and delivered sales and marketing training to all of North America. 

We were responsible for a monthly seminar, lasting a week, called "Marketing Building Blocks." It was an intensive program that taught the entire product line, mixed in with some basics of Sales and Marketing, for our audience primarily composed of engineers. The rest of the time, we conducted Sales and Marketing skills courses, that would be delivered on the road.

It was here that I became aware of a structured approach to Business Ethics. I came to love the training and education profession, and had second thoughts about ever getting an MBA. 

My work culture was much superior to that in Texas. Our manager, Don McCain, was a brilliant and kind mentor that would occasionally erupt into swells of temper. He was detail oriented, driven, exacting, and worked long hours both in the office and at home. But he kept us laughing. He forged a well-oiled team of professionals, of which there were five of us.

Don said of me "He's a joy to manage. But he never sweats, or shows any sense of urgency, and that drives me crazy." Don was right. I simply did not consider the expected outcomes in the corporate world to be that urgent. Priorities changed from day to day. We would get re-organized. We would have to start all over, or throw away weeks of work that would come to naught, simply because an executive changed his mind. 

We needed reflective people in posisions of influence then, and we need them now. 

In Nashville, we had a high-performance team. The fifty or so employees of the corporate training program liked and admired each other. We had fun. We did good work. We all seemed, perhaps, a little too relaxed to the workhorses, the engineers, accountants, and sales professionals out in the field. 

But trainers are performers. There's a saying: "Never let them see you sweat". This is true of all professions that put someone up on the platform. 

An ethical framework must never be an urgent framework. The two ideas seem inconsistent. 

In the 1990s, we all seemed to be figuring that out. Stop, think, assess, evaluate. Do it all reflectively. Let all viewpoints be heard. Treat all people with dignity. Come to consensus. 

But there are impatient people in the world, and they hate everything in the prior paragraph. Reflection and ethics require self-awareness, the ability to look in the mirror and make adjustments. The emerging values of the 1990s did not make it into the 21st Century. In 2020, they are barely discernible. 

2022 Update: As I navigated the UM-Anderson quagmire, beginning in February, 2020, my thoughts returned to the universal principle of Ethics. The classical definition of Ethics is avoiding even the appearance of wrongdoing. Ethics, of course, were nowhere practiced by the University of Michigan's Board of Regents, when it comes to Dr. Anderson. Just one complaint would count as "not looking good." You can take immediate action, address directly with the employee involved, and escalate as needed. You might be able to help the perpetrator before the problem becomes systemic. But it's no surprise that it continued for so long. The field of Ethics has undergone a de-emphasizing since the mid-90s. The prevailing woke culture of 2022 disdains the idea of "ethics," or of a standard of excellence. The overall culture, therefore, bears at least part of the blame, with the U of M Regents, for letting someone like Anderson hold sway, for so long. People that are afraid to "offend" are less likely to report wrong-doing. 

Next: Face Time, or Fake Time?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To Change the World

My life mission had been clear from the very start. In high school, I knew that I could have chosen several different paths, any of which might easily have led to success, both financial and emotional. My options were all quite appealing: Music Performance or Education. This was the path where I had the most professional backers. My music teachers in school urged me to go there. They wrote letters. The military sounded good. I liked the benefits, the clearly-defined path to advancement, the early retirement. The requisite career choices for "smart people": Engineering, Medical School, Law School. I considered the ministry, and thought about diving into government and politics. Or maybe, learn a skill like piano-tuning, and build it up into a practice.  Any one of these had promise. They each could virtually guarantee that I would not want. And I would arrive with the resources to do a lot of good in the world.  But I wanted to "change the world."As a post-Watergate...
Read more

To Change the World, Intro

This post was first published on November 25, 2020.  2023 Intro : Since first posting this entry, I have continued to expand my understanding of myself, and the world. Here I write about getting myself cut off at the knees, by first two teacher colleagues that I had come to respect and trust; and then via a helpful point by a member of the University of Michigan School of Education faculty. It was particularly devastating, because the comments all came from teachers . . . you know, the people that are supposed to build us up and prepare us to become productive citizens.  But that's the story of the Boulder for me. These teachers were the boulder for me then. Why did I want to "change the world"? You see, actually, these other teachers were right. I was trying to change the world. But isn't that why most of them became teachers? To change the world? How is it that they made it into a derogation, at least in my case?  This is the Boulder in the years surrounding 2005. A...
Read more

A Slap in the Digital Face

I joined Nortel Networks in July of 1988. My path into the corporate world had been long and maybe a little aimless. Having earned my MBA from Texas Christian University, in 1985, I embarked upon an unrewarding and frustrating wilderness in a handful of Southeastern Michigan small technology businesses. People kept wanting to hire me into Sales. A mentor told me, years later, that it was assumed I would be good in Sales because I looked honest.  Years later . . . in 2020, I began to see an impediment in my career path, a giant, invisible boulder that prevented positive movement on my part. It was a boulder put their, beginning with two initials traumatic experiences of abuse, followed by a third major experience in the 1990s, that amounted to severe emotional abuse and trauma. I was making counter-productive decisions and plans. I was doing things that made me more vulnerable to predators (they are more prevalent than we think), which in turns made me more vulnerable yet. With edit...
Read more