Honesty

Wow, forever since I did a post. The small matter of getting married, going on honeymoon, Christmas and employing three new staff at work, amongst other feeble excuses.


Nonetheless yesterday I had a fascinating conversation with the Chief Officer of our charity. We were planning our business for the coming 5 years or so, and were thinking about the words we wanted to associate with our business. Everyone wants to be efficient and fun and innovative. However I had suggested honesty as something that we should have as core value.


I have previously worked in a organisation where honesty was seen as a key part of the way everything worked. Its incredibly powerful, and far more difficult and effective than you might imagine.


An example of the power of honesty


Scenario A -  you ask a staff member if they have done something, something that's important and has consequences if they forget. They forgot. If honesty is valued, they will tell you, knowing that lying is so serious. The result? A problem is out in the open and the people affected can deal with it. Are they happy with the person that forgot? No. But at least they can deal with that problem.


Scenario B - you ask a staff member if they have done something, something that's important and has consequences if they forget. They forgot. If honesty is not valued, they say "oh I emailed so and so and they never got back to me". The result? The problem is still there, only now its on the back of one person to sort out, if they can at all.


In both these situation the problem already exists, whether its out in the open or not. The difference is that the problem is solved with the power of the team rather than the individual.


Another example of the power of honesty


Scenario A -  a department in an organisation is measured once a year on how well its doing, whether by financial targets, output, quality of service, whatever. If honesty is valued in an organisation, the penalty for lying about your performance is greater than poor performance itself. The result? The poor performance comes to light and the organisation can take whatever action is needed to increase the performance in that department.


Scenario B - in an organisation where lying or "exaggerating" results is the norm, the department would find a way to show its output as being better than it really is - double counting, false disasters, creative accounting, etc. The result? that organisation continues to perform poorly.


In both these situation the problem already exists, whether its out in the open or not. The difference is that the performance problem is never addressed, and either the truth comes out further down the line when its two years deeper, or the organisation's overall performance continues to suffer.


Honesty is hard - there is some part of it that's about taking your medicine, taking responsibility for what you have or haven't done and accepting that ultimately we all make mistakes. It means risking losing face, it means being honest with yourself as well as others, and knowing when you've let yourself down.


Alternatively honesty is easy - I work hard enough in a complicated environment without having an overarching complexity about who I told what, when and to what aim? I want all my efforts to go on work, not lying about it. I work hard so I make mistakes, not because I'm sloppy but because I'm pushing myself. I want to be able to come in in the morning and work hard on my job, not on creating a network of fine threads to cover those innocent mistakes, or to feel that if I dont create the network of lies I'll be punished, because everyone else is.


Honesty has to be a culture. And all organisational cultures take their cues from the top. The examples set by your senior management, directors and CE all drip-drip through everyone else that works there. if they bluff and blagg about what they do, how great the business is going, then everyone else will too. The day your CE comes to you and says "this is our problem, this is the reality if our situation, its time to roll up our sleeves" is the day your workforce rolls their sleeves up to.


How honest are you about your financial situation? How honest are you about the impact of the recession on your team? How honest are you about whether your staff members feel fulfilled and are looking for work elsewhere? How honest are your best staff members when they're being poached by someone else?


I began to wonder about Nick Leeson - how many people's lived were affected by the fact that he worked in a culture where lying about your mistakes was accepted, and raising it honestly to be dealt with was not? Extreme example perhaps, but easily understood nonetheless.


So honesty it is for our business - honesty with our funders, with our Directors, with our stakeholders, with each other. Because the alternative is so destructive, so backward and so futile, that it barely seems a choice at all.