The Good Ones. Bruce Weinstein
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or their companies, or other conduct that displays contempt for the truth. Falsehood in all its forms is a poison to an honest person.
Refusing to Fudge Data
Well before she became senior vice president for strategy and business development at Xerox, Cari Dorman worked as an electrical engineer for a company that had been awarded a contract with the U.S. Navy. Her role was to develop a software program that would measure the likelihood that a transmitted electronic message had reached its intended target. Cari’s boss — I’ll call him Saul — asked her to change some data in her research because the results were not what Saul wanted or hoped they would be. Cari did not want to because of the potential implications and did not make the changes.
“I knew that standing up to Saul might get me fired,” Cari told me. “But I asked myself, ‘What if my son were in the navy during a war, and he was relying on my software program for knowing whether a message he sent got through or not?’” With lives on the line, Cari was willing to risk her job for the sake of doing honest research. Her passion for the telling truth and her courage to be true to herself makes her one of the Good Ones.
For reasons Cari doesn’t know, Saul eventually was asked to take a cut in pay, and he left the company.
Standing Up to a Dishonest Vendor
Honest employees are truthful employees. Ken Meyer, vice president of human resources at Community Health Services in New York City, told me how an employee’s passion for the truth potentially saved lives, certainly vanquished a cheater, and changed the way Ken runs employee orientation sessions.
Marvin was the new director of the fire safety department at a large company where Ken used to work. When he was going through the contracts from various vendors, Marvin noticed that the one who supplied the company’s many fire extinguishers had never inspected them. Marvin called the vendor, Bill, to find out what was going on.
“You’re supposed to inspect them,” Bill said.
“Um, no I’m not. That’s your job,” Marvin replied.
Bill then explained how previous fire safety directors had handled the issue. “All you have to do, Marvin, is go through the building, take a look at the extinguishers, and make a note on where you checked the extinguisher,” Bill said. “Then count how many you inspected, let me know how many there are, and I’ll send you a check.”
“Wait a minute,” Marvin said. “You’re telling me that after I inspect our fire extinguishers, you’ll send a check to me, not to my company?”
“That’s right,” Bill stated, presumably expecting Marvin to exclaim, “Sign me up!” But that’s not how Marvin responded.
Instead he said, “All right, I can’t attest to what happened before me, but immediately two things have to happen. Number one, you have to send people to inspect these fire extinguishers. Number two, if you ever suggest anything dishonest like that to me again, I am going to drop you like a bad habit and you’ll never get work here again.”
Imagine an employee lighting a small candle on a birthday cupcake intended for a coworker. The employee blows out the match and tosses it into a wastepaper basket that’s half full. As he leaves his desk to deliver the treat to his coworker, that match, which is still smoldering, rapidly ignites the contents of the trash can.
This is the kind of problem that fire extinguishers are meant to solve, but if Marvin hadn’t stood up to the corrupt vendor, and the nearest fire extinguisher wasn’t functional, what might have happened? How many lives would have been permanently altered by a building fire, and how much damage would the business have sustained? What would the company’s legal liability have been when the reason for the faulty extinguisher was discovered? How would its reputation have been tarnished, and what would it take to win it back? All of these questions would arise simply because a fire extinguisher wasn’t properly maintained.
Marvin told Ken why he did what he did. “Ken, you want to live your life never having to worry about the knock on the door. As in the knock from someone about to say, ‘Something came to my attention that I need to discuss with you. Can you please step into my office and explain something to me?’ For what would be a relatively small amount of money, you find yourself fired, not collecting unemployment because it’s misconduct, and trying to find a job after something like that.”
“To this day, in employee training I repeat what Marvin said all the time,” Ken told me. “Conducting yourself ethically frees up your mind. Not having to worry about the knock on the door gives you peace of mind while you’re at work.”
The events in this story took place decades ago. Marvin is no longer a fire safety officer. He is an ordained Roman Catholic priest and is the pastor of the parish where he lives.
Being Prudent about Telling the Truth
Doris, a senior manager at an automotive parts company, told me a problem she had had recently with her boss, Melanie. “I’ve known Melanie for years,” Doris told me, “and we have a good relationship. Melanie has always encouraged me to speak my mind to her, and I decided it was time to tell her about something that had been bothering me about her for a while.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“Well, Melanie has a tendency to tell stories that go on forever. Or at least they seem to. It’s more annoying than anything else. And I’m not the only one who feels that way.”
“Uh oh,” I said. It wasn’t hard to see what was coming.
“Yes, I told her. And I added that other people feel the same way, but nobody had the nerve to tell Melanie.”
“What happened?”
“It was as if I’d slapped her on the face. She just stared at me for what seemed like an eternity. Then she told me to leave her office. I felt terrible and couldn’t sleep that night. The next day I apologized. I didn’t even try to justify what I said. I know it was wrong for me to tell her it wasn’t just me who thought she has a tendency to ramble. That wasn’t my place. And I honestly thought I was doing her a favor. I mean, I’d want people to tell me if they thought I talk too much.”
Melanie accepted Doris’s apology. Their friendship cooled a bit after that, but it has since recovered.
“I suppose I could have found a better way to tell her the truth,” Doris said. I told Doris about the praise-sandwich technique of giving criticism, in which you begin with something sincere but flattering, after which you mention the behavior that bothers you, and you end with something positive.
“Maybe that would work,” Doris told me, “but that could also backfire. Just because Melanie says she wants me to speak my mind with her doesn’t mean she wants to hear criticism about herself. I do think she needs to be mindful of our time, but her storytelling style is something I guess we’ll just have to put up with.”
In the introduction, I mentioned that my concept of character is derived from the work of Aristotle. One of the critical components of character for Aristotle is phronesis, a Greek word that is usually translated as “practical wisdom” or “prudence.” It’s what Kenny Rogers sings about in Don Schlitz’s song “The Gambler”: knowing when to hold ’em, knowing when to fold ’em, knowing when to walk away, and when to run.
Doris learned the hard way that just because people say they want you to be honest with them doesn’t mean they want to hear about their shortcomings. Doris is now more careful with how truthful she is with her boss about Melanie’s bothersome traits.
“Besides,” Doris added, “I’ll bet there are things I do that annoy Melanie that she doesn’t tell me about.”
Most of the time, honesty is a sign of high character. But, as we’ll see throughout this book, high-character employees know when to exhibit a particular quality and when to keep it to themselves.
The Consequences of Dishonesty