An excerpt from the unpublished 'The Dark Side of Sales', (2006)

The Lesson Called – I have Big Beef About People Who Spew Out the Word INTEGRITY

You: A person, curious about Business Integrity

The Mob: The hundreds of companies that cite Integrity as a Corporate Value or Corporate Commitment in their websites, or annual reports, or posted Corporate Statements, or in their promotional literature

The Situation: We were doing a business S.W.O.T. session. [Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats]. We got around to discussing the concept of Integrity. Our people, unanimously, proposed we continue to use Integrity as one of our posted Corporate Values. I had reservations. In particular, I felt the word meant different things to different people – i.e., the word 'Integrity' is wide open to subjective interpretation, whereas, I was working very hard to build a unified, understood corporate culture.

Preamble: The following excerpt from instructions I gave to one of our people, will provide to you an idea of how in 2005 we approached about 50 Ontario businesses that, in their annual report or their website or both, touted Integrity as a Corporate Value or a Corporate Commitment:

• We need to define 'Integrity' in terms that reflect Clients' definitions [we are going to make contact with some Businesses].
• We need to think of 'Integrity', not from 'our perspective' but from 'their perspectives'. 
• For now, think of 'Integrity' in broadest of terms: find the definition of 'Integrity', which feeds the description of their corporate culture. 
• We need to understand the Businesses' knowledge of 'Integrity' [and the essence of their corporate culture] and whether or not they practice what they preach…or, is it just lip service about 'Integrity'? 
• Is 'Integrity' just a cliché? Or...is 'Integrity' genuine and well understood throughout the organization? 
• in summary - do the Businesses even have a real corporate culture? 

 *****

Postamble: OK, that’s how we approached the exercise. What happened? What did we learn?

We learned, in 2005, Corporate Integrity was pretty close to an oxymoron. Certainly, it was ripe with irony and warranted the title of cliché. While all the companies had used the word Integrity in their website under the section titled Annual Report or Corporate Values or both:

• We could find no company that had created a written definition of integrity. 
• We could find no CEO-type who had a verbal definition of integrity. 
• We could find no company that had taken any steps to inform/educate its employees about integrity. 

In fact, when we offered to have our CEO-type [me] visit their CEO-types, for a 15-20 minute action-packed sharing of thoughts about corporate integrity only 3 of 50 companies agreed to a meeting. While all 3 were tremendous people, with tremendous family-business stories, none of them had clear and communicated definitions of 'Integrity'.