Ethics vs. Etiquette - What Would Al Capone Say?

I had a friend ask me the difference between ethics and etiquette. After all, she said, people who act on sound ethical principles are often the same people who care enough about others to have good manners. Is it possible to have good ethics and bad etiquette, or vice versa? She has an excellent point, but I have to disagree.

Ethics - Doing the right thing.
Etiquette - Doing things the right way.

It's entirely possible to be an sociopath without a conscience that has impeccable manners - the movies and literature are full of "gentleman criminals," like Ted Bundy or Al Capone. It often suits their purpose to be kind and charming. (In certain circumstances, of course!)

It is also entirely possible to be a clean-living, upstanding citizen with no social graces whatsoever. We all have at least one friend or acquaintance who may be a very ethical, good-hearted person who damages his career, reputation or relationships with poor etiquette - he is chronically late, inappropriately dressed, incessantly interrupts, speaks too loud or smells bad. Dr. Gregory House from the TV series "House" is a great example an talented doctor with a good heart but comes across as irascible and has terrible manners.

Right or wrong, we tend to judge the surface of a person's behavior to give us clues about a person's motives and standards. The judgments we make are usually right, but we're wrong often enough. The dissonance between motives and behavior creates these great complex characters for movies and literature.

What do you think? Do ethics and etiquette usually run together or not?

Rising Above Negativity - Coming Back Up The Downward Spiral

Your company has been through a tough time. A merger, an acquisition, a spate of layoffs, a cut in the training budget, or anything that has caused less-than positive attitudes to prevail. You’re hearing grumblings around the water cooler. People are surfing the Web classifieds for job openings. Needless to say, you’re not getting 8 hours of creative, inspired, top-quality work out of every one of your people.

There is a cost to negativity. It’s not just the turnover and the chiseling at the productive time. It also saps the amount of energy people put into making sure their jobs are done right, and the amount of effort spent making sure decisions are made in the best interests of the company.

It is hard for an individual person to break out of a negative pattern, even with years of therapy. It is even harder for a corporate culture to turn from cynical and negative to forward-thinking and positive. There is significantly more inertia involved.

Freight trains don’t turn on dimes. It takes time, energy and persistence to change direction. Energy applied at the beginning of a turn matters exponentially more than energy applied later.

Here are some concrete things you can do:

Are Business and Ethics mutually exclusive?

I was struck by a contradiction today. I believe, like Ayn Rand, that businesses that provide goods or services serve mankind. But after being run through a few phone trees, web sites and customer service mazes, I'm having a cynical day.

This image, from an ING commercial, says that "everyone has a number." And in some cases, as the actors in the image make apparent, we sometimes see and judge one another "by the numbers."

So, are business and ethics mutually exclusive concepts?

Corporation: A business corporation is a for-profit, limited liability entity that has a separate legal personality from its members. A corporation is owned by multiple shareholders and is overseen by a board of directors, which hires the business's managerial staff. - Wikipedia

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There begins impertinence: make a person a label, or a sum of money, and he becomes not an end in himself, but an instrument; and to treat anyone as such is, as Kant argued, not just the supreme discourtesy but the supreme wrong. - A.C. Grayling

Press Coverage for the American Businesswoman's Politically Incorrect Guide to Bangalore

Just a quick note - the Tooele Transcript Bulletin published an interview about The American Businesswoman's Politically Incorrect Guide to Bangalore.

Color photo and everything!

Very nicely done, and thanks to Doug Radunich for being such a great interviewer/conversationalist/listener. I really enjoyed the discussion!

For more about the book, see http://www.bangaloreforbusinesswomen.com

Trust is the Key Issue in Teleworking

Hurricane Ike hasn't even hit yet and has caused a 20 cent spike in gasoline prices, highlighting the need for businesses and employees to find alternatives to the daily commute.

Telecommuting has become more and more popular in the face of energy costs, globalization and other forces. But many employees still find resistance when they ask for a work-at-home arrangement.

Interestingly, today the AP ran a story - Bosses Worry if Telecommuters are Really Working. hitting the nail on the head of the key issue in teleworking or working from home. Most bosses don't trust their employees. Many bosses won't say so in so many words, but one did in this article, voicing an opinion that many, many bosses have but may or may not say outright.

Lloyd Princeton, the president of Design Management Co., said "The biggest issue I have is tracking time and knowing when he's working . . . The doubt starts to happen when he has offsite meetings -- various doctor appointments or the vet." Of course, most of us juggle personal appointments with our daily grind even if we work in an office, but it makes bosses feel better when they can see us come and go.

I think this is probably compounded when popular books like the Four Hour Workweek advise employees to manipulate their output to make it look like they're more productive while working at home than working in the office. Author Tim Ferriss may have done "the cause" more harm than good for the with that little gem.

So, where does that leave you as a work-at-home employee or an office dweller that wants to negotiate a work-at-home deal?

Clearly. trust is the key.

Here are some thoughts on how to build trust with your boss:

• Show commitment to your job and your team. Never let anyone down that's depending on you for something, including your boss.
• Quantify your output. Create and email regular status reports, even if your boss hasn't asked for them. A good format is to list tasks you expect to achieve this week, and then use the same list to report on progress the following week, followed by a new list for the new week.
  
• Maintain a transparent schedule. Don't make anyone come looking for you or wonder where you are.
  
• Find out your bosses favored method of communication- some dislike email, instant messaging, or phone. Use what they prefer, not necessarily what makes the most sense to you. If your boss isn't happy with the way you're communicating, you're wasting your time making the effort.
  
• If you do work at home, make sure you sound professional on the phone during working hours. Make arrangements for kids, dogs, and others in your home, and have a quiet room or office where you can do business uninterrupted.
• Maintain "face time" in one way or another - when ARE in the office, be very visible. Walk around and make small talk with everyone. Get a camera for your computer so that you can do instant messaging from home. People believe what they see.

Some ideas to build trust with your employees:

• Set expectations and model good behavior. Be a team player, make sure decisions are made for the good of the project or the company rather than individuals.
  
• Set up a system that quantifies output in an objective way. Set up a format for status reports that works for you and makes it easy for you to see what is (or isn't) getting accomplished.
  
• Maintain a transparent schedule. Set up a web-based or software-based calendar program so that you can see who is "on duty" at any given time. Enforce its use.
  
• Set checkpoints using your favored communication vehicle. (Phone, email, IM, etc.)
  
• Set expectations that anyone who works at home has agreed that other responsibilities (kids, pets, etc.) are taken care of some other way and don't become an excuse for not getting work done. (Within reason- of course if there's an emergency your employee would leave his cubicle to take care of the situation - expect the same at home.)
  
• Arrange for bonding time with your team on a regular basis - weekly or monthly meetings to ensure communication is good and some healthy socializing takes place. People communicate better, and have more accountability to, people that they see on a regular basis.
  

Whether you're the boss or an employee, the best way to ensure your work at home privileges is to work on trust.

Is The Four-Hour Workweek a Scam?

Isn't it strange the way you see things more clearly sometimes through someone else's eyes?

I read the The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferris some time ago, and I highly recommended it to my friend Julie. Julie finally got around to reading it and came away with a completely different impression than I had.

Reading the reviews on Amazon.com, I've discovered that there is a third point of view that is extremely prevalent.


I read the book about a year ago, from a very practical point of view, and my impressions at that time were that there were some good ideas in it, and that the author was absolutely right about the fact that the 8-hour workweek was arbitrarily set in a time gone by. Managers who measure productivity by hours worked are obviously missing the point. I love the idea of applying creativity and energy to working toward your goals, and saying "why not?" to the most bizarre "dreamlines." I also like the fact that, like Ravenwerks, the book works toward transcending barriers.


Everyone knows I'm a big advocate of flexible and virtual work, and have published several blogs and articles on the subject, including "Getting More Done By Not Going To Work," "Virtual Teamwork - Long Distance Collaboration" I'm also convinced that people need to do a better job of financial planning and that everyone should have a source of residual income so that they're not dependent on their current job - financially independent people work together because they want to, not because they need to; and sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.


My friend Julie's first impression (having just started the book) was the point about delaying retirement until we're almost dead from overwork is a societal ill in the U.S. that needs to be corrected.


The vast majority of the reviews on Amazon paint a picture of a completely different book. They focus on the author's admitted looking for loopholes to achieve some objectives (his kickboxing title is the most glaring example) and taking advantage of the inattention of employers to get what one wants. (Minimizing one's productivity while in the office, and maximizing visible signs of productivity while working outside the office as evidence to support a request for virtual working arrangements.)

There was a lot of invective in the reviews about outsourcing and geographical arbitage. I don't see that either offends my moral compass, in fact, I think that the walls coming down is our greatest hope for intercountry understanding, working for mutual good, and world peace. Ferris takes the examples a bit far to prove a point when he has his personal assistant in India apologize to his wife when they were having a disagreemnt. But again, his purpose is to raise controversy.


Admittedly, I wrote off a great deal of the book as "not for me," I care enough about people (customers, co-workers, people on "my teams") that I would have trouble with not answering my phone or emails for extended periods. Ferris classifies most social interaction having to do with our day-to-day jobs as a "waste of time." While I agree that a lot of time gets wasted in ineffective meetings or idle chitchat, I think we would miss the deep and meaningful interactions that are the fabric of life without working together toward mutual goals that can only come from working with people. I also think it's disingenuous to exploit a work-at-home situation to the point that Ferris advocates.


Although one can argue that "the system" has exploited employees for years to put in unnecessary hours, slacking isn't the answer. You can't "get back at the system," two wrongs don't make a right, and Karma is alive and well. One should give fair value (and then some) for the salary one is being paid. If you have a decent boss, you should be able to get what you want and need without being exploited or being dishonest. If you don't have a decent boss, then you have a different problem altogether.


I care enough about people who have worked hard to be excellent in their sport or profession that I wouldn't exploit a loophole to gain a title that the other competitors and the judges did not feel I had earned, whatever the letter of the rules say.


But different people have different ethics, and I'm certainly not going to say that a book holds no value if the author's values don't mirror my own.


I would still give the book five stars by Amazon's system, just because Ferris does what he says he will do - challenges our assumptions and presents alternatives in a very entertaining and provocative way. The book is badly needed as an antidote to the lethargy, acceptance and entitlement that pervades the American workplace. Just because we don't wholeheartedly embrace everything he advocates doesn't mean that the book didn't fulfill its purpose.


I was shocked by the rancor in the Amazon forums. People sound really angry that the author displays such a disdain for hard work and social conventions. Is this because they feel cheated for buying a book that does not deliver on its promises, or because they are jealous that he is getting away that something that they cannot or will not "get away with" because they're not willing to pay the price in social comfort or prestige?


Did you read the book? What was your impression?

Work at home agreements

I was asked by a friend for input on a work at home agreement, and thought it might be helpful to our readers (those who work at home and those who manage people who do.)

A good work at home agreement could be a simple checklist or a more formal document, depending on the needs of your organization, but it should include most of the following, depending on the circumstances:

• What days/hours of the teleworker's regular schedule can be worked at home?
  
• Are they discretionary or mandatory? (If you're sharing office space it would be awkward if both showed up to work in the office at the same time.)
  
• What tasks can be done remotely, and which need to be done in the office?
  
• Under what circumstances should the teleworker be called into the office?
• What hours does the teleworker need to be available by phone and/or email?
• What meetings should the teleworker attend in person?
  
• Will the company supply any equipment (laptop, phone, etc.)
  
• Will the company reimburse for expenses such as phone calls, internet bills, faxes, postage, etc.?
• Are status meetings or check-in points required? (This might be a good idea, especially for new teleworkers or new managers of teleworkers to ensure that objectives are being set and met.)
• Is it okay if the teleworker works irregular hours? (Do you care if he's golfing all day and working all night, for example.)
  

The more of these things are worked out in advance, the less potential for issues later.

Best wishes,

-Paula