Total organization integrity is an organizational framework and mindset for creating corporate identities of the highest ethical standards. Traditional business ethics has focused primarily on legal and compliance issues. In short, the thrust was on “how to stay out of trouble,” or if you somehow found your way into trouble, “how to get out of it.” But legal and compliance codes represent nothing more than the minimum requirements. Companies desiring a more dynamic, holistic approach to ethics need to go well beyond the basics and move toward total organizational integrity.
The Combat Mindset webinar is a summary of Mann’s Combat Mindset speech which is an empowering messages that encourage others to reach higher as well as building leadership, honor and integrity. Through his entertaining stories which come from his experiences in adventure sports and in the Navy SEAL teams, he clearly expresses how we are all capable of achieving personal greatness as long as we dare to be proactive and step beyond the invisible boundaries we so often set up around ourselves.
This series will introduce you to both benchmarking tools. They are free downloadable tools designed to help organizations determine strategy and measure progress in (1) managing diversity and fostering inclusion, and (2) fostering ethics and integrity in your organization. Both tools are based on input from global experts and provide roadmaps to best practices in global diversity & inclusion and in ethics & integrity.
In Part 2 we will look at the tools around Ethics & Integrity
If you were able to gauge the integrity of your organization where would you fall? Do you have the typical, dysfunctional, or optimum culture of integrity at your workplace? Scott W. Ventrella explores this and more in his webinar "Building Cultures of Integrity." Culture is the interwoven system of beliefs and attitude, and integrity is wholeness.
If you don't have wholeness of beliefs and attitude, what do you have? An unethical environment; some signs of this are lack of trust, finger pointing, people trying to cover themselves, very little whistle blowing, and people hesitant of reporting wrongdoing. In environments like this, employees don't trust their complaints will be followed through; they have the attitude that things won't change. This is a culture of ethical failure.
How do you change that kind of environment? Reinforce and believe in the mission off the organization. Strive for complete alignment and congruency of what we say and what we do. There are three components to look for. The first one is intuition: we should have a very clear idea on what the organizational values are. The second component is reason. Scott talks about decision-making, right versus wrong and right versus right. Right versus wrong is moral temptations where we may know the right thing to do but are sometimes tempted. With this though, the decision-making process is straightforward: do what is right. With right versus right, what to do isn't straightforward. Take two very strong values, such as truth and loyalty: which is the right value to live and work by? Scott uses examples on these rights and more in his dilemma paradigms.
The third, and last, component is action. Scott talks about having the courage to take action and how integrity is everyone's job. He said that simply having an ethics officer isn't enough. You can't appoint someone to do something that is everyone's job. Everybody has a responsibility and should be held accountable.
Along with these three components, Scott identifies 10 characteristics of building a culture of integrity. When we have to make ethical decisions in the moment, and don't have time to check the manual or consult with anybody, Scott says we need to stick to this framework. The only way to do that is to embed it in the entire curriculum with constant, continuous reinforcement.
Scott Ventrella
Best Practice Institute
Best Practice Institute is the research organization behind Most Loved Workplace® certification, the SPARK Model, the Love of Workplace Index™ (LOWI™), and The Workplace Report.
The Workplace Report
The Workplace Report is BPI's original workplace culture research and editorial briefing series for CEOs, CHROs, people leaders, talent leaders, and employer-brand teams. It turns BPI's 25 years of research, Most Loved Workplace® certification data, SPARK findings, and current workforce signals into practical analysis leaders can use.
The report format includes executive summaries, research-backed articles, company examples, methodology notes, and practical implications for retention, hiring, culture, leadership, and employee experience. New research and analysis is published on an ongoing editorial cadence at /workplace-report.