Virtue:
Truthfulness
Other names:
Honesty
Definition:
The habit of telling the truth
Advice:
Empirical Research:
[CSV: Integrity/Authenticity/Honesty ?]
Case examples:
Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Further reading:
Vices opposed:
Lying, Dissimulation (false appearances), Boasting (claiming to be more than you are), Belittling Oneself (claiming to be less than you are; L. ironia, sometimes translated as "irony")
Case Study
ReplyDeleteCaptain Michael Abrashoff explains the importance of maintaining a culture of frankness and truthfulness in his book, It's Your Ship. "As I rose through the ranks in the Navy, I was continually frustrated by how information was stopped at mid-level regions. I knew that messages being passed down the chain of command would often be stopped on the way, so that people on the bottom didn’t get the word. They continued doing what they thought was required, only to be chewed out. Nothing could be more irritating.
"I decided that when I took command, I would focus on creating communication that actually conveyed information. My reasoning was selfish and simple: There was a direct relationship between how much the crew knew about a plan and how well they carried it out. That, in turn, brought better results and helped us become more combat-ready." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, p. 78)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteJohn Wesley Yoest, Jr. explains the practical importance of truthfulness in his book, The Memo. "Trust speeds decisions and increases the staffer’s importance to the manager. Trust is earned by the manager and the staffer and is not quickly fast-forwarded. It is a faith in a current condition and hope in the future. Trust is confidence that the staffer’s suggestions will be honest, reliable, and effective.
...
"Nobel laureate Milton Friedman spoke to this problem. He said that a cultural prerequisite of making money efficiently is the holding of truthfulness as a common virtue. 'It cuts down transaction costs,' says Friedman, 'when you can trust a merchant’s word.' And trust the customer. This saves time and time is, well, money." (Yoest Jr., The Memo, ch. 13)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, The Memo, business professor John Wesley Yoest, Jr. offers several examples to illustrate the importance of what he calls "candor." Aquinas would likely have recognized this as the virtue of truthfulness. "General Ridgway, who kept the Free World from losing the entire Korean peninsula in the early 1950s, reminds the manager that he must control events or be controlled by them. But he must know what the events are. He cannot be in the dark.
"Ridgway said, 'The only inexcusable offense in a commanding officer is to be surprised.'
"President George Washington warned a commanding army general, 'Beware of a surprise! I repeat it: Beware of a surprise...' (Hogeland 2017)
"How does our modern manager learn to anticipate events and to not be surprised? What does he need?
"Candor.
"Candor is defined as an unreserved, honest, or sincere expression; forthrightness...
"How does The Thinking Manager get candor in his life? He asks for it. Nonstop. Perhaps no one did this better than the Irish Catholic congressman from Massachusetts, Thomas P. 'Tip' O’Neill...
"Tip O’Neill loved to talk and as he walked the halls of Congress, he would greet every passerby. He worked the local office politics. He would ask everyone, 'What do you hear? What’s new? What should I know about…?' He might start every meeting by quizzing his staff to get information on all the congressional members (let’s not call it gossip). He was seldom surprised. He knew everything about everybody. He was elected by his peers to be the Speaker of the House from 1977 to 1987. (O’Neill 1987)
"Another popular politician during this period, Ed Koch, also invited—no, demanded—candor from his constituents. Mayor Koch would accost New Yorkers on the subway and from every street corner, with, “HowmIdoin?” (How am I doing?). He’d get an earful. They loved him. He served as NYC’s mayor from 1978 to 1989." (Yoest Jr., The Memo, ch. 19)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn her memoir, Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina discusses her role in the early development of Lucent Technologies, and explains the importance of truthfulness in advertising. "Marketing and advertising are, of course, one form of communication. And although there are many forms of communication, there is but one audience. Experts will argue that there are many audiences—there are employees, and customers, and shareholders and communities. I believe that in reality these have all become one. First, technology has now made it so; as we all know, for example, it is simply no longer possible to speak to employees without shareholders hearing about it or vice versa. Second, particularly for a large public company, most people are members of more than one group. An employee is a shareholder. A shareholder is also a customer and lives in a community where the company has a large facility. A customer lives there as well and owns stock. All of these people are influenced by everything they see and hear as well as by their friends and neighbors and colleagues.
"Although different types of communication can serve different purposes—a prospectus provides a detailed view of all the risks and uncertainties a company faces, whereas an advertising campaign may provide an abstract view of a company’s character—they all find their way to the same audience. And so authentic communications are not simply reality based, they are also consistent among different groups. You cannot say one set of things to stockholders and something completely different to employees and expect authenticity. Different messages may be pleasing for a time, but they will not be authentic, and over time people will reconcile them by choosing which to believe.
"Authentic communications are therefore inherently difficult. They require the right balance of risks and aspirations because both are real. They require the right balance of complex detail and simple concepts because both are required for comprehension. They require the ever-present knowledge that any word and any number may matter deeply to anyone who cares. This is true of every public company, whether Hewlett-Packard or Lucent Technologies. I labored over every detail of the presentation we would make to shareholders during the road show, sweated every aspect of our advertising, and spent many, many long nights arguing over every word and every number of the prospectus." (Fiorina, Tough Choices, ch. 15)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn her book, Tough Choices, Carly Fiorina explains how clear and trufthful communication proved essential to the successful transformation of a struggling Hewlett-Packhard. "Stories and analogies are powerful communications tools because they are simple and memorable. And change, particularly systemic change of a company’s entire framework, requires communication that is authentic, clear, persistent, consistent and ubiquitous. Because people hear competing messages, or resist the message, or just don’t hear it at all, my rule of thumb is that real change generally requires ten times the amount of communication you originally plan. And so I would use every forum, every speech and every venue to communicate with the employees of HP. No matter who I was talking to, no matter where I was in the world, I was talking to the employees of HP. People had to hear me, but they also had to believe me; and so my communication had to be authentic, balancing aspirations and risks, optimism and realism, and big ideas with small details. And my communication had to be consistent with other things they’d heard me say over time. And in all that communication, the most important ideas of all were that change was necessary and possible, and we could achieve what we chose." (Fiorina, Tough Choices, ch. 22)
"One of the great myths of HP," explains Carly Fiorina in her autobiography, Tough Choices, "was that employees never lost their jobs. The truth was Bill and Dave fired people when they thought it was deserved." As CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina would work to restore higher standards of employee performance. This did not make her popular, but the situation required the company to face difficult truths and speak them out in the open.
ReplyDelete" In tough economic times, when the tide recedes, all the frailties in a company are exposed. In that sense, a downturn can be a useful management tool. Issues that were once hidden can no longer be ignored. Now, for HP, “nice” wasn’t enough. We had to be candid. I talked with the management team and the broader organization about the necessity for truth telling. I spoke frequently of the need to look in the mirror, see the truth, speak the truth and act on the truth. I said that respect for the individual meant telling the truth: if someone’s performance wasn’t up to par, we should say so. We had an obligation to give people an opportunity to improve, but if improvement wasn’t achieved, we had to act. Failure to confront the truth and act was a disservice to employees who were making a real contribution." (Fiorina, Tough Choices, ch. 25)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Made in America, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton discusses the importance of truthfulness to maintaining a spirit of solidarity amongst his employees. "Another important ingredient that has been in the Wal-Mart partnership from the very beginning has been our very unusual willingness to share most of the numbers of our business with all the associates. It's the only way they can possibly do their jobs to the best of their abilities - to know what's going on in their business. If I was a little slow to pick up on sharing the profits, we were among the first in our industry - and are still way out front of almost everybody - with the idea of empowering our associates by running the business practically as an open book. I've always told people in the stores what was going on with the numbers. But after we decided to act like a partnership, we formalized the sharing of information to a much greater degree.
"Sharing information and responsibility is a key to any partnership. It makes people feel responsible and involved, and as we've gotten bigger we've really had to accept sharing a lot of our numbers with the rest of the world as a consequence of sticking by our philosophy. Everything about us gets to the outside. In our individual store's purchases, their store's sales, and their store's markdowns. We show them all that on a regular basis, and I'm not talking about just the managers and the assistant managers. We share that information with every associate, every hourly, every part-time employee in the stores. Obviously, some of that information flows to the street. But I just believe the value of sharing it with our associates is much greater than any downside there may be to sharing it with folks on the outside. It doesn't seem to have hurt us much so far. And, in fact, I've been reading lately that what we've been doing all along is part of one of the latest big trends in business these days: sharing, rather than hoarding, information." (Walton, Made in America, pp. 177-78)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his autobiography, Made in America, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton explains how truthfulness and information sharing have been keys to his company's success. "If you had to boil down the Wal-Mart system to one single idea, it would probably be communication, because it is one of the real keys to our success. We do it in so many ways, from the Saturday morning meeting to the very simple phone call, to our satellite system. The necessity for good communication in a big company like this is so vital it can't be overstated. What good is figuring out a better way to sell beach towels if you aren't going to tell everybody in your company about it? If the folks in St. Augustine, Florida, don't get the word on what's working over in Panama City until winter, they've missed a big opportunity. And if our buyers back in Bentonville don't know we're expecting to double our sales of beach towels this summer, the stores won't have anything to sell.
"Nowadays, I see management articles about information sharing as a new source of power in corporations. We've been doing this from the days when we had only a handful of stores. Back then, we believed in showing a store manager every single number relating to his store, and eventually we began sharing those same numbers with the department heads in our stores. We've kept doing it as we've grown. That's why we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on computers and satellites - to spread all the little details around the company as fast as possible. But they were worth the cost. It's only because of information technology that our store managers have a really clear sense of how they're doing most of the time. They get all kinds of information transmitted to them over the satellite on an amazingly timely basis: their monthly profit-and-loss statement, up-to-the-minute point-of-sale data that tells them what's selling in their own store, and a lot of other paper they probably wish we wouldn't send them." (Walton, Made in America, pp. 282-83)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteFrom her early days as a television personality, EWTN founder Mother Angelica has a gift for communicating simple truths directly and forcefully to her audience. As biographer Raymond Arroyo relates, “When a caller informed Mother that her husband had brought another woman home to live with them, Angelica’s advice was typical: ‘Well, kick him out!’
“‘Oh, I can’t,’ the caller said.
“‘What do you mean, you can’t?’
“‘They have no place to go.’
“‘I could tell them where to go,’ Mother purred. ‘They’re headed for hell. Tell ‘em to go there.”
“‘I can’t judge them,’ the caller whimpered.
“‘Are you nuts? Another woman is sleeping with your husband under your roof, and you can’t judge!’” (Arroyo, Mother Angelica, p. 193)
Advice
ReplyDelete“Number one on the list of required communications between supervisor and subordinates is the explicit understanding of expectations on the job. All too often, managers avoid direct discussions and rely on implicit instructions, generalized goals, or corporate policies…Successful managers clearly set down goals and expectations with the subordinates, then follow up with monitoring and support.” (King, The Unwritten Laws of Business, 62)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, Thinking Outside the Box: The Wine Group Story, Arthur Ciocca, founder of Wine Group, Inc., discusses how he became head of Franzia while the company was still part of Coke-NY. It was his honesty and truthfulness that most persuaded his superiors. “Shortly after the Franzia, Tribuno and Mogen David acquisitions, Bill Sullivan, Executive Vice President of Coke-NY, invited me to dinner. He wanted to meet me because I had experience in the business as a result of my time at Gallo as a Group Product Manager. He also knew that I had great insight into Franzia because it was one of Gallo’s competitors. I told him from the outset that I loved my job as General Manager of the Grocery Products division of Oroweat in San Francisco and wasn’t interested in going back into the wine industry. Nevertheless, I agreed to meet with him because he was an incredibly personable guy and I liked him a lot.
“I told him exactly what I thought over dinner. Not all of it was positive; in fact, most of it was brutally honest. He listened carefully and by the end simply said, ‘Thank you very much for your time.’ I left and expected never to hear from him again. I later learned that he went back and told Coke-NY’s other executives about my analysis. That’s when they decided to meet with me first-hand.
“When the meeting got underway, I tried to help them understand what they were up against in the wine business. Coke-NY was a successful beverage company, but its executives recognized the company’s blind spots when it came to wine and spirits. It had headed into uncharted territory without a compass and needed an industry insider to get it on track.
“I told them that the long-term prospects for the company were excellent, but the short-term would be a challenge because it did not have brand strength or pricing power. Combined with the impending oversupply of grapes, that meant depressed prices and margins. I suggested distribution channels be strengthened and operations streamlined.
“I didn’t hold back and the more I told them, the more they wanted to know. I was getting even more deeply involved and the more I tried to extricate myself, the more they wanted me. The last thing I wanted to do was disrupt my well-balanced life in San Francisco and go into competition with the man I admired and feared most, Ernest Gallo.
“Yet somehow the inexplicable allure of the wine business and the incredible challenge of this particular venture seduced me. Before I knew it, I was Vice President of Marketing for Franzia Wines, slated to be CEO.” (Ciocca, Thinking Outside the Box, pp. 12-13)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn Thinking Outside the Box: The Wine Group Story, Arthur Ciocca, founder of Wine Group, Inc., discusses how his young company worked to establish a culture of open, frank communication amongst its managers. “Our management team never set out to develop a style of working together. It evolved as we wrestled with difficult issues and learned to work together to achieve optimum results. As we climbed up the steep part of the learning curve in the early years, we developed an insight into one another’s strengths, weaknesses and values. Everyone on our team was exceedingly well-qualified in their areas of expertise but open, flexible and willing to work together with other departments toward the common goal. There were no political agendas and no egos. Our only goal was to succeed in the marketplace.
“Lynn McShane knew our distributors, customers and the marketplace. Morris Ball knew growers and the grape market. Lou Quaccia understood how to make, package and ship the product. No one had all the answers or could make good decisions single-handedly. We found that the really important decisions required evaluating input from different disciplines and constructing an integrated plan. We brainstormed and debated all-important strategies together and never compromised for the sake of saving time or making someone feel better. We were only interested in the strongest outcome for the company. We had already seen too many failures as a result of compromised solutions in our past experiences.” (Ciocca, Thinking Outside the Box, p. 37)
Case Study
ReplyDeleteIn his book, It’s Your Ship, Captain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S.S. Benfold explains the importance of maintaining clear and constant communication between managers and subordinates. “On Benfold we used every possible means of communication, including private e-mail to key superiors; daily newsletters for the crew; my own cheerleading for good ideas and walking around the ship chatting; and topside light shows and loud music that expressed Benfold’s exuberance. We also issued a steady stream of readiness missives for tasks that ranged from air defense to sea blockades. When we were leaving the Persian Gulf after our hundred-day tour of duty, Vice Admiral Tom Fargo (commander of the Persian Gulf’s Fifth Fleet) took me aside and said that I was the only commanding officer who ever wrote ten-page messages on how to improve our procedures. He also said that these messages were the only ones he ever got that were worth reading from beginning to end. Our whole ship became a medium, sending a message of achievement and can-do optimism to the entire fleet.
“Unlike my former commander, who chewed people out publicly, I often used Benfold’s PA system to praise people, share new ideas, explain our goals, and keep everyone working together for a common cause. I used the PA system so much that I later found out that the crew called me ‘Mega Mike.’ They said I never met a microphone I could resist talking into.
“Like any other workforce, mine appreciated hearing from top management. That communication is another thing missing from many organizations today—managerial silence seems to be growing just when fierce competition is forcing companies to reinvent themselves constantly. Change frightens workers, and their fears thrive in silence. The antidote is obvious: Keep talking. Tell everyone personally what’s in store for him or her—new goals, new work descriptions, new organizational structure, and yes, job losses, if that’s the case. Explain why the company is making the changes. People can absorb anything if they are not deceived or treated arrogantly. Lies and arrogance create an us-versus-them atmosphere that poisons productivity.” (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, Ch. 5)
Case Study
ReplyDelete“It’s critical that leaders don’t shoot the messengers who bring bad news,” Captain Michael Abrashoff of the U.S.S. Benfold explains in It’s Your Ship. “A boss who does will not hear about future problems until they are out of hand. It isn’t hyperbole to say that it can be a matter of life and death to create a climate of trust in which people are not afraid to deliver news that they know you don’t want to hear.
“Benfold and other ships like her are incredibly complex structures packed with sophisticated technology, which is upgraded with every advance. Civilian engineers from the companies that built the machines, usually large defense contractors, complete the work. They install the equipment; then we live with the results.
“AEGIS is the name of the missile fire control system on ships such as Benfold. In Greek mythology, Aegis was the shield made by Zeus from the head of the snake-headed Medusa. Today, it means the ‘shield of the fleet.’
“Before we deployed from San Diego, AEGIS engineers installed an upgrade that was supposed to make the system more reliable. In fact, it became less reliable as the numerous power modules within the radar started to short-circuit. When such problems occur, the petty officers on the ship (who are assumed, wrongly, by the contractors not to know how to operate the new equipment) are the first to be blamed.
“Since Benfold was among the first ships to get the upgrade, and since we discovered the problem before anyone else, the engineers assumed that we were the problem. But we started tracking the other upgraded ships and soon learned that they were having the same trouble, but weren’t telling anyone about it. I sent an urgent message to my commodore in San Diego telling him that the upgrade was reducing the ships’ combat readiness.
“I had no idea how he would react, because we had had an odd relationship. When I took command, he had just left for a six-week counternarcotic operation in South America, so I was six weeks into my position before I met him. He called me in when he had to give me my first official fitness report. He rated me sixth out of the six, which didn’t surprise me, as I was the most junior of the six. What I wasn’t prepared for was that the only substantive thing he wrote was that I was qualified to keep my security clearance. It was a peculiar statement, but I was not upset, because I cared more about results than recognition and I had confidence that results would soon materialize.
“I was relieved and delighted that the commodore worked hard to alert everyone who needed to know about the AEGIS problem. When I needed him to tear down barricades on my behalf because our combat readiness was hindered, my boss was totally supportive. AEGIS engineers were called in almost immediately." (Abrashoff, It’s Your Ship, Ch. 6)