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Integrity Checklist For Professions, Firms and Organizations

“Make absolute integrity the compass that guides you in everything you do, and surroud yourself only with people of flawless integrity. ” – Karl Eller, Integrity Is All You’ve Got

A checklist encompassing all points across the spectrum of integrity is a near impossibility. Use this one as a guide in drafting your own for use in managing the priceless assets of trust, respect, purpose, and reputation.

1. Are the indispensable elements of trust, respect, purpose, and reputation maximized?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

2. Is it made known that performance with integrity is the key to trust, respect, purpose, and

reputation? Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

3. Is a climate of integrity consistently encouraged? Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

4. Are personnel apprised of the authentic meaning of integrity?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

[Adherence to the organization’s established values, products and services—in particular; and, in general, adherence to ideas that withstand scrutiny, that is some manner contribute to the greater good—even when inconvenient or difficult.]

5. Are the fundamental tenets of its practice made known? Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

[Upholding the truth; keeping commitments great and small; standing up and being counted—when it counts; assuming responsibility for mistakes; absolute honesty; conduct consistent with conviction.]

6. Are the adversaries of integrity clearly identified?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

[Fabrication, expediency, hypocrisy, alluring temptation, ill-advised compromise, criticism, and gossip]

7. Do the organization’s leaders set the example?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

8. Are personnel made aware that the organization’s reputation can be lost in a flash and its repair difficult and time consuming?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

9. Is value placed upon keeping one’s word in matters great and small?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

10. Are all expected to stand accountable for both their words and actions?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

11. Are areas identified where integrity issues are likely to arise?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

[EXAMPLES: Conflicts of interest; favors and gifts from third parties; cutting corners; playing fast with rules and regulations; pressures relating to financial statements; misuse of expense accounts; inappropriate requests from major customers, clients and suppliers; fudged or false documentary submissions; invalid customer discounts; failure of disclosures relating to product and service defects; contractual requirements and provisions.]

12. Are staff and employees who perform above and beyond job responsibilities and thus enlarge reputation capital recognized and rewarded?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

13. Do you from time to time utilize outside resources to measure your reputation capital?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

14. Are all employees encouraged to question in good faith practices and policies they consider improper or nonproductive?

Yes ____ No ____ Sometimes ____

“Integrity—Indispensable Element of Professionals, Firms, Businesses, Organizations”

 Enter the brand. Although often displayed in public, it is more than a physical object. In the market place, the brand is an unspoken warranty. It represents an implied promise the service will perform up to standards.

 Think about it. The buyer of a typical service owns nothing—other than a promise that somebody, somewhere, at sometime will carry out a task. Services with the greatest value are based on promises made and kept

 It follows as certain as the sunrise that the foundation element supporting a brand is the integrity of the organization and its personnel. All brands either rise or fall to the extent integrity is displayed in each and every transaction. Let fabrication, exaggeration, or unkempt assurances creep in and the brand is impaired. Its repair is difficult, without exception.

 A fundamental tenet of integrity holds that legitimate promises shall be kept. In marketing services, the tenet converts to the delivery of services–as promised, when promised, in the manner promised. 

 In his acclaimed book, Selling the Invisible, marketing disciple Harry Beckwith writes:” The heart of a service brand is not artful packaging, slick advertising,or the company name emblazoned on everything from sweatshirts to key chains. The heart of a service brand, and a key to a service’slong-term success is the integrity of the people behind it. Invest inand religiously preach integrity. It is the heart of your brand.”

 Note. To assist with encouraging integrity and magnifying your brand, Alliance for Integrity, LLC offers free of charge and costs two working tools: An Integrity Checklist and An Integrity Credo. Both are easily adjusted to your particular circumstances. Go to allianceforintegity.com for contact information.

 Performance with unbending Integrity has more than one legitimate motivation. One, however, outranks all others—a determination to maintain one’s self-respect. Writing in the New Republic, Brad Blandshard observed that self-respect “…is the most powerful of motives for it is what no one can afford to lose; we try to be what we really admire because if we do not we despise ourselves.”

 Toms, a consummate professional on the PGA tour affirmed Blandshard’s tenet at the 2005 British Open, one of the game’s most prestigious events. That year it was played at the renowned Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews in Scotland. That year Toms held one of the tour’s hottest hands. He was a leading contender to win the Open. That is until an unwanted occurrence came to light.

 On the morning of the Second Round, Toms came forward and made a startling revelation. He informed tournament officials, and later the press, that he might or might not have committed an error on the famous Road Hole. If he did, he should have taken a penalty stroke. Toms reported that once on the green, he missed a medium-length putt, then strode to the pin and tapped it in. He could not say for sure, but the ball may have wobbled in the wind. Placing a club on a moving ball called for a one-stroke penalty. No player or official at the scene caught it. He had no one to ask

 Toms disqualified himself from a major championship, in which he had chance of winning, with a lot of money on the line. The officials instructed Toms the call was up to him, since they could not verify one way or the other. He, himself, never doubted his disqualification. In his book, How, Dov Seidman describes his telephone interview with Toms as he made his way back home home to Louisiana from Scotland.

  Among other things said Toms, “Whether there was a breach of the rules or not, there was a doubt. I did not want to live with it; my conscience is clear because I felt like I did the right thing.  Sportsmanship in golf is on a different level. Whether I had won, or even made the cut, it wouldn’t have been fair to the rest of the field, and it certainly wouldn’t have been fair to me because I would have had to live with it forever.”

 Toms drives home a basic tenet of Integrity: it require individuals, professionals of every stripe, business executives, corporate managers, and organizations of all kinds to do the right thing at the right time for the right reasons—even when there is no absolute demand to do so. In this fashion, the priceless capital of trust, confidence, purpose, credibility, and reputation is established and maintained.

 To assist in management of this kind of capital, Alliance for Integrity, LLC offers free of charge and costs two working tools: An Integrity Checklist and An Integrity Credo. Both are easily adjusted to your particular circumstances. Contact AllianceforIntegity.com

 If you keep promises 99 times out of a hundred and the competitor keeps his only 8 of 10 times, you gain a critical advantage in the market place, irrespective of your service or your product line. Bill Rosenberg, founder of Dunk’n Doughnuts, once defined Integrity as delivering as promised, when promised, in the manner promised.

 Dov Seidman cites an excellent example of fulfilling delivery commitments in his book, How, which bears the subtitle: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything in Business and Life. For their wedding anniversary, Seidman ordered a bracelet for his wife from a New York jeweler, with shipment by UPS overnight. Anxious to have the gift on time, he met the delivery truck the next morning. The delivery guy, one Angel Zamora, reported the item was not on board. His shift ended with that stop, but Zamora did not stop. Instead he went the extra mile.

 An hour later he was still on the phone tracing the package. He finally located it where it had become entangled in  a warehouse problem. He arranged for a special run to make delivery . Pending delivery he furnished Seidman his cell phone number and that of his supervisor. Zamora assured his customer he would stay on top of it until delivery. The package was delivered later that afternoon.

 Zamora, as Seidman noted, exemplifies the UPS culture. UPS emphasizes fulfilling delivery commitments, and its delivery man, in this instance, aligned his conduct precisely in accord with his company’s standards. Somebody at UPS, in its earlier days, may have taken a page from Coach John Woodward, the Hall of Fame basketball coach, who instructed his players “It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.

 The cardinal virtue of integrity, the indispensable element, is about HOW you do it.

  Professional speaker, Jim Thomas, and Alliance for Integrity, LLC offer free upon request An Integrity Checklist and An Integrity Credo, for professionals,corporations,firms, and organizations. Contact jim@allianceforintegrity.com.

 Access to Information is easy. It is comparable to an ever-rolling stream that seeps into all cracks, crevices, branches, and estuaries. Sometimes it overflows banks and dams. Dov Siedman, in his book, How, gives an example of what can happen these days when Integrity goes out the window and there is something to hide. The results can be devastating.

 Sideman’s  case in point concerns one David Edmondson CEO of RadioShack. When he joined the company in 1994, the executive fabricated lines on his resume claiming degrees in theology and psychology from Pacific Coast Baptist College in California. In 2006, after just eight months at the top of his profession, he was found out. A curious reporter from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram tracked it down and discovered the discrepancies. The head of the company was forced to resign, his business career in shambles.

 What prompted the reporter to take a second look? Her name was Heather Lindy, and she learned of an interesting circumstance. A top executive who was said to have started two churches was scheduled to go to court  on his third drunk driving charge.

 The invaluable, timely, timeless cardinal virtue of Integrity is grounded on the truth. The first question of Rotary International’s esteemed Four Way Test asks “Is it the Truth?” Falsehood, fabrication, the fudge, and the   lie are among its deadliest adversaries. Let all, who will, see their consequences, writ large in the case of RadioShack’s top executive. He is not alone, of course, there have been many others.

 In this age of transparency, with the tentacles of YouTube and other informational devices too numerous to name, reaching ever deeper, Integrity and its handmaiden—the truth—are of greater value, now more than ever.

 Professional speaker, Jim Thomas, and Alliance for Integrity, LLC offer free upon request An Integrity Checklist and An Integrity Credo, for suggested guidance at groups, firms, and organizations. Contact jim@allianceforintegrity.com.

 In the world of work, everyone encounters circumstances where the right choice is unclear. These are the gray areas, where each fork in the road has its appeal. David Radcliffe, past president of the Southern Company, says this is when we need a sense of sin.

  A sense of sin is the capacity to perceive and foresee that things are not quite right. He analogizes it to seeing smoke in the crowded warehouse, an unmistakable red flag that somewhere in the building there may be a blaze. One’s integrity demands further investigation.

 If the sense of sin goes lacking, we hear such statements as “I really didn’t think it was a problem;” No one will ever know;” “I’m just doing what the division manager would want me to do;” or “I’ll do it differently next time.” These and similar statements frequently signify the wrong choice. They are uttered to make ourselves comfortable with decisions that cannot withstand greater scrutiny. We are considering here conduct that does not break the rules but bends them. Albert Camus said “If you have integrity you do not even need the rules.”

 Says Wayne Sales of Canadian Tire “Making a decision usually means taking the one of two roads. On the path of one lies the basis for doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons. To take the other road, you have to sit back and spin a story around the decision or action you are taking. If you find yourself thinking up an elaborate justification for what you are doing, you are not doing the right thing.” (As quoted in The Integrity Advantage, by Gostick and Telford, Gibbs Smith Publishers, Layton, Utah, 2003).

 In the gray areas that are sure to arise, a sense of sin calls for questions, reflection, even counseling with colleagues and co-workers. It entails taking the longer view to ensure that one does not choose the fork in the road that breaches a credo of integrity.

 [For a free copy The Integrity Checklist and An Integrity Credo, email professional speaker Jim Thomas at jim@allianceforintegrity.com.]   

One Greg Smith, an agent in San Antonio, was in the process of writing an application for a new policy holder. As he filled in necessary information on the form, the client made a request: would Greg fudge the policy effective date to cover a small claim that had occurred a few days earlier. If so, this would save the client hundred of dollars.

The agent refused. He asked the client, “Well, when is the next time that you will me to lie to you?”

The agent had prepared for such an event long before. He determined that when and if in the course of business a client made such a request he would deny it. This was a line he would not cross—at any price for any party. The cardinal virtue of integrity dictates adherence to the right standard even when it is unprofitable and inconvenient to do so.

Greg Smith exercised integrity, went on to sell the policy in question, and won a lifelong client. The client not only purchased the one policy but went on to purchase additional polices, including business insurance, life insurance, and estate planning.

Why? Because the client realized he was dealing with an agent whose trust he could count on. His agent had an intangible more valuable than prestige, power, or money. He had integrity.

For a free copy of The Alliance for Integrity’s “Integrity Checklist” and/or its “Model Integrity Credo” e-mail your request to jim@allianceforintegrity.com.

  In the great scheme of things, opinions have no effect unless they are made known.  Otherwise, they rise no higher than self- indulgence.

  The announcement of convictions can have a profound effect on others—even if they disagree. Words are powerful things. Once released they take on lives of their own. Otherwise, silence installs a statement of consent. Silence can harbor an agreement of that with which one inwardly disagrees. 

  Richard covey, who studies and writes on the habits of successful people, says “You need to know what you stand for and you need to stand for it, so others will know, too.” 

 In an oft-quoted statement, Martin Luther King said, “the ultimate measure of the person is not found in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in hours of challenge and controversy.” 

  In 1956, in Moscow, at the twentieth congress of the soviet communist party, the main speaker was Nikita Khrushchev.  For the first time, he began disclosing the magnitude of Josef Stalin’s crimes.  As he spoke, a note was passed up from the vast audience.  He received it, glanced at it, and then read it aloud: “if Stalin was such a monster, why didn’t you and the leadership stand up to him?”

  “An excellent question,” said Nikita.  “I would be grateful if the comrade who asked it would stand so I can answer him face to face.” Not one soul stirred.  “Well,” said Nikita, “there is the answer to your question.”

  An admiring colleague, who did not always agree with him, said of Earl Warren, Governor of the State of California, and later Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: “Warren stood up and was counted on every great issue of his age.”    

  You can depend on it.  Issues of consequence will arise.  Material questions will call for answers.   Problems will require solutions.  And somewhere, sometime, somebody will draw a moral line in the sand. In those moments, who values—silence—the hedge—the side step—the straddle—the waffle?  Or, splitting the difference? 

  Two questions: have you ever paused and asked yourself on what principles do I stand? Where am I, too, non-negotiable?

 As Professor Stephen L. Carter of Yale Law School points out in his book Integrity, one cannot have integrity without being honest, but one can be honest and yet lack integrity. Consider that for a moment.

 The word “integrity” is invoked to describe everything from the condition of old master paintings to the state of human organs. We see it in TV advertising and politics. It appears in the names of businesses, apartment complexes, and on outdoor signage. That poses a problem. Everybody who uses the term   seems to mean something different from everyone else.

 Integrity in its bare-bones essence means adherence to principles. It is a three-step process: choosing the right course of conduct; acting consistently with the choice—even when it is inconvenient or unprofitable to do so; openly declaring where one stands. Accordingly, integrity is equated with moral reflection, steadfastness to commitments, trustworthiness.

The major difference between honesty and integrity is that one may be entirely honest without engaging in the thought and reflection integrity demands. The honest person may truthfully tell what he or she believes without the advance determination of whether it is right or wrong. This can range from matters mundane to the complex.

 For example.  One friend may tell another, “Only poor people work on garbage trucks.” She may be honest in her belief without taking the time to determine if she is right.

 Consider this example. Being himself a graduate of an elite business school, a manager gives the more challenging assignments to staff with the same background. He does this, he believes, because they will do the job best and for the benefit of others who did not attend similar institutions. He doesn’t want them to fail. He claims integrity because he is acting according to his beliefs.

 The manager fails the integrity test. The question is not whether his actions are consistent with what he most deeply believes but whether he has done the hard work of ascertaining whether what he believes is right and true.

Many refer to integrity as the “thinking person’s virtue.” Is it any wonder?

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The speech is the product of my research, investigation, writing, and speaking on the subject beginning 27 years ago. This work focused on the principles of this timely and timeless virtue. In addition, I collected from all walks of life individuals who have exemplified integrity, often at great cost, inconvenience, and sometimes at irreparable loss to themselves.

Integrity in Action

The examples and profiles demonstrate every point contained in “The Integrity Imperative.” They show integrity in dramatic form, as it is and ought to be. As Coach K of Duke University basketball aptly stated, “Crucial words are best understood by seeing them in action.” If ever there was a crucial word it is “Integrity.”

The Tenets and Principles

 This keynote-conference speech is unique in several particulars.  For once, the message lays out the authentic meaning of integrity. Few, if any, speakers ever offer the correct definition, as drawn from authorities of the ages. And no speaker today, to my knowledge, lays out the tenets of its practice—much less its motivations, adversaries, the accepted rules of compromise, or its supreme benefits and advantages.

Why an Imperative

The presentation makes an irrefutable case. When value is affixed to:Trustworthiness and reputation;

• The necessity of accountability;
• Performing as promised, when promised in the manner promised;
• Refusal to cut corners and play loosely with the rules;
• Recognition and avoidance of conflicts of interest;
• Willingness to stand up and be counted when it counts;
• Defeat of alluring temptations and ill-advised compromise.

Then, Integrity does become and overriding Imperative!

The speech is ideal for your Convention, Conference, Meeting, and Training Session.