Ethical Leaders in Action

In our third of four sessions, we are focusing on some underlying values for public safety organizations:

1. Excellent Public Service
2. Sound Stewardship of Resources
3. Fairness to Employees

We continue to build out this set of values as a resource to aid public leaders in decision-making and to evaluate resource needs and priorities.

We then turn to leading through change, which has become more then norm than the exception in our organizations.  We contrast a more mechanistic view of “interventions” to overcome resistance, to a more holistic view that is more attentive to how organizational cultures work and how we can influence them.

Enjoy the slides – download or view below:

Greetings from Indianapolis.  As I write this, the city is filling with more than 25,000 firefighters.  It is a terrible place to be an arsonist (or a beer).  Thankfully, I am neither.   I even like bagpipes.  Life is good.  

Today I presented to the ISFSI’s new fire instructor credentialing program.  I was “the ethics guy” in the lineup, closing out a full day that featured excellent teaching by acknowledged masters: Eddie Buchanan, John Buckman, Bob Colameta, and Chris Naum.  More than a tough bunch to follow.  I confessed to some intimidation – less than I actually felt.  As usual, reality was much better than my internal projections.  These pros, and the Society membership as a whole, could not have been more welcoming.  Wow.

Attached is the presentation, for your retrieval or online viewing pleasure.  As always, I invite people to use these slides with attribution.

This morning I led a lively discussion with public employees hosted by the City of Saint Louis Park, under the auspices of their Professional Development Program.  We discussed the values inherent in public service, and the qualities that enable leaders to empower others to improve the world. 

Enjoy the PowerPoint by clicking or viewing below…

These days I am fortunate to spend much of my work time with public agencies, mostly police and fire departments.    I volunteer for non-profit organizations, and have been employed by the nonprofit James J. Hill Reference Library and the University of Minnesota.  Ethical Leaders in Action is for-profit, which at this juncture means that we are proud to be entirely solvent and aspire to true profitability.  What have I learned? That mission and margin are perfectly compatible.

For-profit organizations can be as fully mission-driven, and their leadership as entirely committed to service, as any other organization.  Indeed, if the philosophical underpinnings of Ethical Leaders in Action are sound, then the service motive and the profit motive dance beautifully together.  So far, so good.  We do great work that people find valuable, and they pay us fairly for it.  Add a little basic efficiency, and we’ve got…civilized capitalism.  A sustainable business model.  Beautiful music, indeed.

I was delighted when my friend Susan Claeys shared with me her plan to form a similarly mission-driven organization, answering what amounted to a deep calling to serve those in need.  Susan is a charter member of our East Side Ethical Leadership Working Group, and she is a talented project manager and finance professional.  She left the world of cubicles and Gantt Charts behind, however, to found Completed with Care.     Her work: making life easier and more dignified for people in medical crisis.

When we met to discuss her business idea, my first thought was, “where were you when my parents were sick?”   Completed With Care does the paperwork, housework, and yard work that don’t go away in the face of real medical challenges.  They also step in to assist with the supportive tasks that arise because of illness: organizing friends and family, doing the shopping or other errands, etc.   Even people surrounded by love and good intentions can benefit from a little project management and a professional eye for detail.

Maybe most importantly, Susan noticed that how this work gets done contributes directly to her clients’ well-being.    In those moments when we feel most helpless, having things done around us just so means so much.   Efficiency takes a back seat to custom care, and genuine concern.  She earns her fees by being of service.

So…another enterprise is born, pursing financial success alongside a heartfelt mission.  Makes perfect sense to me.

Monday’s working session with the Metropolitan Fire Chief Officers Association was especially lively.   We discussed how we can apply virtues of ethical leadership – service, clarity, creativity, competence, and courage – to fire service leadership.  We also considered three key values for public safety leadership, applicable to law enforcement as well as fire service:

• Excellent Public Service
• Sound stewardship of public resources
• Fairness to employees.

These values represent current work here at Ethical Leaders in Action, to provide a sufficiently powerful framework for upholding high standards within agencies, and to represent, with integrity, the value of public safety agencies to the (increasingly cranky) public.

Enjoy the slides, below:

I am heading for Duluth!  Tomorrow I will present a lecture entitled, “Beyond Thou Shalt Not: Ethics for a Meaningful and Successful Life” to the School of Business and Technology at the College of Saint Scholastica.   I am grateful for the opportunity, which is supported by the Arend Sandbulte Endowment for Business Ethics.

I particularly welcome the opportunity to make a connection between our rich ethical traditions, and their constructive application in our professional lives.  Too often, that connection amounts to little more than a set of rules, codes of conduct designed to prevent (or punish) wrong-doers. 

Ethical Leadership is much more than that, of course.  As I am all too fond of saying, “ethical leaders empower others to improve the world.”   In deference to this educational setting, I will stay a bit closer and linger a bit longer on the underpinnings of ethical theory than I do with, say, a police or fire department.  I’ll apply these theoretical constructs not to a code, but to practical approaches for ethical leaders:

• Ethical decision-making
• Ethics to promote engagement
• The Power of Purpose to motivate and inspire others

Click to download or view:

The title of the speech recalls a remark made by (now State Senator) John Harrington, when he was Saint Paul Police Chief.  I was pitching the Chief on an ethical leadership development program,  answering a series of increasingly sharp questions, when he suddenly smiled and said, “Ah, I get it!  You’re doing ethics without the `Thou Shalt Not.’” 

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

CAW

 E.J. Ajax and Sons, a small metal forming business in Fridley, was named 2011 Minnesota Manufacturer of the Year by the Manufacturing Alliance of Minnesota.  We at ELA are delighted but not surprised: I wrote an Ethical Leaders in Action profile about E.J. Ajax back in 2008, available here.   Since then, company president Erick Ajax has spoken to each of my MBA classes.  Students routinely cite Ajax’s presentation as the highlight of the course (and I confess: my ego and I are slightly ambivalent about that). 

Erick and his fellow company leaders walk the walk, investing deeply and steadfastly in employee, customer, and community relationships.  They reap the rewards, both personal and commercial.  Indeed, Erick takes his work quite personally: “I am excited that our employees can earn the American Dream,” he says.  That vision is anchored first to an absolute commitment to safety: in an industry plagued by amputations, Ajax has gone more than 19 years without a time-loss injury.  (That’s no accident.)  The vision extends to customer relationships and community service, as well.

The firm doesn’t disclose profitability figures, but Erick assures his audiences that the business remains quite profitable.  They create and capture value by partnering to meet customers’ total needs, and by sharing cost savings and innovations with those customers.    A key source for innovation: Ajax’s workforce of less than 50 turns out literally hundreds of suggestions for quality improvements and cost savings on an ongoing basis.

Ajax’s leaders don’t brag much, but they do share learning and best practices across the industry, constantly.  Frequent presentations and public training sessions advance their commitment to worker safety beyond the walls of their firm, and promote a robust (even if more competitive) industrial marketplace.  The firm also invests in state and private workforce development efforts, leading and participating in programs that train and prepare great, skilled workers.

So, it is no wonder that smart MBA students sit up and pay attention:  Ajax competes globally on both quality and price, not by cutting costs to the bone, but by investing in an engaged and talented workforce, and by partnering with customers to create value through innovation and ongoing improvement.   We can all take a moment to learn from that.  

Congratulations to E.J. Ajax and Sons for this most recent award, fine recognition of ethical leadership in action.

CAW

Yesterday marked the launch of a cohort-based leadership program for the Metro Fire Chief Officers Association, meeting at the venerable Jax Cafe in Northeast Minneapolis.  The focus of this session, the first of four, was how to make a fire department “grouse-resistant.”  This refers to the natural tendency of firefighters and fire officers to complain, sometimes bitterly and persistently.  (Apologies to our feathered friends of the North Woods.)

The goal is not really just avoiding discord.  The goal is engagement, at all levels fo the department.  People at their best, committed to the mission of the organization.  One key to achieving engagement: consciously implementing fair processes and ethical decision-making.  We had a lively discussion touching on the realities of a fire department, and even on the nature of fairness itself.   Everyone recognizes that “perception is reality,” or maybe more realistically, perception is as important as reality.  If our processes and conduct are fundamentally fair, based on some simple, proven principles, and if we communicate consistently and effectively, we can have confidence that over time the members’ perceptions will align with that reality.

View the presentation here, or click the link to download:

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On a personal note, it was a real pleasure to lead a conversation of chief officers.  They shared a common perspective, from the top of some very different organizations.  I wish I didn’t have to wait a month to continue that particular conversation…

CAW

Back in September, I blogged about adulthood (“Autumn of our Years?”), promising to continue the inquiry throughout the year. I write today from beside the fireplace, having shoveled many cubic yards of snow both during and after yesterday’s bona fide blizzard. My muscles are nice and loose, and I am in a very fine mood to raise some more questions about this current stage of life. 

I lurched out in the thick of it yesterday afternoon to open up our sidewalk for the many pedestrians in our neighborhood. I was no match for the wind, but my primary goal was exercise: I knew that I couldn’t get to the gym, even with 4WD. The streets had not yet been plowed, and full-size, 4WD vehicles were getting stuck in the middle of the street.

While I shoveled, three stuck drivers asked for my help, and I agreed. Each was young, and each had underestimated the snow as they set out for joy rides. We shoveled and we shoved, and they left. As I returned to my sidewalk, a fourth young man approached me asking for help. I was the only one out on the street, amid screaming winds and failing light. He and his girlfriend were stuck around the corner in a tiny Subaru. They were “out doing some shopping,” he said, and “never should have turned down this street.”

That wasn’t the half of it. They were without boots or substantial gloves, without a snow shovel, without a charge on their cell phone batteries. Even here in the urban core, but this was not weather with which to trifle. I suggested that we turn them around and get them back to the nearest Snow Emergency Route, but my young traveler was adamant that if he “just got some momentum,” they could push through the next two blocks. I helped for another 15 hard-fought feet.  Optimism was no match for physics.

Four young guys pulled up in a Range Rover, gleefully ran to the Subaru, and began shoving. I beat a hasty retreat. They had no more luck than had we, and ultimately struggled to push their own truck out of the snow.  Undaunted, they returned with a tow strap, and all but two drivers slowly pushed the conjoined vehicles down the street and out of sight. One could imagine a similar scene, say, on the steppes of Mongolia.

I used to be one of those guys. I still love driving through snow, but yesterday I knew that an official 23 inches plus drifting was too much for my Pilot, as it was for the Tahoe, Expedition, and Tundra that I pushed, before I pushed the Subaru. In my youth, it would have been irresistible. I have fond memories of driving around with friends – in all manner of vehicles – digging and pushing out other motorists.

Now, I’m concerned about blocking the street for others, or an avoidable back injury.  Further, I’ll confess: I’m a little miffed at people who venture out in a blizzard for no good reason (i.e., anything short of dialysis), only to inconvenience those of us who are more prudent and better prepared.

What happened to me? The answer to that question must reveal something of the nature of adulthood.

On Pearl Harbor Day, I had a most enjoyable lunch discussion with members of the Istitute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Education Division, hosted by Jon Moon, President of MEI.  Jon is a friend and longstanding supporter, and true to form, he brought together a very interesting group of technologists and technical leaders.

The presentation is attached below.   Around the words and pictures, we talked about the real challenges that leaders face working in organizations that don’t always live up to the highest standards of ethical leadership.  We talked a lot about courage, and the practicality of really putting career prospects at risk for our beliefs – when that is, and when it is not, appropriate.  We also talked about a leader’s ability to create an island of mutual respect and commitment to excellence, even in a very rough overall environment.  To do so is to forego the path of least resistance, in favor of a path toward greater rewards.

The group challenged me to sharpen and specify some of my views, and to achnowledge just how difficult much of what I recommend really is.  I, in turn, was able to remind them that I am not recommending that leaders go it alone, but rather rely on one another to sustain the pursuit of greatness.

It was a great discussion.