Without Integrity Nothing Works
We are concerned with achieving extraordinarily high performance and productivity in being a leader and effective exercise of leadership. Remember we lead ourselves too.
Harvard Professor, Michael Jensen’s article “Integrity: Without It Nothing Works”, (2009) argues convincingly that who we are is our word, nothing more and nothing less. And when our word is not whole and complete, neither are we.
Also he asserts that when our integrity is ‘in’; it is a state in which we produce “a 100 to 500% increase in output or productivity”.
We inherited, when we were born certain cultural discourses that inform us of what is valuable, what we should strive for. Beauty, fame, fortune, power.
Some of us reject that and are just as constrained by the negation of what-society-says. It’s all the same discourse and you know where it all ends. You’ve seen the pictures of what happens to the beauty queens over the years in the media. So, whatever square you landed on, it’s not your fault, no one gave you any alternative until now.
I am not advocating for you to give up all your worldly possessions, never wear makeup, become ignorant, and buy a moped for transportation. That is just another prison. For a deep dive see Speaking Being (2019).
Let’s work on another possibility. This could be a relief for those of us who consider ourselves to be our looks, financial status, educational acumen, titles, or even the lack of any of these things. After all, we can never be attractive enough, have enough money or possessions, know enough, have the highest job title, or whatever that is for us that we put together as a 5 year old. Back then it was the fastest or most expensive car, biggest baddest truck, a harem, Barbie looks, or just the opposite. We know all this. It’s not like I’m saying anything you haven’t heard of before. See The Master Game by deRopp (1968) who drove the point home deeply.
Word Defined
Take the case now that who you are is your word and your word is defined as Jensen (2009) distinguishes and see what opens up for you. Jensen defines our word as:
- What you said: Whatever you have said, you will do, or you will not do, and in the case of do, doing it on time.
- What you know to do: Whatever you know to do or know not to do, and in the case of do, doing it as you know it is meant to be done and doing it on time, unless you have explicitly said to the contrary.
- What is expected of you: Whatever you are expected to do or not do (even when not, explicitly expressed), and in the case of do, doing it on time, unless you have explicitly said to the contrary.
- What you say is so: Whatever you have given your word to others as to the existence of something or some state of the world, Your word includes being willing to be held accountable that the others would find your evidence for what you have asserted, also makes what you have asserted, valid for themselves.
- What do you say you stand for: What you stand for, whether expressed in the form of a declaration made to one or more people, or even to yourself, as well as what you hold yourself out to others as standing for (formally declared or not), is part of your word.
- The social moral standards, the group ethical standards, and the governmental legal standards of right and wrong, good and bad behavior in the society, groups and state, in which one enjoys the benefits of membership are also part of one’s word. Unless one has explicitly and publicly expressed an intention to not keep one or more of the standards, and is willing to bear the cost of refusing to conform to these standards.
If you prefer video on the topic:
The Source of Turmoil and Upsets
I assert you can find one or more of these missing in each and every upset that exists in your life. Number 3 is particularly problematic for us humans. Imagine if someone close or important to you has an expectation of you and we unknowingly violate their expectation, what happens is not all that pleasant for either party. We may protest that it is not fair because we didn’t know, however that is how we are cause in the matter of the upset. We need to let people that are important to us know what they can expect. And make our expectations of them explicit.
You can imagine the impact on performance and output of our word and what happens when we violate the integrity of our word.
There are reasons why we don’t practice this and you can find them in the Jensen (2009) article or conveniently at the Social Science Research Network (Erhard (2009). Or in this YouTube below:
The good news, which is covered later in these articles, is that, while we will never be able to keep all our promises and our integrity is always going ‘out’; we can always be ‘In’ Integrity simply by acknowledging when we are not ‘in’ integrity and cleaning up the mess. That restores our word. We honor that we gave our word.
There is another extraordinary benefit that is not at first very obvious. More will be said about this in later communications. We have distinguished ourselves from our psychology. That is to say from our emotions, moods, feelings. We have total dominion over our word in contrast to our emotions which arise seemingly at random. What we distinguished above gives us complete and total control over our lives rather than being jerked around by our emotions. Our waiting for some emotion to inform us to do or not do something. As we develop our integrity muscle this will become more evident as we gain more power. Reference to this is in the course materials for the Being a Leader and Effective Exercise of Leadership by Erhard et al (2022), links below. In the future we will be exploring emotions and where they come from. See Barrett’s book on How Emotions Are Made (2018)
References
Barrett, L. F. (2018). How emotions are made. Pan Books.
Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve and Zaffron, Steve, Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality (March 23, 2009). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 06-11, Barbados Group Working Paper No. 06-03, Simon School Working Paper No. FR 08-05, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=920625 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.920625
Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve and Zaffron, Steve and Echeverria, Jeronima, Course Materials for: ‘Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership: An Ontological/Phenomenological Model’ (October 4, 2022). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 09-038, Simon School Working Paper No. 08-03, Barbados Group Working Paper No. 08-02, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1263835 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1263835
DeRopp, R. S. (1968). The Master Game.
Hyde, B., Kopp, D., & Zimmerman, M. E. (2019). Speaking Being: Werner Erhard, Martin Heidegger, and a new possibility of being human. Wiley.
Jensen, M. (2009). Integrity [Review of Integrity ]. Rotman, 16–20.