Stopping a Plane with Ethics Aikido
Ethics Aikido is the art pushing back without pushback. It doesn’t take a black belt. Just one simple question. I used it once to stop a potentially scandalous $500,000 plane flight. We’ve all found ourselves in ethical jams. Our bosses or colleagues want to do something we think is wrong, or plays too close to…
Read MorePodcast: Driving the ROI of Ethics and Success
People don’t want to survive: they want to thrive. To show how, my podcast with World Commerce and Contracting explores The Right Way to Win: The ROI of Ethics and Success. The podcast covers: How ethics and business success reinforce each other How leaders send the message from the top How enforcement trends target middle…
Read MoreA lunch-break meditation on friendship
What makes us friends with somebody? Marriage v Friendship “Marriage” is an easier thing to understand. It is a civil contract and/or religious covenant with a defined beginning, defined rights and duties, and defined end. When entering or staying in a marriage, motives and conduct don’t matter. A person who got married for money or…
Read MoreA non-partisan legal question about the Trump garden gnome
This is a non-partisan legal question, so nobody get angry. A friend of mine installed a Trump garden gnome in his front yard. Does common law of tort recognize such a thing as an “unattractive nuisance? #TheRightWaytoWin
Read MoreGet Out of Jail Free (sort of) — Heeding the DOJ Guidance.
A recent Corporate Compliance article featured my Best Practices for leveraging U.S. Department of Justice Guidance on Evaluating Corporate Compliance and Ethics Programs (DOJ Guidance). The DOJ will apply the Guidance in deciding whether to prosecute or fine you or your business. Wise people will take note. And use the Guidance to their advantage. Don’t…
Read MoreThe Art of the Deal (Fee): Trump and TikTok
President Trump recently called for the U.S. Government to get a slice of proceeds from the forced sale of TikTok to a U.S. buyer. There may be legitimate national-security reasons for Trump to force TikTok’s Chinese owners to sell the personal-data-rich social media application to U.S. investors. And arguably, the forced sale will take place…
Read MoreHow Steve Jobs made Apple a $2 trillion company. Lessons for your company and career
Breakthrough inventions happen when we solve technical contradictions without performance trade-offs. For example, you need to cut a material fast but without building up heat. The solution: cut with a jet of cold, high-pressure water. Steve Jobs’s contradiction was running the world’s largest start-up: how to meld public-company size and scale with start-up innovation and…
Read MoreCorporate Governance Shell Games — The Business Roundtable gets caught pocketing the pea
In August of last year, a Business Roundtable press release proudly announced that the “Business Roundtable Redefines the Purpose of a Corporation to Promote ‘An Economy That Serves All Americans.’” Roundtable statements carry weight because the Roundtable comprises over 180 CEOs of global companies. This particular statement presented itself as a big deal because it…
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