Martin Lukes, where are you?

As always, a thought provoking article by Stefan Stern in the FT this morning on the trials, tribulations and place of HR. My eye was caught by this,

Also attending the meeting was Patrick Wright, professor at Cornell university’s school of industrial and labour relations, in the US. In his many discussions with business leaders he has found that there are concerns about the way ethical issues can get downplayed, or even completely ignored, because nobody else in a senior role will raise them. Guess who gets volunteered to do so? “The HR director is told: ‘You need to get this on the table’,” he says. Not easy – especially when you have little idea how much public support you will receive from your colleagues.

Perhaps, Prof Wright suggests, the HR director needs to become a kind of “chief integrity officer”, who could avoid being penalised if the chief executive’s appetite for integrity turns out to be limited.

It’s a very short step from here to Integethics™.

Strategy, Conflict and Leadership

An excellent column by Stefan Stern in today’s FT, The challenge of straight talking. What is true for business is also true for law firms. Two quotes from the column to whet the appetite,

The first from Robert McHenry, chief executive of OPP, the Oxford-based business psychology consultancy,

Indeed, we should probably brace ourselves for more not less conflict at work as the world slides into recession. “Der Dalles schlägt sich,” as they used to say in Vienna. “Those who are struggling beat each other up.”

The second from Richard Brown, managing partner at London-based consultancy Cognosis,

One of the defining characteristics of strategically effective leaders is their commitment to challenge, and their ability to both challenge others and be challenged themselves in a positive and constructive way.

Professional unease

Stefan Stern’s FT column Pssst . . . get smart and wipe out whistleblowing some weeks ago had a telling quote from Dov Seidman, founder and chairman of LRN, a US based business ethics consultancy. After reporting Seidman’s view that ‘ethical clarity cannot be established quickly’, Stern quotes what Seidman told the Journal of Leadership and Organisational Studies,

“Doing the right thing” is not a painless option either. . . I actually think that in many cases doing the right thing is often inconvenient . . . Sometimes that is exactly when you know you are doing the right thing, when it feels so inconvenient.”

I carry around with me a (now dog eared) copy of Practical morality for lawyers by the great Bill Knight, one of the doyens of corporate law in the City. This article is only available by subscription to PLC , which is a great pity as every lawyer should read it. In it he anatomises the dilemma that most of us face at some stage or other in our professional careers, ‘when your client wants to do something which is legal, but in your view highly questionable’, and in the doing of it will be looking to you for help and advice.

As Knight notes

Look hard; this is dangerous territory. One day you’re devising off-balance sheet structures, the next you’re letting the senior executives get rich on them, then you’re shredding documents and, before you know it, you are explaining to your family that you may not be seeing them for some time.

It all seems so easy but sometimes, especially when a valued client asks a favour, and times are hard, it isn’t.

Thought for the week ahead

From a March 2008 Stefan Stern FT column Desperate measures for latter-day Willy Lomans, in which he quotes Neil Rackham, (in his words, ‘the author of the seminal Spin Selling and reliable deliverer of common sense’)

In hard times, people make the mistake of trying to sell to more people at less intensity,” Mr Rackham says. “But what actually works is selling to fewer people in more depth. The same approach that works in good times works in bad times.

How hard is it to say sorry?

Leaving aside the fact that in private I tend to say sorry rather too often (a failing I apparently share with the majority of Englishmen of my age and background: probably early Prep school trauma), in the world of work my early bosses were committed exponents of the “Never explain, never apologise” school. I have always tended to favour the opposite, reckoning that my clients would prefer me to put up my hands if something has gone wrong. The complicating factor, at least for lawyers, is that professional indemnity insurers have their own take on this subject (veering very much more to the somewhat more robust approach of my first employers) and equate sorry to an admission of liability. The trick is to find a way of saying sorry, meaning it and not losing cover. In yesterday’s FT there was an excellent article by Stefan Stern, Say sorry and mean it – or don’t say anything at all. In the right context, saying sorry is a very powerful statement. As Stern notes:

Genuine apologies disarm opponents, win new friends and help you hang on to old ones. In business, when necessary, bosses should apologise sincerely and quickly, or not at all.

This is certainly true of clients. The danger is saying sorry in such a way that it is quite clear you either aren’t, or worse are saying it because you have to (train managers on First Great Western). Perhaps the only thing worse is when it is a pre-recorded announcement (next time you are waiting for a late train, listen hard!).