This is a conversation about ethics and wisdom. As such it is unfashionable – not in tune with the cultural context amidst which we live our lives.
This conversation will not make you a smarter-more cunning marketer. Nor will it increase your close rate and drive up your sales effectiveness. It definitely will not help you to talk lyrically about the customer whilst doing everything in your power to reduce the level of service your provide to your customers after they have become customers. If this is why you find yourself here then I suggest you leave now.
Do Ethics And Wisdom Matter In A ‘Scientific’ Age?
On my LinkedIn profile I have written the following:
Inspired by the possibility of a world that works for all, none excluded. Committed to being a source of workability-performance-transformation. And travelling through life in a manner that elevates-honours all. Enjoy conversations of the authentic-human kind.
What is the scientific basis for this freely chosen way of showing up and travelling in this world? What is the ROI? The first question can only be asked by a man of ‘reason’ – one working in a laboratory, with no worldly entanglements, and a limited, possibly non-existent, moral horizon. The second question is probably the fundamental question that every Taker asks himself: what is in it for me, personally?
I find neither of these questions relevant as I strive to show up and operate from an ethical stance. Not a scientific stance. Nor a ROI stance. Does ethics and moral wisdom matter? Can we live well, given that living well always involves living well with others, by embracing ‘reason’ and ROI? Put differently, is ethics and moral wisdom mere superstition and as such can be jettisoned? Let’s leave aside the theory and look at the phenomena.
Shambles And Lack Of Empathy At Gatwick Airport
Yesterday, Ian Golding wrote the following:
In all my years travelling to and from the UK, I have never witnessed a queue for passport control quite like it. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people were snaking around the airport building. Everyone looked rather bewildered….
….. for the 50 minutes I battled through the queue, I heard not one announcement, and not one member of staff from either Gatwick Airport or the border force bothered to make themselves visible to help or advise passengers……..
The experience was not made any better by finally arriving at a desk. As my passport was taken out of my hand, I was not greeted by an apology, or even an acknowledgement of the wait. Instead, I was told that ‘this is not my fault, it’s the system’…..
I do not hold them responsible for there clearly being no contingency plan in place. However, I do expect that they should be able to empathise with the people they are serving.…
Now here is something that speaks volumes for those who have the listening for it:
Credit should be given to the thousands of customers who quietly and diligently stood in line. I personally did not witness a raised word despite the shambles – there was almost a sad acceptance that this happens in the UK…
If you can read the following article and pay particular attention to the language of the several officials:
A government spokesman said: “We are currently experiencing temporary IT problems which may add to the time taken to conduct passport checks…. We are working to rectify this issue and are providing extra staff to get passengers through the controls as quickly as possible. Our priority remains security of the border. We apologise for any additional time this adds to passengers’ journeys.”
A Heathrow spokesman said: “There are some longer queues than normal in the terminals but we have spoken to border force and they are putting on extra staff… Obviously we want to sort the issue out but not risk the integrity of the border controls.”
Ask yourself if these words could be spoken by a robot. Better still, ask yourself whether these words are more befitting of robots or human beings? Ask yourself where, in these words, there is any care-concern-empathy for the human beings who found themselves amidst the shambles, trying to figure out what was going on, many of whom will have missed their onward connections and found themselves fending for themselves.
How Did The Staff At Sports Direct Treat A Young Mother?
Yesterday, I came across this article about a protest by mothers at a Sports Direct store. What led to this protest?
.….. staff members allegedly told Wioletta Komar that she could not breast feed her baby because it was “against company policy”. She was then made to leave the store and continue feeding her child in the rain while she waited for her husband, according to the Nottingham Post. Mrs Komar claims she has complained to the store five times since the incident, but has received no response…
Do we have so little regard-love for our own mothers so that we can accord no consideration-respect to this mother?
Where is our sense of decency, of fellow feeling, of moral wisdom? What would it have taken for a member of staff to go up to Wioletta, invite her into the staff room, offer her a chair? And in the process connect with her as a fellow human being.
What does the law say on this matter? According to the article:
Breastfeeding in public is protected by the Equality Act 2010, which states that businesses must not discriminate against a woman who is breastfeeding.
The Nonsense Of Scientific Management: What Gets Measured Gets Done, Really?
I can think of no better example of the folly of mere ‘scientific’ thinking-acting than the exclusive focus on metrics, incentives (rewards) and punishments. Some are so lacking in practical wisdom that they loudly proclaim: what gets measured gets done!
Successive UK governments have made a big play of how crime is coming down. Metrics-driven crime recording and performance management systems have been put in place. And the figures have consistently shown a drop in crime.
What does the first official inquiry into the accuracy of the crime figures provided by the police have to say? Here are the highlights from this article:
The police are failing to record as much as 20% of crime – equal to three-quarters of a million offences – including 14 cases of rape and some serious sexual offences…..
The interim report also shows that some offenders have been issued with out-of-court fixed penalty fines when they should have been prosecuted instead…
…… police failure to record crime properly may stem from poor knowledge of the rules or workload but adds that he can’t rule out that it might be the result of discreditable or unethical behaviour by officers.
Well, are the crime figures being deliberately fiddled or is it just pure incompetence? One way of answering this question is to ask how did this official inquiry come about? According to the same article:
The interim report by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Tom Winsor, was ordered by the home secretary following claims of widespread fiddling of the police recorded crime figures by a whistleblower which have been endorsed by MPs.
Let’s take a moment to get present to what is happening here! The very people who are charged with upholding the law are not. Why not? I say that the ethical foundation and moral wisdom that is the essential ground for effective policing and the just rule of the law is no longer present: if it is not dead then surely it is on its deathbed.
Does this fiddling of crime figures matter? Does it really matter? It seems rather academic, doesn’t it? What is the big deal if the police are failing to record up to 20% of crime. Now I invite you to step away from the deliberately bland language of academic-managerial-political speech and look at the phenomena: the human impact. What is the human impact? Here are examples that bring the human back into the conversation:
Among the cases HMIC cites as wrongly written off are:
- An allegation by a 13-year-old autistic boy who told his parents he had been raped by a 15-year-old male friend which was wrongly written off by the police as sexual experimentation.
- A report to the police of rape by a doctor on behalf of a female patient who had consented to sex but told the man to stop when it began to hurt. A supervisory officer ruled that no crime had occurred.
This is not the only case of unethical behaviour, lack of integrity, and lack of moral wisdom. Just this week I came across this article: Department for Work is government’s worst at providing a living wage. Why is this a big deal? Because it is the government department that pays taxpayer-funded top-ups for those of our fellow human beings on low pay. And this government department was the first one to ‘commit itself to paying a living wage, a voluntary scheme under which employers pledge to supplement the legally binding national minimum wage.’
Case after case suggests that the lack of integrity, unethical behaviour and the lack of practical-moral wisdom is now the norm: the default setting at all levels of society.
What Is The Cause Of The Loss Of Moral Wisdom And Lack Of Ethical Thought-Behaviour?
In the age of enlightenment where ‘reason’ and science were being embraced and the old world order was collapsing some saw the perils down the road. Let’s listen:
What conclusion is to be drawn from this paradox so worthy of being born in our time; and what will become of virtue when one has to get rich at all costs. The ancient political thinkers forever spoke of morals and virtue; ours speak only of commerce and money.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourses on the Sciences and Arts
I get that you may not have the same interest-passion for dead philosophers as I do. So allow me to share with you the voice of Barry Schwartz – a psychologist and professor of sociology.
Barry Schwartz On The Loss of Practical And Especially Moral Wisdom
Barry Schwartz has delivered a number of TED talks. This talk was delivered in 2009 and TED describes it as follows:
Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He argues powerfully that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world.
And Finally
I leave you with these final thoughts:
First, as Heidegger pointed out, we do not live-operate in a scientific laboratory as ‘objective’ observers looking at the world. No, we are an intrinsic part of the world: a human being is ALWAYS a being-in-the-world even when s/he dies.
Second, a human being is never just a being-in-the-world. S/he is always and necessarily a being-in-the-world-with-others. Ask yourself in what sense you could possibly be a human being if you were magically born into a world without human beings. Ask yourself where you would be if upon birth there was no human being there to care for you.
Third, a human being is being whose being is to necessarily take a stand on his being. Another way of saying this is that ‘existence is our essence’ or ‘custom is our nature’. Which is to say we collectively make ourselves through our vision of what it is to be a human being. Each age is characterised by a particular vision of what it is to be a human being.
Fourth, we have, on the whole and for the most part especially in organisational and institutional settings, become heartless, self-interested, calculating-manipulative, creatures because we have bought into and been conditioned into this way of thinking and operating as human beings.
Fifth, look around and get present to that which is so. The flowering of the scientific view of man and the world has not brought us to lived experience of nirvana. What it has brought us is longer lives and more comfort. And on the whole and for the most part we do not find ourselves happier. We do not find ourselves experiencing aliveness-fulfilment-joy. We find ourselves living in a world devoid of the basics (compassion, empathy, kindness, brotherhood) that make a human life truly worth living.
Sixth, you and I have a choice to bring ethical living and practical-moral wisdom back into the worlds in which we show up and travel. How? Be expanding our definition of ‘reason’ to include ethics and practical-moral wisdom. And by so doing we will be giving back to the term ‘reason’ to its original fullness – that which was so before the modern age reduced ‘reason’ to its current understanding-practice.
If you have made it this far, I thank you for the generosity of your listening. And I invite you to show up and travel as a leader in life by taking the lead in embodying ethical practices and moral wisdom.
Author: Guest Author
Published On: 6th May 2014 - Last modified: 21st Jan 2019
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