I recently attended my Keystone Business Forum’s semi-annual Keynote event, which launched the Erie, PA branch of the Drucker Society, a non-profit devoted to education of business ethics as written about by the late, great Peter Drucker. The branch will be run by Kevin Smith, who also manages Vie Associates, a training and education company devoted to helping local small businesses grow and succeed.
The first question to be answered about business ethics is, given the directive to “first, do no harm“, is this, is your business living up to this standard and what are you doing to ensure that it is?
Although we cannot guarantee that what we do in business always helps our customers and clients, we can at least make a pledge that we will never knowingly do harm to our customers and clients. By committing to do no harm, we make a statement about the main intention of our business. We are giving assurance that the customer or client will, at minimum, not lose as a result of doing business with us. That goes a long way to build trust, which is ultimately all we must have, if we plan to stay in business for any length of time. Without trust, words are just items of propaganda which do not serve the customer’s interest. If your word cannot be believed, they certainly won’t trust your product, or your service.
To commit to doing no harm, the business owner or the manager needs to take a fresh look at every part of the business, find out what actually goes on, randomly call customers, and basically protect the asset of trust, which is easier to build than it is to re-build. Find ways to find out what goes on when the boss is not looking.
Effort and resources spent on adding to the customer’s experience are wasted if the basics are mishandled and trust is broken or is not consistent. So, is your business living up to this standard and what are you doing to ensure that it is? Get to work ON your business, hire people to work IN it.
Please let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.