Integrity

is a matter of a person’s word

nothing more and nothing less.
There is some confusion between the terms integrity, morality
and ethics. How do you differentiate them?

These three phenomena are widely understood to provide standards of ‘correct’ behaviour, but people generally
get them mixed up. The primary differentiation I make between them is to distinguish integrity from morality and
ethics. Integrity is a purely positive proposition. It has nothing to do with good vs. bad. Think for a moment about
the Law of Gravity: there is no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ gravity; like integrity, it just ‘is’. Morality and ethics, on
the other hand, are normative concepts in that they deal with matters of good or bad, right vs. wrong. Morality
refers to a society’s standards of right and wrong behaviour for individuals and groups within that society, while
ethics refers to the normative set of values that apply to all members of a group or organisation. Thus, both
morality and ethics relate to desirable vs. undesirable behaviour.

Integrity, Morality and Ethics, Defined

Integrity:
A state or condition of being whole, complete,Unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition.
Morality:
In a given society, in a given era of that society, morality is the generally-accepted standards of what is desirable and undesirable; of
right and wrong conduct,
and what is considered by that society as good or bad
behaviour of a person, group or entity.
Ethics:
In a given group, ethics is the agreed upon standards of what is desirable and undesirable; of right and wrong conduct; of wh at is
considered by that group as good and bad behaviour of a person, group or entity that is a member of the group, and may include
defined bases for discipline, including exclusion
You define integrity as “what it takes for a person to be whole
and complete.” What does this look like in daily life?
An individual is whole and complete when their word is whole and complete, and their word is whole
and complete when they honour their word. We can honour our word in one of two ways: first, by
keeping our word, and on time; or second, as soon as we know that we won’t keep our word, we inform
all parties counting on us to keep our word and clean up any mess that we’ve caused in their lives.
When we do this, we are honouring our word despite having not kept it, and we have maintained our
integrity. If you are serious about being a person of integrity, you will think very carefully before giving
your word to anyone or anything, and you will never give your word to two or more things that are
mutually inconsistent.
As they should, many people focus on the importance of keeping their word; however, if one does not
consider how to maintain integrity when one cannot or will not keep one’s word, this is sure to lead to
out-of-integrity behaviour at some point. If you’re up to anything important in life, you will not always
be able to keep your word, and that’s alright, but if you are a person of integrity, you will always honour
your word. Integrity is important to individuals, groups, organisations and society because it creates
workability. Without integrity, the workability of any object, system, person, group or organisation
declines; and as workability declines, the opportunity for performance declines. Therefore, integrity is a
necessary condition for maximum performance. As an added benefit, honouring one’s word is also an
actionable pathway to being trusted by others.
You believe that a key aspect of integrity involves the relationship one has with oneself.
Please explain the importance of this.
One’s word to one’s self is a critical part of integrity. The foundation for being a person of integrity is giving your word to yourself
(or declaring to yourself) the following. First, “Who I am is my word”, and second, “I give my word to myself that I am a person of
integrity.” Without this foundation you will never be a person of integrity. By not being serious when we give our word to
ourselves, we forfeit the opportunity to maintain our integrity by honouring our word to ourselves. For example, think of
occasions when the issue of self-discipline comes up, and the ease with which we often dismiss it. It may be something trivial like,
‘I’m going to work out tomorrow at nine o’clock’, or something serious like, ‘I will never cheat on my wife’. By failing to honour our
word to ourselves, not only do we undermine ourselves as persons of integrity, but we diminish who we are as a person – we are
less than whole and complete as a person. If we aren’t serious about this aspect of integrity, it will create ‘unworkability’ in our
life: we will appear to others as inconsistent, unreliable and unpredictable. You simply cannot be a whole and complete person if
you do not honour your word to yourself. Unfortunately, people almost universally justify or rationalise the mess in their lives
resulting from their personal out-of-integrity behaviour. They point to external causes of the mess in their lives and never
acknowledge that the mess arises from their own personal out-of-integrity behaviour.

Your Ontological Law of Integrity says that integrity has a critical effect on business:
increased performance. How does integrity translate into performance?
As I’ve said, integrity is a necessary condition for maximum performance. That is, if something is in integrity – is whole, complete,
unbroken – it has maximum workability. But because it takes more than workability (a product of integrity) alone to realise
maximum performance, integrity is not a sufficient condition for maximum performance. The proposition is that if you
violate the Law of Integrity, the opportunity-set for your performance will shrink and therefore your actual performance is likely to
suffer. As with the gravity analogy, this is just a plain fact: if you attempt to violate the Law of Gravity without a parachute, you will
suffer severe consequences. We argue that if you respect the Law of Integrity you will experience enormous increases in
performance, both in your organisation and in your life.
You believe that the effects of out-of-integrity behaviour are significantly more damaging
than most people believe. Please discuss.

People tend to view integrity as a virtue that is ‘nice to have’, but not as something that is directly related to performance. They
fail to link the difficulties in their lives or in their organisations to out-of-integrity behaviour. But the increases in performance that
are possible by focusing on integrity are huge: I’m not talking about a 10 per cent increase in output or productivity – it’s more like
100 to 500 percent. At my organisation [the Social Science Research Network (SSRN)] after three years of implementing these
notions, our CEO Gregg Gordon will tell you that we’ve seen in excess of a 300 per cent increase in output, with essentially no
increase in inputs. And our people are happier.

Objects and systems can also have integrity. Please explain.

Integrity for objects and systems is a matter of the components that make up the object or system and the relationship between
those components. Three critical aspects are their design, the implementation of the design and the use to which the object or
system is put. If an object or system is to have maximum opportunity for performance, it must have integrity in each of these
aspects. The design must be capable of fulfilling the purpose for which it was designed – for example, to provide transportation or
flotation. In addition, to have integrity the implementation of the design must be whole and complete; and finally the use of the
object or system must have integrity. If any of these three aspects is not present, the object or system will be ‘out-of-integrity’, its
workability will be compromised and its opportunity for performance will be reduced. For example, if a 300-pound man attempts
to use a life preserver designed for a 50-pound child, he is in big trouble. This distinction – between the integrity of design, the
integrity of implementation and the integrity of use has proven to be of enormous value to me and my colleagues in running SSRN.
Of course, any large computer system is going to have issues, and thinking about the source of problems as due to potential
failures of integrity of design, integrity of implementation or integrity of use has resulted in enormous insights for us.
What are the costs of dealing with an object, person or entity
that is out-of-integrity?

Consider the experience of dealing with an object that lacks integrity, such as a car. When one or more of its
components is missing or malfunctioning, it be comes unreliable and unpredictable, and it creates those same
characteristics in our lives: the car fails in traffic; we inadvertently create a traffic jam; we are late for our
appointment; and we disappoint our colleagues. In effect, the out-of-integrity car has created a lack of integrity in
our life, with all sorts of fallout and repercussions that reduce workability. The same thing is true of our associations
with persons, groups or organisations that are out-of-integrity. These effects generally go unrecognised, but they
are significant.

How does ‘cost-benefit analysis’ affect integrity?

This is a great failure of the curriculum of every business school I know: we teach our students the importance of
conducting a cost/benefit analysis in everything they do. In most cases, this is useful – but not when it comes to behaving
with integrity. In fact, treating integrity ([Link] your word) as a matter of cost/benefit analysis virtually guarantees
that you will not be a person of integrity. When not keeping my word, if I apply a cost/benefit analysis to honouring my
word, I am either out-of-integrity to start with because I have not stated the cost/benefit contingency that is in fact part of
my word when I give it, or to have integrity I must say some thing like the following: “I will honour my word when it comes
time to do so if the costs of doing so are less than the benefits.” Such a statement, while technically leaving me with
integrity, is unlikely to engender trust. Indeed, I have just told you that my word means nothing. If I had one
recommendation for improvement to the curriculum of every business school, it would be to make it very clear to students
that cost/benefit analysis is very important almost everywhere in life but not with respect to honouring one’s word. In my
view, this is a major root cause of the current economic crisis.
Trust in the business community has plummeted in recent months. What has to happen
for it to be restored?
Out-of-integrity behaviour has been pervasive, both on an organisational and an individual basis. Recall that the integrity of an object or
system depends on the integrity of the design of that object or system, the integrity of the implementation of that design and the integrity
of the use of that object or system. Looking at the subprime mortgage crisis, each element of the system evolved in a way that left it out-
of-integrity: the system ended up such that people were rewarded for creating and selling mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, but
not mortgages and mortgage-backed securities that would be paid. Obviously such a system lacked integrity, and we are paying a very
steep price. Moreover, the politics of the situation is now encouraging homeowners (who gave their word to paying back the money they
borrowed to purchase their homes) that it is OK to quit paying one’s mortgage in the case where the homeowner is ‘under water’ – that is,
where the value of the home is now less than the mortgage on the home. Putting the system back in order is deceptively simple: people
have to start honouring their word. If they do, trust will materialise almost instantly. The interesting thing about it is that you actually
create trust more rapidly if you fail to keep your word but you honour it, because this is always so surprising to people. If you’re straight
with people – “I told you that I’d have this report done a month from now, but I know now that I’m not going to be able to and I apologise,
but I’ll get it to you in a month and a half. Let’s have a talk about what I can do to clean up the mess I have caused for you.” If I then get the
report to you in a month and a half, our relationship will be strengthened; but if I simply don’t keep my original word, trust will be lost.
There are great examples of service failures that have turned out positive. Bitner, Booms and Tetrault in their study “The Service Encounter:
Diagnosing Favourable and Unfavourable Incidents,” (Journal of Marketing, 1990, pp.80-81) found that: 23.3% of the “ . . . ‘memorable
satisfactory encounters’ involve difficulties attributable to failures in core service delivery. . . From a management perspective, this finding
is striking. It suggests that even service delivery system failures can be remembered as highly satisfactory encounters if they are handled
properly. . . One might expect that dissatisfaction could be mitigated in failure situations if employees are trained to respond, but the fact
that such incidents can be remembered as very satisfactory is somewhat surprising.” (Italics in original.)
They give the following example: a husband and wife had reservation for a hotel room. They arrived at the hotel, It was completely filled
through no fault of the hotel people just hadn’t checked out as planned. Unfortunately, the front desk staff wasn’t able to find the couple
another room in the city, so they failed to keep their word. But they did honour it: they took a small dining room in the hotel, put in some
cots and pillows and bedding and made a bedroom out of it. In the end, the family rated this as one of their outstanding service
experiences. Honouring one’s word is truly an amazing phenomenon, and my colleagues and I are eager for people to
implement it in their lives and in their organisations. As with the Law of Gravity, the end result is guaranteed.
The Eleven Factors of the ‘Veil of Invisibility’ that conceals the source of the
actual costs of out-of-integrity behaviour

1. Not seeing that who you are as a person is your word

That is, thinking that who you are as a person is anything other than your word. For example, thinking that who you are
is your body, or what is going on with you internally (your mental/emotional state, your thoughts/thought processes and
your bodily sensations), or anything else you identify with such as your title or position in life, or your possessions, etc…
leaves you unable to see that when your word is less than whole and complete you are diminished as a person.
A person is constituted in language. As such, when a person’s word is less than whole and complete they are
diminished as a person.

2. “Living as if my Word is only What I Said (Word 1) and What I Assert Is True (Word 4)
Even if we are clear that in the matter of integrity our word exists in six distinct ways, most of us actually function as if
our word consists only of what I said or what I assert is true. This guarantees that we cannot be men or women of
integrity. For us, Words 2, 3, 5, and 6 are invisible as our word:
• Word-2: What You Know to do or not to do • Word-3: What Is Expected of you by those with whom you wish to have
a workable relationship (unless you have explicitly declined those unexpressed requests)
• Word-5: What You Stand For • Word-6: Moral, Ethical and Legal Standards of each society, group, and governmental
entity of which I am a member When we live (function in life) as though our word is limited to Word 1: What I Said and
Word 4: What I say is so, we are virtually certain to be out of integrity with regard to our word as constituted in Words 2,
3, 5 and 6. In such cases, all the instances of our word (be it the word of an individual or organisation) that are not
spoken or otherwise communicated explicitly are simply invisible as our word to such individuals or organisations. In our
lives, all the instances of our Words 2, 3, 5 and 6 simply do not show up (occur) for us as our having given our word.
3. “Integrity is a virtue”
For most people and organisations, integrity exists as a virtue rather than as a necessary condition for performance. When held as a
virtue rather than as a factor of production, integrity is easily sacrificed when it appears that a person or organisation must do so to
succeed. For many people, virtue is valued only to the degree that it engenders the admiration of others, and as such it is easily
sacrificed especially when it would not be noticed or can be rationalised. Sacrificing integrity as a virtue seems no different than
sacrificing courteousness, or new sinks in the men’s room.

4. Self Deception about being out-of-integrity

People are mostly unaware that they have not kept their word. All they see is the ‘reason’, rationalisation or excuse for not keeping
their word. In fact, people systematically deceive (lie to) themselves about who they have been and what they have done. As Chris
Argyris concludes: “Put simply, people consistently act inconsistently, unaware of the contradiction between their espoused theory
and their theory-in-use, between the way they think they are acting and the way they really act.” And if you think this is not you, you
are fooling yourself about fooling yourself. Because people cannot see their out-of-integrity behaviour, it is impossible for them to
see the cause of the unworkability in their lives and organisations the direct result of their own attempts to violate the Law of Integrity.

5. Integrity is keeping one’s Word

The belief that integrity is keeping one’s word period leaves no way to maintain integrity when this is not possible, or when it is
inappropriate, or when one simply chooses not to keep one’s word. This leads to concealing not keeping one’s word, which adds to
the veil of invisibility about the impact of violations of the Law of Integrity.

6. Fear of acknowledging you are not going to keep your Word

When maintaining your integrity (i.e., acknowledging that you are not going to keep your word and cleaning up the mess that results)
appears to you as a threat to be avoided (like it was when you were a child) rather than simply a challenge to be dealt with, you will
find it difficult to maintain your integrity. When not keeping their word, most people choose the apparent short-term gain of hiding that
they will not keep their word. Thus out of fear we are blinded to (and therefore mistakenly forfeit) the power and respect that accrues
from acknowledging that one will not keep one’s word or that one has not kept one’s word.
7. Integrity is not seen as a factor of production
This leads people to make up false causes and unfounded rationalisations as the source(s) of failure, which in turn conceals
the violations of the Law of Integrity as the source of the reduction of the opportunity for performance that results in failure.

8. Not doing a cost/benefit analysis on giving one’s word

When giving their word, most people do not consider fully what it will take to keep that word. That is, people do not do a
cost/benefit analysis on giving their word. In effect, when giving their word, most people are merely sincere (well-meaning)
or placating someone, and don’t even think about what it will take to keep their word. Simply put, this failure to do a
cost/benefit analysis on giving one’s word is irresponsible. Irresponsible giving of one’s word is a major source of the mess
left in the lives of people and organisations. People generally do not see the giving of their word as: “I am going to make this
happen,” but if you are not doing this you will be out-of-integrity. Generally people give their word intending to keep it. That
is, they are merely sincere. If anything makes it difficult to deliver, then they provide reasons instead of results.

9. Doing a cost/benefit analysis on honouring one’s word

People almost universally apply cost/benefit analysis to honouring their word. Treating integrity as a matter of cost/ benefit
analysis guarantees you will not be a trustworthy person, or with a small exception, a person of integrity. If I apply
cost/benefit analysis to honouring my word, I am either out of integrity to start with because I have not stated the
cost/benefit contingency that is in fact part of my word (I lied), or to have integrity when I give my word, I must say
something like the following: “I will honour my word when it comes time for me to honour my word if the costs of doing so
are less than the benefits.” Such a statement, while leaving me with integrity will not engender trust. In fact it says that my
word is meaningless.
10. Integrity is a Mountain with No Top
People systematically believe that they are in integrity, or if by chance they are at the moment aware of being out of integrity,
they believe that they will soon get back into integrity. In fact integrity is a mountain with no top. However, the combination of
1) generally not seeing our own out-of-integrity behaviour, 2) believing that we are persons of integrity, and 3) even
when we get a glimpse of our own out-of-integrity behaviour, assuaging ourselves with the notion that we will soon
restore ourselves to being a person of integrity keeps us from seeing that in fact integrity is a mountain with no
top. To be a person of integrity requires that we recognise this and “learn to enjoy climbing”.

11. Not having your word in existence when it comes time to keep your word
People say “Talk is cheap” because most people do not honour their word when it comes time to keep their word. A major
source of people not honouring their word, is that when it comes time for them to do so, their word does not exist for them in
a way that gives them a reliable opportunity to honour their word. Most people have never given any thought to keeping
their word in existence so that when it comes time for them to keep their word there is a reliable opportunity for them to
honour their word. This is a major source of out-of-integrity behaviour for individuals, groups and organisations. In order to
honour your word, you will need an extraordinarily powerful answer to the question, “Where Is My Word When It Comes
Time For Me To Keep My Word?” If you don’t have a way for your word to be powerfully present for you in the moment or
moments that it is time for you to take action to honour your word, then you can forget about being a person of integrity,
much less a leader.
‘One’s Word’, Defined
A person’s word consists of each of the following:

1. What you said: whatever you have said you will do or will not do, and in the case of do, doing it on time.
2. What you know: 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.
3. What is expected: 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.
4. What you say is so: whenever you have given your word to others as to the existence of some thing 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.
5. What 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 a part of your word.
6. The social moral standards, the group ethical standards and the governmental legal standards of right and wrong, good
and bad behaviour in the society, groups and state in which one enjoys the benefits of membership are also part of one’s word
unless a) one has explicitly and publicly expressed an intention to not keep one or more of these standards, and b) one is willing to
bear the costs of refusing to conform to these standards.

Integrity of an Organisation, Defined

An organisation (or any human system) is in integrity when:
1. It is whole and complete with respect to its word. This includes that nothing is hidden, no deception, no untruths, no violation of
contracts or property rights, etc.
2. That is to say, an organisation honours its word:

• Internally, between members of the organisation,

• Externally, between the organisation and those it deals with. This includes what is said by or on behalf of
the organisation to its members as well as outsiders.