The future of almost eve.., p.30
The Future of Almost Everything, page 30
Why hiding behind legal opinion is so risky
The harder people try to justify themselves, the more likely it is that they are in deep trouble, even if they will not admit it. I remember a situation a while back where lawyers were being paid a small fortune to find ‘wriggle room’ or clauses in every contract that could allow that particular company to get away with what it had been involved in.
Leaders often hide behind legal opinion. But the longer and more complex your legal advice, the weaker your case must be. And as we will see, you can comply with the precise letter of every law, and still be utterly condemned in the media.
Companies will need to take a common-sense view
For me the situation is simple: what are the reasonable expectations of the other party in this agreement? How would you like to be treated yourself, if you were in their shoes? What is a common-sense view? What will the public’s gut feeling be if they read about this in the media? When you try to explain what you are doing to a member of your family or to a close friend, do you feel completely comfortable or do you sense a little twinge deep inside? Will your grandchildren be proud of this kind of activity when they grow up?
‘But everyone else is doing it’
I recall another situation where the argument from a particular company was that although the practice of giving hidden ‘benefits’ to customers was illegal in some countries, everyone else in the industry was doing it. If they stopped, they would go out of business. If they blew the whistle on the entire industry to regulators, they would be blamed by all their customers, and would also go out of business.
My advice was simple: you will be found out one day anyway, as it will only take a single former employee or customer to go public; you will gain a huge moral advantage in coming clean and exposing wrong practices; and you will make things far worse by continuing when fully aware of the problem. And I was right. Huge corporate fines followed, the senior team at the time was disgraced, and the brand was damaged globally.
Only sell what you believe in
Here is a fundamental, safe, ethical rule of life, that will last 10,000 years.
Always treat others as you would like to be treated. That means staff, customers, business partners, road drivers, toilet cleaners, suppliers, associates, neighbours, friends and family.
If every manager and leader in every company followed this value, our world would be a better place, and we would have far stronger corporate ethics.
$20,000 competition to test the secret of all ethics
A few years ago I wrote Building a Better Business. In it, I promised $20,000 to anyone who could find a way to sell a product, lead, manage or motivate people without using a particular four-word phrase – in one way or another.* I have offered the same prize to many tens of thousands in my corporate audiences over the last decade.
This four-word phrase, or the idea within it, turns out to be the basis of every effective corporate mission statement, every marketing slogan that works, every leadership vision, the foundation of all change management, and will be the cornerstone of all corporate ethics for over 1000 years. So what is this simple four-word phrase, and why has no one ever won the $20,000 prize?
Building a better world
That is what all ethics is about, and is where all human purpose comes from. Find me a human being who thinks that the world is a worse place because of the work they do, or because of the air they breathe, or because of their very existence, and as I say, you have someone who is in deep personal crisis.
So if you want to know the future of corporate values, which mission statements will have greatest inspirational power, which motivational tools will work best, the answers are all contained in that phrase, and always will be. The fundamental question for every future lawmaker, regulator, judge or jury will always be this: will this decision make our world a better or worse place?
Building a better world is hard-wired into our genes
As little children, we soon learn ways to make life better for ourselves. Then we become aware of the existence of others, that life is also about making life better for members of our family, and for our friends. A further stage of growing up is wanting to make life better for our neighbours and community, and also in some small way for our wider world.
These ethical instincts are part of our nature, as social creatures, as human beings that form families, tribes, nations. We see much the same in the animal kingdom, especially among ‘higher’ mammals, in social packs, communities, herds, or even in nesting instincts of birds.
Why crimes are so rare
These ethical instincts are the reason why crimes are so rare. Think about it. When you travel on the metro or walk across the street. Consider the value of what you are carrying – perhaps a smartphone, a portable computer, credit cards and cash.
If someone came up to you with a knife and asked for your phone and wallet, how likely would you be to put up a fight? Most people just hand things over. So it’s an easy and instant win for any impulsive thief. And if they run away fast, or are with friends, they are very unlikely to be arrested. But how often does it happen? The answer is very rarely, considering the wealth that many carry.
Consider again the power of one billion car owners to cause terror and carnage, as a deliberate act to create fear or promote a cause. But how often around the world do people accelerate into crowds of pedestrians? Answer: almost never – less than one episode per billion drivers per week on average over the last few years.
For the same reason, there are very few arbitrary shootings of strangers or stabbings, or bomb attacks – even if you include murders by people who are severely mentally ill. Yet you will find sharp knives as ‘lethal weapons’ in every kitchen, in every home. America has more guns in homes than adults, and simple bombs are easy for any older child to make, using instructions online.
To the CIA: where have all those terrorists gone?
I will never forget the surreal experience of listening to a former CIA leader discussing global threats with a private group of twenty-five senior bankers, in a grave and ‘confidential’, whispering voice, as though he was afraid we would be overheard.
In a few minutes he almost had us all convinced that our nations were in imminent danger of being overwhelmed by evil powers; that anthrax spores could be concealed in every light bulb; and that we might all be about to witness, with our own eyes, a series of terror attacks. But as we have seen, terror attacks are very rare in global terms, and the lifetime risk for most people is less than being struck by lightning – less than one death per 350,000 people a year.
Secret service people like this CIA leader often try to claim that the reason so few attacks happen is that the state is so good at disrupting many thousands of terror plots. But you don’t need a sophisticated terror group, or to be part of a plot, to commit an act of terror in an instant. You only need a gun, or knife, or car, particularly if you don’t care about your own safety or about being caught. So, I asked the man from the CIA: given that every home contains ‘deadly’ weapons, and 1 billion people have the keys to a ‘lethal’ car, where are all these crowds of terrorists? And of course he was rather embarrassed, because he knew he could not give his audience any convincing answer.
Of course we all knew the truth as to why such terror acts are so rare. The fact is that murdering another person is hard to do emotionally, even if the killer thinks the victim is evil, even where the killer has lost his temper, even where such killing is to promote a cause.
I am not for a moment wanting to understate the very present dangers from organised or spontaneous acts of terror, nor devalue the vital role that security services play every day in helping to keep us all safe. All I am saying is that it is easy to lose a wider perspective, the real truth about humanity as a whole.
Throughout almost all of human history you will find a common code of respect within societies, and this same code will also dominate the next hundred years. Enshrined increasingly in laws, human rights regulations, and cultural expectations, our world is increasingly aligned to common ethics, despite gory media headlines.
The search for human happiness – Happynomics
Personal purpose and sense of fulfilment are closely related to happiness. Expect huge growth in research on human happiness and radical questions about values when the results confirm this truth. Research into Happynomics shows that happiness in developed nations is strongly linked to some or all of the following: mid-range income, good friends, stable marriage or partnership, strong faith or spirituality, extrovert nature, liking your job, living in a stable democracy.
A survey of 64,000 people in 65 nations found that 70% of people are content with their lives. Africa is the place where people are happiest (83%), while people in Western Europe are the least happy, with 11% saying they are unhappy or very unhappy. In Africa 75% expect life to get better, compared to only 26% in Europe.
Agony columns are full of advice about how to have happy relationships. In a fractured, increasingly disordered and fast-moving world, long-term relationships are going to matter more. One sign of success for the future will be to be living happily with the same person for a long time. What’s so smart about a string of failed marriages, shacked-up arrangements or temporary flings?
Value for things that do not change
As we saw in Chapter 1, there is a premium on buildings, trees and landscapes that have remained the same for a long time. This is part of the fundamental human need for security, for things that endure. Most humans cannot cope with continuous changes in all areas of their lives without risk of emotional disorder and inefficiency.
Change is a major cause of stress: whether moving house, job, having a child or getting married or divorced.
Single issues and ethics go hand in hand
Single issues define a problem, but only ethics can tell you what position to take. Expect more fierce debates and soul-searching over such issues as arms sales, as attempts are made to define exactly what arms are. Do you include machine tools used to make arms, for example? A global company can find itself caught in the crossfire between shareholder opinion, public perception and views of staff. There may also be a variety of attitudes within the same government, ranging from approval to turning a blind eye to outright opposition and legal action.
Activists are often sharply divided over the ethics of – say – wind power (damaging skyline) compared to solar power (damaging roof appearance and fields), or nuclear power or gas power.
Political correctness and thought control
‘Political correctness’ will grow in power in the next three decades as single-issue groups try to control the words we use. It is hard to express ideas if words are banned. ‘Mentally challenged’ instead of mentally handicapped. ‘Senior citizens’ instead of the elderly or retired. ‘Visually impaired’ instead of blind.
Defending civil liberties
We will see more attempts by governments to justify bad things, with the argument that ‘the end justifies the means’. So people today can have their homes broken into by the police or secret service or their smartphone bugged just because a politician or government worker says it should be done. No warrant is needed in many countries: the police can hold you for days without explanation.
You can be arrested for joining a peaceful demonstration and if you are silent on arrest a jury may be invited to conclude that you had something to hide. You have no right to information the government holds about you. Many nations have a benign democracy, but in a country with a malignant dictator laws like these are especially oppressive.
Civil liberties will remain on the agenda of most nations of the world, especially as online surveillance and tracking becomes almost universal. Human rights will also continue to be a major issue, especially in negotiation of trade agreements with developing countries. There will be many agonies of conscience over whether a government should engage in buying or selling major contracts with ‘odious’ regimes – and debates on how such things should be determined.
Challenging human rights abuse in other nations
Many will argue that there is no point in criticising a nation for poor human rights, when your own economy depends on trade with them, and where such protests are only likely to increase the cultural isolation that already exists.
Most challenges by America or the EU to countries like China will continue to fall on deaf ears, and will be rejected as pompous and arrogant, based on ignorance. The Chinese government believes that the greatest human right is to be able to work and eat food rather than starve, and believes it is doing well with these things, while being more open than for decades as an evolving society. China believes that too much freedom, too fast, could place at risk all that has been achieved so peacefully. There is a belief that ‘leaders know best’ what is good for the people. A similar paternalistic attitude was seen in the UK Conservative Party in the 1980s.
Expect to hear more about human responsibilities, with responsibilities and rights becoming equal pillars of global codes of ethics. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a product of the Second World War, and was set out in 1948. Expect a similar Declaration of Human Responsibilities.
Wealth can create a more ethical world
Most people in developed nations have doubts about the ethics of business, and many question the ethics of endless economic growth. However, the truth is that business has generated wealth at astonishing speed for humankind over the last 30 years, and will continue to do so.
Since 2000, the percentage of the world living on less than $1.25 a day has fallen from 30% to below 10%, after adjusting for inflation. This is because the wealth of emerging nations has grown each year on average around 4.5% faster than that of developed nations – an astonishing achievement, driven largely by growth in global trade. If similar growth rates continue for just the next 30 years, the average income in the world will then be equal to that of US citizens today.
Of course, such growth rates are unsustainable, and it is more realistic to expect that such an equalisation may take 50–80 years or more.
Justice and wealth contrasts
As we have seen, half of all global wealth is owned by the richest 1% – one of the greatest and unsustainable ethical stains on our world. The gap is growing between those with a life expectancy of 100 years and those with a life expectancy of 35 years, between those with unlimited health care and those who have to walk barefoot for over 50km to find a (badly equipped) clinic.
At the extreme end of this inequality scale are human slavery, bonded labour and trafficking. Around 30 million people are enslaved today, in an industry worth over $32bn a year for traffickers alone. Of these 30 million, 78% are sold for labour, and 22% forced to become sex workers. One in 25 of the entire population of Mauritania is a slave and there are estimated to be 14 million slaves in India alone. Expect many more efforts to stamp out the global slave trade. A big ethical question is what to do with slaves once they are rescued. Are they automatically given rights of residence in the country they are now in?
Foreign aid will often be viewed as imperialism
One way to improve the lives of the very poor is with foreign aid, for such things as health care or education. But government aid can be seen as a form of imperialism, especially as donations are usually linked to contracts for the donor’s own consultants and supplies.
Autocratic leaders in emerging nations can regard well-meaning NGOs as interfering, condescending critics of their nations, sending home to wealthy supporters hundreds of tearjerking photos of dreadful situations, which are bad for the national image, and give a very distorted view of life in general.
Some of the poorest nations are dominated by development projects. In places like Sierra Leone a large percentage of vehicles on the road belong to organisations such as UNICEF, a sign of a ‘donor-dependent’ economy.
It is extremely difficult for foreign-funded projects to operate without distorting local priorities, and money can fall into the wrong hands. A community leader has a shopping list of ten items, ranging from roads to water and clinics. An NGO is offering help with literacy – and may themselves be corrupt or self-serving. The help is accepted and a new education facility is built. It may be helpful, but was it the most appropriate next step?
The most sustainable models of development or philanthropy have an element of redundancy built in. For example, AfriKids is a charity operating in northern Ghana to relieve child poverty and suffering. A stated aim by the founder in the beginning was to be able to close itself down one day. And in the AIDS charity ACET that I started some years back, that is just what we did for a home care programme in the UK – once we saw that government-paid doctors, nurses and home carers were doing what needed to be done.
Trade rather than aid
In Africa most governments are aiming for low inflation, low budget deficits and encouragement of private business. But until America and Europe stop blocking imports of African goods and food, and cease dumping their own subsidised farm products, there will be slower progress.
Many African leaders hate being bullied by Western governments into lifting currency controls and other measures. They fear the economic rape of their nations by new imperialists, whether Chinese or American, who use money instead of guns, take local control in subtle ways, pay little for resources, and take wealth out.
They have little choice, it seems, but to allow their economies to become the puppets of globalised power bases. Multinationals and Sovereign Wealth Funds will experience brittle relationships with governments and peoples, which may snap at short notice.
Does the lift factor actually work?
What will happen to the poorest of the poor? Will they be lifted as these national economies grow, or will they be trampled? Some have argued from experience in Indian cities such as Mumbai that the rich get richer while the poor still starve and die. That may be true in the short term but not in the medium to longer term.
