Business Integrity And Honesty - Does It Pay?

Online, March 16, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Although business integrity and honesty still appear to be pretty rare commodities in today's business world, more and more business leaders seem to finally be waking up to the fact that deception is not the best way forward for their businesses.

Hiding or spinning the truth is no longer a workable business strategy (if it ever was). It may have worked to some extent 'in the old days', when spreading bad news wasn't so easy, but websites like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter have put paid to that. They enable bad news to be spread to the four corners of the world in the blink of an eye, which makes it impossible for businesses to keep a lid on bad news.

In his article below, John Gerzema discusses why business integrity and honesty are so important, and he cites two great examples of this in action - Nokia and Domino's Pizza.

Managing By Mea Culpa:

"With straight talk and lessons in sacrifice, a new generation of leaders is changing the way that companies are managed."

Last month, Nokia's new CEO Stephen Elop sent an e-mail to his staff, the contents of which would change the course of the company. In a candid, pointed missive, the Canadian executive said, "our platform is burning." Nokia's Symbian operating system had fallen far behind in the age of smartphones, which threatened Nokia's 200 million worldwide customers. Apple's iOS, RIM and Google's were now the dominant platforms, creating three viable ecosystems of operators, developers, and consumers.

So Elop announced at The World Mobile Congress that Nokia would partner with Microsoft on a next generation of Windows 7 smartphones. Some Symbian engineers walked off the job, but Elop's message to Nokia's culture was blunt: Change, or die!

Rather than hide his strategy or put a spin on Nokia's business challenges, Elop's frankness is emblematic of a new way of thinking to jump-start a business.

Today a growing number of managers are aligning their organizations around honest self-reappraisal, while earning the trust of customers as their company evolves.

In his company's effective "Pizza Turnaround" YouTube video, Domino's Pizza CEO Patrick Doyle admitted their pizza tasted like "cardboard" with "processed cheese." This audacious marketing piece followed an expertly-handled crisis-management video a year earlier, in which Domino's was widely praised for swiftly handling the actions of a couple of rogue employees who were caught on camera doing some unsightly things during food prep.

Doyle told the Associated Press: "The old days of trying to spin things simply doesn't work anymore. Great brands going forward are going to have a level of honesty and transparency that hasn't been seen before." Domino's reputational score has risen by an impressive 21 percent in differentiation, by 24 percent in leadership, and by 28 percent in perceived quality in our brand asset valuator (BAV) data.

Visit the following link to read the full article:

http://www.managementnuggets.com/2011/03/business-integrity-and-honesty-does-it.html