Corruption Rarely Begins As Corruption And Other Lessons

I have a friend who just completed his 24 months as a resident of TROSA in Durham, a best practice treatment center for substance abuse.

Now he is a post grad for a month or two before he walks the stage in their next quarterly graduation ceremony.  As is true for many graduates, the program has had a profound impact on the life of this individual.

I’ve known about TROSA and been friends with its founder from its inception, but I’ve observed even more about why the program has been so successful as I have participated in some events over the past two years.

It takes two years, not just to kick bad habits, but to drill down to the triggers behind them, and most of all, to inculcate values and coping mechanisms including not just work ethic but how to work with others.

These include techniques for conflict resolution and emotional control.  One that is particularly important in the program is zero tolerance for failing to disclose something that is awry, even if you weren’t involved, even if was for a good reason.

TROSA understands that corruption rarely begins as corruption.

It may even be a means to a good end as United Airlines executives recently learned the hard way.

As Dr. Dan Ariely who also calls Durham home, along with his colleagues including Harvard’s Dr. Francesca Gino have shown, “simply seeing another person cheat can lead us to cheat, even if we care about being honest.”

TROSA understands that even omission of acknowledgment is contagious and leads to a slippery slope.

The organization is famous for its entrepreneurial approach.  It’s is too bad one of them isn’t offering workforce and leadership training to businesses and agencies on accountability and the importance of speaking up.

But as Dr. Gino notes in a Harvard Business Review post this week, “Behavior can be contagious even when it’s simply described in a story.”

Stories of people, especially low-level employees, who uphold organizational values is a particularly effective means of “onboarding” new hires especially when it comes to orientations regarding ethics.

In my former life, I saw otherwise good people in each of the communities I represented who always seemed to be dogged by stories of corruption.

What they had in common was the way they made decisions, usually based on “who was asking” for something rather than a strategy of fairness and consistency.

I never felt this shadow on their reputation was deserved but the behaviors that brought it about often made it difficult to work with them as strategic partners because they were always asking me to subtly cross the line.

They never saw themselves that way.

But really, none of us do.

As Dr. Gino wrote in here excellent book entitled, Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, we all have “a rose-colored view of who we are and what we do, and we aim to behave in ways that are consistent with our self-image as capable, competent, helpful, and honest individuals.”

The book deals with forces from within, forces from our relationships and forces from the outside, “factors that characterize the context in which we operate and make decisions.

It’s a good book, as is Ariely’s entitled, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty.

I always found myself considered a pariah by the “who’s asking” types who would in each of the communities I represented, ultimately make it their objective to recruit as many others around me to their way of thinking, hoping that the isolation would make me give in, or at the very least get me fired.

While holding firm to strategic decision-making about what was best for these communities, I always made doubly certain that our organization gave them every service we were capable of giving while remaining authentic.

But I also owe becoming a better and better leader over the years to these people.  Just because they were wrong doesn’t make them stupid or wrong about everything.

I became the CEO of a destination marketing organization at a very young age, twenty-six, so until the day I retired I viewed myself as a work in progress.

Trying to be rigidly authentic or true to yourself can, if you are not careful, also keep you from evolving.

This all made more sense to me looking back as I read an article a few months ago by Dr. Herminia Ibarra, formerly of Harvard, now professor of organizational behavior at Instead, The Business School for the World, entitled The Authenticity Paradox.

The reputation I earned over four decades was all about change.  I may have led three DMOs but they literally evolved weekly - if not daily - so in essence I led about 1,700 different organizations.

My personal “authenticity paradox” was learning that building consensus for ideas and values among stakeholders in a community can feel, well, more than a bit slimy and political but it can still be data-driven and strategic.

During my career I was intrigued when I was frequently credited with grit, resilience and perseverance so when I come across research into those traits, I try to read carefully.

Based on recent research at The Ohio State University, grit and perseverance in the face of repeated obstacles and even failure arise when an individual is able to generalize from successful past success while still learning from failures.

People who can learn to do this stand out from those who have the appearance of grit but are betrayed by perpetually needing to self aggrandize, making them particularly vulnerable to “who’s asking” decision makers.

The latter may have learned grit but their perseverance masks an otherwise negative self-image, thus the self aggrandizement.

Researchers have found that losing is actually good for us.  People who self aggrandize are put off or threatened by participating in “post mortems” after a projects, something which I adapted from EST training or a Ken Blanchard seminar in the early 1980s.

During post mortems, some people literally can’t or won’t shift gears from “what worked” to “what didn’t work,” no matter how safe and blameless you make them.

Often this is because they have issues with accountability or accepting responsibility but it can also be because they have never learned the values of introspection and curiosity which research by the authors of The Innovator’s DNA found are indicative of a rare blend of humility and confidence.

Possibly this is due to the stories they were told as children, which in the words of Seth Godin, “matter far more than we imagine.”

Values imprint by observation or patterning from birth to age 7, then from modeling or identification until age 13, including making our own value decisions, then from socialization with peers until we’re age 20.

People who can’t admit, let alone learn from failure or even admit “what didn’t work” in an otherwise successful transaction were probably told stories along the way that led them to believe that success came from fixed states, making them vulnerable to “who’s asking.”

Learning from failure and even success, on the other hand, are investments in continuing and never ending improvement rather than chalking it up to fixed states.

The difference is between looking good and actually being good, the essence of authenticity.

These are things TROSA understands – teaches and applies – so beautifully.

New values can be learned after the age of 20 but it is very hard and usually occurs with a significant emotional crisis such as facing up to addiction.

The Significance of Understanding Your Natural Rhythm

I am what researchers call a “lark,” someone who, because of the way their circadian rhythms shifts, is genetically a “morning person.”

This is why I still get up around 6 a.m. even though I am retired.  It is why I work out and write these posts early in the morning.  Other people are genetically night “owls” or what researchers call “undifferentiated.”

A researcher at BYU, my alma mater, found in a study that 44% of people are “larks” like me, another 32% are “owls” and 24% are undifferentiated.

Dr. Jeffry H. Larson, who graduated a year before I did, also found that people whose rhythms are mismatched are far more likely to argue and to do so more often.

Researchers at Harvard and the University of Utah found that this can also impact when people are most likely to lie.

Further, researchers at the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins and Georgetown have found that when energy wanes, as it does later in the day for “larks” and earlier for “owls,” is also the time of day overall when people are more likely to be unethical.

For some time now, researchers have studied what they call “social jetlag” and found correlations to our chronology.  This is what some people feel when they go back to work on Monday or after a vacation.

It is also something that many college graduates are about to experience as they shift into the workforce.

Studies of “presenteeism” (present in body but not in mind,) note that it costs nearly $80 billion in annual lost productivity.

Human performance decreases at night by 5%-15%.  Interestingly, turnover drops by more than half when employees are able to modify a select a schedule compared to when mandated.

Some research has found links between “owls” and smoking and obesity.  Other research has found that “owls” are also potentially more creative and possibly have slightly higher IQs.

It isn’t likely that a person can change their chronology, and there are some well documented health reasons for why we sleep and fast at night.

Flex time is a solution but so is encouraging people in the workforce to be more conscious and respectful of the ebb and flow of their own energy as well as that of others so that they take on big projects when they are operating with high energy.

It may be that teams should be assembled, in part, using compatibility in this regard as criteria.

Years ago, during my four-decade career as a community marketing executive, I set a rule that people who helped me protect my calendar could set no more than one meeting for me in the morning and one in the afternoon without first clearing an exception.

This is what Dr. Christine Carter at UC-Berkley, the author of the new book The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work, calls the “minimum effective dose” strategy.

For me, that rule about meetings was one of those “micro-habits” she writes about which, to paraphrase, channel our brain’s natural ability to run on “autopilot” so our habits can “relieve overreliance on willpower.”

I can also see in hindsight, how some people who are unethical and savvy at manipulation, probably took care to select meeting times where the potential for unethical outcomes was most probable.

They may have innately understood what researchers have observed.  Due to the “psychological depletion” people experience as the days wear on, “in the afternoon, the moral slope gets slipperier.”

7 Truths

A friend of mine’s job is to make sure a mega-bank’s marketing is ethical, especially any advertising about products.

Although probably subject to regulations, it is a voice of conscience that many in my former field of community destination marketing could use when tempted to place ads for no other measurable reason than to make a stakeholder happy.

This sort of ethical compliance might also come in handy whenever a few are tempted to use ad mediums, such as billboards, that desecrate roadsides and degrade the brands and appeal of towns and states, including their own.

The latter would probably even volunteer to be strapped to the bumper as willing hostages for lawmakers trying to push a bill through in North Carolina that would legalize thousands of illegal billboards, permit their conversion to digital even where residents are overwhelmingly opposed, as well as drive up the cost of road construction.

Pushing aside that public opinion polls show North Carolinians are opposed, regardless of party, gender or geography, a sponsor pointed out that billboards “are no different than radio, TV or newspapers.”

Uh, there is at least one crucial difference.  Radio, TV and newspapers produce content in return.  Billboards destroy content when they blight their surroundings and destruct scenic character.

The legislation’s sponsor went on to use tourism as a justification because “its visibility to the traveling public must be preserved and fostered.”

Okay, let’s forget for a moment that for decades in survey after survey, scenic character and climate have been the two overarching draws for tourism here.  Billboards, eh, not so much.

Any tourism concern still using billboards in North Carolina should take heed from marketing guru Seth Godin who wrote that “Marketers need to spend less time making promises and more time keeping them.”

I’ve had some experience here and there marketing tourism including two decades in North Carolina so let’s look at whether billboards are important to tourism:

• It is true that 1-in-10 Americans prefer to see ads on billboards, however, 90% don’t.
• It is true that 3% of small businesses advertise on billboards, 1-in-10 when medium size businesses are included, however, 90% don’t.
• It is true that .2% (two-tenths of one percent) of adults find billboards the most influential ad medium for purchase decisions, however, 99% don’t.
• It is also true that nearly two-thirds of Americans now use smartphones, 67% of which use them for turn by turn navigation while driving, and 75% while traveling.
• It is also true that beyond smartphones, 40% have other portable GPS devices and 17% have it built into their vehicles, and this is ramping up in North America to another 13 million vehicles annually.
• It is also true that on the road, 62% use mobile devices to find restaurants, 46% to find attractions, 42% to book and research accommodations.
• It is also true, according to Michelin, that as a backup the remaining 39% rely on old fashioned maps, guides and Internet print outs to find their way around.  Billboards fall in the 5% who use none of the above or “other.”

You do the math and decide whether it makes sense to surrender North Carolina’s brand to an obsolete advertising technology which represents a tiny number of jobs and almost no tax revenue.

Then, it might be a good idea to let your elected representative know how you feel.

Of course, tourism isn’t the only consideration.

On the other side of the ledger, not only is scenic character the reason visitors including more than 80% of newcomers and relocating visitors find North Carolina appealing but making trees and vegetation a priority yields air and water purification, carbon sequestration and of course, private property values and quality of place.

Of course, billboard companies, nearly all of them headquartered out-of-state, have obviously filled the ears of lawmakers otherwise.  Too bad they aren’t subject to greater ethical compliance regulations, too.

As for my former profession in community destination marketing or visitor-centric economic and cultural development, it is a good sign that 200 have earned accreditation which includes having a code of ethics.

But it reminds me of when employers found it wasn’t enough on applicants to ask if job applicants had a car, so they added a follow-up question, “Does it run?”

Destination Marketing Association International dropped a long standing requirement that members and their staff members sign a code of ethics about a decade ago now because some “good ‘ole boys” couldn’t see how to enforce it, especially when other “good ‘ole boys” were in violation.

Of course, the answer was easy.  Throw the bums out!

Attributes For Serving On Governing Boards

I became a CEO in my mid-20s, at a very young age, albeit for an organization still in start-up.

Friends have always kidded me that it must have been nice not having a boss for all but a handful of years during my long ago concluded four-decade career.

But I always had bosses.  They were governing boards of rotating directors to whom I was accountable that always included a member or two who didn’t understand or accept that a board only gives direction as a whole, not as individuals.

Even a chair person couldn’t give direction without direction provided by the board as a whole.  Often the most difficult transition for some board members is from the managerial or owner role in their own organizations to one of oversight as part of a group.

Unfortunately, few of us are vetted for even minimal attributes and skills, such as critical and strategic thinking or how to run a meeting before being appointed or elected to governing boards.

An article in the current issue of Harvard Business Review about where boards in general fall short, made me think back to how fortunate I was to have so many great board members given the agendas of some individuals and how and why they were appointed.

Only 16% of the directors surveyed thought the boards they served on understood the dynamics of the industries in which their organizations were involved and only 22% believed their boards knew how their organizations created value.

The community destination marketing organizations (DMOs) that I served were especially complex because they function as intermediaries between external stakeholders and internal stakeholders including a whole sector of different industries.

That a board member comes from one of the front line stakeholder industries is no guarantee they will understand the overall sector, let alone the transcendent purpose of visitor-centric economic and cultural development: to broaden the local tax base while guarding unique sense of place inherent to the communities they serve.

This is why being teachable is an important attribute for potential governing board members.

As the authors note, the two codified core aspects of fiduciary responsibilities of board members include loyalty to the organization, “placing the organization’s interest ahead of one’s own,” which includes outside special interests.

The other is prudence, ensuring that “the proper care, skill and diligence is applied to business decisions.”  The authors note that there is nothing to suggest that the “role of loyal and prudent directors” is to pressure management to maximize” short term interests.

Yet, in my experience, this is what special interests relentlessly seek.   Examples of this in community destination marketing organizations are when elected officials or facility managers try to pressure a DMO to substitute short term objectives such as subsidizing groups to use certain facilities or to fill hotel rooms or and seats near term.

The far more valuable strategic purpose of a DMO is to safeguard a communities indigenous sense of place and to fuel the overall local business climate so as to broaden the tax base.

This generates far greater overall revenues than if used instead to merely close the short term operating deficits of a few public or private facilities.

Organizations with self-appointed boards, unless the nomination process is truly democratic, as in the first two organizations I led, can still be rife with directors there to serve their own interests or those of cronies or cabals.

But publicly appointed boards, such as those I worked under the last half of my career, have their own set of challenges, especially as happened to several of the boards to which I answered, when an elected official or two deliberately pushed the appointment of a board member they hoped would undermine the organization from within.

What would lead a public official to do this?  Avarice.

Unfortunately, very little attention is paid in government to generating revenue, which many officials believe comes only by raising the rate of taxation.  Instead, they spend nearly all of their time focused on spending, or dividing up the pie or even worse shell games.

This is how elected officials or administrators can come to see the short term, such as eliminating the operating deficit on a facility that was always expected to run a deficit as more important than spending that amount on marketing the overall destination which would generate a return of six times that amount.

But short term thinking is not unique to elected governing boards.  It is the same strategic failure that forces many publicly traded companies to sacrifice long term value for short term payouts.

The authors of “Where Boards Fall Short” contend that board members must focus on long term strategy.  They further state that “what matters most is the quality and depth of the strategic conversations that take place.”

Unfortunately, being strategically inclined is rarely, if ever, given consideration when appointing members to governing boards probably because fewer than 14% of Americans are strategically inclined.

The word inclined is used because this is a talent, a propensity, more than a skill, making it difficult to learn or teach.  I suspect, when they are strategically inclined, CEOs spend far more than the 1% to 3% of the time most CEOs do on average with strategy.

Unfortunately, the same is probably true of many governing boards, where members arrive late, leave early and complain about prep time to read materials and reports prior to the meetings, let along delve into strategic conversations.

Appointing or electing governing board members is as great a responsibility as serving on one.  Here are a handful of important attributes to keep in mind:

• 30% of the entire workforce in America is truly engaged.  Half just show up and go through the motions.  Nearly 20% are troublemakers.

Rarely is someone who is disengaged in other areas of their life going to suddenly become engaged as a member of a governing board.  Make being engaged a pre-requisite to appointment.

Beware of organizations who seek benchwarmers.  Appoint board members who are strategically inclined and who will be eager students of the organization’s mission and environment.

• Recalibrate the size of governing boards.  Experts now believe the size of a non-profit board functions best with five members.  Poor governance increases with board size.
• Appoint board members who reflect the values of the organizations.  If that is fund-raising, appoint fund-raisers.  If that is volunteerism, appoint activists.  If that is being information driven, appoint members who understand and appreciate analytics.
• Appoint members who understand and embrace ethics and compliance not people who see ethics only as a boundary to be skirted.  There is a reason compliance is no longer housed in legal departments in corporations.

Most importantly, appoint people to governing boards who are or can be in synch with an organization’s culture, values and mission, who want to move it forward, not pull it back, and who know how to resist special interests including their own individual interests.

The True Usefulness of A Common DMO Ethical Code

In my opinion, one of the worst decisions made in the 100-year history of the governing board for the 100-year-old association for professionals in my former career of community destination marketing (DMO) occurred just a decade ago.

Quietly deep-sixed was a common code of ethics that every member DMO’s staff had been required to sign each year.  Ironically, it was the adoption of a code of ethics more than 90 years ago that helped spur formation of the organization and draw membership.

I still wasn’t aware when I served on that board a few years later or with incredulity I would have the code of conduct back up for reconsideration.

In Durham, my last DMO before retiring, we not only continued the practice but had a consultant update and expand it to a “best practice,” expanding the name to read Code of Ethics & Conduct.

Not only was this much improved version readopted by our governing board in Durham, but reading and signing the code was made mandatory for each board member as well.

Of course, DMOs individually must still show evidence of a code of ethics to be Internationally accredited.  But the DMAI board that deep sixed having one in common among members missed the point of why it had been so useful.

Its wasn’t about enforcement.  Should anything get appealed all the way to that level, someone is clearly over the line.  The real value of having one in common was as a communications tool among individual community DMOs when competitors crossed the line.

Sadly, I was forced to use it that way once to inspire a counterpart to stand up to unethical behavior among his staff and stakeholders that was undermining my community.

DMOs operate in the “commons,” and abiding by a common code of conduct permits them to be extraordinarily competitive while at the same time being cooperative, often lost on private sector executives or even local officials prone to be cutthroat.

It is not without reason that the general public is so uncertain of the ethical standards of officeholders, business executives and community boosters.

On another occasion, I used DMAI’s now defunct common code of ethics as the reason not to comply with a request from another community’s stakeholders that would have undermined it.

In this way, codes work best not as a means to resolve disputes once out in the open or as some kind of self-righteous one-upsmanship.  By then it is usually too late for someone to modify behavior without losing face and way too much energy goes in to proving who is right.

As an friend of mine in high office once remarked, “there is only room for one person at a time to stand on principle.”

Common codes of ethics and conduct work best as a gentle nudge when someone appears conflicted or passive about crossing the line such as I did in a very uncomfortable first meeting with a relocating hotel executive in the 1980s.

Chillingly, he unsuccessfully offered me a bribe if I would pave the way for him to jump onto a governing board, which was self-appointed.

Ironically, researchers have found that signing a code of conduct is no guarantee, nor is transparency, about avoiding conflicts of interest.

To bolster them, research has found that putting the signature line at the top of the document helps, but so does having people ask publicly for forgiveness.  Both are moral cues.

But too often those prone to stray merely find these enablers.

Unfortunately, within their communities, DMOs are still the exception  among business-related community organizations when it comes to codes of conduct, where among strategic partners they would come in even more handy.

When the association for DMOs adopted a code of ethics in 1923, members were routinely buying conventions (paying bribes or subsidies,) and selling facilities that didn’t exist or that they knew wouldn’t be ready.  “Anything goes” had been the model.

DMOs were first organized in the wake of the sense-of-place movement fueled during the Progressive Era, and an exhibit of the ideal city created by Fredrick Law Olmsted and a partner for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

By the 1920s, civic boosterism was in its heyday and mass leisure tourism by roadway was emerging, giving communities far greater potential than just the 10% or so that has always been represented by conventions.

But shady convention practices were only one way community destination marketing was being ethically abused.

Many who were marketing places as a commodity began to erode the very identities they had created by falling in with billboards and other forms of desecration and blight.

This was also when destination marketers fell under the charm of downtown developers and allies who, rather than funding stadiums, convention centers and cultural facilities themselves, began to push communities to fund them publicly instead.

While tourism was given as motive, as it is far too often today, researchers have uncovered that the real reason was to shore up and increase private property values.

Rather than focus on uniqueness, destination marketers falling under this spell became enablers of homogenization.

DMO’s would be well advised to reinstitute a common ethical standard but this time, part of the conduct should be a return to the primary role of safeguarding the distinctiveness of their communities.

A Vision Quest – Reflection and Renewal

Five years into retirement, people I run into often ask what I do now, “ride my Harley all day?”

Forgetting that for most people this is like saying “how are you?” as a form of greeting, I usually respond that I write these essays.

Follow up if any, is “about what?” but the answer is too eclectic to express in passing.

Frankly, I’m puzzled at the numbers across the globe who read these essays.  For me they are about self-discovery and revelation.

One person who really did want to know probed yesterday into how I decide on the topic each day.

He was puzzled and maybe even surprised at a habit I formed at age 19.  Each morning after waking, now after an early morning walk, I try to spend just a few minutes randomly reading a few passages from some inspirational volumes.

Some date to when the habit formed, such as these two tiny, tattered books I bought in the late 1960s filled with things such as, As A Man Thinketh, and other essays written by James Allen, as well as speeches such as Winston Churchill’s “Never Give Up” speech -

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honour…”

These books have been joined over the years by a collection of speeches and writings by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the King James version of the Bible, teachings of Confucius, the Book of Mormon, the diary and reflections of Marcus Aurelius or the Quran.

Some are historical by nature, such as the family heirloom, an 11-volume set entitled, The Story of Civilization, written by the Durant's between 1935 and 1975.

Never in sequence, I just open any one of them to a random spot and read, if only for ten minutes as I did this morning from a one I’ve read and re-read over the last fifty years, Letters from a Stoic by Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

Of course, the practice certainly isn’t unique.  I think I learned it from a friend, Bob Jensen, but these books feed me spiritually.

I can trace many of my poorest decisions to times when I was in too much of a hurry to feed this habit.

I read a few minutes from the books I mentioned not to judge them or their authors or as a zealot would, but because they center me.

Ultimately, the underlying thread tying them together, at least for me, is ethics.

I mentioned the Quran last on purpose, because I’m not Muslim.

It is just so different than most people think.  Many of the narratives evoke those similar in Jewish and Christian scriptures.  After all, it’s the same God.

Only when severely twisted and deformed by zealots, as many do with the Bible today, any of these scriptures can be remotely rationalized to condone what extremists do and have done for centuries in the name of their “faith.”

Americans get frustrated as we’re led running from one demon to the next. But any reaction to Muslims in general, instead of terrorism specifically, is because so many of us haven’t read what they believe.

Today, 37% of Americans have never left their hometown.  Nearly 6-in-10 have never lived anywhere other than their current state.

Nearly 12% have never even set foot outside their home state.

I have lived 60% of my life in two states, but like only 15% of Americans, I have lived in four or more states (seven in all, four in the first six years after forming that habit.)

More than 70% of North Carolinians, a state that adopted me 25 years ago, have never lived anywhere else, making it what researchers call the second most “sticky” state but also a “magnet.”

My bio-native state of Idaho, where my roots go back to before it even became a territory and given that name, is half and half, making it one of the top “magnet” states but not as “sticky.”

In the middle of the 1840s, all eight sets of my sixth-generation Mormon ancestors headed out over the Rockies thousands of miles away from their birthplaces to forge a new homeland along the slopes of 111th Meridian.

In the decades before, half of Americans moved.  In fact, 30% lived west of the Appalachians by 1824, and 40% or 7 million did by 1840.  But the area truly west of the Rockies would not reach that population until 1920.

Of course, this does not count members of 250 Native American tribes in the Far West who were divided up into nearly two dozen distinct language groups.

By 1850, my ancestors were joined by 3,000 others who had begun spreading out over 1,100 miles of the Rockies, and there were another 8,000 people living in Salt Lake City.

The population of the Far West was just reaching 179,000 people, 3/4th of whom were in California or New Mexico.  That was only .7% of the nation’s population spread over nearly 900,000 square miles, twice the area of the original 13 colonies. 

But Henry Ford’s great-grandson, reminds us in a TED speech, that in the decades before the Ford Model T, Americans rarely ventured more than 25 miles from home during their lifetime.

Back when I was just put in charge of my first community destination marketing organization in 1975, half of all Americans had never flown on a commercial airliner.  Even today, 30% of Americans have never flown.

Of those who do fly, nearly half don’t in any given year, primarily due to the hassle it has become.

That’s what makes the prophet Muhammad particularly impressive.

In his early 20s, he was living at a time roughly midway between the looting of Rome by Visigoth terrorists and militants and the birth of my 38th great-grandfather Charlemagne, who would turn the corner on the Dark Ages of Western Europe.

Back then, Muhammad was a business manager for trade caravans working 3,000-mile trade routes running high along the eastern slopes of the Sarawat Mountains that rise abruptly to 12,000’ from the Red Sea.

North, the routes ran during the summer, south during the winter and to and from what are now Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

During the time of his first visions, Muhammad had long been gleaning narratives, beliefs and ethical codes from a diversity of faiths along the full length of these journeys and during the merchant fairs at each stop.

Of course, one doesn’t have to travel today to broaden his perspective and get spiritually renewed, especially when so many places have exchanged integrity and authenticity for the turnoff of lines/crowds, consumption, fantasy and sameness.

Even the reflection and renewal I find each dawn as I loop through heavily wooded Rockwood Park resting at the base of two converging ridgelines where I live not far from downtown Durham is validated by science.

Research conducted both before the Great Recession and six years later shows that it greatly accelerated the paradigm shift in the kinds of destinations Americans prefer, now trending more toward “places that are restful and relaxing” being a priority with activities “off the beaten path.”

Even those intent on activities are looking for things “out of the ordinary,” with more than 3-out-of-4 seeking to “relax and unwind,” and 6-out-of 10 seeking to “learn something new.”

Even the vast majority of those planning to splurge seek less stress, enrichment, engage with loved ones and avoiding crowds.

Couple this with findings that 73% of visitors participating in activities, attractions and events prefer real or authentic experiences compared to the 21% who prefer fantasy, and the road to destination appeal is clear.

Travel, no matter how far, at its best can be what Dr. Scott Russell Sanders calls a “vision quest” in his essay, “The Geography of Somewhere,” where I was in the audience when the speech was first delivered.

In part, my early morning habit is a vision quest.  So are the essays I post on this blog.

The Life Skill We All Must Recognize

As a guest, I was standing at the back of a gathering recently to celebrate the anniversary of a popular landmark when a state legislator whispered in my ear that it was odd there was no acknowledgement given for those who paid the biggest price to clear the way for the project.

I smiled and whispered back to my friend that as he well knows from his work as a lawmaker, there is typically no reward forthcoming when the feelings or opinions leading up to a decision are mixed or pluralistic.

The “are you fur us or agin us” part of our human nature usually masks how difficult some decisions are, even when they end up being “fur.”  People unwilling to examine self-biases rarely award points to those disposed to critical thinking.

Just ask Mayor Bill Bell, whose nearly 40-year career in public service to this community was punctuated midway through by two years of exile because after much soul-searching, he courageously came down on the side of an imperfect and highly controversial formula for a school merger.

At the event I attended, I tested a theory about how revealing feet are to body language.  It turned out to be a very accurate way to ascertain how genuine, open and accepting people are.  Even on the cusp of the South, where I have lived for nearly 25 years, it is almost impossible to tell otherwise.

I picked up that tip much too late to be of use in my long ago concluded forty-year career in visitor-centric community economic and cultural development.

It comes courtesy of Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman, a former behavioral change therapist who is now an author, teacher and speaker.  She coaches executives on a variety of topics including how to read non-verbal communication.

About half way through my career, a specialist reviewing my results on an in-depth Myers-Briggs test, warned me that being an “x” on two of the four spectrums, “introvert-extrovert” and “judging-perceiving (tactical-strategic)” would lead some people to distrust me.

Many, maybe even most, human beings tend to think in “either/or” terms as they do with “fur or agin.”  An “x” meant that on any given day or several times a day I might swing between “strategic” to “tactical” or “quiet/introspective” and “outgoing” and back.

This expert’s warning was that either/or people might view that as duplicitous or deceptive.  He was right.  In fact, during my career one of the people attending the recent event had warmed me,  referring to a couple of people trying to get me fired at the time, that “they just don’t trust you.”

Last summer while spending a week at a Rocky Mountain lake in the Pacific Northwest, I read Dr. Goman’s newest book entitled The Truth About Lies in the Workplace but found it applied just as well to the broader workplace in my former field of community marketing which included stakeholders such as elected officials and strategic partners.

In community marketing, an exec is charged with fueling the local business climate and expanding the local tax base, all the while safeguarding and promoting the community’s sense of place.

All of this must be done while not really being in control of anything and expressing not only your own opinions (hopefully informed by data) but also faithfully advancing the collective policies and opinions of a governing board.

Sound like fun?  It was incredibly challenging and fulfilling!

I highly recommend reading the book, especially for anyone who thinks they don’t lie at some level because it documents using scientific studies that we all do, and not just to children at this time of year.

Unfortunately, most in that category may be equally good at self-deception or don’t give a damn.

As the book details, “extroverts lie at a higher rate than introverts, intelligent people are better able to handle the cognitive load imposed by lying and manipulative people or those overly concerned with impression tell more lies.”

If those shoes don’t fit, the book also notes that some professions are more prone to lying including evangelists (including I presume those sermonizing on behalf of community’s development and revitalization,) sales people and marketers, politicians, company or organization spokespersons and of course, actors and poker players.

My experience tells me that representatives of special interests especially adept at the “push and shove” of lobbying would make the list.

The book deals with lies both at a strategic level called deception and lies at a day-to-day tactical level.  Both are life skills learned in childhood as a means of gaining advantage.  This includes omission, spin, hyperbole, withholding, glossing, misinformation and many other techniques that are used to simply gain advantage.

Manifesting infallibility is itself a form of lying as is backstabbing.  In studies, nearly half of those surveyed admit to lying but it may pay to be especially beware of the half who refused to admit it.

They are likely to be particularly creative and adept at rationalizing “means” by the “ends” they are meant to accomplish.  By noting the universality of lying and deception in everyone at some level, the book doesn’t seek to lower the bar on ethical behavior but sensitize us to be able to spot egregious deception.

It is best read in the spirit of self-reflection and introspection.  Unfortunately, for many unable to admit to being human or with a tendency to self-righteousness, reading it may only serve as an enlightening enabler.

However, I would add it to any must-read list of management books.  It is especially appropriate for anyone in economic development including both supply-side and my former specialty on the demand-side.

I definitely recommend reading the book not just in terms of your workplace but the broader community context in which one may work.

It may even aid in formation of New Year’s resolutions.  No lie!

“The Globalization of Indifference”

I have it on good authority that many of those people who line up days in advance outside of “big box” retailers for Black Friday sales specials endure the wait so they can buy tens of thousand of dollars in merchandise.

The items are quickly shipped to other countries where resale will double the return on their investment.  Puts a whole new spin on the holiday spirit and an exclamation point on what Pope Francis recently bemoaned as the “globalization of indifference.”

However, studies have shown that making actions transparent backfires as a means to discourage ethical behavior due in part to what Dr. George Lowenstein, a behavioral economics researcher at Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Behavioral and Decision Research calls “motivated bias.”

He is famously quoted as saying, “Transparency is well and good, but accuracy and objectivity are even better.”  It turns out that one person’s transparency can be an enabler for other people to not only cross the line but feel good about it.

I know - I’ve always been drawn to the counterintuitive when revealed by data, which explains my interest in a great website, EthicalSystems.org, a collaboration by more than 20 researchers, most at business schools, including Dr. Dan Ariely in Durham, North Carolina where I live.

Ariely gave a speech a year ago about “what makes us feel good about our work.”  His research shows that motivation is about much more than payment.  It also involves “meaning, creation, challenge, ownership, identity, pride etc.”

This was certainly true in my now-concluded forty-year career in visitor-centered cultural and economic development, and one reason I always employed MBWA (management by walking around).

It wasn’t to monitor employees as much as to answer questions they might have, give feedback, encourage entrepreneurial thinking and help resolve any obstacles, including the need for any additional resources or support.

A few may have viewed it as micromanaging but as Hertz CEO Mark Frissora explained in an interview this month for McKinsey and Company (paragraph breaks are mine):

“I have to get ‘too involved’ in the business because I’m setting the strategy.

If I don’t understand the business, then I’m a poor manager and I’ve failed as a leader. It’s critical that leaders spend a lot of time where the work actually gets done—that they get into the guts of the business and see what happens there.

The further down the chain you go, the easier it is to see how your strategy might not work the way you’d intended. You might even discover that the strategy itself is backwards.

You always walk away with a new insight or a new opportunity.”

He manages 41,000 people.  In my career I never managed more than 30 and the average was below 20, but one of the reasons I found MBWA effective was to resolve any ethical issues in real time.

Ethical behavior has always been important to community destination marketing.  In fact, the association of community marketing organizations (DMOs)was organized 100 years ago primarily to create and embed a code of ethical behavior for members.

Up until a decade ago, every employee of each member organization was required to sign and return this code of behavior.  This process seems to have fallen through the cracks during a leadership change or worse, vetoed by those walking too close to the line.

However, at the organization where I worked up until retirement, we deepened the code and continued the practice of re-signing it each year.  The organization's governing board adopted a similar practice for each newly appointed member.

It would be a good idea on the 100th anniversary for Destination Marketing Association International to update that code and to reinstitute having the staffs of member organizations sign it annually.  As a template, it could use this best practice example.

Research shows that a code of ethics is more effective if signatures are required and especially if the signature is at the very top of the document rather than at the end, which is more customary.

During the latter stages of my career there were persistent rumors within the development sector of another community with which I was familiar that one of my peers in economic development was taking money off the books from a special interest.

I never gave it credence because I knew that money was far from being the primary motivation for this peer, but a soon-to-be published study by Harvard researchers explains why “reputational risk” may be the best way to ensure ethical behavior, especially among very “successful, higher-status” executives.

The more successful a person becomes and the higher they climb in the social hierarchy of an organization or a community, the more likely it becomes that they will be tempted to engage in deception to maintain the appearance of success.

This is why a code of ethics, especially in smaller organizations, must be backed up by a strict separation of accounting and performance reporting controls and board officer review of the CEO’s expense account.

Also essential is that CEO performance evaluations involve each member of the entire board through a mechanism that provides anonymity and eliminates politics.  And if need be an examination of personal bank accounts if questions of objectivity are ever raised.

Much of what we call corruption is perfectly legal, including Black Friday.

One Degree Separation From Tom Butters

Coming out of a wedding ceremony last weekend in historic Safety Harbor, Florida, I walked for a time next to someone who had traveled twice as far to attend as I did from Durham, North Carolina.

Before I could note my bonafides among the “Cod Fishers” by explaining that the town where she lives lies midway along a line of settlements by my ancestors stretching from Topsfield in the mid-1600s to the northern reaches of The Last Green Valley in the 1840s during which they headed out to my native Rockies, my new conversationalist stunned me with an even closer degree of separation.

When she noted that her husband was friends with a former athletic director at Duke University located where I live, I stunned her back when I immediately replied Tom Butters, a friend and mentor during my first decade here as head of Durham’s community destination marketing agency.

I marvel now even in retirement at how readily officials such as Tom and then Duke President Dr. Keith Brodie were to embrace me and the new organization that I had been recruited to jump-start in 1989.

They granted me instant credibility and the benefit of the doubt on many occasions.  I remember once when I was defending a Duke decision not to pursue a large event, a large donor who that made unhappy referred to me by a pejorative and Duke replied, “Yes he may be, but he is our a**hole.”

Tom should have already been famous to me when I arrived.  He had pitched during the early 1960s for the Pittsburg Pirates in the Major Leagues.  I am a lifelong New York Yankee fan but followed Pittsburg back then because the Pirates starred another Idaho native, Vern Law, who pitched in the same rotation.

Butters also played with Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell, the latter whom I would meet at a Bulls game shortly after I arrived in Durham, as well as Bill Mazeroski, who had beaten the Yankees in the 1960 World Series with a homerun in the bottom of the 9th inning.

While in the minors, Tom had played for Salt Lake City (AAA) as well as Asheville (A) and Charlotte (AAA) during which time he completed his college degree by completing one semester a year.

In his first game in the “big leagues” he faced a handful of L.A. Dodgers in relief who had cut their teeth in Spokane (AAA,) the closest thing at the time to a professional baseball team for my native Idaho.

He gave up a single to Maury Wills, got Wally Moon on a pop up and walked Frank Howard between strike outs to Tommy Davis and Ron Fairley.  Next, Tom helped defeat the San Francisco in his first start.

My post-wedding conversationalist's husband had been roommates with Tom when he was a star pitcher for Ohio Wesleyan.

Tom had come to Duke shortly after his MLB pitching career was cut short by a neck injury that resulted from a car accident on his way to spring training.  Ironically, this occurred in Fayetteville, North Carolina, an hour and a half south of Durham, where we would one day meet.

At Duke, Butters headed special events for Duke athletics and for a time coached the baseball team under famed athletic director Eddie Cameron.  Yup that Cameron.

By 1977 he was named athletic director.  In 1980 he recruited the then little-known and now hall of fame basketball coach, Mike Krzyzewski, who also became a good friend shortly after I arrived in Durham,  just before winning his first of four national championships.

Upon my arrival, Tom immediately grasped the relationship between promoting Duke and my role in promoting Durham overall.  His forte had been development and he understood the innate connection between a university and its community.

He also appreciated that, as was our policy, the organization I represented then would never pursue or commit to an event that required Duke facilities without clearing it with Duke in advance.

University facilities are an incredible asset to a community marketing organization but rarely are they sitting idle.  Booking group business is about fit not just “big game hunting.”

Many communities not only put their own stakeholders on the spot by pursuing events that are not a good fit and without first clearing availability, but push ethical boundaries even further by bidding on events too large for them to host on their own.

They can only make it work by incorporating facilities in nearby communities, but often before clearing them with counterparts, thus putting entire regions and states on the spot.

Durham collaborated with not only other destinations in its metro area but destinations in a nearby metro in designing shared bidding guidelines and procedures on mega-multi-city events.

In the end, these guidelines were signed off on by not only other community marketing organizations but respective chambers of commerce and university athletic directors.

Tom was an inspiration for this collaboration just before he retired in 1998, little more than a decade before I would.  He set the standard for Duke’s success not only on the fields of competition but in the classroom and in his community.

He was also an incredible mentor.

Work Hazards

Work can be hazardous to your health and I don’t say that just because I retired from a forty-year career to move on to researching and writing eclectic essays for Bull City Mutterings.

Using swabs in the typical workplace, researchers determined that the average person touches 300 surfaces every 30 minutes becoming exposed to 840,000 germs.

That’s more than 13 million germs each workday, and that doesn’t count the germs transferred when shaking hands with someone who doesn’t always wash up.

The biggest source of germs?  Break room faucets.

I recently had my shots to inoculate me from getting the flu and pneumonia just as a text arrived from my health insurance provider with the tip that regular hand washing with soap could save more lives than any vaccine.

Unfortunately, studies show that only 78% of workers say they wash their hands often and surveys reveal that 1-in-3 have been observed by coworkers leaving restrooms without washing their hands or using sanitizer.

Researchers have learned that “normative messaging,” e.g., reminding people to wash up and telling them “why,” is effective, increasing that behavior by 20%.  Giving the percentage who do isn’t as effective as just the subtle reminder of “what to do.”

It also appears that the “observer effect” is just as powerful.  Read Kevin Charles Redmon’s blog at Pacific Standard for links.

Dr. Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics researcher who is based in Durham, North Carolina, where I also live refers to this as “reputational risk,” in his book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty.

This is the single most powerful influence to ensure ethical behavior.

Judging from what my lobbyist friends tell me about a few of their colleagues, especially those roaming free in local government, I suspect there is a correlation between sliminess and those who are too important to stop and wash their hands.

In her book You – According to Them published last year, Sara Canady explains that these people suffer from the “Don’t Fence Me In” syndrome.

They bully people, often in view of officials and under the noses of the news media because they feel entitled – entitled to operate under a separate set of rules.

They feel invulnerable because they are henchmen for powerful interests who would never sanction their behavior but use them anyway, giving them “plausible deniability” as protection from risking their own reputations.

Because people turn a “blind eye” or are embarrassed to report them, or are so revolted they just abandon the civic process entirely, this crowd feels no reputational risk.

And from my observations, they also don’t wash their hands either.

Contrasting Americans in 1943

I guess I’m not surprised that most Americans seem more exhausted and detached rather than incensed at what’s happening in Syria.  I certainly have been.  Forces that gridlock us today seem eerily similar to those following the First World War, which resulted in the creation of modern-day Syria.

For more than a decade now, Gallup polls have shown that fewer than a third of Americans think our country should build democracy abroad.  Barely half want us even to defend human rights.

These findings remind me though of another poll in the spring of 1943, barely 18 month after America had entered WWII and still two years before its conclusion.  First, some context might be useful.

In the years between the world wars, America had been gridlocked by a blend of isolationists.

This included Republicans who blocked the League of Nations and conservatives from both political parties who demonized immigrants and immigration while promoting economic segregation during a Gilded Age not unlike the one spawned over the past three decades.

This isolationist blend also featured hate groups such as the huge second coming of the Ku Klux KIan along with over 100 groups forcefully promulgating anti-Semitism, ultimately including both Holocaust enablers and deniers.

Caring Americans did not have near the intensity or energy that the vast majority who were self-centered, intolerant, inflexible and bigoted did.  Sound familiar?

In 1939, a poll of Americans was conducted by Elmo Roper, who pioneered the first scientific national opinion polls.  It was taken a few months after Nazi Germans had herded nearly 30,000 Jewish people into one of three concentration camps.

One was Dachau which my father’s U.S. Army battalion would liberate seven years later (one of his photos of a gas oven there is shown above.)

Even after news reports of this Kristallnacht spread here, the poll showed that fewer than 4-in-10 Americans felt Jews should be treated like other people and 53% believed they were different and should be “restricted.”

Ten percent even wanted them deported from America.   In May of that year, Southern Senators threatened President Roosevelt, if as indicated, he dared grant permission for a ship of Jewish refugees including many incarcerated in Dachau to dock in America.

Entry into the war chastened Americans and within a year and a half, another poll by Roper showed that three quarters felt that after the war, American should play a larger global role.

Nearly the same proportion believed America should “plan to help other nations get on their feet,” and half concurred with active involvement in an International organization with “a court and police force.”

President Roosevelt’s moral leadership was also rewarded with 7-in-10 approving of his handling of the war and 2-out-3 favoring a fourth term.  Most of the wars since then such as Vietnam and Iraq haven’t met the moral leadership test.

Some presidents even bucked public opinion to keep us out of war, such as when retired Five Star General Dwight D. Eisenhower, eager to end the Korean War, brushed aside a poll showing half of all Americans willing to drop “the bomb” on what was then termed Red China.

Recently President Obama has tried to do the same while also recognizing moral imperatives.  Americans seem to have grown weary of war, even in response to moral obscenities such as those taking place in Syria.

Or maybe as Winston Churchill famously said – “…Americans will always do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”

In his white paper on Moral Courage, Dr. Rushworth Kidder, founder of the Institute for Global Ethics in 1990, makes the case that moral courage is as important as physical courage but it deals with intangibles, values and convictions.

A friend of mine, Ryke Longest, who heads an interdisciplinary clinic and teaches at Duke University Law School here in Durham where I live, teaches his students this “truth”

“The only fights we surely lose are those we surrender by doubting the value of courage.  Courage is not foolhardiness.  Courage is not bravado.

Courage is the notion that some things worth fighting for are worth risking everything in the battle.  The problem of our present is not unique in history, but rather a common theme recurring through the centuries.”

He goes on to a describe a cycle that repeats itself historically – “Fear creates greed for power.  Greed seeks power.  Power stifles justice.  Justice finds a champion.  Champion encourages ordinary people.  Ordinary people overthrow the greedy.”

If you never had a chance to hear professor Longest, here are two inspiring clips, one from the Wizard of Oz and the other Henry V that he uses to make this point.

I have faith that once again and soon, Americans will find their energy and intensity to stand up for their convictions.

Authenticity Means Walking the Four-Way Walk

The irony of a huge message greeting travelers as they approach Downtown Durham, NC has been on my mind since Friday.  Shown in the image in this blog, it was erected by the District level of Rotary International over the objections of a great number of Durham Rotarians.

Even if Rotarians here, including many in leadership positions, hadn’t vociferously objected when the plan for the billboards was first floated, District 7710, an umbrella serving 44 autonomous clubs in the north-east-central piedmont region of North Carolina, should have known better than to use billboards to carry its message, especially in Durham.

In their just-published book entitled Can’t Buy Me Like: How Authentic Customer Connections Drive Superior Results, Bob Garfield and Doug Levy make an observation of which Rotary should take note:

“Now marketers can and must define their brands not by ads…but by their core purpose.”

In his related editorial in USA Today yesterday, Garfield, who is also co-host of NPR’s On The Media and a veteran journalist who covers marketing in such publications as Advertising Age, notes that “the public now evaluates brands more on how they conduct themselves in the world than on the intrinsic qualities of the goods and services themselves.”

The Rotary billboard message’s intent was to stimulate membership interest but to me, and I believe to the younger audiences to which it is trying to appeal, the organization’s use of that medium is not only guaranteed a high turn-off to turn-on ratio but it violates three elements of The Four-Way Test of core values to which Rotarians recommit during weekly meetings:

Is it FAIR to All Concerned?

No!  It is an insult to Durham, which banned outdoor billboards in 1984.  When the courts approved their removal, lobbyists for the outboard billboard industry aided by copious amounts of campaign donations persuaded the NC General Assembly to make that impossible.

So Durham is forced to wait for the remaining 89 out of 200 to fall down over time or be removed when roads are widened.

Will it build GOOD WILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

No!  Not only is it offensive to Durham residents, it runs in the face of the 8 out of 10 North Carolinians who view billboards as detracting from the appearance of communities.

Billboards are viewed by many as “desecration marketing” and unethical because they not only create blight but because their owners destroy roadside trees, generating air and water pollution.

Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

No!  Only .2 percent of Americans find billboards useful during the course of a year.  Even utilization by small businesses has fallen to less than 3% because thoughtful marketers realize that not only will a billboard message turn off more than 8 consumers to every 1 for which it may appeal but the stigma accrues to the brand (in this case Rotary) and not to the billboard company.

Conservative guru William F. Buckley wrote that “billboards are acts of aggression, against which the public is entitled, as a matter of privacy, to be protected…”

Advertising legend Howard Gossage decried the existence and use of outdoor billboards noting that - “Outdoor advertising is peddling a commodity it does not own and without the owner’s permission: your field of vision.”

It is possible that Rotary wasn’t aware of where Fairway, the out-of-state owner of the billboard in question, would place its message.  It should have.  It should also have been wary of the complimentary or reduced cost space the outdoor billboard industry provides to non-profits as a means to resurrect what is left of it image and create the misimpression of disloyalty to community values.

Maybe Rotary felt enabled and Fairway emboldened to disrespect Durham, because the community’s downtown advocacy organization, though taxpayer-funded and fully-aware of local sentiment, has for years been too lazy to change out a depiction of an outdoor billboard as art work on its homepage long after being reminded of Durham values.

When serving as president of the largest and oldest of Durham’s five rotary clubs nearly a decade ago, I learned the hard way when consulting Rotary officials up line on controversial matters, that some were fearful of taking a stand, even when to do so meant being consistent to the organization’s core values.

Rotary wasn’t that way back when 16 Durham business leaders, including one in public office met on November 9, 1915 to organize the first Rotary Club here, just short of six years after the now 1.2 million strong worldwide organization was founded.

Beginning just before 1900, Durham like many places across the nation was caught up in what is now referred to as The Progressive Era.  This was an era of reform that spawned a surge of community pride and improvement initiatives across the nation including a concern for beautification and appearance.

The era spawned many community initiatives such as arts councils, city beautification and planning, community-destination marketing (convention and visitor bureaus,) forestry organizations and concern for urban forests, business advocacy organizations such as chambers of commerce and a push toward professional management for cities and counties.

Durham’s first Rotary Club was caught up almost immediately in a struggle between members focused on embedding ethics and ideals in its members and some who were more interested in projects.

For many clubs today, projects are almost entirely the focus which leaves many members and club leaders vulnerable to making mistakes that are contrary to the organization’s core values.  This includes using outdoor billboards.

However, even those who were project-driven when the Durham club was founded had a keen sense of the importance of improving appearance.  The first project was creation of a city park where the City Center District Bull Plaza is today, complete with a stone gazebo (which still exists today at Bennett Place State Historic Site in Durham.)

This is also the era when war broke out between those bent on blighting public roadsides with billboards for rent and those concerned with scenic rights and preservation.  Between 1900 and 1920, the number of cars nationwide increased by 1000 times and with them a network of roads.

By 1920 one candidate for governor in North Carolina was campaigning for voting rights for women and blacks as well as preserving scenic character as a means to make this a tourism state.

O. Max Gardner lost that election, but he ran again and won in 1928.  He then commissioned a report on the state of roadsides in North Carolina.

The report documents that even at the maximum speed limits of 35-40 miles per hour at that time, approaches to cities such as Charlotte and Asheville were blighted by a billboard every 4 to 5 seconds.  Nearly 350 scared the 30-mile route from the east to Durham alone.

Today we know a lot more about the scientific and economic value of eliminating billboards and preserving roadside views with trees and vegetation but it isn’t just the Rotary group that superimposed that billboard on Durham that is oblivious.

Wrapping itself in the cloak of states’ rights to avoid federal initiatives, the North Carolina General Assembly has ironically declared war on local communities even though that level of government is far more trusted among Americans.

The Republican-controlled legislature is not satisfied with its tragic authorization a few years ago for out-of-state billboard companies to override local ordinances and clear cut billions of dollars worth of roadside trees statewide.

Now the legislature is also trying to deny communities the right to protect neighborhood design standards to preserve sense-of-place.  They are also meddling with Charlotte’s management of its airport and trying to strip away the authority of elected school boards over construction of schools.

Many in this state, beginning at the highest levels and obviously including some Rotarians need to revisit The Four-Way Test.

The Optimum Size for Governance

When I was recruited to Durham, North Carolina twenty-three years ago to jumpstart the community’s first official marketing organization, I was impressed that the governing board numbered only seven directors, a best practice at the time.

Until recently, two other economic development-related non-profit organizations in Durham had boards of directors that numbered more than thirty and forty respectively, which was common in the 1960s.

In their book Race for Relevance, Harrison Coerver and Mary Byers peg the optimum number of members now for non-profit boards of directors at five.  A corollary among profit and non-profit organizations has always been, “the larger the board, the poorer the governance.”

Large boards are typically less effective at governing because they are inefficient, divert a lot of organizational resources and don’t optimize the potential of individual directors, in part because the larger the board, the more many members are simply disengaged.

One of many other gems in this 152-page book is that in addition to limiting the size of governing boards to five members, organizations are well-advised to hire a search consultant to identify and qualify potential board members based on competency.

Just a few of the criteria the authors suggest are:

• Do candidates have basic leadership skills? (not to manage but to lead)
• Do they have at least a three-to-five-year horizon in their thinking? (strategic and visionary vs. tactical)
• Do they know what it means to govern? (which is different and much more difficult than managing or executing)
• Do they grasp the concepts of conflict of interest and resisting special interests?

In other words, a good board of directors is comprised of members with specific board-level competencies.

The larger the board, the more likely members will show up late or leave early, get up to take calls, spend time texting or emailing and fail to read preparation materials or hold information and context approved in policies and plans.

In my experience and as noted in the book, there are several reasons beyond inertia or out-dated thinking that many organizations still retain huge boards of directors:

• Large boards are often used to create an audience for management to pontificate or as a means to preach to potential converts.
• Some organizations are adverse to debate or candor or conflict resolution.  The larger the board, the more issues go unquestioned.
• Some organizations eschew data-based decision-making and attempt instead to insinuate credibility or support for actions by parlaying the reputations of those on the board.
• Large boards are often used to mask a superiority complex on the part of some individuals or even organization-wide which is manifest in a type of attention-deficit or mission-creep.

Al Parrish, a friend and retired hospitality and healthcare executive in Anchorage, Alaska smilingly advised me once after an individual had carbon copied forty people on a memo meant to corner me, that “the merit of an idea is always inversely related to the number of people one feels compelled to carbon copy.”

His advice became even more cogent when business communication moved to external email in the early 1990s, shortly after I arrived in Durham.  People who “cc” scores of people are often adept at lobbying, and they utilize their large boards and public officials as a form of coercion.

In a somewhat related topic, the book The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty uses humor and plain language to overview a number of experiments and studies that reveal why and how people rationalize crossing the line when it comes to ethics.  Written by Dr. Dan Ariely, a behavioral economics researcher at Duke University and a Durham resident, the book was released in mid-2012.

In this book, Airely discusses how people use the human propensity for reciprocity “trying to engender a feeling of obligation in others.”  An executive from another organization with whom I worked during my career was a master at this both with his board and with elected officials.

He often chided me when frequently reminded that use of funds in my organization was restricted both by state legislation and governance policy, noting once that “no one will check.”  He viewed himself as very honorable but I guess to him violations of code were based only whether or not you were caught.

Large boards make malpractice such as this much easier.  They are also susceptible to the pressure of reciprocity.

Both of these books are well worth a read for anyone who is an executive or serving on a board of directors.

Reputational Risk – The Foundation of Ethical Society

A noted researcher on business ethics argues that the only sure-fire way to ensure ethical behavior is what we’ve all come to call transparency, a word so overused it is almost useless.

His description in a new book entitled The Righteous Mind is much more powerful:

“…the most important principle for designing ethical society is to make sure everyone’s reputation is on the line all the time, so that bad behavior will always bring bad consequences.”

For that nugget, the author, Jonathan Haidt goes back to 4th century BC and commentary by Plato’s older brother Glaucon.  For all of the codes of ethics, protestations, centers, seminars, books and workshops devoted to ethics, all that really needs to be done is to ensure “reputation is on the line all the time.”

In my experience, the more indignant a reaction is to questions about or suggestions of unethical conduct, the more likely it is that an individual or group of individuals is hiding something shady to protect their personal or associated reputations.

Reciprocity can be a positive outcome of groupishness but all to often it is an enabler of unethical conduct.

There is a reason that investigative reporting is so expensive and now so increasingly rare.  It takes a lot of time to get to the bottom of even the most seemingly transparent issue.  If you ever read one of those nonsensical, “he said - she said” news reports and wonder WTF, there is always more to the story and it usually relates to ethics.

While exploring the scores of different surveys on the website yourmorals.org that Haidt helped create, my eye was caught by one designed to score where a person stands on various business-related ethical issues.

It drills down on aspects such as usurping credit, taking favors, playing games, concealing misconduct by others and taking advantage of others.   In this one, the higher the bar, the more accepting you are of those behaviors.  It will be revealing even to someone tempted to try and game the survey.

The results (shown as an image in this blog) provide an individual score first (in green,) followed by the average for thousands and thousands of males (brown) and females (orange) who have taken the survey.  It even gives a result (not shown) about the perception one has of how accepting others are of unethical behaviors.

Both males and females who were accepting of those unethical behaviors on the survey believe that others are even more likely to be unethical.

I was always grateful that the Durham Convention & Visitors Bureau (DCVB), where I worked the latter half of my now-concluded career was created under state statute as a public authority with a governing board appointed by local elected officials according to a balanced set of categories.  Many such organizations and non-profits self-appoint all or most of their governing boards.

As a public authority, DCVB is not only subject to independent scrutiny such as annual audits but to the standards, requirements and additional scrutiny of the North Carolina Local Government Commission.  In addition, the organization undergoes regular in-depth diagnostics for aspects such as accreditation.

The Commission was created in 1931 in the depths of the Great Depression and it is the singular reason so many local governments and local authorities have such stellar ratings from independent agencies.

Unfortunately this isn’t always true of other DMOs or especially non-profits, even those contracted by local governments.  The Commission has made mistakes, usually under political pressure, but I would support efforts to involve it even more deeply and definitely more broadly in oversight of any public or non-profit responsible for the use of public funds.

As blogger Tom Fishburne humorously blogs today, trust today is very rare and he supports the concept that businesses and organizations should be required to earn trust before telling their stories.

To me, earning that trust begins with “making sure everyone’s reputation is on the line all the time.”