A Community of Integrity - ideas from Dean BrunerPosted: January 4, 2010 at 3:12 pm | byFiled under: Building a Business, Articles of Interest I am a big fan of Dean Bruner’s blog. I have always found his perspective insightful and interesting. His latest blog post on integrity seemed perfectly suited for the new year so I thought I would pass it on. Below is an excerpt - I recommend clicking to the link and checking out his other posts. http://www.darden.virginia.edu/html/DeansBlog.aspx Creating a Community of Integrity “We can afford to lose money. We can afford to lose a lot of money. But we cannot afford to lose one shred of our reputation. Make sure everything you do can be reported on the front page of your local newspaper written by an unfriendly, but intelligent reporter.”
– Warren Buffett [1] Last spring, a prospective student—someone who had been offered admission and was considering joining our community–approached me and said, “You talk a lot about ethics and integrity in your speeches, blog postings, and tweets. Does Darden have an ethics problem?” I replied, “No—precisely because we do talk about ethics and integrity pretty regularly. They are not values that we store in a cupboard and only bring out on ceremonial occasions; they are part of our daily life.” The person smiled politely and turned to someone else for conversation, giving no hint as to the kind of impression I had left. A community of integrity is not everybody’s cup of tea; almost certainly, we lose some students who won’t make a commitment to a high community standard. Thus, it was with a bit of surprise and satisfaction that I saw this person enroll last August. Does all our talk about ethics help or hurt us? A truism in management and family life is “if you can’t talk about it, it won’t get done.” Making progress on anything important is not a matter of … continue reading at http://www.darden.virginia.edu/html/deansblog.aspx?id=20752&blogid=198 (0)comments |