Diary of a Start-Up

Business ethics frequently remain as just airy ideals, trotted out insincerely at interviews or at company training sessions, or as unnoticed platitudes in glossy corporate literature.

These days it is increasingly common for pundits, from academic researchers through to organisational development consultants, to call for a greater emphasis on  business ethics - but there is a general vagueness about how they can be successfully operationalised.

A typical example of a corporate mission statement which ends up appealing to no-one because it tries to reach out in a -specific way to everyone would be: "We are a dynamic and progressive organisation which aims to be best in the field and to deliver exceptional customer service and value for money."

There is an implicit rallying call to excellence and to integrity but there is a complete lack of authentic resonance in vacuous statements such as these, which sadly decorate many a business plan and annual statement.

These days we all meant to have a big story, based on big goals, big values and a perfectly poised sense of exactly who we are and where we are going.

Sociologists call it Hypernormality - a sense that just being part of the crowd is no longer enough, a demand that each and every one of us is centre stage and comfortable both in the glare of public observation and within our own ambitious and solid personalities.

The precise relevance of these kind of frameworks of living was brought home to me again yesterday. I was delivering a corporate culture introduction seminar at the excellent and vibrant Liverpool Chamber of Commerce. It's one of those places whose own culture feels powerful and enthusing.

As ever, we got to talking about values - and, as ever, that is a much more difficult subject for people to get their heads around than is commonly acknowledged.

What is your DNA Failure Platitude?

I beg your pardon? - Are you asking me something about my heritage or my parentage?

No, I'm not - but I am inquiring about something fundamental to your business lineage and to your success prospects.

Let me explain. I've written before about Failure Platitudes, the tendency for fundamental flaws to get swept up in generalising excuses which hinder any precise analysis and remedial action.

They tend to operate across the areas of Leadership, Management, Strategy, Communications, Process & People. The kind of typical Failure Platitude tends to be along the lines of, "Everything round here is great except the people - you just can't get them to do anything." Obviously this is a nonsense; there are numerous organisations where people consistently achieve wonderful things together. Hence the problem lies elsewhere.

This kind of blanket, internal whitewashing greatly hinders the frank, co-operative and detailed conversations and initiatives that can lead to sustainable and superior corporate culture.

I visited the ambitious and on-the-ball East Cheshire Chamber of Commerce on Thursday to listen to a talk by Bob Stewart, he of commanding the UK's Nato contingent in the Bosnia horror affair back in the early 90s fame.

Now, to be totally honest, I am usually deeply uneasy about using military langague in business for the risk that a winning at all costs mentality creeps in and that anyone who is not right there with you is automatically the enemy.

It's a bit like sport - the military is another one of those areas which seems as if it might have close links to business practice and we can quite easily slide across high performance practices and the business world will be all the better and all the higher performing.

But it's not quite as simple as that - in relation to both sport and the military, the world of commerce is a more complex arena entirely and the games that we play in business need to be much more long termist.

I've been blogging about sustained action and sustainable motivation over the last week and some more ideas have developed over this weekend.

I was talking with my friend Richard Francis, whose early stage online letting agent and landlord services' portal is starting to show real momentum. This is because Richard is one of the best exponents of doing stuff I know - he is a master of sustained action. He tellingly said:

"I was thinking over New Year about how I am going to orientate myself into 2010. Now that we have our broad strategy proven, I am going to worry less about that. What I am going to do is to fill in as many little bits of the big picture as I can - but that's not a process that has any end.

"When I look around me I see that so many people think they are working towards an end point and they slow down and then they can get complacent, or never achieve any significant scale, or get swallowed by a new competitor. For me it's now about incremental and permanent growth in everything that I do."