Last week, Harvard’s Ben Heineman, Jr., shared his thoughts on improving business school education, namely by better integrating the skills taught in other professional schools such as law and public policy. He believes that doing so will produce better business leaders than many of those currently in power:
The fundamental problem in the financial meltdown is bad decision making by the CEOs and the boards and other top leadership on the allocation of capital and other fundamental tasks facing a corporation. We therefore really need to change the nature of leadership. Leadership is about integrating many perspectives to truly understand the nature of the problem. That broader perspective in defining problems will likely lead to better resolutions.
Another key to Heineman’s ideas about leadership is integrity. In his book High Performance with High Integrity, Heineman argues that acting with integrity is key to any business’ success. As he put it during our conversation:
Fusing high performance and high integrity is one of the foundational goals of capitalism. When you do that, you have the enduring trust of all the stakeholders vital to the success of the corporation. Obviously the shareholders, but also the employees, retirees, customers, the suppliers, the community, the media, the regulators. This is foundational.
Heineman says that companies must have “a culture where it’s understood top to bottom that doing it the right way is as important as doing it.” Here are three of his keys to ensuring that such a culture is in place:
- 1. Consistent and committed leaders: Integrity must drive the behavior of the company’s leaders. “It’s not just the aspiration, but it’s their own actions. That means they have to exemplify the values and not just talk about them,” says Heineman.
- 2. Make integrity a key to all company operations: “Whether it’s marketing or sales, manufacturing, IT or finance,” Heineman says that all areas of the company need to bear responsibility for “embedding those obligations [to integrity] into the business process.”
- 3. Give employees voice: Heineman advises, “Allow employees on all levels to express concern about the way the company is operating in a commercial sense or in an ethical/legal/financial sense. They need to do this without the fear of being retaliated against and with the confidence that their concern will be looked at carefully, professionally and promptly.”
