Revenue and your character: How integrity drives your earning power

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There are two types of situations where, in your business life, you are faced with a decision that tests your integrity: the big decision situation, and the little decision situation. We'll look at these one at a time, but before we do, let's look at the root of integrity: our conscience.

Now, there are a lot of people who say that there is no "right" and no "wrong." But I believe that most of us - with rare, pathological exceptions - have a conscience. That conscience is that little ping we get when we are faced with a decision. We intuitively know what the right thing is, and what the wrong thing is. What we decide to do after we get that internal message is the true test of our character.

What does this have to do with revenue? Everything. Looking at revenue from the buyer's point of view, which is what I always do, I can say with confidence that every time someone makes a purchase, they want to make it from someone they trust. The more expensive or complex the purchase, the more trust plays a role in their buying decision.

If you're selling - and we're all selling, if we're in business - then this means that the more people trust you, the more you will sell. Seems simple enough, until you're faced with making one of those tough decisions. Which brings us to the big decision situation.

The big decision

Someone has just given you the opportunity to profit in a big way. Let's say they've asked you to join them in a business venture, but in doing so, you will have to betray the trust of someone else, because of an agreement you have with them. What should you do?

On one hand, the offer is attractive, and it could mean big bucks for you and your family. But you don't feel right about betraying the trust of someone you've already made commitments to. That's your conscience talking.

The minute you decide to ignore your conscience, you are headed for trouble, and not just for moral reasons:

1) The person you are betraying, when he finds out he has been betrayed, will never trust you again, and will tell others that you are not to be trusted. This destroys your credibility and reputation.

2) Here's the not-so-obvious part - the person with whom you have entered into the new business relationship now knows that you are willing to betray a trust. So that person won't trust you, either. He will be suspicious that you will betray him next, and will tell others that he isn't comfortable having to depend on you.

3) There is no such thing as a simple little lie. Telling the truth is pretty simple. Something happens, and when someone asks you, you say what happened. Or someone says something, and when someone asks you, you say what that person said. Or you think something, and someone asks you what you were thinking, and you tell the person what you were thinking. They now know what you know.

On the other hand, lies get complicated, really fast. Something happens, and you're embarrassed that you made a mistake, so you try to cover it up. The person you're talking to thinks, "Wait a minute, that doesn't make sense," or, "That's not what I heard/saw." So the person starts asking you questions. Now you have to tell more lies, to make the first lie sound plausible. From one tiny seed, the lie grows into a twisted tangle, as you attempt to cover up the simple truth. If you lie habitually, you will end up spending a large portion of your thinking time trying to remember what you told to whom, and you will live in constant fear that you will be found out.

If people see you facing up to a mistake you've made, apologizing, repairing the damage and never making that kind of mistake again, they will always trust you to do the right thing.

Little decisions every day

There's another type of situation where integrity comes into play: the "should I do it right or should I cut corners" situation. All day long, we are rushing around trying to meet our deadlines. The demands on our time just keep pouring in. More than once in any given day, we are faced with a decision: do this right, or let it go, even though it isn't quite right.

Now, I'm not saying that you should be such a perfectionist that you never get anything done. But you know - thanks to your conscience - when you've truly done something correctly and when you're about to cut a corner. And cutting corners, just like those little lies, have a tendency to turn into complicated monsters.

When you cut corners in one place, the next thing you do that relates to the first thing will also be compromised. I see this all the time in complex business transformation projects. Someone along the line decides that they won't bother to do something right. Subsequently, all the people who take that one thing and try to build upon it will run into problems, to the point where the entire effort can fail because that initial neglect snowballed. You will really have a mess on your hands, because you have to fix all the problems downstream of that first deliberate screw-up.

This is terribly costly. It poisons the entire work environment. It saps employee morale and energy; no one wants to work on a project that is going to hell in a hand basket. It forces you to take people away from revenue-producing projects and put them to work cleaning up the mess. The word gets out that your company has made this mistake, and people who hear the story - potential employees, customers, and business partners - are less likely to do business with your company.

Bean counters are notorious for purposefully cutting corners in order to save a penny here and there. They insist on a cheap, plastic part in a product "because it's inside - and no one will see it." Ultimately this "no one will know" decision leads to malfunctioning products, frustrated customers, many returns, and a tarnished, revenue-sapping reputation. In the end, everyone knows.

You may well ask, "What about costs? How can a company afford to 'do everything right'?"

My answer is there are two ways to cut costs. One is to look for every opportunity to pinch pennies, which can be taken to a damaging extreme. The better way is to be fanatical about efficiency and simplicity, which result in more cost savings than the cheapskate approach could ever net you.

Employees who work in "do it right" companies are usually encouraged to come up with new ideas on efficiency and simplicity, and they do. Their ideas can revolutionize an entire manufacturing method, whereas that cheap little plastic part can only shave a tiny fraction of the product's cost - while risking the company's hard-earned reputation for building products that work.

The next time you are tempted to cheat or betray someone, to cut corners, or to hide the truth, your conscience will give you a little tap on the shoulder. It won't be as obvious as the other voice that is saying, "What the hell - no one will ever know!"

But you know which voice is right. And there is no doubt in my mind - based on years of observing hundreds of businesses succeed and fail - that the revenues that come from doing it right are bigger and more dependable than any revenues you get from the dark side. Not to mention the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you have no one to fear, nothing to hide, nothing but a good future ahead of you, and great memories behind you.