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A company's objective is to make a profit. When businesses are operated the right way, they can stay healthy for a long, long time. When they take short cuts, however, they sometimes see immediate benefit, but often long-term hurt...
Last week I wrote about ESPN's eleventh hour decision to back out of a documentary on concussions in the NFL. Sources say that it was the NFL who pressured the network to do this.
My opinion is that, since ESPN purports itself to be journalistically objective, then it was cowardly to bow to pressure from its largest customer and compromise its values.
I felt this weakened ESPN as an organization.
Several of you responded and asked if it was possible that ESPN had done the right thing for its people by preserving an important relationship with its most important customer, assuring an influx of money and job security.
Thus the conundrum...
Preservation of profit, stability and jobs (the very purpose of business) weighed against being principally honest. Tough choice sometimes to be sure.
But then, there has been virtually no unethical action taken in business that didn't have greater profit as its motive. Cheating, dishonesty, lowering of values are all generally spurred by making a better buck.
And, it can be argued, that that better buck is a way to preserve jobs. In reality, too often "preserving jobs" and "benefiting the employees" are smoke screens that cover a multitude of evils.
Big tobacco used that justification many years ago when it denied the validity of studies that proved that smoking cigarettes increases the chances of one contracting lung cancer. There was an industry to protect...jobs to save.
Why can't Nike et al employ sweatshops and use what amounts to slave-labor in third world countries? As long as it increases profit and secures jobs in America, right?
Steroids in baseball brought big contracts to the individuals and big crowds to the ballparks, thus creating and preserving jobs.
We all complain about TV news and how compromised it is. Its infotainment approach is all about ratings, money, profit, jobs.
You know the argument for slavery in this country was largely economic right? The plantations' profit-margin would be destroyed, and many would shut down if slavery was abolished. And so it was. But the south is healthier in the long run without slavery, yes?
I'm certainly not pretending to be a hero here, but I've put my own job security and the job security of those who work for me on the line as a consultant by telling CEOs what they don't want to hear. It cost me at least one client I know of.
I suppose I could coo in leaders' ears, sidestep the truth...but then I wouldn't be doing them any real good. Besides, I'd grow ill and choke on my own misinformation after a while.
I'm all about increasing profits, but just because something increases profits for the moment, doesn't make it the right thing to do.
I've seen it time and time again; companies that compromise their values end up rotting from the inside and are less healthy long-term.
Companies need to stand for something or someday they won't stand at all.
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