Hypocrisy

Special Halloween Edition

In the spirit of Halloween, a time of costumes, treats and tricks, I’m inspired to start a list of ways that organizations dress themselves up so that they appear to be what they are not. Some of these terms and concepts are familiar. Some terms I’ve invented (4, 5, 6) and two need better names (7 & 8).

1. Astroturfing: Pretending to be a grassroots organization when you are not, so that the organization looks like an authentic representation of citizens’ or consumers’ self-defined interests.. Examples include the Center for Consumer Freedom and Working Families for Wal-Mart .

2. Good-coating : Claiming that your products or services are socially-responsible or benefit society, when they don’t. A deceptive or misleading use of cause marketing.

3. Greenwashing : Misleading the public about the organization’s environmental practices or history, and/or misleading the public about the environmental benefits of your organization’s product or service. Similarly, the term green sheen describes when organizations attempt to appear that they are adopting practices beneficial to the environment.

4. Potemkins : Presenting your organization as being larger, more impressive, more positive etc. than it is (often through communication practices such as online presence, business address, promotional materials, etc.) The intent of the organization’s presentation not to convey truth but instead to misleadingly impress outsiders.

5. Reputation squatting ®: When a smaller or newer organization takes on some or all of the name of an older, larger and well-known organization that also has a positive reputation, when there is no relationship between the organizations. The intent is to free-ride on the benefits of the famous organization’s reputation. Examples include: Princeton Ski Shops, Princeton Driving School, and the Princeton Review college-preparation business . None of these organizations has any connection to Princeton University, but they all benefit from the positive halo of the Princeton name. An accidental example of negative reputation-squatting? Palin Syrah.

6. Trojan Horses: When the organization takes a name and a public profile designed to appeal to a certain values set, which covers its actual intentional antagonism to that value set. Examples include the American Pregnancy Association , TeenBrakes, and Care Net. A special type of Trojan Horse is the GONGO.

GONGO: Government-organized (GO) non-governmental organizations (+NGOs ) created by a government or by government officials, their relatives and friends, that support the government, often by using money intended for the civil society. [note: These are such an absurd contradiction that they'd be funny, if they were not so destructive of the concept of government for the people.]

7. "We just made it up, and we like it": When an organization creates a fake name, fake history, fake founders, fake heritage, etc. (often for marketing proposes) and then adopts this to help define the organization. Examples include Thornberg & Forester, Gilly Hicks, and The Heartland Foods Corporation.

8. Values Portfolio Contradiction: When an organization uses tactics that contradict their values, such as when PETA uses sexism & misogyny to promote animal rights.

More Kinds of Faking? What should be added to this list? Any good examples, or new types? Give us some good ideas, and I’ll send you some Snickers bars.

Happy Halloween!

The McCain Campaign has hired Obama supporters to work as as "paid volunteers ."  As reported by Tom Baldwin in the UK Times, and picked up by The Huffington Post and the Daily Kos, the McCain Campaign is paying temp workers $10 an hour to go door to door handing out absentee ballot requests. Although the hired volunteers work for the McCain Campaign and wear McCain-Palin campaign stickers, some of them actually support Barak Obama .

Paid volunteers are inauthentic.

Paid volunteers fake the expected relationship between the organization and the volunteer who represents the organization. Especially when they are working for an ideological organization, like a political campaign, paid volunteers need to act like and be perceived by others as supporters of the organization and its beliefs, even if they are not. The burden to them of "wearing the brand" of the ideological organization can weigh heavy on volunteers, asking them to be inauthentic to themselves.

As one woman on The Huffington Post concluded:

It’s a sad commentary on our country when people need work so much they will speak against their own ideologies just to collect $10 per hour!

Even more of a concern is that some of these paid volunteers are not only Obama supporters but also African-Americans. This is a concern because the (apparent) race-ethnicity of the "paid volunteer" campaign workers is interpreted by the potential voter who answers the door to infer that these particular African Americans have chosen McCain over Obama. The appearance of a supposedly volunteer campaign worker who is African-American contradicts the voter’s expectation that African Americans support Obama. (And over 84% of African-Americans support Obama, as of 10/21/08.)

The perception that these African Americans have repudiated Obama to volunteer instead for McCain adds extra power to the campaign workers’ perceived endorsement of McCain.

Paid Volunteers look like they support the cause even if they don’t.

When a campaign representative appears at a citizen’s door, the citizen usually assumes that the person herself/himself supports the cause they are there to advocate.  The volunteer is perceived to be someone who believes in the candidate so much that the volunteer will work for the candidate for free. The perception that paid campaign staff are volunteers adds additional power and weight to their inferred endorsement of McCain.

There is a long tradition of campaign workers being volunteers. Although campaigns do hire and pay some workers, it is understood, as one McCain organizer explained, that "paid staff don’t work. "  However, because it’s been hard for the McCain campaign to get enough volunteers, they have been hiring "paid volunteers". Paying for volunteers tactic not only gets the campaign more feet on the street, but also these paid volunteers make it look like support for McCain is more widespread than it actually is. The McCain campaign benefits from the additional staffing and also from the perceptions of broader support than what is real.

"Who You Are" is part of the implied endorsement

The campaign workers’ outward appearance is used as part of the persuasion process, even if the appearance is irrelevant (e.g., if the canvasser is pretty) or inferred (e.g., a uniformed Veteran campaigning against Obama). By using African-American temps who are not McCain supporters , the McCain campaign is playing on citizens’ assumptions about the race-ethnicity and cultural values of the campaign’s African-American hired help. In this way, the McCain campaign benefits from "who these paid volunteers are," particularly their race-ethnicity, to communicate a message that African-Americans support McCain and his policies — even where this is not true.

Two Messages for the Price of One

By hiring African-Americans as paid volunteers, the McCain campaign is getting a two messages for the price of one. The perception that these African-Americans  implicitly endorse McCain comes along with the perception that these African-Americans repudiate Barak Obama.

There are of course African-Americans who do support McCain.  These African-American supporters are authentically committed to McCain and his policies because they truly believe that McCain will represent their best interests, personally and perhaps even in terms of their cultural group.  But, adding ‘fake’ African-American supporters allows others to concluded that McCain has more minority support than he actually does, conveying a doubly inauthentic message.

It hurts to wear the brand that contradicts your beliefs.

Some of the paid volunteers described their discomfort with being McCain Campaign employees:

"This is embarrassing. We’re doing this because we have to live. At least none of our friends can see us."

Asking Obama supporters to override their own beliefs to sell the competition sets up contradictions for these employees.  The employees have to appear as though they believe in a candidate that they in fact don’t support, which can be emotionally and philosophically burdensome. But the burden is even worse when the employees are actually Obama supporters. Then, the employees are actively working against their values, beliefs and best interests.  The employees not only have to endure the self-contradictory behavior of looking "like the brand" by presenting beliefs that are not their own, but also they must manage the reality that they are hurting themselves.

Asking African-American Obama supporters to override their beliefs adds an extra sting.

These employees must cope not only with pretending to support McCain and being assumed to repudiate Obama, they must also cope when others assume that they are betraying their social identity group.  Of course, no African-American automatically supports Obama just because they are both Black. Rather, most African-Americans support Obama because they believe that Obama uniquely understands the position of their group within US culture and history, in part (but not only) because he identifies as Black. For an African-American citizen to reject Obama as a candidate can be seen as them rejecting the idea that being Black matters, either to the citizen or to the candidate.

What must it be like to know that you working against your own candidate and against what you perceive as your best interests, just because you desperately need the money?  Isn’t this just another kind of exploitation?

How could the McCain Campaign be more Authentic?

Should the McCain campaign hire only white workers who actually support McCain?

No one who needs a job should be pushed aside because their beliefs don’t match those of the organization, or because members of their social identity group don’t match the organization’s expected target demographic. The job market is too small, and grocery bills are too high, for this to be the best option.

However, perhaps the McCain campaign could put these temporary workers in different jobs, where the work they do has nothing to do with the assumptions anyone would make from their appearance or about their beliefs. Better to give these workers hourly jobs where there is no assumption that the job holder endorses the candidate…. jobs like coordinating canvassing routes, organizing mailings, and data entry. After all, these jobs all pay the same, and none is a stepping stone to a career.

For jobs with citizen contact, the campaign should strive to hire employees who are genuine, authentic McCain supporters, if at all possible. Better to pay people to promote what they believe in than to pay them to lie.

Alternatively, the McCain campaign could give each hired hand a name tag that reads:

I am a paid employee of the McCain campaign.
No personal endorsement of McCain should be inferred.

That would be the most authentic, least misleading, and least exploitative option. Do you have other ideas?

(If you enjoyed this post, please consider Digging it. I’d love for more people to read it. Thanks. )

For an interesting contrast with the Obama Campaign, check out my earlier post: Obama’s Website Made Me Cry .

For more information: There is a video by Sam Mayfield , a reporter from UpTake and the Center for Media & Democracy , available on YouTube.  She interviews a McCain campaign official who explains that "paid staff don’t work" (at 0:50). He argues that the job of these paid employees is to retrieve absentee ballot requests, and as such "It’s functional in nature" he explains. "It’s not about persuasion." Yet the employees all wear McCain-Palin campaign stickers on their shirts, putting the lie to the claim that the employees’ aren’t expected to appear to endorse the candidates.

The Body Shop is Republican? Anita Roddick must be rolling over in her grave.

Released last week were the results of a study that shows how organizations have supported the Republican and Democratic parties. The data include direct corporate support (through Political Action Committees) and/or the support of these organizations’ employees (through individual donations). You can check our the data at GoodGuide.com.

As I scanned the dynamic graphic that shows where organizations fall on the spectrum from Democratic to Republican, there are a number of completely predictable placements. No one would be surprised to see Dreamworks Entertainment firmly in the Democratic column, or Cracker Barrel in the Republican column.

However, could somebody please explain —

What’s The Body Shop doing over with the Republicans?

If the Body Shop stands for sustainability, fair trade , and defending human rights, what does it mean to say that it supports the Republican Party?

Another surprise? Whole Foods is almost as Republican (45%) as it is Democratic (55%).

This data on political contributions suggest that some organizations lean one way, while our beliefs about who they are (e.g., their corporate images, their organizational identities) lean the other way.

Contradictions Suggest Inauthenticity

Where the political leanings of an organization are different from what their identity suggests, we are getting a contradictory message. What we’d infer from the organization’s behavior does not support what we believed about the identity, because the brands of the products and/or the identity of the company ’say’ one thing while the organization’s behavior says another. These contradictions can confuse stakeholders.

When the messages are contradictory, we can expect Inauthenticity, so that:

• Customers will be confused about what values their purchases are supporting.
• Customers will be confused about what their purchases from this company are communicating. They will ask themselves "what am I telling other people about who I am by buying these products?
• Current employees will wonder: Who is this organization I’m part of, really?
• Current employees will wonder: What does being part of this organization say about me? How does it brand me?
• Potential employees and potential business partners will be surprised, and maybe even turned off, if they were counting on the organization to share one set of values or the other.
• Any stakeholder will wonder: Which matters more, politics or identity? Is politics or corporate image a better predictor of the organization’s actual values and priorities?
• The organization itself will be confused about which of its values its customers are supporting, its employees are connecting through, and which should guide its future.
• The organization’s cultural (value based) influence will be confusing.

Alignment suggests Authenticity

In contrast, where the political leanings of the organization and the organization’s identity are aligned, we would expect authenticity, so that:

• Customers will be confident about what values their purchases are supporting.
• Customers will be confident about what their purchases from this company are communicating.
• Current employees will feel secure that they know what the organization values (whether or not they individually share these values), who the organization is, and how the organization will behave in the future.
• Potential employees and potential business partners will be confident that they can count on the organization to act according to its values.
• Any stakeholder will trust that the organization to be who it says it is and to act accordingly.
• The organization itself will be clear about what it values, and how these values will direct its future actions.
• The organization’s cultural influence will be focused and more effective.

Some important caveats:

Your ’surprise’ mileage may vary. What I found surprising was the contrast between what I thought these organizations stood for (i.e., the brand, their image, their corporate values) and what their pattern of political contributions showed that they supported. If you have different beliefs about these organizations, based on your own knowledge of them, your reactions may vary.

GoodGuide is itself a "progressive" organization. "GoodGuide provides the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home." GoodGuide is also a "for benefit" corporation (a B Corporation ). The political leanings of the data gathering organization do not necessarily influence the data collected, how the data are presented, and how the data are intended to be used… but neutrality and/or preference must be demonstrated, and not assumed.

The data is not all that solid. For some organizations, the actual amount of the contributions is meager, and for several it appears that only a few individuals’ contributions composed the whole assessment. (For example, some organization’s total contributions are $2,000 and $3,000.) And, I’d be more inclined to conclude that the organizations’ political leanings were displayed through PAC contributions (which are made by the organization itself). However, the quality of the data does not detract from the discussion of how contradictions between political contributions and organizational identity/image might affect perceptions of authenticity.

Action steps? Well, I think I either have to throw away my Peppermint Foot Scrub, or donate more money to the Democrats to compensate for buying a Republican product. And, at Whole Foods, I’ll just be ambivalent about the politics and continue to be annoyed by the prices.

Organizations need to be aware that their political contributions will brand them and influence how stakeholders feel about them. Organizations should consider whether their political contributions are aligned with their actual or desired identity, and make adjustments where they conflict. And, where there are conflicts, the organization should devote some energy to identifying its real values.

Go play with the data yourself, check out the results and see if anything surprises you. What do you make of this?

Sarah , Sarah , Sarah . Just when I’m ready to move on to other topics, you serve up yet another opportunity to understand organizations and authenticity. This time, the lessons are all about image, and the relationship between how we present ourselves and who we really are.

If Palin’s wardrobe upgrade had been well-executed, perhaps we would have heard only the usual sexist complaints about how much time and money women (need to) spend on clothes, or the chatter of armchair fashionistas regarding how pantsuits are "too sensible" and red pumps "too tacky". Instead, we’ve got a media-pundit-blog bonanza. (Check out Princess Sparkle Pony’s Sarah Palin Neimansgate Link Roundup .) And in this bonanza? A chance to think more about authenticity.

Let’s start by appreciating the smart move : paying attention to image. It all starts with The Wardrobe.

The Wardrobe

The upgrade of Palin’s wardrobe by RNC operatives was absolutely appropriate and even necessary. A wardrobe upgrade was necessary because:

• Image matters.
  Every organization and leader needs to project how it wants to be seen. And, since we all contain multitudes of attributes, we need to be choosy and shape our images so that we project the specific attributes and characteristics that will help us achieve our goals.
• Context matters.
  Images that look fine at the hockey rink are just not right for the national stage. Similarly, the face your organization shows to the community in which it is located is probably not what it needs to show to the NYSE. You need to shape your image to fit the context (in this case, the campaign and the audience).
• Palin needed a new wardrobe.
  Consider what Palin wore as Governor — These outfits are fine near the Arctic circle, but not hot enough for the heartland. Consider the blue parka and green scarf (ouch) (photo from Michelle Malkin ) and the oh-so-80’s eyewear. Enough said.

Look at it this way: What would we think of a leader– especially a politician– who didn’t bother to adjust her appearance and self-presentation when moving from a provincial podium to a national stage? We’d think she was naive. And maybe even unprofessional. Plus, we’d all make fun of her. So let Palin be thankful that at least she didn’t do the shopping herself. — Not only is clothes shopping an appropriate task for an executive’s stylists assistants, but just imagine the field day we’d have if Palin had spent more campaign time in Nordstrom’s than she has in press conferences.

But moving on, what about …

The Lyin’

The occasional fashion gaffe is inevitable and forgivable (and sometimes just funny. See this faux pas, from MakePalinAVerb .) But a full wardrobe of mistakes? That makes you wonder what’s really going on. Like when an organization misspells its name in its logo , and then tries to suggest the misspelling disappears if you squint a little. While Palin’s stylists were busy considering cut, color, fabric and fit, they forgot two important things. First, they forgot about the brands and how brands communicate the symbolism that goes along with a product’s function. Then they forgot that when you stick together brands that contradict each other, you create conflicting messages and leave your audience wondering what is intended and what is accidental, and what is true and what is not .

For a time, the brands of the nominee’s new clothes were overlooked. Even the Washington Post’s fashion columnist, Robin Givhan, missed the brands — and so Givhan described Palin’s wardrobe as "exceptionally ordinary ". Without the brand, the silk jacket is pretty but let’s pay attention to her speech. Knowing the brand, it’s a $2400 Valentino top- and who has that kind of money?

Still, although true fashionistas took note of the brands, the luxury labels in Palin’s Wardrobe might have escaped public acclaim if the total costs had not been outed by Politico . Struggling to understand how any person, even a candidate for national office, can spend five times the average American’s household income on clothing, we look at the brands and we find our explanation. All that extra money, the money that separates the silk jacket from the $2400 Valentino top, is the cost of sending a message of wealth , luxury, and high style.

My friends, these are not the priorities of ‘the real America’.

And this is what has everyone’s boxers tied in knots… With all the effort and cost budgeted for overdoing Palin’s wardrobe, the RNC is displaying ‘elitist’ values, values that it publicly mocks yet cannot resist, even at full price.

The symbolism of the luxury brand outfits clashes with the RNC’s claimed values. And contradicting your own values never looks good.

If your organization’s brand is all about the "real America" and Main Street values, you can’t brand your spokesperson with luxury-priced designer clothes. Similarly, if your organization is offended by $400 haircuts , it can’t argue that a $4,000 handbag is a necessary expense.

Forgetting about the values conveyed by the brand is like a corporation of spending all its communication resources on a nice logo, while forgetting about the text that goes along with the visual. What you end up with are conflicting messages, and an audience unsure which message(s) are true and which message(s) are lies.

The Which?

Through the magical door of the RNC’s Wardrobe, which Palin do they want us to see now?

• The authentic Palin who expressed ‘who she was’ by how she appeared, and behaved — like a real hockey mom governor?
• The Palin who was savvy enough to upgrade her appearance as she upgraded her ambitions?
• The not-quite-so-autonomous-and-competent Palin who is ‘groomed’ and ‘fashioned’ by backstage employees of the RNC?
• The Palin who comes from the "real America" (you know, the America where Everyfamily, like hers , has has a $500,000 lakeside home, 2 vacation properties, a plane, and an annual income of $230,000 )?

Images matter. The messages that candidates and organizations create and send through their manufactured images are important. In the case of the "real American" wearing an elitist luxury wardrobe, the mixed messages simultaneously confirm what we know (e.g., the Palin’s are wealthy enough, the Republicans are out of touch with real Americans’ budget constraints) and project what we desire (e.g., anyone (you?) can seamlessly move from the frontier to the front stage). Images can even tap into long standing cultural concerns that were once authentic and are now just put on and cast off when it’s convenient for the organization.

Looking like a hypocrite has its own high price.

In Dante’s Inferno , hypocrites walk endlessly ’round and ’round the 8th circle of hell, wearing heavy lead cloaks that have been painted with gold. Lucky for Sarah Palin, she only has to wear Escada jackets– and she might even be released by November 5th. But, no matter how polished she looks, Palin will forever carry the burden of tarnished "authenticity".

Ultimately, the fault lies with the RNC stylists. They understood only part of what’s important about images.

Yes, images matter. Yes, it’s okay– even necessary– to shape the image of your organization and your spokesperson as your objectives and your contexts change. But also, you must pay attention to the assortment of messages, the message ‘wardrobe’ , if you will. Messages have to be styled so that they coordinate rather than clash, because contradictory messages leave your audience wondering who you really are.

What should an organization do to avoid creating the perception of lying and the raising the question of which image to believe?

—Follow the Inviolable rules of Authentic Organizations , and sustain a relationship between your image and your substance.

—Never stretch your claims about who you are too far from the reality of who you are. It’s okay to create an image that is aspirational; it’s not okay to create an image that is hypocritical.

And, organizations could consider this thoughtful suggestion from arch-conservative, vice-presidential speechwriter (and my Bryn Mawr classmate) Lisa Shiffren . Usually, I respectfully disagree with Lisa, but here, writing for The National Review, she makes a lot of sense:

"Because I like Sarah Palin, and want her to succeed, I would be really happy to know that, should she find herself back in Alaska for the next four years, (or, for that matter, in D.C.) she chose to spend a little of the money that would otherwise go to her clothing budget on a personal library of conservative classics. Going upmarket intellectually will complete the transformation, and make her truly" (i.e., authentically) "prime-time ready."

What do you think? Share your thought in the comments, below.

People are hungry for authentic leaders and authentic organizations .  Assessing an organization’s authenticity or a candidate’s authenticity is one way that we gauge where to place our trust. To entice people to trust us, we need to make them think the organization is authentic. Sometimes, we may even want to create "Fake Authenticity" in areas where the organization doesn’t have real authenticity.

In the first two posts I’ve written about "Fake Authenticity", I argued that Sarah Palin is a useful role model for organizations. Organizations can  Use Real Authenticity to Establish Fake Authenticity: Sarah Palin shows organizations how.

There are two steps to establishing Fake Authenticity. We already addressed Step 1: 4 ways Palin Creates a Fake "Reality". Now, we move on to Step 2: Mixing fake reality with the truth.

How to Mix Fake and Real

1. Loosen up the Real to make room for the Fake

2. Elevate the Fake to the same status as the Real

1. Loosen up the Real to make room for the Fake

– Make room by enabling more than one interpretation of the characteristics of the organization or the candidate . Let stakeholders have their own understanding of what you mean when you say "Our organization is faith-friendly ", or whatever. Describe the real in ways that let people assume that you and they have the same understanding of what it is. Let people read into your ‘real’ statements whatever they want. This way, should you ever disappoint them, you can always argue that it was their fault for misinterpreting you– you have been portraying yourself honestly.

— Make room by describing yourself/your organization and your values in vague terms. Terms that are general, abstract, and ambiguous make it easy for stakeholders to agree with you. For example, it’s easier for people to agree that you "support equal pay" than it is for them to agree with your actual voting record  on equal pay legislation.

Vague terms and abstractions seem to communicate your beliefs or your plans without actually offering information that stakeholders can evaluate. Plus, the more vague you are, the harder it is to verify whether what you say is true. The lack of actual information offered combined with the difficulty of verifying your claims makes it easier for people to overlook the details and facts that are required for a data-based evaluation.

Remember:  Abstractions make it easy to agree, generalities make it hard for people to hold you accountable.  Emphasize both.

– Categorize your real and fake attributes with a broad label that’s so attractive, no one thinks to ask if it’s accurate. People are drawn to broad, attractive claims. They’ll think you’re great if you say you want to "save the planet" and "stand up for freedom", and they won’t even notice if you are unwilling to fund research in wind power or refuse to pressure the Saudis to let women drive.

A great example of broad and attractive label is "Maverick ". What does it really take to be a maverick? If you look closely at the definition of a maverick, and then at some of the so-called maverick’s behavior … hmm. Some of the behavior is maverick-y. But the term "maverick" is stretched to accommodate behavior that is all about the status quo- not maverick-y at all.

2. Elevate the Fake to the same status as the Real

– Don’t treat the fake reality as any less important than the real reality. Describe the real and the fake with the same enthusiasm, the same frequency, and in the same venues. If you issue a press release, don’t bold only the verifiable claims– make the fake claims bold too ! If you don’t distinguish between the fake and the real when you present yourself, stakeholders might forget to parse out any distinctions between where you are really and where you are fake.

–Put the real and the fake next to each other, so that the fake benefits from the halo of the real. Consider what happened during the debate when Palin offered a most genuine moment, when she talked about her children, her brother and education. She’s a "strong believer in home schooling, virtual schools, and other innovative education options" and many viewers could feel that there was substance behind her claims about the importance of education. Our desire to see authenticity is so strong that, when we get a glimpse of it– even if it’s next to a bunch of inauthenticity–  our desire to resolve our cognitive dissonance in a positive way helps us gloss over what isn’t so real.

Putting it all together….

Use Real Authenticity to Create Fake Authenticity:

Step One: Create a Fake Reality
– Craft a good story
— Prepare thoroughly, offstage,
— Work your message
– Act like you believe your story

Step Two:  Mix the Fake Reality with the Real
– Loosen up the Real to make room for the Fake
– Elevate the Fake to the same status as the Real

Combine real substance with good fiction and offer this mix to an audience that desperately wants to believe in someone or some organization "like" you, and you might look authentic enough to entice their trust in you.

For a while, at least.

What is true?

What is true matters less that what people believe is true. Similarly, what is authentic matters less than what people think is authentic.

Cynical as it seems,  "truth" is what seems "real", not what is real. While we might be saddened when what seems authentic is treated as though it were authentic, we ignore reality at at our peril.

What hurts more:

(a) An offensive organizational action or

(b) an offensive action that displays inauthenticity?

I vote for (b). An offensive action that displays inauthenticity hurts more than an action that is simply offensive.  Why? Because an offensive inauthentic action represents a broken promise.

When an organization makes a claim to be a certain way, it is making a promise to its stakeholders. When an organization like Omnicom says “We are committed to ensuring that we use our position to promote socially responsible policies and practices and that we make positive contributions to society”, we take that as a promise. When an organization like Tyson Food says “we strive to be faith friendly”, we take that as a promise. Omnicom promises to be socially responsible, and Tyson promises to be faith friendly. In both cases, we expect the organization to keep its work and to keep its promise.

A Promise is a Promise

The cynics within and among us can mock our naivete. Why should we expect an organization to keep its word about socially responsible behavior?   Well, if we expect organizations to keep their word about using quoted market prices to determine the fair value of their forward foreign exchange contracts, why shouldn’t we expect them to keep their word about the way they’ve committed to promote social responsibility?

Investors bet a lot of money that Omnicom will keep the promises it makes in its financial statements…so why should Omnicom’s promises about their social practices be any less of a sure thing?

An organization’s promises about its financial practices and its promises about its social practices are essentially the same thing. They are promises that an organization will act in accordance with its words. They are promises that the organization will be authentic. So, when an organization’s offensive actions contradict its promised actions, the actions are inauthentic.

Broken Promises Double the Harm

Offensive actions that are also inauthentic harm an organization’s stakeholders twice. First, they harm stakeholders by their offensiveness, plain and simple. Second, they harm stakeholders by demonstrating that the organization doesn’t keep its word. Each time an organization fails to keep its word, our trust in that organization erodes.

It was suggested in comments on an earlier post about a homophobic advertisement for Snickers, that “we are really offended and harmed not by the inconsistency between actions and policies of the ad agency), but by the homophobia (in the ad itself)”.  I absolutely agree that the homophobic ad itself is harmful, and I agree that acting to stop that harm as quickly as possible is always appropriate.  But there is more to it than that.

In addition to fixing the current harm, organizations need to fix the systems that lead them to harm their stakeholders in the first place.  In other words, organizations need to fix the systems that allow them to act inauthentically.

Promise to Keep the Organization’s Promises, by Being Authentic

While stopping the immediate harm is important, it is also important to prevent harm in the future. A strategy that addresses the source of the current harm is worth pursuing, even if this strategy might take longer to have an effect. In the case of Omnicom, pressuring the ad agency to act authentically would prevent future homophobic ads and prevent homophobic actions anywhere in the organization. Pressuring the organization to act authentically would have the additional benefit of helping the organization to keep any of its promises, regardless of whether these promises are financial or social.

Similarly, systems that help Tyson Foods to act authentically instead of inauthentically would help Tyson find ways to keep its promise to “strive to be a faith friendly company.” In addition to resolving the current issue of respecting the holy days of its Muslim employees, pressing Tyson to act authentically would prevent Tyson from demonstrating bad faith. Instead, Tyson would be motivated to find new ways to be faith friendly, by holding itself accountable for evolving its understanding of what it means to be faith-friendly to every stakeholder, to every faith, in any situation.

Organizations have systems in place to make sure that they keep their financial promises, and they should put systems into place to make sure that they keep their social promises, too.  Pressing an organization to act authentically helps to fix the immediate harm, to prevent future harm, and to keep any and all of the organization’s promises.

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