The How-To Guide for Building an Ethical Team

Does your team really have your back?

Productive teams work best when everyone is focused on productivity and positive actions. However, there are a few who make work harder for others.

Without having an effective system in place, some people are able to get by with doing the least amount of work, causing more work for others.

With proven systems that work, you can learn how to create a focused work environment that is positive and rewarding.

The Natural Law
This seemingly obvious natural law is important to grasp:

WHEN YOU REWARD DOWN-STATISTICS AND
PENALIZE UP-STATISTICS, YOU GET DOWN-STATISTICS.

If you reward nonproduction, you get nonproduction. When you penalize production, you get nonproduction.

Do it All By Statistics
‘Statistic’: A statistic is a number or amount compared to an earlier number or amount of the same thing. Statistics refer to the quantity of work done or the value of it in money. Statistics are the only sound measure of any production or any job or any activity. These tell of production. They measure what is done.

In the conduct of your affairs in all matters of rewards and penalties, pay sharp heed to the basic laws as stated above and use this policy:

Award production and up-statistics and penalize
nonproduction and down-statistics. Always.

Also, do it all by statistics – not rumor or personality or who knows who.

Unfair Advantage
Unfortunately, it has become an all too common occurrence for someone to get a raise or promotion based on his or her relationship with a manager or boss. Even if this does not occur in your business, chances are that your employees have experienced it before, making it even more important to have a clear set of expectations that is followed universally.

So, make sure everyone has a statistic of some sort. Promote by statistic only. Penalize down-statistics only. Never promote a person with down-statistics or demote a person who has uptrending or increasing statistics.

Establish a Code Of Discipline
To ensure production is rewarded, a code of discipline needs to be established, made plain for everyone to see, with limits against over-punishment and recourse for those who are wronged.

Accordingly, this code of offenses and their penalties should become firm and expressed policy. Most often, this policy takes the form of a “Code of Conduct”. Lack of specified offenses, penalties and recourse bring everyone to uncertainty and risk at the whim of those in charge.

Ethics Actions May Need to Be Taken
‘Ethics actions’: any disciplinary measures taken with an employee to address and remove demonstrated counter-intentions from the environment. ‘Counter-intention’ means a determination to follow a goal which is in direct conflict with that known to be the goal(s) of the group.

Ethics actions are often used to handle down-statistics of the individual employee. They would include any disciplinary actions that are called for and prescribed by company policy to eliminate the demonstrated counter-efforts to the organization’s stated goals.

Thus, a person who is not doing his job becomes the focus of investigation by the person responsible for addressing such matters, usually located in the Human Resource department.

Protect Your Productive Employees
Conversely, if a person is doing his job (and his statistic will show that), his personal ethics are considered to be in. By definition, ‘personal ethics’ are the rules or standards governing the conduct of a person. To “get in one’s own personal ethics” means to abide by the rules or standards one has set for himself to achieve optimum survival.

So, the person who is doing his job and has good statistics is protected by the Ethics Section. One can, as the old expression goes, get away with murder so long as he is a producing, high-statistic employee.

It is very easy for an employee to completely misunderstand ethics and its functions. Due to past bad experiences, one is likely to identify any justice action or symbol of justice (such as a judge or a policeman) with oppression. Yet in the absence of true ethics, no one can live with others and statistics go down inevitably.

Reward Production
It is not humanitarian to let a whole population go to pieces just because a few refuse to work. And some people just won’t. And when work no longer has reward, none will. So specialize in production and everybody wins. Reward it.

In Order To Succeed
To succeed in this “civilization” or any society, crude or sophisticated, one has to act continually to keep one’s own environment under some control. It does matter what goes on around one. The only thing which does not care is a corpse.

It is a rather simple thing—not heroic. If one can’t control a coffee cup he is likely to get scalded! If one can’t control a car he is a statistic. Extend this to one’s coworkers slightly and it is plain to see that total permissiveness is suicide. Standing with a bland look while Joe sticks pins in someone or something is not good manners, it’s idiocy!

Exert Some Control
To live at all, one has to exert some control over his equals as well as his employees and (believe it or not) his superiors. When misconduct and unethical behavior is occurring in a group, it is almost impossible for other members of the group not to know of it. At least some of them are aware of what is going on.

When a group has down statistics, it is not true that all of them are trying to fail. Only a few are dedicated to not doing their jobs.

The question one can ask of any group that is not doing well is this:

Why did the other group members tolerate and ignore the
loafers or out-ethics people in it?

By ‘out-ethics people’ we are referring to people who are involved in an act or situation or relationship that is contrary to the ethics standards, codes or ideals of the group or other members of the group.

Individual Group Members
There is ONE factor which makes an upstat group (that is, a group whose overall production statistics are high), upstat and a downstat group (i.e., a group whose overall production statistics are low or declining) downstat and a horror to be around.

The single most notable difference between an upstat, easy-to-live-and-work-with group and a downstat, hard-to-live-and-work-with group is that the individual group members themselves enforce the action and mores of the group. That is the difference—no other.

In an upstat group, at the first pinprick Joe would probably have a black eye! In a downstat group Joe could go on and on with his pins, each group member watching and shrugging.

In a group where members have some concept of controlling their environment and their fellows, you don’t have loafers or out-ethics people – because the rest of the group, on an individual basis, just won’t tolerate it. Those who would have a tendency to wreak havoc (to bring about or cause disorder or chaos) or loaf don’t dare. And the group becomes easy to live with and work with.

Key Factor
So, if one were seeking the key factor that makes a group easy to live and work with, it is not whether individuals in the group should be preselected or carefully made ethical by some process or by inspired leadership. It is whether the group members themselves exert any control on each other.

To find out more about these proven and effective systems …