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Day 3 of 5: Trust-based Business Development in a Recession: Principle 2, Collaboration

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Monday we announced a five-day blogpost on developing business in a recession based on each of the Four Trust Principles.

Trust is paradoxical; as is the best approach to recessionary times.

Yesterday we offered ideas based on Trust Principle 1, Client Focus. Today we highlight Principle 2, Collaboration.

If trust is important to business development generally, it is particularly important in a recession. Collaboration is one of the four Trust Principles because:

Collaboration with existing clients cuts business development costs—selling to existing clients is far less expensive than selling new business.

Collaboration with others—including even competitors—offers scale economies.

Collaboration allows reconfiguration—of markets, production, services.

Most importantly, collaboration is inherently about relationships—and not about competition. In a recession, that’s the message you want to send—now is the time to strengthen relationships. You’ll reap the benefits later.

How to do it? Here are 14 ideas to prime the pump. Please: add your own. Let’s collaborate on generating a great list.

1. If you’re a consultant of any type: write your next proposal seated next to your client. Bring all your backup records, rent a conference room, and collaboratively proceed to write a joint proposal. Rather than deal with issues after the proposal has been written and sent and it shows up as a disagreement in the final sales meeting—raise it in joint meeting.

2. If you’re a speaker or trainer, put together a speaking tour, or a combined webinar, of like-minded people–including those you used to think of as competitors. 

3. Does your company outsource key processes? Is the recession causing strains in the relationship? Have an offsite meeting with key leaders of each firm, with the agenda of “where can we collaborate more, and argue with each other less?”

4. Answer the question the customer asked you: not the one you wanted to answer. The customer is not your competitor–collaborate with the customer by talking straight.

5. If you’re a B2B manufacturing salesperson, call a key customer. Suggest the two firms sit down together offsite for a day and discuss “what could we do better together to make things cheaper, faster, or more profitable for both of us?” Be prepared to share your manufacturing process, costs, and profit margins, so you can figure it out together.

6. If you’re a professional services provider, sit down with your client and see which portion of your services could be performed more cost effectively by the client, or how your costs could be reduced. For example, if preliminary research needs to be done, ask if the client has someone who could do it, and get approval to rely on it, or use it as a base. If you charge for materials, let the client make the copies and produce the the books. When you travel for the client offer to use the client’s travel service if the client can get a better price on travel.

7. If you’re professional services firm with underemployed staff, offer to swap similarly underemployed staff with a client. Both will gain valuable perspective and experience without being taken off critical work. The employees involved will feel grateful and challenged. And the linkages between the firms will be strengthened. None of which would easily happen in good economic times.

8. If you’re in a business where sales are large and take time, then at the next sales presentation meeting, have a client individual co-present with you. And make a point of it, saying “working collaboratively with you is what we believe in, and it’s even more important in tough times like these.” Actions speak louder than words.

9. If you’re in a functional department of a large company (HR, legal, IT), identify 3-4 of the same departments in other large companies in your geographic area. Create a collaborative work group across the companies that meets (within bounds of legal agendas) to share best practices and work opportunities.  

10. Give your receivables clerk a budget to buy flowers or chocolates for the payables clerk at your most important customers for Valentine’s day (you’ve still got a few days).

11. If you’re in sales or customer relationship management, go find who, if anyone, is handling innovation for your firm. Ask them if they would like to collaborate on that innovation work with Customer A, Customer B and Customer C?

12. Ditto in reverse. Ask your key customer whether anyone is handling innovation in their firm—and if they would appreciate the chance to work with your innovation people.

13. Look over your professional services providers. Is there anyone with whom you can work a barter arrangement? (Remember to check with your accountant on the tax issues, even if you don’t want to be appointed by the President).

14. If you’re in sales, go talk to your customers’ salespeople.  Share best practices and success stories; also share horror stories about how each organization treats salespeople from other companies (including how theirs treat you). You will gain perspective and insight about your customer’s company, and they may even put in a good word for you with their company’s buyers.

There’s our list. How about you? In the spirit of collaboration, please add an idea of your own. We want to hear from you.

Day 2 of 5: Trust-based Business Development in a Recession: Principle 1, Client Focus

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Yesterday we announced a five-day blogpost on developing business in a recession based on each of the Four Trust Principles. Trust, we suggest, is paradoxical. That’s exactly how we must meet recessionary times.

 

Today we offer 22 specific ideas based on Principle 1, Client Focus: Focus on the Customer for the Customer’s Sake, Not Just the Seller’s Sake. 

Recessions drive us to self-centered fear; but they are simply the down cycle in a long-term relationship. Client focus shows dramatically that you are in business relationships for the duration, not just for while they’re convenient.

Our hope is to prime the pump with specific ideas.  Please add your own ideas, appropriate for your own organizations, in the comments. Let’s make this a resource for all.

1. You’re a staff strategist or a line marketer. You have one mandate: Focus. Downplay new lead generation– recessions are time to dance with the one who brung you. Good strategists know saying yes to one means saying “no” to others. Resist the temptation to go RFP-hunting. Let your #1 customers know who loves them, and show it.

2. You’re a financial planner. You fear client phone calls in a recession—they mean withdrawals. Do the opposite—call them. Give them life advice, like “next year is not the time to retire after all.” In times of fear, those who reach out to hear the pain are those who gain later.

3. You’re an accounting firm. It’s tax season. Everyone thinks you’re busy. Surprise them with a 2-3 hour clinic for your clients’ kids who are now college graduates on how to do their own taxes.

4. You’re a CPA firm. Offer to “spotlight” your client’s human interest / charity / goodwill story on your firm’s blog or newsletter.

5. You’re a restaurant owner. You know who your good customers are. Surprise them next visit by picking up the tab. Quietly. After the meal.

6. You sell insurance but don’t track your clients’ payment status because you already got the commission. Start tracking them now. In a recession no one wants unintentionally lapsed LTD or long term care policies.

7. You’re majority owner of a private company. Take off your shareholder hat and put on your investment hat. This is when you grow share by growing trust. Draw down on the shareholder account to invest in the employee, customer and supplier relationship accounts.

8. You provide tech support to home businesses. That green stuff about lowering electrical costs is a lot more interesting to customers than it was 6 months ago; bone up on it.

9. You’re a doctor, and recessions mean more scrambling for less insurance money. When you have good test results for a nervous patient, don’t wait for the next visit. Call and celebrate with the patient for a few minutes.

10. You’re a one-person consulting shop. Recessions drive changes in customer needs. Can your firm change on a dime to meet new client needs? Of course you can, you’re a one-person firm. Figure out what those new needs are, then go talk to the client.

11. You’re in corporate sales and your funnel has slowed to a crawl. Do your research, then offer your prospect three ideas that can reduce costs in the next quarter without any extra work.

12. You’re anyone. In a recession, customers are more worried and self-focused than usual. Go take that course on listening and empathy you’ve been putting off; it’s twice as important now, and you’ve no longer got the excuse of being too busy.

13. You’re a practice area head in a professional services firm; project or client relationship managers report to you. When was the last time you visited the top 3-4 clients? Go visit, with your client manager. Your agenda? “Just wanted to hear what’s new with you. Besides our own services, what can we do for you?" And don’t even think about charging the time.

14. Your customers are in retail (or chemicals; or telecom–whatever). Ask yourself what’s changed, new, and critical to them because of the recession. Now ask what you can do to help. (“Increase sales” and “cut price” don’t count). Then redesign your offerings.

(Example: for us, professional services firms are big clients. They are cutting back discretionary travel and training. The “obvious” answer is webinars. But as one client says, “There’s only so much webinar you can take stuck in your cubicle from 9 to 5. We’re being webinar-ed to death.” Our solution? The Onsite Offsite(TM). The best of offsites, minus the costs, but without the compromises of conventional one-way datapipe solutions).

15. You’re a consulting firm. Don’t succumb to the“hey, we’ve all got to pitch in here, can’t you lower your rate for us” argument. Pitch in, yes. Make strategic investments, yes. Re-tool your offerings, yes. But don’t lower your rates. It just says you had “padding” before. And an insolvent consultant is no help to clients.

16. You’re a law firm; offer a series of brown-bag talks given by partners on recession-relevant topics. Invite your existing clients.

17. You’re a development director for a charitable organization. Your donors are your customers. Instead of asking them for money, turn the tables; ask how a particular donor is affected by the recession. How can you add value to his or her life? With whom can you put them in touch?

18. You’re a systems firm. Your tech leaders need speaking training. Invite three clients to join so they can learn too.

19. After a long day at the office a longtime client contact calls to tell you he’s been laid off. You have to leave, but offer to speak later that night, to help out in any way you can.

20. Some of your customers sell to other customers of yours. Make introductions; then make more.

21. You’re an accounting firm. Hold topical lunchtime 60-minute phone calls for five of your medium-sized clients’ treasurers on recession-relevant topis. You run the logistics and line up the topics. And don’t wait until after tax season, they’re hurting now.

22. Just to practice Principle 1, Client Focus, go drop dimes in someone’s parking meter, or pay the toll for the guy behind you. It’s cheap behavioral training for client focus. And it makes two people feel good.

There you go; 22 ideas based on Principle 1, Customer focus.

What did you learn from other businesses that might work for your own?

Tune in tomorrow, when we list specific business development ideas for Principle 2, Collaboration. And please–add your own ideas in the comments section below.

 

Trust-based Business Development in a Recession

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We at Trusted Advisor Associates try our best to practice the Trust Principles we espouse. We have found they work for business development, as well as in other aspects of business.

We believe they are particularly relevant in a recessionary environment. That’s why we’re devoting Trust Matters this week to selling in down times.

Today’s post will set up our perspective—and the next four days will deal with business development ideas based on the Four Trust Principles, as follows:

Monday Thinking about sales from a trust perspective
Tuesday Principle 1: Client / customer focus
Wednesday Principle 2: Collaboration
Thursday Principle 3: Medium-to-long-term perspective
Friday Principle 4: Transparency

The Trust Perspective. Trust is a paradoxical thing. It requires risk-taking when we’re risk-averse. It requires doing the opposite of our first instincts.

Recessions are the same. The thing consumers want to do—stop spending and save—paradoxically drives the recession deeper. The one thing businesses want to do—cut costs, squeeze suppliers and customers, and scale back plans—paradoxically drives the recession deeper.

Trust is about relationships, not transactions. Thinking of downtimes per se is transactional thinking. Thinking of downtimes as one half of a business cycle is relationship thinking. And it’s what you do in tough times that determines how others trust you in the good times.

Trust is based on being willing to put the other’s needs first. But in a recession, the instinct to take care of Number One has the same trust-destroying effect as selfishness does in personal relationships. And it hurts business development in both the short and long run.

Trust and Business Development. We’re going to offer a few specific ideas based on these principles during the week.

What do we mean by specific ideas? Here are a few starters:

• Pick a local charity or non-profit organization; make a significant donation to them. It will be completely unexpected, very needed, and very appreciated. Don’t worry about publicity—word will get around.

• Pick a few important existing customers—you can’t help everyone—and do an important project for them, one that would normally have trouble getting done because it’s long term and visionary. And do it for free.

• Increase your severance package benefits. Now.

• Use collaboration as a form of innovation. In our business, we are working with clients to develop the Onsite Offsite, a way of delivering distance seminars at in-house costs, packaged innovatively to go way beyond traditional webinars.

Finally, one of our Trust Principles is Collaboration. We’d like to share our ideas with as many people as possible. We invite you to pitch in and make this a truly collaborative week by adding in your own comments and ideas.

Stay tuned to Trust Matters this week.

 

 

I Screwed Up

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Thanks go to President Obama for timing his first major Presidential misstep to coincide with my delivery of a “Being a Trusted Advisor” workshop.

In class, we had been talking about human nature and the gravitational pull to avoid admitting culpability and generally looking bad when—voila—there appeared the perfect teaching point on the front page of the New York Times.

Whatever your politics, there are two key lessons to be derived from the “I screwed up” message that President Obama delivered on the heels of Tom Daschle’s withdrawal from consideration as the next secretary of Health and Human Services:

1.  Take full responsibility. He pointed his own finger at himself. He didn’t say “I regret the unfortunate circumstances and misinformation that led to the selection of Mr. Daschle.” He didn’t hitch his wagon to Daschle’s admission of his own mistake. No, Obama said, “I screwed up.”

2.  Keep it simple. He used plain talk. Three simple words. I told workshop participants to use no more than ten words when there’s a hard truth to be told. Obama came in seven under.

Telling the truth when the truth makes you look good (as in, “Mr. Client, I have 20 years of experience solving the kinds of problems you are facing right now”) increases your credibility by demonstrating your expertise.

Telling the truth when the truth makes you look bad (as in, “I screwed up”) is a trust trifecta: your honesty boosts your credibility, your humanity creates intimacy, and your willingness to subordinate your own ego lowers your self-orientation. 

It’s another part of the trust paradox: doing what makes you look bad (telling the truth) makes you look good.  As long as you really mean it.

 

Trust, Trust, Trust

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There’s a major bear market right now—in trust.  Or so it seems reading the papers, blogs and broadcast media.  The only bull market to be found is the bull market in talking about the bear market in trust.

So it’s very appropriate for this blog to have a point of overview.

First, a sampling:

This Tuesday, Henry R. Kravis said trust is the"The Single Biggest Factor" in the economic crisis:

Both the Economist and the NYTimes agree that trust is a Big Deal at Davos this year.

Paul Krugman says trust is a big part of the problem.

Robert Reich agrees with Kravis, that what we are facing is "a crisis of trust.”

Edelman’s Trust Barometer dropped precipitously across institutions this past year.  As the FT’s John Gapper  points out, Edelman’s survey suggests “only 49 per cent of Americans, living in the country of capitalism and free enterprise, thought the free market should be allowed to operate independently.” 

So—what does all this mean?  Above all, it means two Big Things:

1.    we are facing a Big Opportunity cleverly disguised as an economic crisis;
2.    at the heart of all trust is personal trustworthiness.

A Big Opportunity Cleverly Disguised as a Trust Crisis.  The academic research on trust is staggering in the breadth of definitions of “trust.”  We trust stoplights, Amazon book reviews, the kindness of (some)strangers, some businesses more than others, neighbors, those we know, those with similar names or facial features or religions—and we trust each in different ways.

How curious that, despite our inability to provide a concise dictionary definition, we nonetheless know from context pretty much what is meant when we use the word.  Which means, to say “trust is down” is not meaningful without context.

Other statements requiring context include “trust takes time,” “trust takes years to build and only a moment to destroy,” and “trust but verify.”   All are true in their place—and not so true outside that place.

Context is critical.

Most trust-talk these days is about institutional trust—the SEC, the institution of business, trust in the media.  Interestingly, it doesn’t take long for attitudes about institutions to change—a charismatic leader (a Pope, a President) can rather dramatically affect trust levels.  (By contrast, it takes much longer to change cultural attitudes toward trusting “others,” or toward strangers.)

All of which means getting the context right is critical.

Trust is Personal.  Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill famously said, “all politics is local.”  So is trust, in the sense that if is unlinked from people, it loses its breadth of meaning. We don’t say we “trust” that the sun will rise in the East, or that the law of gravity will work every time.  We may depend on or predict based on laws of nature; we “trust” people. 

We cannot afford a society based on 18th century models of a competitive state of nature.  We cannot even rely on "the rule of law"–society is too complex.  We cannot afford social constructs based on the suspected evil of others–we need models based on values and standards to which we demand people aspire.

This is a fundamental truth about trust.  In all the debates about institutional trust and the need for regulation, we ignore this truth at our peril. 

At the risk of using the same quote twice in a week: Samuel diPiazza, CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Robert G. Eccles, a former HBS professor, wrote, in Building Public Trust:

…even transparency and accountability are not enough to establish public trust. In the end, both depend on people of integrity. Rules, regulations, laws, concepts, structures, processes, best practices, and the most progressive use of technology cannot ensure transparency and accountability. This can only come about when individuals of integrity are trying to “do the right thing,” not what is expedient or even necessarily what is permissible. What matters in the end are the actions of people, not simply their words…without personal integrity as the foundation for reported information, there can be no public trust.” 

If there is any common message about trust, this should be it.  The "trust issue" is not fundamentally about disclosure, or process regulations, or even transparency: at root it is, as it always has been, about the personal integrity and trustworthiness of human beings in relationship to each other.

 

Why Attraction is Worth More Than Retention

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The phrase “attraction and retention” is so entrenched in business-talk that a Google search with quotes around the terms turns up 306,000 hits.

That’s a lot. But it’s dwarfed by the active-voiced “attract and retain,” with 2.07 million hits.

If memory serves, the phrase comes out of the “war for talent,” initiated in 1997 by McKinsey.

Was that war ever won? Apparently not. In 2007, Bob Sutton was announcing “The War for Talent is Back.”

In fact, as of just a few months ago, McKinsey was announcing The Return of the War for Talent  (“It’s Baack!”).

But, as of two weeks ago, according to search firm Morgan McKinley, the War for Talent is Over.

The War for Talent has had more comings and goings than Cher has had farewell tours. So it goes with business concepts that mean whatever you want them to mean.

(For a really wonderful read on the abuse of “war for talent,” read Malcolm Gladwell’s article The Talent Myth.)

But I digress. The WFT is fought on two fronts—finding talent, and keeping it. Despite the eerie parallels with roach motels, the language "attract and retain" has stuck.

“Attract” has taken a back seat to "retain," and it’s not hard to see why. Consider the well-established economics of customer loyalty. Employees form relationships and gain hard-to-replace skills, referred to in distinctly non-human terms as “relationship capital.”

Yet, just as the best defense may be a great offense, the best retention strategy may be a great attraction strategy.

For one thing “retention” often lives down to the very behavioral language used to describe it. Think handcuffs, golden or otherwise; do-not-compete clauses; hands-off clauses in search firm contracts. More benignly, flex time and use it or lose it vacations.

But more importantly, think what a really fabulous, unbelievable attraction proposition does for retention. Suppose you had an extraordinary new-hire offer. Tons of money, social good, ambience, benefits, advancement, work-life balance, cachet. Maybe like Google a couple of years ago.

Why would someone leave such a place? Not for money, or promotion, or lifestyle. More typically it’s because their life goals had simply changed.

It happens. Twenty-somethings have kids. Project management loses its appeal after being the meat in too many sandwiches.  You cannot “retain” people whose life goals have shifted. And if you keep only the employment contract, they lose their enthusiasm.

But what about the greatest attraction pitch of all—"We Care about YOU."

If you could believe a firm really cared, if they could prove it to you—wouldn’t you want to join that firm? And stay there, until they were simply incapable of meeting your changed needs?

I’m saying yes, of course you would. They catch is, why would you believe it?

Well, suppose the firm paid a recruiter to hire you away from them? Suppose they paid you massive severance packages should you decide to leave? Suppose they developed alumni programs, like universities with “graduates?”

The really fine consulting firms—Bain & McKinsey, for example—truly value their alumni—you are a lifetime member, you’re just working the client side as an alum.

But even more sharply, think Zappo’s. Here’s one more great Zappo’s article, from Fortune’s January 22 issue 

Zappos bribes trainees to leave.  Few do.  When Zappo’s recently had to lay off 140 people, they were extra-generous in terms of severance. They offered 6 months of paid COBRA health care. And so on.  Remember, these are not people Zappo’s is trying to retain–these are people they’re letting go.

eBay gets it. "How you treat the leavers has a strong impact on how the stayers feel about the company," says Beth Axelrod, eBay’s SVP of human resources. 

Exactly.  How these companies attract—a values-based culture that actually values customers and employees, not just their abstract corporate-finance-centric “relationship capital”—directly drives their success at retention.

Don’t focus on retain—that’s about the company. Focus on attract—that’s about the employee. Then live the values.

It’s the paradox of trust. If you actually set someone else’s priorities above your own, you get back boatloads of what you want.

But only if you’re willing to put your motives second. You actually have to care.

Envy, Resentment and Trust

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Resentment is like taking poison—and waiting for the other person to die. 

Sounds absurd, but anyone who’s honest will recognize not only the absurdity of that stance, but the fact that we nonetheless indulge in it all too often.

Then there’s resentment’s close cousin envy.  “Envy is the ulcer of the soul,” said Socrates.  The parallel metaphors of ulcers and poison are not accidental.  They are internally corrosive issues masquerading as external.

I want to highlight two other writers whom I find do a wonderful job of exploring the darker regions of the soul. One is Phil McGee; the other is Peter Vajda.  Both have commented on this blog from time to time.

Here are a few choice comments from each on the subject.  Peter’s comments come from  “I Want What You Have.”  Phil’s come from his post "Three Men."   
I recommend reading both in the original. 

Here is a taste, in alternating call-and-response format:

In the throes of envy, we become mired in a sense of lack and deficiency. And, like an ulcer, envy eats away at you, consciously and subconsciously. It seems to be the energy that is running your life – a life of frustration – feeling like you’re being decimated from the inside out.  Peter Vajda

He was the oldest of the group and the ring leader and most of the people in the room seemed to respect and care about him. He was, therefore, the target of my jealousy and dislike. Phil McGee

The honest reality with envy is that it’s never – repeat never – about the other person. Envy can be a blind spot. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Few folks realize they are their own worst enemy when it comes to envy.

He had, I came to realize, a sharp wit and great sense of humor and he enjoyed life, a feeling rare in me until I began to question why I disliked so many people instead of wondering what was wrong with me. Somewhere inside I knew I was cheating myself and that I was afraid of getting close enough to feel the rejection that was sure to come.

While focusing outward on what others have, the envious one is also dwelling on “what’s wrong with me.” In this place of self-loathing and self-pity, when we feel “less than”, we tend to focus on what we don’t have. Lack attracts lack. Caught in a downward spiral of envy, you move backwards, sowing seeds of doubt and limiting your potential.

Les…helped me to see that I was wrong about people. They really don’t exist for the sole purpose of making my life miserable. Actually when I seek their friendship and counsel and am open to them it seems they will do anything to help me see the light of love rather than the blind darkness of fear and resentment.

You can decide to not be envious or jealous. It is a choice.

Indeed it is. And choosing to be free of envy and resentment makes you able to trust, as well as trustworthy.

Thanks,Phil and Peter.
 

Transparency and Selling

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President Obama directly links transparency to economic performance.

In his inauguration address, he asserted “…those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Lately transparency has been in short supply.

Offices for sale. Ponzi schemes. The former mayor of Baltimore has just been indicted on charges that she accepted illegal gifts, including gift cards intended for the poor that she allegedly used instead for a holiday shopping spree.

Whether with respect to government, or to building client relationships, transparency is at the very root of trust.

That may seem obvious. Motherhood and apple pie. But for those of us with a career background in sales, transparency requires deprogramming. We were taught:

• Never share a weakness
• Never admit a competitor strength
• Never share cost information
• Always get as much margin as you can
• Don’t share information that could decrease your ability to close a sale

Oh yeah, and be customer focused.

What goes around comes around. In the long run, the truth inevitably bubbles to the top. You can get credit for saying it—or blame for resisting it.

As Charlie Green said in a HuffingtonPost piece, “If we see someone as being transparent, then nagging questions about motive disappear. We no longer speculate about, ‘What’s in it for him? What’s the hidden meaning? Why’d he say that? Is he lying?’ and so on. We accept the person at face value for what they say, even if—sometimes, particularly if—what they say reflects imperfection. That works in sales and in politics.” 

Yet, we’re trained to go in come back with information that will close the sale. Hunt it, kill it and bring it back to eat.

• What if, instead of dancing around an answer we don’t know, we just admit we don’t know?
• What if, instead of promising something we probably can’t deliver, we admit that and then tell them what we can do?
• What if, instead of offering “teaser” pricing and then covertly getting it on the back end, we share our cost structure?

These examples are counter-intuitive—downright treasonous in some circles.

Without the pretension, void of false promises and out on a limb – we are, admittedly exposed, naked and vulnerable.

But wouldn’t you rather buy from a seller who is willing to show you his cards, even if—perhaps because—you both know it might cost him the sale? That visceral reaction works in reverse when transparency dominates relationships (think Madoff, Blagojevich).

Transparency creates a powerful pull toward you. It also, by the way, lets you sleep easier.

I Have Done Nothing Illegal

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You know the old joke: “Legal ethics is an oxymoron.”

Now, it may or may not be that lawyers are disproportionately ethically challenged. But the real oxymoron is not about lawyers—it’s about the legal-ization of ethics.

An act can be immoral or unethical without being illegal. And the absence of illegality does not make an act moral. This should not be a hard concept to grasp.

Yet, there is no shortage of businessmen and politicians who aggressively assert legal non-guilt as if it could mask the stench of grossly unethical behavior.

Googling “I have done nothing illegal,” and variations on the theme, provides such gems as these:

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich—“I’m here to tell you right off the bat that I am not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.”

New York’s former State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, responding to a damning indictment, sounds like the ex-boxer he is, saying
“After being hounded for three years, I am being indicted on a prosecutor’s sleight of hand.” Bruno insults an entire profession by calling millions of dollars in sales-commissions-or-is-it-kickbacks “consulting fees.”

Remember Senator Alan Cranston of the Keating Five? Talking to congress, he said, “You know that I broke no law.”

Enron’s Jeff Skilling testifies that he and Lay never broke the law.

Confirming their virtue, his buddy Ken Lay said: “We don’t break the law.”

Former New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli, explaining the scandal that led to his resignation: “…had not denied taking gifts from Mr. Chang, but said that he took no ‘illegal gifts’…”

Back in 2006, San Jose’s mayor Ron Gonzales kept it simple. Indicted for fraud, bribery and conspiracy, he said “I broke no law.”

Lousiana’s former Governor Edwin Edwards, being charged with $1M in racketeering and extortion said, ”I know I didn’t break any Federal laws.”

Really blurring the ethics/law boundaries, Pennsylvania State Senator Fumo’s 2007 response to a 139-count Federal indictment was, “I know in my heart that I have not done anything illegal.”

Over on Long Island, the late Republican Joseph Margiotta was convicted of federal mail fraud and conspiracy charges in a municipal insurance kickback scheme, and served 14 months. Even then, he explained, “I didn’t break any law.”

When Don Imus was brought back to the air from the racist dead, part of the rationale for it, as provided by the CEO of Citadel Broadcasting was, you guessed it, “he didn’t break the law.” So I guess all that other stuff—no biggie.

I can’t wait to hear from Madoff. His scam deftly sought out legal vacuums. So if and when he says, “I’ve broken no laws,” it’s important we remember he’s still a sociopathic ripoff artist.

When someone says, “I didn’t do anything illegal,” you can bet your bottom dollar they did two things wrong. One was the scam itself.

The other is worse. They have demeaned both the law and ethics.

The law cannot and should not substitute for ethics. For one thing, it puts an unsupportable load on the law—and lets unethical and immoral people off the hook.

Worst of all, it equates moral arguments to whining complaints made to third parties. That’s a recipe for abdicating personal responsibility. You can’t trust people who have no inner moral compass. A thief with a legal loophole is still a thief. A con artist with a good lawyer is no less a con artist.

That is the true meaning of “legal ethics is an oxymoron.”

When someone to whom we entrust our life savings or our political leadership acts badly, and then defends himself by saying,“I broke no law,” they should be shunned and shamed—outed and shouted—exposed to derision and disgust in all forms of public dialogue. Not to mention voted out or fired.

Bruno, Blago and Bernie ought to be ashamed of themselves. If they can’t even manage that, their status in court has no claim on our judgment.

The Path of Redemption Leads to Trust

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Let’s take a break from Madoff, academics, and business processes.  Let’s go way inward and talk about redemption.

In 1997, Robert Duvall’s The Apostle won many nominations and awards.  It features a jagged but dead-on role by Farrah Fawcett, and the best work I’ve ever seen Billy Bob Thornton do.  But mostly, it’s Duvall.

Some reviewers can’t find the redemption in it.  I think it’s about nothing but.

Duvall’s character is a sinner of every sort—a cheating, lying, womanizing and self-congratulatory preacher.  In a fit of rage, he unintentionally kills his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s boyfriend, and sets out on the lam in the deep rural south, calling himself “The Apostle E.F.”

What follow is a series of epiphanies for him.  At every turn of his life, he rediscovers the beauty in life and other people, and in serving them—at the same time realizing with horror how deeply he had sinned.  And at each turn, the consequences of his sin catch up with him. 

He is forced to move on to another place, where again he gains a new insight, again realizes the depths of his sin, and again accepts the consequences of his sin by being forced out of yet another home.

It ends with him working on the chain gang, yet praising the Lord.  Because for every realization of his sin, he knows he grows to a greater appreciation, and becomes more willing to do the right thing.  Every step down represents more learning, humility and dedication to service.

Something like that happens in the last of the Carlos Castaneda Don Juan series, Journey to Ixtlan.  Don Juan and Don Jenaro explain that because they are magical warriors who can see things others can’t, they also cannot be understood by mere mortals. In a palpable sense, they can not go home to Ixtlan anymore.  Yet offered the same choice again—to learn and be alone, or to be common but together, they would choose the lonely life of the magician.

William James, in Varieties of Religious Experience,  wrote about the “once-born” and the “twice-born.”

The once-born has always led a life of quiet faith. The twice-born, by contrast, knows what hell looks like, having been there, and so appreciates the difference. 

I think Duvall, Castaneda and James all spoke the language of redemption.    The religious sense of “redemption” is delivery from evil or sin.  It has a strong sense of “now I know what I never knew before, and I know it to be true in a way I never knew before.”

* Redemption is a complete change of perspective.  Redemption means “I have seen the light,” or, more colloquially, “holy crap, I never realized.”

* Redemption is what the Angel Clarence teaches Jimmy Stewart in Bedford Falls, and Ebenezer Scrooge in London. 

* Redemption is why alcoholics will ignore priests and spouses, but listen to a fellow alcoholic—they’ve been there and seen the light.

* Redemption is the ultimate act of empathy.  It is about radically revising ourselves to see another reality. 

Redemption alone isn’t sufficient to trust someone.  Ex-smokers, for example, can be giant pains-in-the-butt because they’ve exchanged one cause for another.

But it’s a powerful start.  The ability to see (at least) two sides of a coin is the foundation of getting along with others.  And thence to trust.