Customer Reviews

The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul (BK Business)

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The Compromise Trap is a really good how-to for leading an ethical life--at work and anywhere else. It's well argued, it flows, it starts in a logical place and it takes a pretty straight-forward way to a logical conclusion. It's full of useful advice, exercises, tools, and other aids to make it easier to follow your conscience. But what I think is most valuable in the book is that it foregrounds the importance of ethics in our work lives. We're overwhelmed on all sides with messages that the most important thing is to be successful, make a fortune, be top dog, outdo your competitors, and so on. That makes it easy to forget that most people thrive when they know they are doing the right thing. The Compromise Trap is very straightforward about the fact that when you compromise your values, you may be "successful" in conventional terms, but you stand to pay a high price in terms of your self-respect.

Although I think the individually-oriented advice is great, I would have liked to see a little more discussion about systemic solutions. The book starts from the premise that there is systemic problem: if you are in a corporate job, you will experience pressure to do things to maximize shareholder value regardless of the social utility or individual impact of the product or service you are helping to bring to market. If the problem is systemic, then trying to be individually ethical is ultimately a losing game, even if you find yourself a community of like-minded friends and colleagues.

This is a book worth reading. It gave me an excellent perspective on the traps you can fall into at work (or any other group I am part of)... important so that I can recognize when I am compromising my own core principles because I feel like I have to go along or because somebody has backed me into a corner in a way that I feel trapped. More importantly, it gave me tools and recommendations how to not get trapped. Concepts such as "unpacking yourself" to understand better what is going on, why you are feeling trapped and what is important for you to do to not feel that you are compromising are helpful to understand. Then knowing how to make a positive move... one that does not compromise your core principles while moving the group or organization ahead... is key. An excellent book.

I strongly recommend the Compromise Trap as a practical guide for people at all levels of corporate life as well as others who are seeking to act with more courage and congruency.

The demands of the workplace are challenging at all times and particularly challenging in today's business climate. Well-meaning people at all levels of organizations find themselves facing choices every day that create internal conflicts, confronting them with difficult choices, often resulting in compromises that they might regret later on. Elizabeth Doty's book provides the clearest understanding to date as to how we get ourselves into these traps and how we can work our way through them in ways that support our integrity and self-worth.

The book's description of "Healthy" versus "Unhealthy" compromises lends important insight into how we can navigate through the complexity of our commitments and relationships at work and in our lives. The chapter on "Five Positive Plays" offers excellent and practical advise. There are many other pearls of wisdom and usable tools throughout the book.

Many reviewers have commented on this book's value for professional development as an employee -- someone without direct power to make change. I'll add kudos in terms of its usefulness for one's development as a leader with direct power.

Each of the stories shared in "The Compromise Trap" mentions some sort of communication with leaders of an organization. As a manager -- leader -- you could think about what you would have done if the employee had come to you. The examples and issues might also prompt consideration of the environment in your company: Is it the kind in which people can and do come to you with similarly-weighty concerns?

This book can also be a tool leaders use to clarify what they feel is important. Only a few of the examples and stories have a clear right or wrong, the rest present an opportunity to ask yourself if you would have done something differently at all.

Using the book in this way is possible because Ms. Doty presents the examples and makes her key points without a hint of preachiness. She's included a fairly wide range of industries, making it easy to relate to. All in all, this is a great read whether you're a business leader at or near the top of the ladder, or working several rungs below.

We wrestle with ethical dilemmas and complicated challenges every day in our work. Often we making compromises to succeed or to just get by. Elizabeth Doty understands the downside of the conscious and unconscious compromises that we make in our work--compromises that often cause us to lose sight of what we value most highly.

In The Compromise Trap, Ms Doty helps us transform the choices we make when facing the pressures and difficulties of the workplace. Guiding us to maintain our integrity and play a bigger game, the author provides tools and techniques that support the aliveness of our souls at work and encourages us to use our energies wisely and well. Ms Doty's writing provides insights and suggestions that open and evolve the situation, the organization, and us rather than shutting things down or diminishing possibilities.

Drawing from fields as diverse as systems theory, leadership development, organizational learning, negotiation, and action science, Ms Doty synthesizes comprehensive research and years of organizational experience to help us be more alive and effective at work.

The combination of good writing, online tools, and team and individual exercises provide the reader a useful, elegant, and practical book that is a "must read" for anyone who wants to avoid the compromise traps that arise to trip us up in highly complex, rapidly-changing organizations.

How do good people lose their moral compass? Elizabeth Doty interviewed business professionals and drew on her own experiences as a corporate consultant to find out. She concluded that some people fall into the "compromise trap," yielding to unhealthy pressure exerted at even the best companies. Doty explains that you must develop personal resources that allow you to stay true to your values. She recommends finding a higher purpose, a beacon, to steer you away from making decisions that conflict with your beliefs. Doty's "key concepts" and "individual and group activities" provide practical exercises for integrating her theories into your day-to-day behavior. getAbstract recommends this book if you're feeling compromised, wrestling with a moral dilemma or seeking expertise in business ethics.

Imagine if everyone who conducted business in our society took an oath similar to the Hippocratic Oath, and promised to do no harm and add value to their own organization and society at large.
Elizabeth Doty, in her insightful book, "The Compromise Trap," informs us that many MBAs are already taking such an oath. "The Compromise Trap" is a call to all of us to step up and take personal responsibility for our work ethics and the standards by which we lead our lives. Drawing on powerful interviews with people who compromised and were courageous in their work situations, she shows how we can strengthen our internal reinforcements, redefine the way we conduct ourselves, and develop a more adult relationship to authority. Doty shows how moving beyond fear is at the core of the matter, and that the lines drawn between our work and personal lives are artificial ones--the values we display in one, inevitably seep into and affect the other. She expands her insights to the world stage by quoting Vaclav Havel, on how an inner split was at the heart of what enabled the totalitarian regime to continue in Czechoslovakia: "We were all morally sick because we got used to thinking one thing and saying another."
This valuable book offers practical ways in which we can craft our lives in order to engage at the highest level, and live more authentically.

Elizabeth Doty's THE COMPROMISE TRAP provides readers with a fine survey that offers insight into rules that undermine personal integrity. Six personal foundations for maintaining core values are presented along with fifty firsthand accounts of compromise in business environments, making for an outstanding survey business managers will relish.

This book is very well thought out, and offers a unique perspective on the way that business, ethics, morality, and self development are interrelated. It goes beyond the easy answers and really grapples with the complexities of the issues.

I didn't know a book about business could be fun to read and a page turner. It makes a case that having a larger vision, which includes caring about others, is best for business as well as for personal growth and lays out the steps that need to be taken. If capitalism is going to keep from floundering this is probably the way it will have to do it.