Customer Reviews

The Integrity Advantage: How Taking the High Road Creates a Competitive Advantage in Business

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If this book had been titled, Leading with Integrity, I would have rated it as four stars. With that title, it's main weakness is in not providing enough advice on "how to" lead with integrity.

While The Integrity Advantage describes some benefits to being a person and an organization of integrity in business or in nonprofits, the evidence in the book is far from overwhelming that integrity is the best way to go. That's unfortunate, because acting with integrity provides many advantages not explicitly described in this book (such as creating positive word of mouth rather than negative word of mouth, attracting customer loyalty that enables you to survive when you make mistakes, involving more stakeholders to help you, and encouraging people to listen to one another and communicate better). Instead, you see some advantages of operating with integrity while being reminded that you'll sleep better at night, even if you make less money. I think a more compelling case can be made than this book does. My guess is that the reason behind this limitation in the book is that only a few executives seem to have been used as sources. I doubt if more than a dozen people are involved with an example, as opposed to a quote.

The best part of the book comes in a list of "What Integrity Looks Like -- Up Close":

"Little Things Count," "Find the White [When Others See Grey]," "You Mess Up, You 'Fess Up," "Create a Culture of Trust," "You Keep Your Word," "You Care about the Greater Good," "You're Honest but Modest," "You Act Like You're Being Watched," "You Hire Integrity," "You Stay the Course." Each part of the list is developed with at least one example from a prominent business leader and some quotes from others. There's also a brief summary at the end of each one.

Another valuable part of the book is in part three where you get tips on how to act on your desire to operate with integrity:

1. Take time to reflect before acting
2. Get ideas from others until you have a good one of what's needed
3. Consider the effects on those who will be affected
4. Start making changes in yourself

Warren Buffett's advice is the best part of this book. He points out that he hires for those with integrity, high intelligence and great energy. But the latter two characteristics don't help if you don't have the first one. I also liked Mitt Romney's example in the foreword of how people with similar values can end up failing if they don't make living their values with integrity a priority. The means count as much as the ends.

After you finish this book, look at the decisions and actions you will probably be called upon to make today. How can you make them with more integrity?

If you want to know how some of the most successful businessmen and women integrate integrity into how they hire employees, run their businesses, and guide their lives -- get this book. If you want to know why integrity is a real business asset -- get this book.

With interviews from some of the biggest names in the business world, Telford and Gostick have crafted a simple, effective roadmap to understanding integrity, understanding yourself, and understanding the tremendous power of integrity. Without being self-righteous or preachy, "The Integrity Advantage," provides sound, practical business advice that is needed more today than ever. Whether you're a CEO, a manager, or a manager-to-be, get this book.

What a refreshing book to read. I grew up in the 70's, where TV was clean, our parents didn't worry about us going out to play and values were ingrained in us. In today's world, we're bombarded with news about the crooked Wall Street Execs or the newest scam to steal our information from us. We start feeling it's okay to let our morals slip a little. After reading this book, I realize that we can hold ourselves to a higher standard. Integrity is important in this day and age. We need to stop making excuses and very simply "do the right thing". I love this book and I recommend it so highly that I feel everyone should read it and it should be a requirement for high school graduation. Integrity is that important for the success of our society.

This thin and easy-to-read book looks at a number of companies, most of them quite well-known--and shows how their ethical commitments to treat their workers fairly, be honest with their customers, and minimize negative environmental impact all help create a healthier bottom line. Citing examples from Canadian Tire (Canada's #1 rated employer to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway to an unknown insurance agent whose refusal to lie about a policy's starting date to cover a pre-existing claim led an initially greedy client to give him over a million dollars worth of business, the authors demonstrate that standing up for what's right generates more profit. Unlike my own Principled Profit, the examples don't really look at the marketing benefits--but it does look closely at the difference in public perception of a Johnson & Johnson or a Gillette that does the right thing, and an Enron that does not.

And they occasionally look beyond the business context, as in the powerful example of Clarence Jordan, leader of an interracial and egalitarian Christian community in the segregated American South of the 1950s. When he tried to buy chicken feed from a local merchant, the storekeeper would only sell to him if Jordan publicly renounced his views on integration. He answered, "I just came in to get a bag of seed. My soul is not for sale."

The authors identify and explore 10 characteristics of integrity--including, ironically enough, the feeling that people of integrity are quiet, humble, and don't "spearhead large ethical crusades." I hope they'll forgive me for touting their virtues in spite of my own campaign for the Business Ethics Pledge [...] . And when faced with ethical quandaries, they suggest a four-step process for evaluating the decision.

Shel Horowitz's award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, demonstrates how to build a business around ethics, environmental sustainability, and cooperative practices--and how to develop marketing that highlights those advantages.

Over the last few years, corporate performance has taken a back seat to corporate governance. With every scandal that rocks Wall Street; Enron, Adelphia, Anderson, and WorldCom to name a few, issues like ethics, morals and social responsibility are plastered on the top of the fold of rags ranging from the NY Times to the Morgan City Daily Review. Through interviews with some of the world's most respected CEO's, Adrian Gostick and Dana Telford's book "The Integrity Advantage" sheds an interesting perspective of corporate integrity and how this integrity, in fact, is truly a competitive advantage. The authors describe ten characteristics that are consistently displayed by people with integrity. Although none of these are compelling and shed new light on integrity, the authors emphasize the importance through the experience of the CEO's and demonstrate how incremental improvements in each one develops the reader's decision making enhancing their own reputation of integrity. It would seem, on the surface that integrity is an easy concept to understand and apply. However, the NIKE example speaks to how this is not the case. Although conceptually we can grasp integrity and how this may, in fact, be a competitive advantage, what the book does not address is how it fits within the construct of social responsibility. In other words, is integrity as described in the book, aligned with Milton Friedman and Elaine Sternberg's view of corporate responsibility? Or does it follow the framework put forth by Elizabeth Anderson and R. Edward Freeman? I am inclined to believe the spirit of the book falls somewhere in the middle. The book quotes some of the most successful smartest CEO's in the world. And although social responsibility and certainly integrity are of primary concern, each one of these individuals has a profit motive for being in business. Otherwise, they would be heading up a nonprofit organization. It seems to me these two, integrity and having a profit motive should not be mutually exclusive. Although as Friedman states, social responsibility as a motivating factor in decision making is in fact taxing the shareholders of whom you have a fiduciary responsibility to act in their best interest. As Sternberg states, you have to be able to differentiate between business and other institutions. There should be a distinct line, roadmap if you will, to address both, but make no doubt that the business is the first and foremost responsibility of the executive. That said, there is something to be said of Anderson's and to some degree Freeman's views of social responsibility. The corporation should consider and behave in a way that considers both benefits and consequences to its stakeholders. This does not mean that it should act to promote the greatest benefit to its stakeholders, in doing so it ignores the aforementioned fiduciary responsibility. In my humble opinion Freeman is wrong, they do not have nor should have legal "requirements" to do so. What should drive their stakeholder responsibility is their personal integrity, which gets us back to the book. One could argue that had Phil Knight, or any other of these executives that have recently fallen from grace, pursued the steps in the book they could have avoided the problems they faced. In the end, integrity is indeed a critical success factor that could be used to leverage the corporation and become a competitive advantage. And integrity along with the profit motive should not be viewed as mutually exclusive. However, one should never forget the responsibility to the shareholder and that this responsibility should serve as guidance with integrity as the cornerstone in every leaders and employees decision making process.