Integrity Ideas are specific actions a leader can consider during the Re-Align step of Integriosity^®–actions that will begin to Re-Align the organization with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.  You can find more Integrity Ideas at Integrous | Integrity Ideas (integriosity.com)

Integrity Ideas are practical actions toward implementing a bigger WHY for the organization.  We believe some are critical (and necessary) steps in the RENEW/RE-ALIGN/RE-IMAGINE/RESTORE process.  Others are just ideas to be considered if they feel like a good fit based on what leaders prayerfully discern is best for stewarding the organization toward its WHY.

“Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” falls into the “necessary” category as an important element of stewardship in an increasingly polarized society that has become less welcoming and even less tolerant of Christianity and Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.

INTEGRITY IDEA: Keep Controversy Within Your Mission

We don’t mean that an organization should have a controversial mission.  “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” is about putting in place policies and practices to ensure that the organization is prepared to take positions on controversial social and political issues that impact pursuing its purpose, values and culture but resists taking positions on potentially divisive issues that do not.

All one needs to do to understand the relevance of this topic is search the internet for something like “companies speaking out on social issues” or “companies staying neutral on social issues”.  The results show that there is a heated controversy about whether an organization and its leaders should weigh-in on heated controversies.

Some commentators focus on the societal demand for CEO’s to take positions on divisive issues.  Others point to companies that regret “speaking up” and still others point to companies that regret “shutting up”.  Other commentators talk about companies that have adopted policies of neutrality or why neutrality is not possible.

We believe 1 Thessalonians and Ecclesiastes provide guidance for a faithful leader pursuing faithful integrity:

But we urge you, brothers . . . to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one. (1 Thessalonians 4:10-12)

Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes.  (Ecclesiastes 11:9)

“Aspire to live quietly” but “walk in the ways of your heart”.

“Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” recognizes that leading with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing requires a continual prayerful balancing of the call to be courageous and the need to be wise.  Both the idolization and fear of “speaking out“ may lead to poor stewardship.

Here are two verses to anchor those guideposts:

Courageous: Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go. (Joshua 1:9)

Wise: Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  (Matthew 10:16)

Wisdom is often not as celebrated by the faith community as courage, but it is critical to discern the right balance between the two if a leader is to honor God’s command in the Creation Mandate (the mandate in Genesis 1:28 ““Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it”) to steward creation, which includes the organization.

In our current culture, a leader who takes a position and speaks out on a controversial issue is certainly embracing the call to courage.  But are they being wise?  We believe the answer is “it depends”.  Taking a Biblically-based stand on a divisive societal issue is neither inherently good nor inherently bad for an organization.

A faithful leader is called to steward the organization they have been given to lead by God.  “Speaking up” may be absolutely the wrong execution–poor stewardship–for a particular organization, given factors such as the industry, geographic location, customer base, employee base, and regulatory environment.  For example, “speaking up” may alienate key stakeholders or create an “us-them” culture.

You may be wondering why “speaking up” is celebrated more than “shutting up” in the faith community.  We believe a truism attributed to John Hayes, former Chief Marketing Officer of American Express offers an insight:

We tend to overvalue the things we can measure, and undervalue the things we cannot.

It is easy to see, record, tally and celebrate the courageous societal/political positions an organization embraces.  We like courage–it is “loud”.  In a culture that has been getting more and more secular (and even hostile to faith), people of Biblical faith are encouraged and energized when they can celebrate courageous acts in the name of faith.

It is much harder to identify “shutting up” initiatives in pursuit of faithful integrity through wise stewardship.

The organization’s heart–as defined by and reflected in its Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values and Re-Imagined Culture–should be the filter through which decisions about “speaking up” or “shutting up” are made.

CONTINUUM: Policies

The Integriosity model organizes “heart change” along six Covert-Overt Continuums.  There is nothing magic about these categories, but we believe they are helpful in thinking about practical execution of a Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values and a Re-Imagined Culture.  The Continuums are Prayer, Proclamation, Policies, Practices, Products, People.

Each Continuum represents an area in which leaders can begin to think about, plan and institute Re-Alignment changes to the heart of the organization.

“Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” is on the Policies Continuum. It involves prayerfully implementing an overarching approach to how the organization will respond to social and political issues that are divisive in popular culture.  It is an approach the organization can adopt to reflect and reinforce its purpose, values and culture.  Policies are guidelines, whether written or merely understood, that define and shape aspects of an organization’s culture by providing expectations for how the organization’s heart will be promoted and protected.

COVERT-OVERT RATING: Highly Covert

The Integriosity model breaks the Covert-Overt Continuums into six gradations–from Highly Covert to Highly Overt–that we believe are helpful in beginning to pray and think about what is most appropriate for an organization at a particular moment in time.

Most Integrity Ideas will have one place on the scale.  Some can vary depending on how they are implemented.  “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” is Highly Covert (an action that would be taken by a secular company) because even a secular organization benefits from taking a thoughtful approach to how it “speaks up” or “shuts up” about controversial political and social issues.

“Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” can also be anywhere from Overt (An overtly faith-based action known generally within the organization) to Highly Overt (an overtly faith-based action involving community, website, sales/marketing materials) if the faithful leader chooses to explain its policy in terms of the organization’s WHY and Biblical beliefs, principles or priorities.

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Kingdom

When we categorize faith-based actions, we also consider the stakeholders principally impacted by the action: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors, Community and Kingdom…

“Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” serves all stakeholders but we categorize it as principally serving the Kingdom because it requires a prayerful balancing of the calls to courage and wisdom in pushing back on values of the kingdom of the world and pushing forward Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities in the face of potential controversy and opposition.

IMPLEMENTATION

There is no easy formula or algorithm for determining whether implementing “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” for a particular social or political issue should lead to wisdom prevailing as “shut up” or courage prevailing as “speak up”.

In post #141 (Covert or Overt), we explored whether an organization pursuing faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing needs to do so in a way that is overt about faith.  We concluded that the “right place” on a covert-overt continuum for a particular organization and leader will come through prayer and is likely to evolve over time.  It is about ABIDING in the leading of the Holy Spirit–not STRIVING to look “faithful”.

The same is true when deciding whether “shut up” or “speak up” represents the better stewardship of the organization.  When it comes to covert vs overt expressions of an organization’s WHY, we suggested the balancing act of courage and wisdom is better thought of as “courage tempered by wisdom” rather than wisdom tempered by courage.  We think the reverse is a better approach when implementing “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission”.

While overt expressions of Biblical faith such as prayer at meetings, workplace Bible studies and prayer groups, corporate chaplains, Bible verses on packaging, giving out Bibles to workers and customers, and including “God” or “Faith” in the mission and values, may turn some people away or even offend them, they are not nearly as divisive as publicly taking a position on a highly controversial social or political issue.

When it comes to implementing “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission”, we believe it is better to think “wisdom tempered by courage”.  “Shut up” should be the default unless prayerful discernment reveals to faithful leaders that “shut up” is inconsistent with the best stewardship of its Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values and Re-Imagined Culture.  Then it is time to “speak up”.

We have emphasized in several past posts that an organization pursuing Biblical flourishing through the alignment of its culture with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities must recognize that the Creation Mandate requires faithful stewardship of God’s creation and that faithful stewardship of an organization must take into account four principles–Respect, Sustainability, Mutuality and Generosity.  “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” particularly implicates Respect and Sustainability.

Respect. Respect for all humans because God created them, which means treating all stakeholders of an organization (owners, employees, vendors, customers, communities) with dignity and caring about how the organization is impacting their flourishing.  While all people in an organization need to be aligned with its purpose, values and culture, they need not be aligned as to controversial societal and political issues that do not impact pursuit of the organization’s purpose, values and culture.  “Speaking up” when not mission-driven risks undermining flourishing by unnecessarily dividing employees and being perceived as disrespecting the views of those who disagree.

Sustainability.  Sustainability applies across all aspects of an organization, including its utilization of all forms of capital that drive the business and its relationships with the stakeholders related to those forms of capital.  “Speaking up” on controversial societal and political issues when not mission-driven risks unnecessarily alienating the organization’s human capital–its people.

Ultimately, in determining whether “speak up” or “shut up” is the best stewardship of an organization, faithful leaders must prayerfully seek God’s guidance.  A Harvard Business Review article provides one practical framework for assessing whether “speaking up” is mission-driven.  Author Paul Argenti of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business suggests focusing on three questions:

• Does the issue align with the organization’s strategy and mission?

• Can the organization meaningfully influence the issue?

• Will the organization’s stakeholders agree with it “speaking up”?

We believe Hobby Lobby’s famous challenge of the contraceptive mandate under the Affordable Care Act was mission-driven “speaking up”–Hobby Lobby was being required by the government to do something that substantially burdened the organization’s exercise of its faith.  It was not merely stating its position on a highly charged societal and political issue.

A mission-driven approach to “speaking up” or “shutting up” is evident in Basecamp’s courageous announcement (to both public criticism and praise) that employees would no longer be permitted to discuss social and political issues on the company Basecamp account. Co-founder Jason Fried explained:

We don’t have to solve deep social problems, chime in publicly whenever the world requests our opinion on the major issues of the day, or get behind one movement or another with time or treasure. These are all important topics, but they’re not our topics at work — they’re not what we collectively do here. . . . We’re in the business of making software, and a few tangential things that touch that edge. We’re responsible for ourselves. That’s more than enough for us. . . .  A return to personal responsibility and good faith trust in one another to do our own individual jobs well. A return to why we started the company. A return to what we do best.

A significant number of their employees reportedly decided to leave.

Another mission-driven approach to “speaking up” or “shutting up” was announced by Coinbase, which also lost employees when its Co-Founder, Brian Armstrong, described its “apolitical” refocus in a blog post:

Everyone is asking the question about how companies should engage in broader societal issues during these difficult times, while keeping their teams united and focused on the mission. . . . During difficult times I think it’s important to go back to the guideposts we’ve established, like our culture doc, mission, and values. . . . We focus on the things that help us achieve our mission. . . . We focus minimally on causes not directly related to the mission: Policy decisions: If there is a bill introduced around crypto, we may engage here, but we normally wouldn’t engage in policy decisions around healthcare or education for example. . . .  Broader societal issues: We don’t engage here when issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus.  Political causes: We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission. Even if we all agree something is a problem, we may not all agree on the solution. . . . It has become common for Silicon Valley companies to engage in a wide variety of social activism, even those unrelated to what the company does, and there are certainly employees who really want this in the company they work for. So why have we decided to take a different approach?  The reason is that while I think these efforts are well intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division. . . . I recognize that our approach is not for everyone, and may be controversial. I know that many people may not agree, and some employees may resign. . . . We need to do a better job of being authentic about who we are. . . . We are an intense culture and we are an apolitical culture. . . .  With a strong, united culture, we can build a company that changes the world. At Coinbase, that culture means staying focused on our mission and being the best company we can be.

We were particularly drawn to Anderson’s reference to being more “authentic”.  As we first described way back in post #43 (Righteousness–Need for Authenticity), “authenticity” is critical to faithful integrity.  Authenticity can be thought of as having four components:

• Identity: The organization is clear about its WHY–its purpose, priorities and its values.

• Sincerity: The WHY the organization professes is actually the WHY to which its leaders are committed.

• Consistency: The organization operates consistently in accordance with its WHY.

• Transparency: The organization is clear and open about its WHY and that WHY is understood by its owners, employees, customers, vendors and community.

Implementing “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” must be authentic, with each decision to “speak up” or “shut up” prayerfully being driven by faithful stewardship of the organization’s WHY and not by fear, guilt, public opinion, or legal obligation.  It must come from an understanding that the organization’s work itself is a sacred pursuit to be faithfully stewarded and not just a secular platform for sacred deeds.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM):  This post was inspired by recent developments at Vanderbilt University (my son’s alma mater)and then Pomona College.  To be honest, I have been very frustrated by institutions of higher learning–particularly my alma mater–forgetting their mission to be places of free expression where students can learn to discuss respectfully and learn from diverse viewpoints.  In a Wall Street Journal commentary, the chancellor of Vanderbilt described three steps the university has taken to get back to that mission.  One of those steps is “institutional neutrality”–knowing when to “shut up”.

More recently, the president of Pomona College immediately suspended protesters who stormed an administration building and occupied her office.

ESSENCE:  Integrity Ideas are specific practical actions a faithful leader can consider in leading faithfully through business a better way.

INTEGRITY IDEA: Keep Controversy Within Your Mission

COVERT-OVERT CONTINUUM (six Continuums for action):  Policies

COVERT-OVERT RATING (several levels from Highly Covert to Highly Overt): Highly Covert

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Kingdom

We don’t mean that an organization should have a controversial mission.  “Keep Controversy Within Your Mission” is about putting in place policies and practices to ensure that the organization is prepared to take positions on controversial social and political issues that impact pursuing its purpose, values and culture but resists taking positions on potentially divisive issues that do not.  It recognizes that leading with faithful integrity through business a better way toward Biblical flourishing requires a continual prayerful balancing of the call to be courageous and the need to be wise.  Both the idolization and fear of “speaking out“ may lead to poor stewardship. Wisdom is often not as celebrated by the faith community as courage, but it is critical to discern the right balance between the two if a leader is to honor God’s command in the Creation Mandate to steward creation, which includes the organization.  The organization’s heart–as defined by and reflected in its Re-Imagined Purpose, Re-Imagined Values and Re-Imagined Culture–should be the filter through which decisions about “speaking up” or “shutting up” are made.

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Photo credit: Original photo by Joey Kyber: https://www.pexels.com/photo/selective-focus-photoraphy-of-chains-during-golden-hour-119562/
(photo cropped)