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 IDEA: Stop the Rot

“Stop the Rot” is about putting in place practices and procedures to identify and address behavior by stakeholders that undermines the organization’s Re-Imagined Values and Re-Imagined Culture.

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.

“Stop the Rot” is critical to implementing and maintaining a Re-Imagined Culture that reflects a Re-Imagined Purpose and Re-Imagined Values that align with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities.

It recognizes that one toxic employee, customer or vendor can begin a corrosive effect that spreads like the rot on a bad apple in a barrel.

According to Merriam-Webster, the idea that “one bad apple spoils the whole barrel” goes back at least as far as the early 16th century in “The Cook’s Tale” from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.   In Poor Richard’s Almanack, Benjamin Franklin stated it as “the rotten apple spoils his companion.”  But it goes back even further.

The Bible warns of the negative impact that one person can have on others. For example:

Drive out a scoffer, and strife will go out, and quarreling and abuse will cease. (Proverbs 22:10)

A man of wrath stirs up strife, and one given to anger causes much transgression. (Proverbs 29:22)

A dishonest man spreads strife, and a whisperer separates close friends. (Proverbs 16:28)

Because “an organization is a merely a collection of people working together toward a common purpose”, organizations function or “dysfunction” toward or away from that common purpose based on relationships.  One toxic person can begin a corrosive effect that spreads like the rot in an apple barrel.

“Stop the Rot” also recognizes that an organizational culture cannot become or remain healthy if it excuses, condones, tolerates or ignores bad behavior or poor performance. Cultural commentator Seth Godin has observed:

The attitudes you put up with will become the attitudes of your entire organization. Over time, every organization becomes what is tolerated. If you reward a cynic merely because he got something done, you’ve made it clear to everyone else that cynicism is okay. If you overlook the person who is hiding mistakes because his productivity is high, then you are rewarding obfuscation and stealth.

In his book Why Business Matters to God, Jeff Van Duzer observes:

Office politics, malicious gossip, behind-the-back criticisms, cliques, truth “spinning,” destructive personal ambitions, free-riding, domineering behavior, sexism, racism, jealousy, self-promotion—these are all common features of today’s corporate environments.

In its 2024 State of the Global Workplace Report, Gallup concludes that 16% of employees in the United States are “actively disengaged”.  Gallup describes this condition as follows:

Actively disengaged employees are loudly quitting. They aren’t just unhappy at work. They are resentful that their needs are not being met and are acting out their unhappiness. Every day, these workers potentially undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish.

All the best-intentioned efforts by leaders to cultivate a Re-Imagined Culture can be thwarted if “rot”–forces and influences that are working against the growth of the Re-Imagined Culture–is not identified and eliminated.  These forces and influences can take many forms, such as disruptive, dishonest or disengaged employees, ineffective or authoritarian managers, overly demanding or abusive customers, or corrupt, unethical or unreliable vendors.

“Stop the Rot” involves taking steps to communicate “that type of behavior is not consistent with our purpose and our values and will not be tolerated.”

It also must involve taking steps to understand the root of the problem and to address any systemic or cultural issues contributing to or even rewarding the “rot”.  For example, the bad behavior may be perceived by stakeholders as what the culture values, or it may stem from discontent fueled by a toxic culture.

CONTINUUM: Practices

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.

“Stop the Rot” is on the Practices Continuum. It involves ensuring that the Re-Imagined Purpose, Values and Culture of the organization and its integrity are not being undermined by the behavior and practices of its employees, customers or vendors.

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.   “Stop the Rot” is Highly Covert (An action that would be taken by a secular company) because every organization, secular or faithful, can (and we believe should) benefit from understanding and addressing factors, whether a real culture or particular stakeholders, eroding the organization’s desired purpose, values, culture and, ultimately, results.

Like many Integrity Ideas that are Covert, “Stop the Rot” can be moved toward the Overt end of the Continuum if the faithful leader chooses to explain the practices in terms of the organization’s WHY and Biblical beliefs, principles or priorities.

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors

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.

“Stop the Rot” serves Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners and Suppliers/Vendors, because they benefit from the organization implementing and maintaining its Re-Imagined Culture–unless they are the source of the “rot” seeking to undermine, or unwilling to align with, that vision.

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementing “Stop the Rot” is not as easy is simply firing “a few bad apples”.  Just consider “actively disengaged” employees.  They are more than likely showing up as “bad apples” because they are disengaged, not disengaged because they are inherently bad apples.  Terminating 16% of the workforce would be addressing the symptoms while ignoring the disease.

We have talked a lot about culture in prior blogs.  Culture in an organization is “how we do things around here”–how people behave, how people treat other people, how people are motivated, what people perceive to be valued, what behavior is tolerated, encouraged or discouraged, which policies and rules are followed, and which are ignored.   It is an ever-changing reality that must be cultivated and curated.

As we have said many times in prior posts, purpose and values define the culture of an organization; the culture shapes the behavior of the people in the organization; and the behavior of the people drives the results of the organization.  Unlike lofty purpose statements and value lists, culture is where the rubber meets the road and the boots hit the ground.  It drives whether people are engaged or disengaged, flourishing or dying, competing or collaborating.

The first step in implementing “Stop the Rot” is identifying systemic or cultural problems that may be contributing to any “rot” being observed in individuals.  Is there a high level of worker disengagement? If so, what is at its root?  Are vendors engaging in corrupt or unethical practices?  If so, was it unknown, tolerated or rewarded?

Presumably, a Re-Imagined Culture in alignment with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities would reflect the attributes of Vision, Value and Voice (from Mike Stallard’s book Connection Culture) that we identified in post #084 (Re-Imagined Implementation–Culture and People) as critical to an organizational culture of “connection” that fosters worker engagement.  “Stop the Rot” should involve an honest assessment of worker engagement.

“Stop the Rot” should also involve undertaking an honest assessment of the organization’s current real culture, including assessing what people perceive to be its real purpose, values and culture, the assumptions and motivations that underpin its policies and practices, and the real WHY behind its purpose, values and culture, in order to ensure that “rot” isn’t simply a reflection of a real culture that is undermining the Re-Imagined Culture.

• Are vendors paying bribes because they have learned it is expected?

• Are vendors engaged in supply chain practices antithetical to the organization’s WHY because employees believe obtaining the lowest cost is the highest priority?

• Are customers being abusive to employees because it is tolerated by managers?

• Are employees taking advantage of customers or vendors because they believe the organization’s WHY is “win at all costs”?

Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, wrote:

[F]or any CEO who wants to understand the real culture in his or her company: Do not look at the value statement in the new employee handbook. Go deep and understand what each process in the company is telling employees is important. Again, people do not do what you expect but what you inspect.

“Stop the Rot” may require increased efforts at aligning the organization’s real culture with its Re-Imagined Culture, which we addressed in post #237 (“Real” Culture Revisited). It may involve implementing the steps we suggested in post #163 (Integrity Idea 021: Cancel Cursing) or in post #145 (Integrity Idea 013: Set a Values “Plumb-Line”).

“Stop the Rot” will likely require prayer and difficult conversations with individuals.  We believe these conversations should happen in the context of a policy on forgiveness and second chances like what we described in post #191 (Integrity Idea 032: Adopt a “77” Policy).  If those conversations involve decisions to terminate the employment of human beings, we urge faithful leaders to apply the Golden Rule as described in post #215 (Integrity Idea 045: Terminate with Gold).

One of the best ways to “Stop the Rot” is to “avoid” the rot with pre-emptive practices. A faithful leader committed to cultivating a Re-Imagined Culture in line with Biblical beliefs, principles and priorities must recognize that it may be perceived as an “extreme culture”, particularly if leaders choose to implement policies, practices and procedures closer to the overt end of the Covert-Overt Continuums.

• An extreme culture should be disclosed upfront to potential employees to avoid misunderstandings and disappointments.  Recognize that people will either love the extreme culture or hate it.  Those who “love it” will be loyal and engaged.  Those who hate it will be disengaged and should leave (or never start).

• An extreme culture requires special cultivation:

• Preserving the values underpinning the extreme culture is critical.

• The extreme culture must shape the behavior of participants rather than allowing disruptive behavior of participants to distort the extreme culture.

A faithful leader committed to “Stop the Rot” must recognize that some qualified and even highly productive people will not be willing to work in, or behave in a way that aligns with, an extreme culture.  And some vendors and customers will not want to conduct themselves in ways that reinforce rather than undermine the organization’s bigger WHY.  Ideally, they will recognize the misalignment and move on.

If that fails, a faithful leader must have the courage to protect the barrel and its bigger WHY, regardless of the cost–trusting in God’s promises.

PERSONAL NOTE (from PM):  Spending most of my legal career in a large Wall Street law firm where profit was the priority, I witnessed the willingness of an organization to tolerate toxic personalities because they were big producers.  I witnessed how that “rot” could spread.  When a toxic personality left (usually because someone offered to pay them much more–and they believed they were worth more than their peers), some people saw it as a loss.  I understood it as a cultural blessing.

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

INTEGRITY IDEA: Stop the Rot

“Stop the Rot” is about putting in place practices and procedures to identify and address behavior by stakeholders that undermines the organization’s Re-Imagined Values and Re-Imagined Culture.  It recognizes that one toxic employee, customer or vendor can begin a corrosive effect that spreads like the rot on a bad apple in a barrel.  It also recognizes that an organizational culture cannot become or remain healthy if it excuses, condones, tolerates or ignores bad behavior or poor performance. The first step in implementing “Stop the Rot” is undertaking an honest assessment of the organization’s current real culture to understand the root of the problem and to address any systemic or cultural issues contributing to or even rewarding the “rot”.  For example, the bad behavior may be perceived by stakeholders as what the culture values, or poor performance and even bad behavior may stem from discontent fueled by a toxic culture.

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

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

STAKEHOLDERS SERVED: Employees, Customers/Clients, Owners, Suppliers/Vendors

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Photo credit: Original image by Ishan Wazalwar on Unsplash
(photo cropped)