Slow Leadership and Ethics
Several people commented about the mention of ethical considerations in our preliminary survey findings. Do these suggest most people are not sufficiently interested in ethics? That's not how I read the result. Take it at face value and it says ethical questions aren't a current problem for the majority. Hopefully, that means they don't find themselves in working situations that raise ethical concerns in their minds.
Yet there is a clear link, I believe, between ethics and the ideas of Slow Leadership. I'd like to try to clarify my thinking on this point. Please join in with your own thoughts. It's an important issue.
Slow Leadership is about creating the right balance between the needs of corporations and the people who work within them. Corporations need to be profitable, productive, competitive and able to produce products or services people want. Slow Leadership helps in all these areas by minimizing mistakes, avoiding rash choices, preventing poor quality due to haste, and limiting reworking and false starts. It also lowers costs by aiding the retention and recruitment of high-quality employees.
For people working in organizations that espouse Slow Leadership, work becomes a more attractive and satisfying activity. There is time to be creative and explore fresh options, as well as get current work done correctly and on time. The false cult of overwork and continual speed doesn't produce the results people claim for it, as I have explain before on this site.
Then there is the ethical element. Treating people badly in the cause of profit or personal greed cannot be ethically or morally correct. No creed or set of ethical standards allows it. It is simply wrong. Since Slow Leadership promotes civilized standards of leadership behavior, it includes an ethical belief that to stress and overwork employees is both ineffective, in business terms, and indefensible, in moral ones.
That is the position I see for Slow Leadership, at least at present. I would be very happy to receive your views, for or against the points I have made.
Yet there is a clear link, I believe, between ethics and the ideas of Slow Leadership. I'd like to try to clarify my thinking on this point. Please join in with your own thoughts. It's an important issue.
Slow Leadership is about creating the right balance between the needs of corporations and the people who work within them. Corporations need to be profitable, productive, competitive and able to produce products or services people want. Slow Leadership helps in all these areas by minimizing mistakes, avoiding rash choices, preventing poor quality due to haste, and limiting reworking and false starts. It also lowers costs by aiding the retention and recruitment of high-quality employees.
For people working in organizations that espouse Slow Leadership, work becomes a more attractive and satisfying activity. There is time to be creative and explore fresh options, as well as get current work done correctly and on time. The false cult of overwork and continual speed doesn't produce the results people claim for it, as I have explain before on this site.
Then there is the ethical element. Treating people badly in the cause of profit or personal greed cannot be ethically or morally correct. No creed or set of ethical standards allows it. It is simply wrong. Since Slow Leadership promotes civilized standards of leadership behavior, it includes an ethical belief that to stress and overwork employees is both ineffective, in business terms, and indefensible, in moral ones.
That is the position I see for Slow Leadership, at least at present. I would be very happy to receive your views, for or against the points I have made.
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