Choosing Truth Over Self in Life and Loss Prevention
Brian
Frasier
Loss Prevention Professional and President of the Oregon Chapter of the
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
Franklin Roosevelt once said, “Repetition does not transform a lie into a
truth.” I think he would have been a bit shocked to see how quickly a lie can be
repeated in today’s internet and social media age, which gives that statement
even greater meaning.
What I want to discuss with professionals in loss prevention is truth telling. I
don’t mean the kind of truth telling found in the Jim Carrey movie “Liar Liar,”
where you live a life compelled to tell the truth in every circumstance,
especially by disclosing how many unpaid parking tickets you have to the officer
that just pulled you over for speeding. Nor do I want to discuss how in loss
prevention we are always trying to find and evaluate the truth in the interviews
we conduct. The kind of truth I want to talk about is the courage to choose the
truth over personal self-interests in the face of powers, culture or fear that
work against you to do it.
When I was 8 years old, I found out I was adopted. Something seemed amiss. It
wasn’t like my family was African American and here I am white as rice. I would
hope if that were the case I would've figured that out before 8. My parents
didn't sit me down and have a discussion about being adopted. I was what you'd
call a "curious individual." I accidentally stumbled upon the truth through
snooping and finding documents that laid it all out pretty clearly. Finding out
the truth in the manner that I did had the most profound impact on me. It helped
shape me for better and worse into who I am today. My parents are great and
wonderful people but they were hugely insecure in their ability to confront an
uncomfortable subject. To this day 34 years later, my adoption has never been
talked about. I learned that there are some truths that cannot be ignored or put
off and must be brought out in the open no matter the fear or how painful it may
seem.
Just a bit of a side note on being adopted: Being 8 years old in the late 1970s,
finding out you're adopted with a kid that has a bit of creative mind, you
start thinking maybe your parents are aliens or that you’re the one from another
planet. Then you see "Superman The Movie" and it all starts to make sense: Older
parents who are nothing like you. No brothers or sisters. Living in a small
farming town. You have this weird aversion to things that are green that could
be kryptonite even though you're told it's just broccoli. Maybe. Just maybe. So
you go outside and try and lift a car and the only thing that happens is that
you look like a fool in front of everyone. It was extremely disappointing, but I
digress.
Throughout history we have read and studied great figures that have suffered
enormous consequences at the hands of people in power for their attempts to
speak the truth. Jesus: Crucified for going against the powers of the time and
fighting for the truth to be told. Martin Luther: Fought the misguided beliefs
that buying indulgences from the Catholic Church would help get you into heaven.
Galileo: Defended helio-centrism against the Catholic Church. Martin Luther King
Jr: Fought for basic human rights that were denied based on the color of their
skin. The truth being that all people are truly created equal. Those are some
pretty powerful figures in history that chose fighting for truth over the
consequences of themselves and paid enormous prices for it. These figures of
history are admired and a part of celebrations and remembrance today throughout
the whole world. We forget or don't understand how controversial and
revolutionary they were at the time.
Lets bring this down a notch to a lower level. Some contemporary and smaller
examples that to me are just as powerful: Karen Silkwood: Exposed health and
safety conditions at a US nuclear facility. Frank Serpico: As a detective he
exposed corruption and bribery within the NYPD. Jeffery Wigand: Told the truth
of tobacco companies who intentionally manipulated the tobacco blend to increase
the nicotine addiction. Sharron Watkins: Exposed the house of financial cards
that was Enron. Joseph Wilson: Wrote an op-ed piece about his findings in Africa
that went against the government’s rationale for invading Iraq. The list goes on
and on with example after example of people choosing to speak the truth over
just protecting themselves or a culture or an organization.
Each of these people had a boss, leaders they reported to or part of a place
that influenced them greatly and came across information or saw things that they
knew weren't right and chose to tell the truth while risking their reputations,
career and even their lives. We celebrate these people. We admire them. It can
be easy to look back and recognize their contributions and efforts without
really understanding what it must have been like at the time they were faced
with making a decision on which way they should go. Stay quiet, keep my job,
pension, friends, and career or risk it all for an idea, a truth, and a belief
of what is right vs. what is wrong.
What if we were to break this down another level to a place where we all can
relate? We don’t have to talk about these grand figures that transformed nations
or advanced the ideals of science or exposed corruption and fraud. What about
our daily lives where we go to school, attain an education and strike out
working for organizations with the hope and optimism that we can add value and
provide meaningful work? Many of us have become disappointed with what we have
found. Management guru Peter Drucker said that people and organizations must be
focused on the right things to be effective. What if what they think are the
right things are actually the wrong things? What do we do about it when we find
ourselves in a place that keeps doing the wrong or ineffective things? Too often
we don’t do anything about it and remain silent while we continue plugging along
in a job, completing meaningless tasks, or being a part of endless committees
that have poor value and no effectiveness to the overall success of the
organization. Fake work is what I call it.
How many examples can we all have where we see something that just doesn't make
sense and if we find ourselves bold enough to question it, do leaders offer an
excuse or shut down the conversation where your loyalty or ability to be seen as
a team player is questioned? If you are a leader or manager that's done that,
those are how the seeds of unethical behavior, corruption and fraud are planted.
I've been there. As a manager pushing fake work, making the people reporting to
me track and do so much busy work that had little meaning or value compared to
the effort put in. It seemed they spent more time documenting something than
they did actually being engaged in the process of trying to solve the problem.
When I was 28 years old, I had just been promoted to my first district loss
prevention manager position. I had worked really hard in my early 20s doing
everything that was asked of me and going above and beyond to show how
eager I was to get promoted. Never mind that a lot of those things had zero
value to anyone. They impressed my superiors and that's all that mattered. How
wrong I was. When I got promoted, I continued with that line of thought and
towed the company line. Pushed programs. Ignored concern and dissent within the
ranks. Things looked good on paper and on the surface but in many ways it was
just an illusion because I cared more about the numbers, more about my own
success than the people that worked for me.
Today, I get fully that results come from building the foundation with the
people, then the results will follow. If something isn’t working it is usually
the program and not the people that need to be reevaluated. I realize that there
will always be some busy work and people that are performing poorly. But if the
amount of busy and ineffective work becomes excessive and a large part of what
workers are asked to do, employees will tune out, go through the motions,
collect a paycheck and possibly watch a lot of cat videos on YouTube.
When something does come along that could be real, effective and meaningful,
people will be jaded and suspicious and get blamed for why things failed. As
leaders, it is our responsibility to seek out the truth from the perspectives of
those we ask work of and ensure that we are doing the right things - even if it
goes against our personal opinions or organizational culture. With technology
and consumer trends changing more rapidly than companies have the ability to adapt
to quick enough, people hired to run an area of responsibility must be given the
flexibility to be relevant to their market conditions and not run a corporate
cookie-cutter program so strictly that is poorly planned and poorly supported.
There is no time for ineffective programs to go on. It takes the ability to want
to know honest feedback from the field, to be humble enough to say we made a
mistake and we need to change direction with real input. It takes courage and
humbleness to ask and it takes courage and passion to answer truthfully.
If you are a leader, if you supervise people, oversee a department or are
fortunate enough to run an organization, you have the supreme responsibility,
the absolute obligation of ensuring that the culture is right to make it OK for
people to be truthful so that their ability to be highly effective is not wasted
on misguided efforts that end up squandering time, money, resources and sap
morale. Peter Drucker also said "culture eats strategy for lunch”. I believe
that wholeheartedly. If the culture in the company or department isn’t right,
all your efforts on whatever strategy is being implemented will eventually go to
waste. A professor in my MBA strategy class stated that company programs have
about a 20% success rate. 20%! Think of all the loss prevention programs that
have come and gone and the pressure we have placed on professionals to reach
goals with those odds.
I’m reminded of a story that I came across from Dr. Benjamin Carson at a recent
National Prayer Breakfast attended by President Obama. You can find it on You
Tube after work hours preferably. The story is that a wealthy man who loved his
mother very much and enjoyed buying her things started to run out of ideas of
things to buy her. But he came across these birds. These birds were awesome.
They could sing, they could dance and they could talk. They were $5,000 birds
and he bought 2 of them to send to his mother for Mother’s Day. He called his
mother up so excited. He said “Mother-Mother, what did you think of those
birds??!!.” She said, “They were good!” The son was shocked. He said, “Mother, I
don’t understand, how could you eat those birds, these birds cost $5,000 a
piece. They could sing, they could dance and they could talk.” Mother said,
”Well...I guess they should’ve said something!"
In that story lays the heart and essence of one of the most pressing issues I
see today. Many people are afraid to speak up and keep to themselves and
continue as a silent observer while the wrong things are happening around them
or to them. If we as a culture aren't so concerned about if we put enough hours
in the week or the politics of an organization and focused more on the true
effectiveness of our time, our projects, our conference calls, our meetings. Or
we let go of our own fears of self-protection and insecurities then maybe our
family, our whole lives would improve somewhat and the stress we all have, the
anxiety we all feel can be lessened. We embrace the truth no matter if it means
we admit a wrong, or if it causes fear or uncomfortable situations or shakes up
the organizational culture. And just maybe an 8-year-old kid can grow up
learning the example of how to handle the truth when it hits them in a way that
fosters positive results later in life ... and they won't keep waiting for the
energy of the sun to give them super powers.
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