东芝丑闻教训：有一个撒谎的CEO，就会有一群撒谎的员工

    3. 依品行解雇人。

    詹·利姆和美捷步网站首席执行官谢家华共同创立了旨在传播幸福生活理念的公司Delivering Happiness（deliveringhappiness.com）并担任CEO。她向全世界的企业负责人展示了如何构建一个成功的团队。上周早些时候，我有幸在美国演说家协会的年会上聆听了她的感人演说。利姆建议：“招人要慢，炒人要快”。她还说，这两项工作都应该以公司的价值观为基础。

    不过，从东芝近况就能看出，公司价值观有时并不光彩。

    对任何企业来说，长期成功的关键价值之一就是诚实。

    20世纪90年代初，我在内布拉斯加州林肯市的盖洛普研究所参加了为期一周的管理研讨会。当时该研究所的拥有者、已故的伟大人物唐纳德·克里夫顿（继承克里夫顿衣钵的包括同为作家兼学者的汤姆·拉斯和马库斯·白金汉）在我们的研讨班上说，盖洛普开除了一名编造数据的员工，尽管后者只这样做了一次。

    这样的反应是否太过严厉了呢？

    《财富》主编艾伦·莫里觉得这样做并不过分。他对我说，企业最宝贵的资产就是人们的信任，所以“任何有可能让它失去公众信任的东西对盖洛普的工作都是生死攸关的威胁。”

    莫里说：“想一想，是什么让品牌那么有力量，就是信任。看到这些品牌时，大家就会觉得自己能得到可靠的东西……我就把维护公信力作为自己的最高目标。”

    不光是企业，员工不诚实在任何领域都会导致失败。政治顾问、《候选人的十大最严重失误》（The 10 Worst Mistakes Candidates Make）一书的作者杰伊·汤森德指出，在履历中添油加醋的人都为自己栽大跟头埋下了伏笔。

    上周五上午，杰伊在Skype上对我说：“我在肯塔基州参加竞选工作时看到了一位国会议员候选人的简历。当时他是州参议员，自称毕业于美国海军学院，拿到了计算机科学学士和硕士学位。我打电话向该学院求证此事，对方却回答说‘对不起，先生，这个人不是我们的毕业生。他在这儿上过一个学期，然后就退学了。而且我们的计算机系根本就没有开研究生课程。’”

    杰伊说：“这个人多年来一直在说瞎话。此事被选民发现搞得他焦头烂额。他是共和党，那儿是共和党支持率最高的地区之一，但他却落选了，而且输的不是一点半点。”

    只关注应聘者的知识和技能是错误做法，同样的，仅仅因为没有业绩而开除员工也不对。肯塔基州的民众让一位公务员下岗的原因实际上是说谎。如果早开除了那些不诚实的人（包括CEO），东芝也许就不会有现在这些麻烦了吧？

    请大家稍等，我再补充两句。

    明智的公司在招人、提拔人和开除人的时候不光要看知识和技能，还要看品行，这说起来很容易。但在实际操作中它意味着什么呢？

    在今后的专栏文章中，《财富》杂志管理栏目将探讨品格优秀的员工具有的十种品质，以及企业如何判断求职者和员工有多少这样的品质。

    敬请继续关注！（财富中文网）

    本文作者布鲁斯·韦恩斯坦有“伦理者”之称（他的网站是www.theethicsguy.com），他是一位主题演讲人和企业伦理、管理以及品格培训师。他的最新著作是《那些好人：品格高尚员工的十大品质》。

    译者：Charlie

    校对：詹妮

    3. Fire for character.

    Jenn Lim is the CEO of Delivering Happiness, a company she founded with Zappos.com CEO Tony Hsieh. She shows business leaders around the world about how to build successful teams, and I was fortunate to hear her moving speech earlier this week at the annual convention of the National Speakers Association. “Hire slowly, fire quickly,” Lim advises, and adds that both activities should be based on the company’s values.

    But as Toshiba’s recent history demonstrates, sometimes a company’s values are dishonorable.

    One value that is essential for the long-term success of any organization is honesty.

    In the early ’90s, I took a weeklong leadership seminar at the Gallup Institute in Lincoln, Nebraska. Its owner at the time, the late, great Donald O. Clifton (whose protégées include Tom Rath and Marcus Buckingham), told my class that Gallup fires an employee who fudges data, even if that employee has done this only once.

    Isn’t this response rather harsh?

    Alan Murray, Fortune’s editor, doesn’t think so. A company’s greatest asset, he told me, is the trust that people have in it, so “anything that has the potential to damage that public trust is an existential threat to the center’s work.”

    “When you think about what makes brands powerful,” he continued, “it’s all about trust. The public has a certain understanding that what they’re getting when they see that brand is something they can count on … I see maintaining the public’s trust as my highest purpose.”

    Dishonesty in an employee is a death knell in every field, not just business. Jay Townsend, a political consultant and the author of The 10 Worst Mistakes Candidates Make, says that people who embellish their resumes set themselves up for a nasty fall.

    “I worked on a race in Kentucky once and reviewed the resume of one of the candidates who was running for U.S. Congress” Jay told me via Skype Friday morning. “He was a sitting state senator, and he said he’d graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with both an undergraduate and a master’s degree in computer science. When I called the Academy to verify this, I was told, ‘I’m sorry, sir, but this person never graduated from here. He was here for one semester and dropped out. We don’t even offer a master’s degree in computer science.’”

    “The man had been lying for years,” Jay said. “When voters learned that, he was cooked. He was running as a Republican in one of the most Republican districts in the country. He lost, and it wasn’t even close. ”

    Just as it’s a mistake to look only at a job candidate’s knowledge and skill when making hiring or promoting decisions, it’s also wrong to fire employees only because their performance is lacking. The citizens of Kentucky essentially fired a government official for lying. How might Toshiba have avoided its current problems if it had gotten rid of the dishonest people in its midst (including its CEO) earlier?

    But wait—there’s more!

    It’s easy say that smart companies should hire, promote, and fire for character as well as knowledge and skill. What does this mean, however, in practical terms?

    In future columns for Fortune’s leadership channel, we’ll look at 10 qualities that high-character employees possess and how companies can determine the degree to which job candidates and current employees possess these qualities.

    Stay tuned!

    Bruce Weinstein, The Ethics Guy, is a keynote speaker and corporate trainer in ethics, leadership, and character, and his latest book is The Good Ones: Ten Crucial Qualities of High-Character Employees.