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Welcome to the very last lecture of the best business ethics practices to implement in
your organization.
I want to take a little step back for this very last lecture. Go back to the very first
discussion we had regarding Chapter 1. Why be ethical. And I note in that Chapter, the
competitive advantages are bottom line oriented. That ethical organizations, financially, out
perform unethical organizations. Because people prefer working for ethical organizations and
they prefer doing business with ethical organizations. But also, you want to be ethical because it's
just good to be ethical. And there's a lot of benefits to just being ethical.
Because we only have really one life to live. And in that one life we lived, you want to
improve ourselves as much as we can because that's the legacy that we leave. I want to
get a little personal up front before discussing, ultimately, the purpose of life and why this
all very meaningful to me and why I take business ethics so seriously and I really dedicated
my life to teaching, giving talks and organizing around business ethics.
I'm a two time cancer survivor, including once having so-called terminal cancer. Going
back to 1995. I was teaching business ethics. I was Europe giving some talks and I collapsed.
I was flown back to Madison, Wisconsin. Went to the hospital. And within a day, they said,
you have stage three cancer, Hodgkins lymphoma, and you're going on stage four. And if you
know cancer, stage one is introductory, stage three is you're getting near death and stage
four is you're dead.
And so I was on the verge of stage three going on stage four. Hodgkins, they don't know why
you get it. And it might be environmental. It might be hereditary. And I grew up with
two sisters and they don't get cancer. And I always thought I'm a vegetarian. I've been
a vegetarian for 30 some odd years. I meditate. I jog. I volunteer at soup kitchen. I'm on
boards and I'm involved in the community and now I'm dying of cancer and that is not fair.
That is not fair. So that was a very traumatic experience. And obviously, they told me it
was terminal. This is in July of 1995. Initially, it was a 50/50 chance with chemo. Chemo is
poisons. They were giving me eight poisons twice a month, putting it through IVs into
my veins. I lost 50 pounds but I still continued to teach my business ethics class to executives
at UW.
And by january, after 4 months of chemo, they said the chemo's not working. You're going
to be dead by June. So start clearing up your life. Do what you got to do. Tidy up things.
And it just really forced me to into - "Well, what was this life all about." - Everybody
dies. I mean, there's nobody you know that's not going to die. So life was very, very limited
and very fragile and you don't know when it's going to end.
And my experience in the, because I was terminal and I'm a nice guy, I counseled a lot of cancer
patients when I was in the hospital. And there was some people that were comfortable with
death. And there were other people that were scared to die. And in my discussions with
them, what I realized was that the people accepted the fact that they were going to
die, they had lived good lives. They had done the best that could do. And they were just
comfortable with the fact that they did best that could possibility do with the days that
they were granted. When I talked to people who were afraid of dying, they had lived a
questionable lives. They had done some nasty things. They didn't apologize. They didn't
ask forgiveness. They were stealing. They were cheating on their spouse. They were alcoholics.
They were drug addicts. And they just realized they always assumed that they had more time
to live and now they realized they didn't have time to live. And they were filled with
the anxieties about the inevitability that death was just going to happen next week or
within the month.
So that just reinforced in my own mind how to make the best and most out of every day
and every week. And what we do is we all work. And we spend most of our life at work. So
work and organizations should be places you experience the most ethics, not the least
amount of ethics. Work should be places where you really develop your spirit. Work should
be the place where you really grow your heart.
And I just knew so many people that were participating in organizations that their hearts weren't
growing. They were becoming resentful. They were becoming sarcastic. They were becoming
cynical. And they thought they were wasting their life but maybe the pay was good.
So that got me to take business ethics even more seriously to come up with these benchmarks.
Obviously, I survived the cancer from 95 to 96. And I was very, very grateful with that.
And then, after you don't have cancer for five years, you're viewed of being cured.
So I was cured of Hodgkins disease. I'm very, very fortunate.
Continued to live my merry old live. And then I went to the doctor in, around May of 2011,
so 15, 16 years later, for a swollen hand. If you look closely at my arm, my hand is
swollen. And we're trying to figure out why my hand was swollen. So they did a bunch of
test and what they found out with the test was my cancer came back. And that was huge
shock. And the cancer had nothing to do with my swollen hand. So in terms of a framework
of mind, the swollen hand was a blessing. And it's still swollen. So I had cancer again.
We did more chemo. We did more radiation. And having dealt with death twice, even having
dealt with death once, I became fearless. There was nothing I was afraid of.
And we're so hesitant in touching, talking with each other about sensitive issues that
I just felt essential to really run my classes in a way that were very humane, very collegial,
very conversational, such as these videos, because we're all in this together. We're
all on this earth together. We're all in this life together.
So that gets us to the Purpose of Life. And this is what I cover in my very last class.
So what is the purpose of life?
The best explanation is from Aristotle, going back to 300 BC. And Aristotle explains very
in both Nichomachean Ethics and his politics that the purpose of life is... happiness.
We all want to be happy. How many of you people out there look forward to being depressed.
Nobody. We want to be happy. Now what makes me happy might be very different from what
our director, Jessica, happy and it might be very different than what makes you happy.
But nonetheless, we want to be happy campers. And what makes the world so fascinating is
that we are very diverse in what makes us happy.
But philosophers and social scientists have really focused in on this - "What is this
happiness all about?" - and Aristotle was the best. So if you want to live a happy life,
Aristotle says it's four factors - health, wealth, intellectual virtue and moral virtue.
And what he wrote about 2,300 years ago has been proven by social scientists over and
over and over again. And it's a lot of common sense.
So in terms of health. People who are healthy tend to be happier than people dying of cancer.
There are exceptions to the rules and you're going to have to deal the exceptions for the
rules. So Aristotle does for the most part. For the most part, so health is important.
So if you're not happy right now, how's your health? Are you exercising enough? Are you
part of sports club. Are you a jogger? Do you do racquetball? Do you eat healthy food?
So health matters a lot.
Wealth also matters a lot. Wealthy people tend to be happier than people living in poverty,
for the most part. And Aristotle combines these issues. People who are healthy and wealthy
tend to be happier than somebody who lived their whole life in poverty and is dying of
cancer. So it's a continuing going back and forward. So you have to ask yourself, how's
your wealth if you're not feeling happy? Are you earning enough money at the job that you
have? And if not, do you have to ask your boss for the raise? Or are you unhappy with
your wealth because you want to be a billionaire and no amount of money will make you happy?
So instead, what you have to say is - "I have enough money. I don't need more. Whatever
money I'm making is enough and I'm content with that." - And that creates a very calm
sense of happiness. I'm happy, I'm content with my income and my health.
The third variable is intellectual virtue. People who are well educated tend to be happier
than people who are uneducated. Which is why you're probably getting an education in business
ethics and creating organizations. So education matters a lot. There's that saying that ignorance
is bliss. Aristotle goes on and on. That's not true. If you're ignorant about things,
as soon as you find something out, then you're upset that you didn't know about that before
and that you rather have known about things before. So education matters a lot. So how
is your intellectual virtue? Are you learning new things? Are you reading good novels? Are
you reading the best sellers in terms of how to create ethical organizations? Are you reading?
Are you seeing interesting movies? Are you always learning? Are you constantly learning?
And if you are, you're happy. And you'll be happier than someone who's not.
The fourth variable is moral virtue. People who are moral tend to be a lot happier than
people who are immoral. That immoral person might steal money and get a Jaguar with that,
but their conscience, believe me, does bother them. There's only so long you can deny your
conscience and that inner voice and that inner spark of divinity and humanity that we have
inside of all of us.
Out of those four variables, if you combine them all, the happiest campers in the world
are healthy, wealthy, well educated and have done a lot of moral things. The least happiest
people in the world are unhealthy, dying of cancer, uneducated, sick their whole life,
not learning anything new and they've done a lot of bad things. And we're somewhere in
between, most people are somewhere between the two.
Then Aristotle, going on in his conversational ways, out of four variables, what matters
the most is moral virtue. Even if you're live in poverty and you're sick, like some of the
people I saw in the hospitals that I was counseling, if you lived the moral life, there's this
aura of happiness about you, because that mattered a lot. You've practice kindness throughout
your live. And you realize that life was meaningful to do.
Next, Aristotle plays with moral virtue. What does it mean to be moral. Aristotle says first,
it means, you're kind toward yourself. Going back to egoism. You got to be nice to yourself.
Don't just judge yourself. Don't be overwhelmed by guilt. Be kind to yourself. Serve yourself.
Aristotle plays around with love and service. You want to love, you want to be deserving
of love, so therefore, love yourself and be kind to yourself and serve yourself. If I
need to write everyday because that makes me happy, then find time everyday when I can
do my writing.
Next, Aristotle says you got to love and serve your spouse. So don't just love and serve
yourself. Love and serve your spouse. And then, you got to love and serve your children.
And then that creates a loving and service minded family. And then, you need to love
and serve your neighbor. And then you need to love and serve your community. You need
to love and serve your state. You need to love and serve your nation. You need to love
and serve all the nations of the world.
And when you get into that zone and into that frame, you get a certain kind of bliss that
allows you to just set aside all the stress and all the obstacles and all the problems
and say "I can do anything. I can conquer anything. I can create the most ethical organizations.
We can become as profitable as can be in a good way." So that will derive happiness from
a Aristotelian perspective.
What does this mean. If you're unhappy right now. Check out your health, check out your
wealth, check out your intellectual virtue, check out your moral virtue. If you're a manager...
I visit a lot of organizations and some organizations have a lot of happy employees. Some organizations,
everybody's depressed. They don't want to be there. Work is a pain the neck. In that
case, if you're the manager and you want to have... As a manager, I want to go a place
where people are happy. Of course, that are profitable and performing well, but also happy.
So therefore, ask yourself "are you employees healthy?" Maybe they work too many hours.
Maybe their over stressed. So do a gym. Limit the number of hours they can work. I once
worked for an organization where I told all my employees you can't work more than 50 hours
a week and if I find out that you're working more than that behind my back, you're not
going get a bonus. That 50 is enough. And if you're not good enough to do it in 50 hours,
we're going to have to replace you. And this organization isn't good for you. So you want
to check that out.
Check out the wealth of you employees. Are they content of the wage scales they're receiving.
Check out the intellectual virtue of your employees. You can start a book club at work.
Read novels, read new books. And then check out the moral virtue of your employees. In
that sense, do what I mentioned in Chapter 12. Have teams and as a team, let's all serve
meals at the free soup kitchen. And that's a great and wonderful experience.
And basically, as everything else you do, you do this through assessments. Because we
pay attention to what we measure. So you can do health, wealth, intellectual virtue, moral
virtue on a 1 to 5 likert scale. And you can survey your employees and see how happy they
are on these 4 variables that matter a great deal for many people.
And, as based on my experience, live can be very short and sweet. So, don't put off being
happy. And try to integrate happiness and satisfaction and meaningful work beginning
today into your life. And I wish you well in doing that. So thank you for being a wonderful
student. If you have any questions, just email me through this system. Thank you.