Conclusions
In exploring the nature and dynamics of cheating and purposeful lying we have come to one simple conclusion: Look for processes, procedures, rules and guidelines that either foster cheating or that embed the need for cheating—whether in one’s personal life (or the personal life of ones’ clients) or in the life of the organization with which one is working. At the persona level, we need to identify and work with cheating as it occurs during moments of stress and challenge. How do we reduce the stress and find other ways to address the challenge. We are unlikely to reduce the purposeful lying until we have remedied the need for this lying. Remember, cheating is hard to eliminate—there is always intermittent (periodic) reinforcement unless the underlying stress and challenge is addressed.
At the organizational level we find that behaviors from founders and senior leaders – which ultimately are seen as successful from a business (profit) perspective—become embedded in business processes and systems. We don’t reduce (let alone eliminate) cheating and purposeful lying until we confront (and potentially change) the underlying priorities. For example, the description of Wells Fargo Bank’s consumer fraud noted earlier was apparently based on top leadership requiring stringent sales targets and sales behavior, and then entrenching these expectations in sales processes, targets and bonuses.
On the contrary, while working with Chevron, one of us (KW) consulted on a culture change initiative to speed up decision-making on large-scale project approvals (most often with international governments). After detailed investigations, it became clear that the slow and cumbersome decision-making culture in Chevron was not simply risk-averse decision-making behaviors, but processes for projects approvals (as just one example) inhibited any attempt to change individual leader behaviors – the processes and systems also had to be streamlined.
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