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leadership

The Problem with Integrity

I think about Winston Churchill a lot. A successful writer, correspondent, painter, politician and businessman, he is known for his bold principled stand against Hitler. However, zoom in and a more complex narrative emerges.

After Neville Chamberlain negotiated the Munich Agreement in 1938, which sought to appease Nazi Germany by allowing them to take control of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia, Winston Churchill famously said, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.”

They look wise now, but his comments were unwelcome. Many people in Britain and other countries believed that the agreement would prevent war and that Churchill’s warnings were alarmist. He was even removed from his position as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1939 and was not given any major government positions until 1940 when he became Prime Minister as the war had already started.

He pushed through years of criticism and personally rallied a nation with his bold, counter-cultural, stand that led the allied powers to victory. If we stopped there, we have a tight schoolbook story of leader who did the right thing and was vindicated and honored.

Unfortunately for Sir Winston, shortly after the war, his government was defeated in the general election of July 1945. The British people were tired after six years of war and preferred the Labour Party’s program of social reforms. He found himself doubted, vindicated and then cast away.

Everyone and every organization wants integrity, but actually having it, keeping it and acting on it is a challenge. Nothing is simple when you find yourself at a different place than those around you. Holding a counter-cultural view means going against the dominant beliefs and values of the system you are working hard to support.

Yes, integrity can be dangerous. The word integrity doesn’t have meaning and power when everyone agrees. When integrity forces you to be different, it’s dangerous for you and others. You risk losing your friends, your job and your sleep.

Counter-cultural integrity threatens the status quo and big organizations need broad buy in to the status quo to get things done. The right thing may be good in the long run, but it can be disruptive now. Personal integrity requires standards that may not change with culture or a corporation’s strategy for risk mitigation. Anyone who holds to an independent set of standards will eventually find themselves a problem in a rigid and ever changing system.

Worst of all, the road towards acting on integrity brings you into contact with the dark side. There is a temptation to be right and feel superior to the system you are in. You need the inspiration of the examples of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Winston Churchill or Abraham Lincoln, but you can’t conflate your situation and your strength with theirs. You have to remain humble while not losing your convictions. You have to be continually open to being wrong. You have to push yourself to be flexible. You have to see and respect the other side.

The other temptation is to give in to self-pity and think that the world is against you. The professional world can be a dark, amoral, and heartless place. That is reality–true everywhere. No one is a unique and constant victim of unjustified persecution or mistreatment. There is no conspiracy, just people trying to make it all work and not lose their status, jobs or relationships.

The stress of finding yourself alone, against the crowd, is real. The only way to survive it is to have a trusted network of friends– not friends who just listen, affirm and agree, but friends who hold you accountable and clarify your thoughts. A good friend turns a dark and lonely road into conviction that can confirm your individuality and authenticity. Most important, sharing your story can lead to positive change. There is no tighter community than like-minded individuals who support, refine, and validate each other’s perspectives.

I’ve taken several counter-cultural stands in my life with a wide range of outcomes. All were painful. Every stand I’ve taken has resulted in some degree of lost friendships and increased pain. Some day I may be proud of these actions, but all of them resulted in a lost opportunity where I had to get off the boat and watch it sail on. If there is any pride in that, it’s drowned out by the sadness of it all.

I’ve learned that I’m not particularly brave or strong. However, I’m blessed with great community, a love of history and a deep care for others. Most of all, I feel convicted to protect others who trust and depend on me doing the right thing.

But this isn’t the movies. As I’ve post-processed tough stands, when I did the most good, I felt the worst inside. Taking a different road leaves you feeling alone and scared, self-conscious and unsure. Integrity put into practice in these scenarios makes part of you wish you didn’t have it. It’s not fun and it doesn’t feel courageous. When I’ve done the most right, the overwhelming emotion is sadness and insecurity.

Here I’m convicted and encouraged by two father son chats. The first is Polonius, who is giving advice in Hamlet to his son Laertes as he prepares to leave for France. Polonius urges his son to be honest with himself, to be true to his own values and beliefs, and to avoid the temptations and pitfalls of the world. He advises Laertes to “neither a borrower nor a lender be” and to “this above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” If Laertes is true to himself, he will not be able to deceive others; he will be true to himself and avoid compromise for the sake of others or for the sake of fitting in.

The second is from Cicero. He wrote to his son, Marcus, that an unjust act will never profit him.

Stop. Just let the gravity of this settle. This may be the most counter-cultural message ever written. A thief can at least enjoy his spoils a little bit, right? A boss who complies with pressure to promote a lesser qualified person at the expense of her/his better judgment may get a promotion that helps their career, right?

No, Cicero says it won’t help them. He believed in an absolute view of morality and integrity. He wrote that an unjust act is not only morally wrong, but it will also ultimately harm the person who commits it and the society that allows it. He believed that living a virtuous life and making the right choices, even if difficult, is the only true path to true happiness and fulfillment. In his letter Ad Familiares Cicero wrote: “There is nothing more virtuous, nothing more in accord with duty, than to take one’s stand for what is right.” He also wrote in this same letter:

“What is morally right is not always politically expedient; and what is politically expedient is not always morally right.”

Cicero believed that true success and happiness come from living a virtuous life, and that this requires standing up for what is right, even when it may be difficult or unpopular. Even when it looks like an easy compromise, it will never profit you. Never. Even if you are lucky and some good results from your actions, you have harmed your soul.

The wisdom of history, a deep personal faith and a tight network of friends all give me confidence to do the right thing, no matter the cost. This is true even with full knowledge of just how dangerous, costly and lonely the road of counter-cultural integrity is.

I’m jealous of those who can compromise, make things work and steer situations to a middle ground, but I have trouble here. This isn’t about being brave or honorable as much as I see no other option. Without deep reflection on, and a commitment to hold to standards, I wouldn’t have individuality or authenticity.

Just as breathing is a necessary function for survival, holding to one’s standards and integrity is necessary for maintaining a sense of self and personal agency. Without it, one risks becoming a mere follower or conforming to the beliefs and values of others, losing their unique perspective and individuality. Holding to one’s standards and integrity can be challenging–it’s been the hardest thing I’ve had to do–but it is a fundamental aspect of being true to oneself.

It’s fitting to have just passed Martin Luther King day. MLK wrote:

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

Character is revealed not in moments of ease, but in times of adversity, and when difficult choices and decisions are made. This quote reminds me that true strength and honor come from standing up for what is right, even when it is hard and uncomfortable, and that we should strive to be true to our principles and values, even in the face of opposition. All power is moral power and all strength requires the willingness to walk the hard road, even when it isn’t where you want to go.

January 21, 2023 (updated June 16, 2025) By Tim Booher 6 Comments

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What you do is who you are

This book was a timely opportunity to understand the intersection of culture and action.

Ben Horowitz is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. The firm’s investments include Airbnb, GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Previously, he was cofounder and CEO of Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Horowitz writes about his experiences and insights from his career as a computer science student, software engineer, cofounder, CEO, and investor in a blog that is read by nearly 10 million people.

Here he writes about culture; specifically company culture. The book combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational research to give advice aimed at leaders that want to proactively design culture.

He starts the book with language similar to the Netflix culture deck:

Is culture dogs at work and yoga in the break room? No, those are perks. Is it your corporate values? No, those are aspirations? Is it the personality and the priorities of the CEO? That helps shape the culture, but is far from the thing itself.

I love Ben Horowitz’s brash style and direct advice, but the selection of non-traditional characters felt forced. It was hard for me to connect with characters more defined by their crimes than successes. While historical villians may present some lessons, I think the pool of case studies is large enough to include moral leaders, even if you force yourself to exclude white europeans, which is very Zeitgesity these days.

Studying gang dynamics for leadership lessons, has a Freakonimics like novelty to it, but I’m looking for impact over novelty.

Samuari and the difference between culture, values and virtues?

One case study I did enjoy was the focus on Samurai, specifially the focus on virtues over values. The samurai’s bushido code—"the way of the warrior"—lasted nearly 700 years and still infuses Japanese culture. It endured because it established clear requirements for behavior bounded by loyalty, respect, and sincerity and enforced them with severe consequences for misbehavior.

Bushido isn’t a set of principles, but a set of practices: it’s about actions, not beliefs. Other samurai virtues included honor, politeness, and sincerity: three complementary qualities that translate well to business.

He makes an important point that culture isn’t the same as values – values are more like aspirations, while culture has to mean something in practice. Virtues are what you do. Values are what you believe.

He hits a key point with his perspective on what matters.

Your own perspective on the culture is not that relevant. Your view or your executive team’s view of your culture is rarely what your employees experience…The relevant question is, what must employees do to survive and succeed in your organization? What behaviors get them included in, or excluded from, the power base? What gets them ahead?

Then, he emphasizes how important conveying context to a workforce is:

Above all else, employees want to know that they matter, they’re making a difference, there’s meaningful work to be done, and they’re moving the bigger picture forward. Without this, it’s impossible to get people to care.

If people don’t care, then it is just their own ability to succeed in the culture. If a culture can’t make quick decisions or has a void in leadership, it becomes defined by indifference.

Disagree and Committ

As a manager, the worst thing you can do is undermine decisions made above you. This creates cultural chaos, makes your team feel marginalized and powerless, and end result is apathy and attrition. If you disagree with those above you you need to leave before you start complaiing about them.

The problem is there is a lack of courage in most business leadership. Telling the truth isn’t natural. It requires courage. The easy thing to do is to tell someone what they want to hear.

The way you get to the place of being able to articulate a decision you might not agree with is by asking why. It’s your job to understand the reasoning behind a decision, otherwise you have failed your team.

You might not convince everyone you’re right. But everyone must feel heard and that you’ve acknowledged their concerns. This is the path towards disagreeing and committing.

Final Takeaways

Culture matters and leaders must be intentional. I also take his point that leadership lessons can come from non-traditional sources.

No matter what your culture is, your new hires should embody them: always hire people well suited to your culture. Second, make sure the virtues you choose are actionable. Like the samurai’s bushido code, they should be things you do, not just idealized beliefs. Third, while the virtues don’t have to be totally unique, they should at least distinguish your company from the competition.

This all requires trust. If your employees don’t trust both each other and you, a distinct culture won’t form. They should trust you so much that you can deliver bad news when necessary – for instance, when there will be layoffs – and still retain their respect. If they don’t, bad situations will have a habit of just getting worse and worse.

Ben Horowitz uses Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to show how being direct can be so effective if done with context. With that speech, Lincoln managed to imbue the American Civil War with new meaning by explaining why so many soldiers had died at Gettysburg. He acknowledged the cost of the war, but also explained why he believed in its significance – a model for any CEO.

Bad news goes both ways, of course, and he makes the point that you should foster a culture in which you always know the worst of what’s going on. Every organization of significant size is home to lots and lots of problems: your job is to know about as many of them as possible. Your employees should therefore trust you enough that they can come forward with issues, and know that you’ll be positive and constructive about them when they do.

November 1, 2020 By Tim Booher 0 Comments

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Review: Leadership by Doris Kerns Goodwin

I love how Doris Kearns Goodwin and Laura Hillenbrand explore American history through clear and clean prose that emphasizes strength forged by adversity. I started with “Team of Rivals”, but “Leadership: In Turbulent Times” is emerging as my favorite from Goodwin. Written in the companionable prose that makes Goodwin’s books surefire best sellers, “Leadership: In Turbulent Times” recounts the lives of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Far from hagiography, Goodwin often resists the urge to glean pat lessons or rules from the past and allows herself to savor the stubborn singularity of each moment or personality and lets the reader find the grand themes across these four men.

It was a great surprise to find four of the most interesting presidents profiled in one book in a way that I could compare and contrast their stories as told against a backdrop of hardship. I’ve always a special love for Lincoln, followed by Teddy Roosevelt. The former for his deep well of wisdom and both for their moral courage. While I know that everyone’s story rests on a fabric of painful experiences, these leaders were tested by truly epic events and rose past the challenge to shape our country for the better. One reason I love reading Goodwin is her ability to present subtle, complex studies of her subjects’ personalities and to show how they interact with their times. Most remarkably, she renders her characters with a personal depth and intricacy that not all academic historians seek to attain.

“The story of Theodore Roosevelt is the story of a small boy who read about great men and decided he wanted to be like them.” There is a reason these specific presidents seem to monopolize the names of my kid’s schools. Aside from Johnson, whose Vietnam war tarnished his reputation, the other three were used to regale young readers with stirring tales of their exploits. There is a time-honored tradition of exalting any nation’s leaders, but there is a unique american deliberateness to using our presidents to forge the next generation of virtuous leaders. Goodwin joins this time honored tradition as she seeks to purvey moral instruction and even practical guidance to aspiring leaders through the stories of four exceptional American presidents.

In reading this book, I discovered that Goodwin has already produced full-length studies of each of these men, starting with “Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream” (1976) and continuing through “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II” (1994), “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” (2005) and “The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism” (2013).

This book however, has a greater purpose than biographical. Here she forsakes the strict confines of biography for the new domain of leadership studies. These studies are routinely taught in business schools where they are geared toward would-be or midcareer executives and often focused on imparting useful lessons to apply in the workplace. In this case, Goodwin uses this angle to understand the formation of her subjects’ characters and how their most notable qualities equipped them to lead the country during trying times for each president personally and more broadly in the nation they led.

To accomplish this, she follows a specific recipe for exploring each character’s leadership. The first section features four chapters, one on each man’s boyhood and early influences; the second part, also comprising four chapters, dwells on early-adulthood traumas that tempered their flaws and bred resilience; the third part spotlights the chastened leaders in their crucibles of crisis; and an epilogue lightly glosses their legacies. In each man’s case, the setback is a prelude, a learning opportunity, a character-building experience: Abraham Lincoln as a young man withstood a depression so severe that friends removed all the sharp objects from his room; Theodore Roosevelt saw both his mother and his beloved wife die within a day; Franklin Roosevelt was stricken with polio; and Lyndon Johnson lost his first race for the Senate, throwing him into a depression of his own. I found it refreshing that her aim in telling these stories is not for their own sake but to establish certain central themes of skillful democratic leadership. It was also a small feat that despite the overarching steeled-by-adversity template into which she wedges these stories, each retained its own intrinsic and uniquely personal drama. Goodwin summarized this with: “There was no single path, that four young men of different background, ability and temperament followed to the leadership of the country.”

Gold needs fire. Tribulation produces wisdom. Growth requires pain. And greatness can flourish despite our leaders flaws and the deepest depths of national emergency.

While focusing on one president would have placed more emphasis on the person, exploring the variety and peculiarities among the four presidents took me out of each of their lives into a larger context. Each subject had common traits: preternatural persistence, a surpassing intelligence, a gift for storytelling. However, it is the differences among them that are most interesting. For example, where Abraham Lincoln grew up under the discipline of an austere and dominating father, who would destroy the books that his son loved to read, Franklin Roosevelt thrived under the trusting indulgence of a loving mother. In contrast to Theodore Roosevelt, whose curiosity led him to immerse himself in pastimes like studying birds and other animals, Lyndon Johnson “could never unwind,” channeling his manic energy into his ambitions. All this forced me to admit that the only safe generalization is that one can’t really generalize.

Goodwin’s honest narrative connects you with the real person. President Lyndon B. Johnson was grandiose and narcissistic who missed the opportunity to be remembered as a civil rights champion by his over reliance on letting his generals lead his foreign policy. Lincoln’s well known depression was on full display; but I was pleased to discover how his mordant wit reflected a deep stoicism and was left to determine this was why the weight of his melancholy didn’t derail his career.

Franklin Roosevelt, known broadly for his cheerfulness, possessed a fierce, even ruthless ambition. Her account of his drive to conquer his polio so that he could traverse the Madison Square Garden stage at the 1924 Democratic convention exemplifies her talent at bringing personality to life not through didactic exposition but through well-wrought narrative. She describes Roosevelt preparing for his convention walk by measuring off the distance in his library in the family’s East 65th Street house, then digging into his teenage son James’s arm with a grip “like pincers,” as he practiced hoisting his inert, braced legs across the room. At the convention itself, Goodwin recounts the tension in the arena as Roosevelt triumphantly hauled himself across the stage, on just his crutches, to seize “the lectern edges with his powerful, viselike grip” and flash his beaming smile to the cheering throng.

Pain, weaknesses and challenges didn’t detract from their leadership, but became the central message. Gold needs fire. Tribulation produces wisdom. Growth requires pain. And greatness can flourish despite our leaders flaws and the deepest depths of national emergency.

June 17, 2019 By Tim Booher One Comment