Integrity : without it nothing works..

For most of us Integrity is about being sincere and honest. And "honesty is the best policy". And sincere is about being good and true to oneself. We keep going down that road and eventually land up discussing about morality and ethics in the name of Integrity.

Following are relavent excerpts from an Interview with Michael Jensen. Download the complete interview: here.

• Integrity: A state or condition of being whole, complete, unbroken, unimpaired, sound, in perfect condition.
• Morality: In a given society, in a given era of that society, morality is the generally-accepted standards of what is desirable and undesirable; of right and wrong conduct, and what is considered by that society as good or bad behaviour of a person, group or entity.
• Ethics: In a given group, ethics is the agreed upon standards of what is desirable and undesirable; of right and wrong conduct; of what is considered by that group as good and bad behaviour of a person, group or entity that is a member of the group, and may include defined bases for discipline, including exclusion

Integrity is a purely positive proposition. It has nothing to do with good vs. bad. Think for a moment about the Law of Gravity: there is no such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ gravity; like integrity, it just ‘is’. Morality and ethics, on the other hand, are normative concepts in that they deal with matters of good or bad, right vs. wrong. Morality refers to a society’s standards of right and wrong behaviour for individuals and groups within that society, while ethics refers to the normative set of values that apply to all members of a group or organization. Thus, both morality and ethics relate to desirable vs. undesirable behavior.

Integrity is important to individuals, groups, organizations and society because it creates workability. Without integrity, the workability of any object, system, person, group or organization declines; and as workability declines, the opportunity for performance declines. Therefore, integrity is a necessary condition for maximum performance.

An individual is whole and complete when their word is whole and complete, and their word is whole and complete when they honour their word. We can honour our word in one of two ways: first, by keeping our word, and on time as promised; or second, as soon as we know that we won’t keep our word, we inform all parties involved and clean up any mess that we’ve caused in their lives - by making a new promise or by creating with them the necessary structures for dealing with one not having kept the word. When we do this, we are honouring our word despite having not kept it, and we have maintained our integrity.

A group/organization/system is whole and complete only if the the people involved are in complete Integrity, along with the design of the system, its implementation and use.