The $Price$ Tag of Integrity

     Oxford with reference to integrity states the following: “1. The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles and 2. The state of being whole and undivided.” Wikipedia Library states: “Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. The word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or complete. In this context, integrity is the inner sense of "wholeness" deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character. As such, one may judge that others "have integrity" to the extent that they act according to the values, beliefs, and principles they claim to hold.”
     The key phrases that jump out are “quality of being”, “state of being” “practice of being”, “showing a consistent and uncompromising”, “consistency of character”, and “act according to the values.”  It can be rightly suggested that integrity should be considered as a valuable Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for personal development especially for those in leadership and for any businesses corporate culture. At the heart and core of integrity in “the self.” If you cannot be honest with yourself about your beliefs and values, and or your strengths and weakness your actions will no doubt show this. Those whom you interact with will align your behavior more with the aged old saying “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.” The problem with this in business is that this only holds when your presence is about, however when you’re not there and the difficult situation arises, do as I do, will become the first preference solution.
     Integrity builds trust in relationships and trust develops a stronger sense of togetherness. The teamwork and synergy levels with internal and external clients are greatly enhanced. Those cracks in the foundation and walls from a house divided, causing issues from delayed projects to hefty financial loses will come together, strengthened by the bond of a unified front to achieving company goals. 
     Crisis are a part of doing business, and some of them can cause one to decide to temporarily shelve the integrity principle with the justifications keeping the business open, paying outstanding debts and or saving monies. No doubt these are hard decisions that must be made, often though when integrity is pushed on the wayside it’s because the desire for a quick and easy solution is more desirable. The flipside is when you shelve your integrity, your reputation becomes shredded, and your word will be considered as merely dust in the wind. This will make it harder for you to do business with suppliers and can result with staff taking on the mentality “if you can do it to them, it can happen to me” and becoming disengaged doing unrepairable damage to the company’s corporate culture.
     The bottom line is the price tag for not making integrity a fundamental practice in the business workplace can be very costly. If employee dissatisfaction is high, so will be turnover and absences. If clients cannot trust the product your delivering sales will decrease drastically. If reputations are sullied not only will suppliers do less business but the likelihood for more investment decreases substantially.
     The Integrity level of a company is not determined by the words in a manual, but by the example consistently set by leadership. Is Integrity a part of your KPI standard if not implement it, it will only lead to greater trust, greater productivity and a healthier financial bottom-line.
Keith M. Dean/CEO & Founder – The BusinessofU