By PatSullivan
We’ve got to slow down and be like white lines on mountainous roads to each other, my Dad, the late Bill McHenry, once told me. Otherwise, how can we see and safely navigate the inevitable ethical fogs of work and life?
Even when I was very young, I knew that my dad had gone successfully through several huge ethical fogs. Several years before Dad met my mom, he turned down an unethical but lucrative job at the height of the great depression. When I was just six months old, he blew a whistle on his powerful embezzling boss, a college president. Four years later, soon after Dad’s testimony helped send the boss to jail, Dad turned down another lucrative but unethical job at a social service agency.
As a child, of course, I didn’t understand the full impact of these stories. As an adult, I got enough details about whistleblowing and its impact to fill a book.
In the end, Dad’s only regret was that no one had stopped the president when the wrongdoing was small, by saying simply, “No, Dr. Meadows, you can’t do that.” Over the years, I also learned a lot about the stress of Dad’s whistleblowing on our family, and I healed.
What was left after the forgiveness and healing were some very powerful life lessons in basic integrity. May they also serve you. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
Almost 30 years ago, whistleblower therapist and stress expert Donald Soeken asked my help to write some how-to materials on whistleblowing. I got the gig not based on any published clips (I didn’t have any then), but because the writing sample I gave him was my father’s story of blowing the whistle on an embezzling college president when I was just a baby. In that sample, I detailed the story I knew all too well about how the retaliation Dad suffered impacted our whole family for decades.
Almost all the people I told about the writing gig made what they thought was a joke: “Whistleblowers? Oh, you mean ratters? Snitches? Stool pigeons?” Given my father’s story, and given the 95-5 odds that my mother’s early death from a rare illness was caused by the FDA’s lack of attentiveness to under-reported side effects of a popular prescription drug, it’s amazing I didn’t do bodily harm to those jokers.
Today, it’s still considered okay to slander whistleblowers, then wonder why more people don’t speak out to warn us about fraud, waste or abuse. And there are many who are so focused on not being “negative thinkers” or buttinskies or poor team players that we become complicit in all types of wrongdoing. Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of resources to help you tell truth to power and thrive and/or to support those who dare to speak on your behalf. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
In a week where the news was dominated by yet another terrorist attempt and by a study showing widespread employee unhappiness, it was a treat to discover a world-wide sing-out of John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s “All You Need is Love.” Sponsored by Starbucks, this expertly sliced video montage from singers around the world offers an instant lift for any dreary day.
Imagine, to use another John Lennon pet phrase, that it’s true. Love IS all you need to bring more integrity, more purpose, more joy, more peace in the world through the ways we work and deal with money. Actually, I’m far from the first person to pose this idea. One of the best discussions of love, business and money was Tim Sanders’ wonderful article, “Love is the Killer App” in Fast Company Magazine. Continue reading this post »
By PatSullivan
Only a really nasty person would deliberately plan to create a business that’s unethical or harmful to employees, the earth and other stakeholders. Yet, following the wisdom of the old adage, “failing to plan is planning to fail,” then failing to structure our vision and values into our businesses or jobs is planning to leave out those values — at least as measured by too many sorry results.
“Can you give me more tips and resources for how to put more of my values into my business?” asked a participant in a class I taught on business planning at the San Francisco Small Business Administration www.sba.gov/localresources/index.html). That led to the following list, which I’ll use in tomorrow night’s class. Links are kept visible, in case you want to print out the list and share it. Continue reading this post »
