On Doubling the Benefit

It was a regular theme at our house: “If you’re going upstairs, take a pile of laundry with you.” My folks always taught us to try to get a double benefit from anything we did. Do you take full advantage of your activity at work? An efficient food server drops off the check at one table on his way back from pouring coffee at another. A productive salesperson works on her database while on hold. Voice mail, e-mail and messaging makes it possible to check on communication while in the taxi on the way to a meeting. Repeat this: Starting with me, good stewardship of time will double my worth for myself, my employer, my customers and my family. For more tips and information, visit www.swimstartingwithme.com.

On Saying No to Coworkers

“You wouldn’t mind covering for me on Tuesday, would you, buddy? I’ve got tickets to the big game and I’m due some sick time, anyway.” What do you do when faced with this dilemma? Assuming you would mind or that you’ve got too much of your own work to do to cover for your “buddy,” what do you do? Just say, “No.” Here’s how. “You know, I have just got too much scheduled for me to consider covering for you. I’m sorry I can’t help you out and I have to say, ‘No.’” Worried that you might ruin a friendship? Don’t be. A true friend doesn’t put you in the position of jeopardizing your own job for him. Repeat this: Starting with me, our work place will be one of integrity and personal responsibility. For more tips and information, visit http://www.swimstartingwithme.com.

The Ethics of Everyday Decisions - Making a joke

Humor is a delightful gift - or a dangerous weapon. Of course, like most things, the morality is not in humor itself, but in how we use it. Given that ethics is the behavioral expression of our beliefs and values, how does our use of humor reflect what we hold dear?

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday which said, "Yes, you can have my gun - bullets first." Look beyond the political reality of differences about gun control and ask yourself a question about the humor used to express this person's opinion that gun control is wrong. Is such a use of humor constructive? Is it meant to open dialogue? We may be willing to give this person the benefit of the doubt and trust that s/he does not really intend to shoot anyone who might support gun control, but in this case, does the humor not actually make a point opposite to that which the person intended?

What about the numerous jokes flying around about political candidates of any party? While humor raises issues, how many of those jokes are just mean-spirited? How many intimidate someone with a different view from expressing any kind of an honest, sincere question? This kind of humor creates a predisposition to ridicule and judgment.

And of course, there is everyone's favorite jokes about marriage, in-laws, etc. While they may be funny, what do they reveal about people who make the jokes? What do they truly believe? What are they communicating to others?

Humor is something most of use without really thinking. Next time you say something that makes people laugh, stop and think if what you said truly reflects what you believe. If it doesn't ask yourself why you made a joke about it. Think about other ways to express your beliefs - even humorous ways - that are consistent with your values.

Let's start using humor in a constructive way. Let's start saying what we really think and believe.

The Ethics of Everyday Decisions - Election Ads

First off, there is no perfect candidate. Having said that, what are the ethics around picking a candidate? Are there ethics involved in listening to election ads?

The ads would have us believe it to be a clear case of good against evil. At this stage in the election, ethics lies not so much in the candidate you choose, but in the decision-making process you engage in as you listen to the ads, sound bites, debates, etc.

Consider these thoughts:

1. By definition, an election ad is biased. Don't believe everything you read or hear. Check out the facts through several sources - unbiased ones if you can find them.
2. Election ads are marketing and advertising rolled into one package. Their purpose is to create a need in the minds of the listener and pitch that candidate as the answer to the need. Stop and think. What is hype? What emotions are they trying to draw out? Do you really want what the ads suggest you want? And if so, is this really the candidate to deliver it?
3. Election ads are often focused on a position - that is, an either/or, right/wrong view of an issue. But whose right or wrong? Don't allow the ad writers to tell you what is right or wrong, rather, think about the issue for yourself. Examine the values you hold and decide where you come down on the issue. What are your interests, based on your beliefs? You may find that rather than an issue being either/or, it is neither/nor.
4. Similarly, ads are often focused on a single issue. Any one particular group may be tempted to accept or reject a candidate based on a single issue - like taxes, abortion, defense, etc. But ask yourself if that really matches your total values system. If a candidate promises no increased taxes, how does that square with your value about education or health care?
5. Finally, as the election gets closer, the ads tend to change into either attacks or defenses. The closer we get to having to decide about the issues, the less the issues are openly examined and debated. Look past the ads to voting records, character, affiliations, etc.

Election ads raise all sorts of ethical dilemmas. This web log is not meant to prescribe the right answer, but rather to get you to ask the right questions. Weigh the differing, and even competing values that are presented and make decisions for action based on what you hold dear. Ethics is about making informed choices based on the values you and others believe in.

Scriptural insights: "One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offense he may have committed. A matter mush be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses." Deuteronomy 19:15

"Choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom." Acts 6:3

The Ethics of Everyday Decisions - Cash or Credit?

The latest Federal Reserve statistics report a 9.75% increase in credit card debt for the month of May, 2007. An article in the July 10, 2007 St. Paul Pioneer Press had this quote:

David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York, said some of the surge in credit-card debt reflects the fact that it is getting harder to get home-equity loans with banks tightening up on standards and home values not soaring as they did during the housing boom.

What are the ethical considerations of the decisions we make several times a day on whether to put something on the credit card or not? Here are some thoughts to help define our values in a number of areas. Remember, this web log is not meant to prescribe the right answer, but rather to get you to ask the right questions. Weigh the differing, and even competing values you hold and make decisions for action based on what you hold dear. Ethics is about making informed choices based on the values you and others believe in.

1. Spending what we don't have
2. Borrowing against the future to meet today's needs and wants
3. Determining the difference between "need" vs. "want"
4. Paying more than what something is worth (through interest)
5. Placing ourselves in bondage to the banks
6. Immediate vs. delayed gratification

I'm sure there are others, too, but ponder what you believe in these areas and then ask yourself if your behavior around credit matches up with those beliefs.

Scriptural Insight: The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is a servant to the lender...Do not be a [person] who strikes hands in pledge or puts up security for debts; if you lack the means to pay, your very bed will be snatched from under you. Proverbs 22:7; 26-27

The Ethics of Everyday Decisions - Exercise

You know what your doctor says about exercise. You probably echo those words when you look in the mirror. Unless you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, you know what the health benefits of regular exercise are.

What about the ethics of exercise? Is whether to exercise or not a moral issue? Ask yourself what your values are around the following statements. Whether you agree or disagree, how does your answer affect yourself or others? (One description of ethics is considering whether an action has a negative or positive effect on self or others.)

Exercise affects my mood and how I feel about myself
Exercise affects my self-image and therefore, how I feel and act around others
Exercise affects my ability to carry out my job duties
Exercise affects my ability to care for my loved ones
Exercise affects what and how much I eat
Exercise affects my use of health care resources
Exercise affects my sexual health
Exercise affects how I carry out my life purpose

These are just some of the ways to think about how exercise may have a negative or positive effect on yourself or others. It is a moral decision. How will you decide?

A Scriptural Perspective: "...but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified." 1 Corinthians 9:27

Ethics of Everyday Decisions - Diet

This is part of a series encouraging an examination of everyday decisions from a moral standpoint. How do our everyday actions help or harm ourselves and others? Think about it. For those interested, there is a Scriptural insight relating to the everyday decision, from a Christian standpoint. I welcome responses from those who might be able to offer similar insights from the Koran or other sacred writings. Over the next few months, watch for postings on health decisions, work decisions, environmental decisions, relationship decisions, and...who knows what else?

What constitutes an “ethical” decision? It is considering whether the decision has a negative or positive effect on ourselves or others. What we eat, or more importantly how we eat clearly has an effect on not only our bodies, but it also affects our mental well being, our social interactions, our family and friends, our economic system and, yes, even the cultural fabric of our society.

The effect on our bodies is well documented elsewhere, so just consider that your choice of what to eat is, indeed, a moral decision. While any particular choice about a particular food has little long term effects, we choose to build up or destroy our physical health by our collected decisions around diet. Beyond our physical health, though, the effects are not so obvious. However there is ample evidence that eating decisions are tied to self-image, mood, coping mechanisms, diagnosable emotional disorders, and more.

Dietary decisions, however, go far beyond ourselves. We have all been in situations in which choosing to eat or not to eat something hurt the feelings or offended the sensibilities of others. In certain cultural situations, the choice to eat or not eat certain things can have far reaching effects on our social relationships. Certainly, we see it often within families or in work situations.

Is it a stretch to say our decisions on diet affect our economic system? Hardly. The food industry is driven by consumer choice. Our choices help determine what is sold in our grocery stores and restaurants, what is advertised to our children, what is grown on our farms and what is imported and exported. For example, by choosing to include foods prepared with transfats in our daily or weekly diets ensures that transfats will continue to be used and affect our economy and our nation’s health (and therefore, the economy!).

Finally, dietary choices affect our cultural fabric. Perhaps it is not so much what we eat as how. The decisions we have made to make fast food a bigger and bigger part of our diet has clearly affected what our children eat, how people spend their money, how families cope with busy schedules around mealtimes, etc.

These are only some of the many ways to look at our dietary decisions, but it is enough to challenge us to examine our own decisions in light of how they affect ourselves and others. Decisions about what to eat are, indeed, ethical decisions.

Having established that, consider that each person must work through this decision maze for himself or herself. One person makes that hurts no one while another may make the same decision and cause a great deal of hurt. (This is easiest to see from a personal point of view. One person may eat peppers while the next person would suffer severe heartburn from the same decision). So, judge not, but do be intentional about your own decision making.

A Scriptural Perspective: One man’s faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. –Romans 14:2-3

Ethics of Everyday Decisions - Smoking

This is part of a series encouraging an examination of everyday decisions from a moral standpoint. How do our everyday actions help or harm ourselves and others? Think about it. For those interested, there is a Scriptural insight relating to the everyday decision, from a Christian standpoint. I welcome responses from those who might be able to offer similar insights from the Koran or other sacred writings.

Over the next few months, watch for postings on health decisions, work decisions, environmental decisions, relationship decisions, and...who knows what else?

The spate of laws around smoking in public places suggests that there’s more to smoking than one’s own personal decision. “To smoke or not to smoke?” It is a moral decision.

On the positive side, smoking may have a calming effect on the smoker, fulfill a desire for taste, or contribute to one’s self or group image. Many claim smoking depresses one’s appetite, helping people keep from gaining weight. Buying and smoking supports thousands of workers (and their families) in the tobacco industry and its entire supply and distribution chain.

On the negative side, smokers’ friends and families may have to stand by and watch as their loved ones’ health and lives are negatively affected. Smoking causes and/or contributes to numerous life threatening and life-limiting diseases and conditions for both the smoker and those close enough to inhale the secondhand smoke. As a result, individuals, companies and society bear higher health care costs. Smoking produces litter and indoors, coats walls and furnishings with a yellowish substance. As a result, more frequent cleaning is required, increasing costs to building owners, employers and taxpayers.

There may be more implications, positive and negative, but just considering the ones above, you can see that decisions around smoking are moral decisions, in addition to practical, political, financial and others.

A Scriptural Perspective: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” -1st Corinthians 3:16-17

Ethics Forum: Diatribe or Discussion?

Sometimes and with some people, you can have serious, respectful discussions around differences in beliefs - even religion and politics (which common wisdom says to avoid). Other times, it's impossible. What's the difference?

Listen and you'll hear it. It has to do with inflammatory language. In those impossible moments, you will hear name calling, judgmental terms, sarcastic tones, negative characterizations and usually, raised voices. In the more constructive interactions you will hear open ended questions, a respectful tone, non-judgmental terms and voices at normal volume. It's really the difference between a diatribe and a discussion.

"Diatribe" is a word that comes from a couple of Greek words which mean "to wear away." People that engage in diatribes are holding forth their own views in such a way as to rub out any dissenting idea. Inflammatory language is an attack and puts people into the "fight or flight" mode. Instead of discussion, there is either an argument, or a one-sided oration. "Discussion" comes from two Latin words which mean to shake apart. In usage, it means to dissect and examine. Respectful language invites an in-depth look at a subject.

Consider an example in which someone starts out a conversation with, "Those fat-cat senators just screwed us again by passing that baby-killing bill." If the listener is in agreement, there won't be a discussion, only a crucifixion of the senators and mutual self-righteousness around the speaker's moral beliefs. If the listener is not in agreement, there will either be an argument trying to prove who's right, or the listener will withdraw.

Now consider a different start: "I just heard on the news that the Senate passed a bill encouraging stem cell research. What kinds of moral and practical issues does this raise?" By creating a safe forum, extending an openness to examine what the bill really means, the discussion is likely to lead to all sorts of questions and issues that have far-reaching implications. Regardless of your beliefs, there is a freedom to raise questions for deeper thought.

Diatribes shut off questions. Discussions encourage them.
Diatribes create an adversarial atmosphere. Discussions create a collegial atmosphere.
Diatribes force defensiveness. Discussions allow self-examination.

The next time a moral issue arises, start a discussion. Challenge those who use inflammatory language to put their guns away and respectfully look at the issues with you. This leads to ethical and moral growth and creates and environment of change. One more example of "Starting With Me."

One of my old professors - Tor Dahl - an internationally known expert in productivity commented on a recent study in which Connie White Delaney, Dean of the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, stated that Iceland practiced a national philosophy that could be summarized in four points:

1. The healthy help those who are ill;
2. The employed help those who are unemployed;
3. The young help the old; and
4. The rich help the poor.

He uses the study as a jumping off point for some insightful comments about national health policy (see http://www.tordahl.com/newsletters.html for the whole story). But before you go to Professor Dahl's site, let me comment on some ethics implications of the study's findings.

The four points bring to mind ethical concepts connected to compassion, justice, fairness, redistribution of wealth, The Golden Rule, etc. But one idea that is not often connected to ethics is "practicality." And yet a country (or city or company or family) that practices the four points would be demonstrating practicality. Is practicality an ethical concept? I would argue that it certainly is, at least in this case.

For an organization to find a practical, effective, cost-efficient method of caring for all its members is to declare a moral imperative. Such an organization challenges its members to give back what they have been given - health, jobs, money and the benefits of youth. Such an organization creates a channel through which wellness in its broadest definition is delivered to all. Such an organization publicly affirms the intrinsic value of all of its members. Such an organization demonstrates its beliefs in action.

The topic of creating practical ways to live out our values is open for discussion. Can we here in the U.S., in your organization, in our towns, in our neighborhoods, in our families put those four points into practice?

What do YOU think?

Storm Mentality Spawns Ethics Discussions

While Minnesota digs out from a second snow storm in as many weeks, the news programs have picked up some interesting human interest angles - people helping people. There seems to be a "storm mentality" that touches people's desire to help others in a way that's not normally so present.

Well, kudos to all those who are shoveling neighbors' walks, pushing strangers' cars and cleaning off coworkers' windshields. But kudos also to the media for highlighting ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The news stories spawn discussions about reaching out; about helping people whether or not they "deserve it;" about anonymous acts of kindness.

The more people talk about it, the more people are open to doing it. The more people are open to doing it, the better off we will all be. Mature ethical behavior spawns ethics discussions. And the discussions spawn action. It comes down to "Starting With Me."