Today we're going to be discussing the topic of why excellence is the essence of business ethics. And we're joined by David Gill. And in just a second, we're going to have him try that tongue twister five times fast. Why excellence is the essence of business ethics. And David is a writer and speaker based in his hometown, Oakland, California. He recently retired from his position at Mockler Phillips Professor of Workplace Theology and Business Ethics and Director of the Mockler Center for Faith in Ethics and Workplace at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton and Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to this, he served on the faculties of New College, Berkeley, North Park University, and St. Mary's College. And he's a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University, and the University of Southern California. He's the author of seven books, including a two-volume Introduction to Christian Ethics, Becoming Good, Building Moral Character, and Doing Right, Practicing Ethical Principles, and a general market business ethics book. It's about excellence, building ethically healthy organizations. And that's really going to be kind of the focus of our chat here today. Welcome to the Christianity of Business Podcast, David.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_01It's great to be with you. So when it comes to business ethics, you say that it's about excellence. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_00Well, uh, for so many, you know, as I've studied business ethics over the years, and as a matter of fact, it's not just business ethics, it's ethics in general. So often people think of ethics as being what I would call damage control, and people concentrate a lot more on what's wrong than they do on what's right. And so in a lot of businesses and business ethics courses, you study uh terrible things that went wrong at Enron or, you know, the Exxon Valdez runs aground, you know, and who's going to be responsible, uh, who should who should be punished, who should pay. You know, so ethics tends to be uh damage control. It tends to be negative, it tends to be um, you know, all about catching the bad guys and and and blaming them or something like that. But I don't really think that's the classical approach to ethics. For example, Aristotle, who's you know one of the Greek fathers of moral philosophy, he began his book on ethics, the Nicomachaean Ethics, by saying uh the good is that at which everything aims. So it's about figuring out what is the goal, what is the aim, and then in light of that, you figure out how you need to be behave in order to achieve that good. And I would say the same thing is true of biblical ethics and Christian ethics, that ethics is really about uh about how do we please God and how do we live the kind of life that's pleasing to God. It's not about just avoiding hell, it's about achieving, working our way toward what would be uh praiseworthy in heaven, you might say, what pleases God. So it's about it's about excellence, and it's not just about, for example, in Romans, Paul says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So I think there's a lot to a lot to the idea that ethics is more about how to figure out what's good in order to overcome what's bad rather than just cataloging what's bad. We don't want to just become experts in what's bad. The the uh I've I've heard, I and I believe I've read this somewhere in in my life, that the rabbis, the the Jewish rabbis, old Jewish rabbis used to say that in the Ten Commandments, there's not really ten commands, there's one command and nine corollaries. So it's really all about the first commandment, who's going to be God here, and then everything follows from that. So that's the way I approach ethics, is is ethics is about uh the kind of people and organizations we need to have and the kind of guidelines we need in order to uh achieve our mission, in order to achieve what's excellent.
SPEAKER_01Got it. Well said. So so you know, when when people think ethics, oftentimes our mind immediately goes to, like you said, Enron. Uh it goes to whistleblowing, basically. It's almost that that's at least what comes to to my mind. Uh, but but they don't we don't often think of excellence as being a part of what ethics is all about. You know, it's not just about catching the bad guy or just about setting up guardrails so you don't do the wrong thing, uh, but but it's about it's about excellence and and doing well toward your goals. So why why would you say this concept has been so misunderstood? And why has business ethics become so compartmentalized?
SPEAKER_00I think sometimes people have have thought that business, when you talk about business ethics, you're talking about creating a set of ethical standards that are lower uh somehow and less demanding than what you'd expect in the church or in your family, things like that. Uh John Maxwell, the guy who's written all these leadership books, he wrote a little book called There's No Such Thing as Business Ethics. And uh and he was basically trying to say there's only one rule, which is the golden rule do unto others as you would have them do unto you. But but he he misunderstands what people in business ethics are really trying to do. Most people who uh are in this field, what they're trying to do is not not achieve a lower standard. What it really represents is an application. So business ethics is applying uh ethics, our best ethical thinking to uh to the business area, just like medical ethics applies it to the medical arena or legal ethics to law, that sort of thing. So I think sometimes people don't understand that this is really just a way of talking about the applied in the trenches uh meaning of our ethics. And I think it is true, like you said, why has it become so compartmentalized? Uh I we need a much grander kind of vision of what ethics is all about, and not just focusing on small dilemmas or responding to cases and quandaries, but looking more broadly at uh at how we create health, ethically healthy organizations and ethically healthy people.
SPEAKER_01Right. So at its at its fundamental level, would you say that every decision in business is fundamentally an ethical issue and not just the ones where there's a significant temptation to make an unethical decision?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think ethics in general is about uh how we ought to behave, what we ought to do, and what's the right way to behave. And as a Christian, the right way to behave is what pleases God, what represents the will of God, you know, because God knows best uh what what the right thing to do is. But uh but so in a sense, uh every decision in life has an ethical aspect to it. And uh, you know, because we're always not just wanting to have the right way to think or the right way to believe or the right way to talk, but the right way to act, the right way to behave. You know, on this business of damage control versus mission control and excellence, one of the things that I've done as a business ethics teacher over the years is I spend, for example, in the airline industry, I spend a lot more time with my students studying Southwest Airlines, which is a really exemplary company. I mean, nobody's perfect, but Southwest has been a very exemplary uh company in the way they treat their customers, their people, their compensation uh for their employees, as well as the responsible compensation packages that their CEOs take. Whereas when you look at other legacy airlines, uh, and you could just about mention any of them by name, they've been in bankruptcy, they've had scandals, they've had uh you know, they have uh executives to take in these huge compensation packages while squeezing their mechanics and flight attendants and others to take to make pay uh you know concessions and abandon their retirement packages. I mean, they don't all do that all the time, but I'm just saying I would rather study a company that has uh a lot of positive things to learn from than spend my time dissecting uh all the bad stuff.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell What are maybe some other examples of ethical issues that people traditionally don't think of as quote unquote ethical issues? If if ethics is about excellence, excellence in relation to pursuing whatever your overall objective is, I mean, because I mean in another way, it sounds like you're saying that ethics is it whether you have good ethics or bad ethics, it's in relation to what your desired outcome is or what you're trying to accomplish. Is that right? And that's kind of two questions in one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, when I work with a company or actually, you know, working with individuals and in coaching them or teaching MBA students, uh, one of my major early uh uh uh topics is mission and vision. And because I really believe that that it's mission and vision that drive uh good ethics or bad ethics. And so if your mission as an individual is to move people's money from their pockets into yours as quickly and massively as possible, I think that's going to leverage uh uh some bad behavior and some bad choices on your part. It's gonna make you step on people and exploit people, perhaps. And so, and and you know, in in uh the Christian faith, nobody in the Christian faith should be deceived about this, that uh those who want to be rich fall into temptation, and the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. So, so profit is good, it, you know, and uh and money is valuable and important, and I don't deny at all that businesses and individuals need to uh have that as part of their objectives. But but our primary mission, uh, you know, what is our primary mission in a business or in our personal life? And I think getting that straight is what's really really significant for ethical performance. You know, one of the things is I I I sometimes ask my students, you know, why uh some guy, let's just think about an individual who's kind of a slob and everybody wants him to change his ways and uh, you know, clean up his act and go to school and you know, dress better and all the rest of this. And and nobody can get the guy to change uh until one day you see this guy's going to the gym and he's working out and he's uh taking his studies or going to school or going to work with more seriousness. And what made him change was that he fell in love with somebody. And that's what motivates him. Or you look at a team that where all the members of the athletic team are at each other's throats and they're just looking for their own statistics and everything else, and yet a team can change uh if they have a coach who gets them to see that if we just work together, we could actually play in the Super Bowl, we could win a championship. And it's that kind of uh mission that will drive change in individuals and in organizations. So, what is that uh change? I don't think it's just about uh about getting more money for yourself. I think it's got to be something more positive. My approach to mission is to uh uh try to get people to focus on two basic themes. One of them is to is to design, create, and build something, uh some product or service that will help other people or will be beautiful. It's valuable in people's lives. So it's kind of this uh creativity innovation side that you're gonna have a stronger, more ethical organization if you begin there by rallying your people so that they're coming to work trying to have a hand in uh in innovation and making things better. Or the other thing, the other great theme is to fix something that's broken. So either build something that's uh a service or a product that's valuable and helpful to people, uh, or fix something that's broken, heal somebody who's hurting or whatever. And there are, by the way, studies of these uh of you know, organizational missions that make this same kind of point in one way or another. But I think as a Christian, you know, these are the two main characteristics of God uh is that he's the creator and the redeemer. He he built a beautiful world and he fixes broken people and the brokenness of the world. And I think that every man and woman and child is made in the image and likeness of a creator and redeemer. And so when you rally your workforce or you steer your organization toward one or both of those two great themes, I think people like to get out of bed in the morning and show up at work and bring their best self if that's what they're what the company is really all about. So, you know, it's it's the mission, but it's not just any mission, it's getting the mission right and then saying what kind of people do we need to be, what are the core values of our culture, what are the kind of uh character that we need to hire for in order to optimize our chances of achieving that kind of a mission.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I mean, as as Christians, it it it seems clear that we would need to make sure that what we're trying to accomplish in business and the way that we go about it is in line with biblical principles. Because I mean, if I can have a set of ethics, but if my objective is wrong, you know, I was thinking about this article that came back out, it came out in the 60s from the Harvard Business Review about how uh basically business should be like it you should be viewed as like a poker game, where at the poker table, you're not trying to help the other guy win. You're you're bluffing, you're you know, you're lying, as long as you're not cheating. Um, but you know, because certainly that that wouldn't be okay, but but bluffing and uh doing everything you can to win is is the name of the game. And so he says that uh you may be familiar with this article that I'm talking about. Um and and he says that you need to get your ethics. Business is not a place for ethics anymore than business than poker is a place for ethics. And yet to have that kind of humanist philosophy, that that secular humanist philosophy, is there's there's still another objective that we all have, whether it's uh as you said, taking money from somebody else's pocket and putting it into our pocket, or taking their chips and putting it in our stack. So we all have something that we're after, but our and our ethics are going to whether we realize it or not, the ethics that we have are in line with that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, uh, I think uh yeah, is business is business bluffing ethical, I think was the name of that article. That's right. It's in all business ethics or business anthologies, but it's it's a very narrow view of what what ethics is all about and what business is all about too. And I just don't think uh I don't think ultimately that's very satisfying to our employees or or or works very well for the kind of marketplace that we'd want to want to be involved. So I think um, you know, I think when you look at at uh you know what the Bible teaches, uh, for example, when the when the Ten Commandments were given, which is I think the outstanding kind of uh template for thinking about what's ethical and what's not, um, you know, what what uh the Lord says in in those texts back in Deuteronomy and Exodus through Moses is if you will if you will uh walk in these ways, if you will live by these uh by these ten words, uh it will go well with you, and you will live long in the land the Lord your God has given you. Now we know that you know the person who best lived up to the Decalogue was crucified when he was 33 years old. So there are no guarantees in a broken world that everything's gonna be uh automatically perfect or something like that. But I still think that by and large, if you uh if you live by the guidelines of Scripture, it does usually go well with you. Usually people like to do business with you if you tell them the truth and you don't steal from them and you uh and people will uh you know they floor they tend to flourish under these circumstances. And so, and I think even like the the Beatitudes, which are the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus basically basically says, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, etc. So we're we're not just suffering when we do these things that God has called us to do or to be, but actually we're blessed when we live this way, generally speaking. Now, you know, we have to be ready to be persecuted, and that blessing may not come in the short term. Uh so I don't really believe in what you might call a prosperity gospel, but I do believe that by and large, uh, you know, at a very profound level, biblical values do resonate with people who, even though they may not be Christians or they might not really be familiar with it, uh I more and more over the years I've come to believe that, you know, in that thing that Paul talks about in Romans, that those who do not have the law, like written down in the scriptures, like the like the Hebrews, the Jews, nevertheless they have the law written on their hearts and they have a conscience that bears witness to that law. And I find that, you know, the more I work with people in the business world and MBA students, I find that actually they resonate with the truth of biblical values and biblical perspectives, uh, even though they don't understand quite why. But it's because they're made in the image of God and they have this uh they have a heart that resonates and they have the law written on their hearts.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I have a an ethical question. So when it comes to competition, you know, I was thinking about the poker table metaphor. Uh as is it Christ-like to compete in business? I mean, it at what point is it not Christ-like to try to beat your competitor in business? Do you do you know what I'm asking?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think competition is is uh is not a bad thing. I think that uh you know crushing the weak or whatever is not a good thing. But you know, you have these these uh examples in the Old Testament where people were not supposed to mow their fields all the way to the edges, but leave uh you know leave some of the food, some of the crops on the edges for poor people to be able to uh you know get food. So you're not supposed to just completely monopolize everything to the extent that that those who have no resources are unable to get what they need to survive. And I I think in business that's a good a good reminder that we we should not be just crush people out of existence, but you know, try to um recognize when enough is enough and we ought to leave room for other people. But but by and large, I think competition is is uh you know is part of what we're all about as human beings. And you know, Paul uses all these exam, you know, athletic metaphors about competing and running the race and all this kind of thing, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, certainly he he does, but he's talking about you know running the race set before me and and the and the pursuing the high calling, not necessarily in the sense that I'm the only one that gets it. I mean, he says he he says that you know it's like a runner and only one gets the prize, but not sort of like the the zero-sum game, which is the way that I think most of us look at our industries, right? I mean, it's uh you're you're either I mean you gotta be you gotta be number one. You know, you gotta like you know, Jack Welch talked about how he would wake up every morning thinking about how he's gonna beat his competitor. You know, like is is that the kind of and we praise that, right? I mean, is that is that the right approach?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I think I I think the way I would look at it is to say, I want to wake up every morning and try and be as good as I can possibly be. I wanna uh I want our company to perform at absolutely the best uh level it can. And so I'm not so much focused on crushing others as I am on achieving our goals. You know, so I think I think that's a better way to look at it is to say how can we be as excellent and successful as possible? But be sure that we don't harm others. I mean, I think, I think, you know, one way of defining why something is wrong ethically is because it harms others. You know, Paul says in Romans, again, love does no harm to others, therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law. You know, so that whole idea of avoiding uh significant and real harm to others, I think is important. But there's that still leaves a tremendous amount of room for uh for growth and excellence and competition. So I think competition's healthy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I think what you know, it does, it goes back to it's about excellence, you know, like the name, the title of your book, that it's not it's not about beating other people, it's about being the best that God has called you to be, and first of all, knowing what God has called us to be, right? As as individuals, as uh for our companies that we lead. And you know, I was thinking about uh Truett Kathy when years ago when Boston Chicken, now known as Boston Market, was about to do some aggressive expansion, you know, the the board of Chick-fil-A's you know, they're kind of frantic. And Truett Cathy slams his fist down on the table. He said, Gentlemen, we're not going to get bigger. We're not we're gonna focus on getting better, and then our customers will demand that we get bigger. And and and it's uh that's the essence, I think, of what you're saying. Ethics is all about is is excellence. It's doing the best, being the best that you can be as an individual, as a company, and that's honoring to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and if more and more people in your product area come to you because they get a better price and better quality and better service, I mean you're actually blessing more people. It's it's not like you're you're motivated by trying to put the other company out of business, unless maybe they're doing something terrible to people, so you want to put them out of business. But, you know, generally speaking, if you're growing because you're delivering great service at a great price, uh, you know, I think that's good. It's good for the people who are your customers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well said. So what would be uh a parting piece of advice and and and also what would an ethical scorecard look like for a company? How how would how would a company know what what can what kind of application can somebody take from this today?
SPEAKER_00I think the I think the most what one of the first things is to just realize how important it is to pay attention to ethics and to think of it in a broad sense that it's it's not just uh something narrow and legalistic. You know, in in so many companies and in in individual thinking too, ethics is really little more than compliance. You know, it's in in some companies it's just called a compliance office or an ethics and compliance office, and it's about complying with the law. It's like lowest, the lowest possible uh requirement of what the law sets up and living within the regulatory environment. Instead of asking, you know, what's the best we can do, we just sort of ask how can we avoid getting in trouble? How can we avoid getting sued or going to jail or, you know, this kind of thing. So I think stressing how important ethics is in terms of building a culture where people will perform well. Uh, you know, so I would say that's that's kind of the beginning is just to emphasize how this is really important, but to take a holistic and kind of positive view of what ethics is all about. Ethics is, I often say it's a description of how we need to treat each other and treat our customers in order to achieve our mission with excellence. So ethics is an account of how we need to treat each other and our customers, all of our stakeholders, in order to achieve our mission with excellence and success. So I think promoting the importance of that is really important. Ethics isn't just a luxury, but it's integral to what our company and our culture is going to be about. And then I think just to think of it in terms of uh its relationship with our mission, the core values of our culture. So it's not just a code of what we have to do in different areas, different activities, but ethics is really also about an alignment between our mission and vision of the company or the organization, uh, the core values that we want to build into the culture, and then the ethical guidelines follow from that. So I think I think that's the kind of place to begin, is not just to ask what's the worst thing that we need to, you know, what are the horrible things that we need to avoid, but what is the good that we can achieve? What's the good that we can do in our industry in order to overcome the evil and the bad stuff that's going on in our industry? How can we invent, how can we design some positive approach in our industry? How can we set the example for other companies?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's powerful. I mean, setting the example, I mean, Jesus has called us to make disciples. And I mean, our our companies can set such an example that can reveal Jesus. I mean, the way that we conduct ourselves in our workplace, that can reveal Jesus, the character of Jesus. And and uh I mean that that is the Jesus is the essence of excellence. Uh I mean He He's the one that created, he's the He's the standard. So, you know, let's not just look at our competitors as our standard. Let's look, let's look to Jesus. David, where can people learn more about you and your books?
SPEAKER_00I have I've I've had two parts to my career. I've been a professor for 40 years now, and about half of those years, I was teaching business ethics, primarily business ethics, in um to MBA students. Uh and so, and then doing consulting among uh mostly small and medium-sized companies. And then this book that you referred to, uh It's about excellence, is really a book written for uh for business people, for people out in the workplace like that. It's it's a general market book, not not really intended in the first place to evangelize people. But anyway, that side of my work is really represented at my website called ethicsbiz.com, spelled unconventionally. So eth i-xb-i-z.com. Ethicsbiz.com is where all of my, you know, my my ideas and my consulting approach and stuff like that uh is there. And then my other website, davidw.gill.org, davidwgill.org with no punctuation in there, uh, at that website, that's where my Christian stuff is is focused. And obviously there's a huge relationship between the two. And I think the values and ethics that I'm promoting at ethicsbiz.com are really grounded in a very direct kind of way in uh in the Bible and in my Christian faith. But on the other hand, I don't get in people's faces about uh you know using my Christian churchly language at that website like I do uh at DavidWgill.org, which represents my other things that I've done, my other 20 years of my life teaching in theological seminaries and uh on on uh trying to understand or explore the ethics and values of Jesus and Scripture is what that website's all about.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Well, everybody go check out ethicsbiz.com and also davidw.gill g-l dot org to learn more about David and his books. David, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the Christianity and business podcast today. And may God continue to bless the work you're doing with ethicsbiz and just helping uh to reveal Jesus in the world and help uh companies to become uh to have better ethics and uh and to and to do it with excellence. Thank you so much, Darren. And uh looking forward to seeing you also in Dallas at the Faith and Works Summit. Yeah, that'll be great. And uh, and by the way, or they're friends of ours, everybody go check out fwsummit.org and uh and certainly do go check out uh David's website as well. Thanks again, David. Okay, thank you. We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you quit rating review appreciated podcasts on YouTube.