Examining Your Moral Compass
Examining Your Moral Compass
By Jerry Jones
By Jerry Jones
President & CEO, Cannon IV, Inc.
Socrates was the first to point out that knowledge is the key to principled ethical behavior. Socrates said that people will naturally do what is good if they know what is right. In other words, evil or bad actions are the result of ignorance, and any person who knows what is truly right will automatically do it.
My wholehearted belief in these principles is constantly put to the test, as it was most recently in a class with high school students at Scecina High School. I have been fortunate enough to develop and teach a class on “Ethical Leadership,” and discussions with these students over the last semester confirm for me once again what Socrates told us thousands of years ago – that people want to do the right thing and thirst for the knowledge to do so. Even more important, the students have helped me understand what a magnificent opportunity we have to nurture in people that core of moral righteousness, and guide them in making sound ethical decisions.
All of us operate with a different “moral compass.” Bowen H. “Buzz” McCoy says it well in his book, “Living into Leadership: A Journey in Ethics.” To him, “Life is an adventurous pilgrimage during which we are formed and reformed.” We are formed by the influences in our lives, and reformed by the decisions that we make. All of us have been at a crossroads in our lives where we have been forced to make an ethical decision. These are the moments that define us.
So that begs the question – what is the moral compass in our own workplaces? Are our daily behaviors and decisions guiding the moral compass in a positive direction? How are we teaching ethical behavior to our employees? Have we established an environment where employees are empowered to do the right thing no matter the outcome?
At my company, we established “the Cannon IV Way.” It is the moral compass by which we operate. “The Cannon IV Way means doing the right thing by valuing individuality, trust and spirit. Our actions are the result of our passion, integrity and conscious desire to succeed.” As a result of this, the strength of our moral compass is put to the test daily, often in small, but teachable, ways, but sometimes in large, far-reaching ways.
Cannon IV had one of the greatest challenges in its more than 35 years of business in the last half of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. Like many companies riding out this recession, we faced a very tough time financially. It became so tough, in fact, that we faced an unfortunate decision concerning our payroll. Company revenue was not enough to support the payroll as it was, and management was faced with reviewing how much money had to be released from the payroll budget. We knew we didn’t want to put anyone out of a job in such a tough economic climate, and for the same reason, we didn’t want to lay anyone off.
As a compromise, our management team decided to institute a temporary across-the-board wage decrease for every member of the Cannon IV team. Beginning in March 2009, everyone in the company took a 7% pay cut for an undetermined amount of time. I know this was tough on our employees, and it was very difficult presenting it to them, particularly since we did not know how much time it would take for us to recover.
Yet we did recover, and I believe it was because of our team’s willingness to hang in there, work hard together, and help us pull out of a difficult situation. Ironically, our Cannon IV team didn’t get down, they got up; and after three months Cannon IV was back on the right financial track.
This gave us the opportunity to do the right thing -- to bring everyone’s wages back to their original amounts before the pay reduction had gone into effect, and beyond that to pay back in full, and with interest, what we believed was essentially a loan from our staff.
Socrates goes beyond the correlation of knowledge with virtue; he equates virtue with happiness. He tells us that the truly wise man will know what is right, do what is good, and therefore be happy. And it’s the truth. Everyone at their core wants to feel pride and respect about themselves and their companies. That’s why ethical decisions are opportunities; against the scandal of Enron, A.I.G. and all the other well publicized ethical failures in Corporate America, we have the opportunity to shift our moral compass, creating an environment where doing the right thing is rewarded and thus a workplace for which employees can feel proud.
Jerry Jones is President and CEO of Cannon IV, Inc., one of the strongest independent Hewlett-Packard printer dealers in the United States. Cannon IV is headquartered in Indianapolis, with additional locations in Ohio and Texas. Cannon IV sales are nationwide. Jerry, along with his father, Richard Jones, founded Cannon IV in 1974. Upon Richard’s death, Jerry became president in 1978. There are four brothers – Jerry, John, Jeff and Jim – in the Jones’ family, and all work at Cannon IV. In 1997, Jerry received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Cannon IV’s business and civic awards include: Indiana Small Business of the Year, Indiana Business Ethics Award, Spirit of Service Award presented by the Archdiocese of Indianapolis and One of the “Best Places to Work in Indiana” in 2009.
Jerry sits on the boards of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, Marian University Board of Trustees, Noble of Indiana, Scecina Memorial High School, and INTEC. Jerry received a B.S. from Indiana University in 1972. He and his wife, Peggy, married in 1974 and have three children – Jennifer, Jonathan, and Jacob. Jerry’s interests include running, bicycling, college basketball, reading, and the theater.
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