Lies and Culture

Here is a question. How many of you are doing business with someone that won't return your calls and they owe you money? Someone is always chasing someone down for blood. It affects new relationships as well; after having had two or three people default on promised payments it becomes harder to trust the next person’s word. It's hard to blame the person that's always been burnt for being shy of the fire.

Lies breed distrust, distrust means things take longer to navigate or innovate. It takes longer to discuss an idea with someone because they may steal it. It takes longer to open a bank account because they need to verify that we are who we say we are. It takes longer to source funding because people have been scammed before. When things take longer to innovate we get left behind. Then when we get left behind we start to look elsewhere at perceived better opportunities, to where the grass appears greener on the other side. So lies breed distrust, distrust slows us down, and we start to look at where we think things are really happening. Many in Africa think they are in training. “I’m training for my real job in Europe or America, training for the real world.” Why? They do not see anything happening for them here.

Lies promote a bad culture. There's nothing worse than a bad culture; a bad business culture where suits and ties are more important than truth and quality. The sort of culture where promises are broken without regard for the consequences is destructive. I was dealing with a bank with liquidity issues, daily I got promised “we will have cash for you tomorrow”. They never did. Why not just be honest and tell me the truth, let me know exactly where you stand so that I can make better decisions and plan better in my own life and business.

When love and passion for people takes a back seat and instead status and pictures in the newspaper are regarded as symbols of validity we fall short. When we expect the best service or product in the world from local SME's or start-ups, but we want to rip them off and pay cheaply we contribute to a culture that festers. Every time we lie, or cover up the truth, or lead people on we add to the culture of deception and make it harder for others to trust.

Here are some things to remember when trying to build a better culture. More things happen when no one cares about who gets the credit. Innovation explodes when the landscape is easier to navigate. Good culture triumphs over good strategy (the best crafted strategy documents will fail if there is no integrity to underscore it). Truth and honesty breeds brothers and sisters, not patrons and clients.

The grass has got to be greener inside of our world. Let us not head out for international pastures before we address the bad culture and lies that cripple the genius we have.

(See http://emergingideas.com/lies-culture-grass for the source article for this post)