(Chiquita Code of Conduct) Here’s the scenario: you’re a kid and you’re given a banana. What’s the first thing you do? You take off the little Chiquita sticker and place it on your sister’s back or forehead or cheek. It’s almost impossible to eat a banana without doing something with that blue sticker. Then think of the banana itself. It’s iconic. I imagine that it also has some amazing qualities that we’re not even aware of. I’m amazed that I can eat a fresh banana in Alaska.
So I have to say that I was a little disappointed when their code of conduct is called “Code of Conduct Working to Produce Trust.” What a missed opportunity. They could have called it: The Banana, Stay Fresh, The Blue Sticker, or something like that. Who’s that actress who used to dance with the fruit basket on her head? I forget, but they could have used her in the code. OK, that’s probably going too far. My experience is that calling your code – Code of Conduct is forgettable. Find your story and then give your code something a memorable name related to that story.
The rest of the code is pretty good. No legalese. Big bright pictures of fruits and vegetable – although the avocado looks like a fried egg. The scenarios are good. It’s helpful to have real life scenarios. Overall it’s a very good code of conduct.
What’s the rate of return on an ethics and compliance program? How can you place a dollar value on an improved reputation? I haven’t seen a way to measure this. But one can look back in time at a few statistics. This is what Vivek Wadhwa did in an his article in Business Week entitled Why Be an Ethical Company? They’re Stronger and Last Longer. Here are the statistics:
Of the original Forbes 100 in 1917, 61 ceased to exist by 1987. Of the remaining 39, only 18 stayed in the top 100, and their return was 20% less than the overall market during the period from 1917 through 1987.
Of companies in the original Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index in 1957, only 74 remained in 1997; of these, only 12 outperformed the S&P 500 in the period from 1957 through 1998.
The average CEO tenure in the U.S. is 4.2 years, less than half the 10.5-year average in 1990.
Which companies survived? The hypothesis is: companies with ethics. Mr. Wadhwa points out that companies like Charles Schwab and US Bancorp aren’t struggling in the current economy because they didn’t go after the quick money of mortgage-backed securities. Companies like Costco aren’t hurting because they pay their employees well and they don’t have a CEO with a huge paycheck. These companies place their values over the quick buck.
Mr. Wadhwas concludes:
The moral here is fairly simple: When a company’s ethical compass is pointing true north, everything else falls into line. This isn’t to say that companies with great ethics don’t fail. But it does seem to indicate that companies without good ethics are far more likely to fail due to their inability to sustain or hear an inner voice to guide them through the dark times to the light.
I don’t think it takes statistics and measurements to come to this conclusion. We all inherently understand this. But it can be difficult to implement.
I took a class in college that forever changed the way I thought about learning. It wasn’t the substance of the class that changed my viewpoint, it was the way the teacher allowed us to learn. The point where I saw things differently was when he allowed me to draw pictures rather than write a report. That probably sounds juvenile. But it brought something out of me that I didn’t know I had. I was able to draw different literary theories in visual form. I loved it. I understood difficult concepts as a result of this exercise. He even shared it with the class and they better understood the concepts.
So when I see someone do something like the following presentation, I like to pass it along as a good example of how to share your message.
This type of thing is not easy to do. In a comment the producer describes the process as follows:
The team at O&M and the folks at Unilever were so amazing on this with great ideas and feedback all the way through. We did previs in Maya, and designed in Illustrator and After Effects. CG was a mix of Maya and XSI, tracking and roto were a mix of Flame and a motion tracking package. Nothing proprietary, just hard work. We shot it together with Steve Gordon, a great director at our sister company Sons and Daughters.
Hard to do, but if you’re trying to get your message across it’s worth it.
(Chiquita Code of Conduct) Here’s the scenario: you’re a kid and you’re given a banana. What’s the first thing you do? You take off the little Chiquita sticker and place it on your sister’s back or forehead or cheek. It’s almost impossible to eat a banana without doing something with that blue sticker. Then think of the banana itself. It’s iconic. I imagine that it also has some amazing qualities that we’re not even aware of. I’m amazed that I can eat a fresh banana in Alaska.