The Complicated Story of Why We Lie
Dear Reader: I’m sorry to report that you’re a no-good dirty liar. Yeah. There. I said it.
It’s not you, it’s me. Well, and you. And everyone, really. Together, as a collective of people hungry for success, we’ve turned the world into a veritable shitshow of moral uncertainty. No matter what industry you’re in, what politics you follow, and which flag you fly outside your home, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is damn near impossible to find these days. Our news has been hijacked by clickbait. On TV and social media, we’re inundated with opinions pretending to be facts and barraged with views that polarize the world. And in the business world, as in society at large, we see people coloring what they say so it’s more “palatable” to our sensitive, politically correct eardrums.
With the facts being so difficult to discern, can we honestly be too surprised that we live in a sea of deceit? I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust anything I see and hear. But I do hear it . . . and the siren song of cheating has perhaps never been so loud, as we saw in the last chapter. We can hardly help but be wooed by it—the promises of yachts, jets, and the Lifestyles of the Rich and Instagram-Famous. We wonder, Why bother playing fair if everyone else is using bluster to profit? Why emphasize the facts if nobody trusts them anyway? Why think about long-term reputation when I might not even be in this role for the long run?
All good questions. And to get at the answers, we must return to our roots and understand how we’ve ended up here, so that we can appropriately gauge where we are as a society and then accurately predict what might happen next.
A BRIEF HUMAN HISTORY OF (DIS)HONESTY
Unfortunately, humanity holds a long-standing, damaging belief about the connection between money and morality. For millennia, we humans have built societies that teach us contradictory notions about right and wrong and about how we can use money to tip those scales in our favor. I can’t very well expect you to believe that we’re at a tipping point of change for the future if I don’t show you where we’ve been in the past, right? And to measure how we’ve traditionally linked money and morality, we need to go back in time.
When in Rome . . .
The year is 1517. The place: Rome. Your wealthy, despotic uncle has just passed away. Good riddance, you think. He spent his life proclaiming his pious dedication to Catholic values and community service, but you and your siblings know the truth: he sought to make himself wealthy above all else and all others, and he succeeded by acting as an unrepentant thief in his business dealings. Of course, Rome doesn’t have Facebook or Yelp during the Renaissance, so every customer with the misfortune of dealing with your rich uncle has had to learn, from scratch, that there was a reason why he had more shekels than the rest of his competitors.
But fortunately for your uncle, his religion offered him a loophole for eternal redemption (cue heavenly chorus, please). St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome has been in dire need of some updating, and it’s looking for a few coins to help with the renovation. So, to fill the investment gap, Pope Leo X has expanded the use of “indulgences”—spiritual pardons for lifelong sins that the pope can, at his discretion, hand out to “worthy” Catholics. All that’s needed to acquire one of these indulgences is a fairly sizeable chunk of cold, hard cash—which, luckily for your uncle, was no problem at all. With a casual transfer of wealth from your uncle to the Catholic Church ahead of his demise, your uncle earned his pardon and set his spirit free to go to heaven, a life full of sin notwithstanding.
How to Walk Like an Egyptian
The powers that be in Rome made it relatively easy for sinful leaders to act dishonestly for a lifetime with no one the wiser and get their sins pardoned as a sort of twisted have your cake and eat it, too. But Rome was not alone in conditioning society to the vicious circle of money and morals in which immoral behavior could be used to pursue money, which could then be used to offset immoral behavior, and ’round and ’round it goes. Rome was just one in a long line of societies that placed money over morals this way. Take, for example, the curious phenomenon that occurred within the high priests of Amun in ancient Egypt, who rose to great power from the fifteenth to the tenth centuries BCE.
Imagine, for a moment, that as you step outside your favorite local market, you become momentarily blinded by the desert-hot sun and go ass-over-teakettle down a flight of rock steps, landing you forcefully face-first into a cart of unforgivingly unripe melons (a sorrowful but quick way to go, at least). Instantly, you are transported to a firelit hallway, appropriately called the Hall of Two Truths. As you approach the end of the hall, you begin to make out a giant scale with a pulsing, red organ on one end—your own beating heart. On the other end of the scale, you can see the outline of an ostrich feather—the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of truth, balance, justice, harmony, and other elements of an honest life.
You watch anxiously as the scales tip back and forth; you hurriedly recite an ancient incantation, praying that your sins don’t weigh down your heart and make it heavier than that feather of truth. If your heart doesn’t pass this test, it will be devoured by the part-hippopotamus, part-crocodile god Ammit, whose snacking on your cardiac organ will permanently erase your soul from the world, thereby preventing you from reaching the afterlife.
For all intents and purposes, the story of the Hall of Two Truths was a remarkable way to encourage ancient Egyptians to embrace honest values as a way of life. In fact, it’s not unlike many other cultural and religious stories designed to help us make honest decisions and act harmoniously within our societies (read: formulated with the best of intentions). Except that, as we saw in Rome, there was a loophole in ancient Egypt (read: leave it to us humans to fuck it up).
Although ancient Egypt’s weighing of the heart ceremony was designed to apply to all Egyptians regardless of status, the Amun priests began allowing wealthy Egyptians to purchase special documents and funerary objects with protective spells to give them an edge. In one available trade, wealthy Egyptians could buy a ready-made papyrus to bring with them into the afterlife, so all they had to do was fill in their name and voilà, they could punch their ticket to eternal bliss. With enough moola, they could even customize those spells to absolutely ensure that their hearts wouldn’t become Ammit’s lunch. And if that most pious judgment of all could simply be bought, what reason would a wealthy ancient Egyptian have for living an honest life in the first place?
Dishonesty Is an Easy (But Potentially Deadly) Habit
To put it simply, we’ve given ourselves an out when it comes to morals and money. Duplicity has been ingrained in our societies through our traditions and habits. Time and time again, we followed the path of dishonest gains because we could, because the consequences could be skirted. And sometimes, instead of disapproving of our deceit, society allowed and even incentivized our dishonest natures—especially if a few influential souls stood to make a profit.
To make matters worse, it isn’t easy for us to change course. To resist deceit, we fight not only society’s allowances but also the way our brains fundamentally work. A 2016 study in the journal Nature Neuroscience showed that being dishonest actually alters our brain chemistry, making it increasingly easier to lie the next time and the next. That sinking feeling we get from being dishonest comes from the part of the brain called the amygdala, and repeatedly telling lies—even to ourselves—eventually suppresses the amygdala’s negative signals that remind us we’re being dishonest. Unsurprisingly, a cognitive neuroscientist that led the research concluded, “If you give people multiple opportunities to lie for their own benefit . . . they start with little white lies [which] get bigger and bigger over time.”1 It’s as if we’ve made a developmental line into a circle: We start out lying for our own benefit (to avoid the pain that comes with admitting we ate the cookie). Then we’re taught explicitly that lying is wrong. And then, instead of stopping there, we turn into adults, learn that society has provided us loopholes to suppress our learned morality, ignore the warnings we ingrained into our amygdalae, and turn back into self-preservationists, truth be damned.
Time and time again, we followed the path of dishonest gains. And sometimes, instead of disapproving of our deceit, society allowed and even incentivized our dishonest natures—especially if a few influential souls stood to make a profit.
As it is, when we face any habit-forming activity, it is up to us to admit we have a problem and admit that we need to be more conscious about how we live our lives. Do we wield lies or the truth? Do we know we’re lying, and do we honestly understand why? If we get away with deceit, we feed more and more power to it, as the neuroscience study, Elizabeth Holmes, and Shane Smith all show. Now add social media. Add fake news. Add a few notable examples of liars in top positions in business and politics. And it’s enough to almost convince ourselves that it’s easier than ever to go with the dishonest flow and capitalize on our societal and personal loopholes in morality.
But that’s where the tipping point comes in. We’re not descending into more deceitful darkness; instead, we’re approaching a cliff. Rome and Egypt of yesteryear didn’t have smartphones. They didn’t have a scientific community as we know it today. Their information didn’t flow rapidly around the world in a heartbeat. Sure, lying is easy when we can get away with it. We deceive ourselves and others more easily when it’s easy to do so and there are no repercussions. But the easy times are rapidly ending. Remember: people exchange money for value. That’s the basis of commerce and capitalism. When we consumers know more, we assign value based on better information. And when that happens, the entire system shifts—in favor of honesty.
A WINDOW INTO TOMORROW’S TRUTH
For the first time in human history, something is different about the here and now when it comes to the core value of honesty. Something fundamental has changed, which has—for the first time ever—put the feather of truth in perfect balance with the pursuit of achievement and profits.
In earlier times truth and profits might have functioned as opposing forces, but today honesty and profitability are both intertwined. Better yet, you can even use each one to cause the other to occur. Did a velvet-robed wizard shift thousands of years of human behavior with a magical wand? Nope—like many good things in life, all it took was a few computer geeks and a dream.
See, something remarkable occurred just a few decades ago, something you might have heard of through your local news outlet or your mobile telephone. It’s called the internet. The internet made transparency the buzzword of our time, because for the first time ever, anyone with an internet connection can look into the windows of companies in a way that was never possible before.
Whereas before a company could say one thing and do another, that is no longer true. Whereas before a company could praise their employees but actually treat them terribly, that is no longer true (or at least they can’t get away with it without being called out on it). Whereas before a company could pollute the environment, or mishandle its finances, or employ unfair labor practices, that is—increasingly and for the most part—nearly impossible to pull off without getting brutally exposed.
And whereas before a few wealthy celebs might have continued matriculating their offspring into elite universities with the leathery creak of a bountiful checkbook and a few tall tales about their children’s athleticism, that is, apparently, no longer an effective method. Eleven schools and fifty people were implicated when the college admissions scandal broke in the spring of 2019. It turns out that wealthy parents had a long-standing tradition of getting their kids into the college of their choice through bribery instead of merit (raise your hand if you were shocked . . . yeah . . . didn’t think so). I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t surprised to hear yet another account of using deceit for personal gain. But that scandal served my point beautifully: those who tried to cheat the system were caught and publicly exposed, proving how difficult it’s becoming to cheat and get away with it with today’s easy access to information.
My argument for why to resist cheating’s lure is simple: what got you here won’t get you there (as author Marshall Goldsmith said long ago). Dishonesty might be working for some people, some of the time, but its efficacy will not last in today’s increasingly transparent environment. In this environment, we’re all growing tired of bullshit. Aren’t you? Our awareness of fake news grows stronger by the day. We leave our phones open to fact-check the talking heads on TV. Scandal after scandal hardens us into professional skeptics, wary of almost everything we see and hear.
That’s today; what about tomorrow? As a thought experiment, let’s play these trends forward and ask ourselves some important questions. For instance, do we believe that technology will solve our fact-checking needs? Do we think that someday Robey—the name I’ve chosen for your personal AI robot (you’re welcome)—will be able to gauge an organization’s or leader’s reputation with an automatic online search? Can you envision saying, “Hey, Siri, is this CEO full of shit?” Can you imagine Alexa automatically fact-checking TV pundits and correcting every assertion as it leaves their lips? Do we foresee that, given the incredible number of first-person photos and videos being posted to social media every second, we will soon live in a world where nobody has to guess what happened because everything will be recorded by someone, somewhere?
We don’t need to have wild imaginations to conjure a world like this; we’re already living in the early days of such a future. And in that future, leaders and organizations will be measured by exactly what they say and what they do—no more and no less. In such a world, who will win? That’s right—the leaders who create incredibly honest organizations with nothing to hide. When I ask Robey to find me the most reputable company that sells a product or service I’m looking for, it won’t have far to go. That might just be the easiest question we ask our current robotic friends, Siri and Alexa. Someday soon, the window for using lies to get ahead will permanently close. That day is approaching more quickly than some unscrupulous leaders would care to admit.
Someday soon, the window for using lies to get ahead will permanently close. That day is approaching more quickly than some unscrupulous leaders would care to admit.
As we, the consumer public, have been given the right to transparently examine people and organizations, we’ve borne witness to a world thrown into chaos as many organizations are struggling to keep up, to change, to transform, to adapt, to adopt new ways of being and new belief systems and new core values (which must now include honesty).
For the business world in particular, information transparency brought on the infamous age of the consumer, a dreaded (by some) state of commerce in which boardrooms have been stripped of their superpowers while their customers have picked up the controls like a group of giddy kids in an after-hours Toys “R” Us. It’s no wonder why many organizations have failed to keep pace; a medieval monarch informed that the farmers had taken charge would have been desperately unable to cope. He might have considered exiling himself or worse as an alternative to such a terrible coup. And yet, if that king had been honest with himself, he might have willingly adapted to his new role and even prospered because of it.
In fact, that’s exactly what we’ll learn how to do with this whole honesty thing, because, to be quite clear, this is a book about making money. And that’s what makes our society different from those that came before: we are finally at a place in time where it pays to fight our millennia-old, innate human tendency toward using dishonesty to get ahead. Honesty is soon becoming the only policy that can guarantee your ability to survive as we accelerate into information transparency. It’s honesty . . . or it’s gambling with your life, your career, or your child’s dreams of going to their first-choice college.
Cheaters need not apply.
THE CAPITALIST CONUNDRUM
The dangers of dishonesty abound in our personal and professional lives, from buying your kids into a better school to inflating the number of new accounts your company opened this quarter. We must fight the habit of dishonesty before it catches us with our proverbial pants down in our newly transparent world. Furthermore, if we want to succeed in business, we need to check our beliefs about business—because despite commerce being created by deceptive human beings (because that’s what we all are), the business world was never designed to exist on a foundation of deceit.
To help us remember what business and capitalism were honestly meant to be, let’s pop over to eighteenth-century Scotland, where we’ll toast a glass of Scotch to the young philosopher who first opined on the subject of capitalism. His name, which some econ majors may remember from class (unless they got too involved in the whiskey), was Adam Smith.
The Humble Origins of Capitalism
Today’s systemic corporate greed is only partially Adam Smith’s fault. Sure, Smith invented capitalism as we know it, and economics majors worldwide study his works. But few realize that Smith was a moral philosopher first, having written The Theory of Moral Sentiments before he ever thought about laying the foundations of classical free-market economic theory (which is a fancy way of saying, “how people can sell stuff to each other so they can make mo’ money”).
Most importantly, Smith’s original concept of capitalism emphasized creating value for the benefit of everyone involved. As an antitheses to unwieldy corporations that pollute our environment and employ slave labor, some of today’s memorable start-ups have returned to Smith’s balance of delivering profits and benefitting all involved. TOMS Shoes, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, and other ecologically- and charity-minded companies show us that businesses that crusade for the social good can prevail. Unfortunately, for every one of those examples, we can point to countless others that ruin the water supply, screw their suppliers, or subject their customers to an hours-long phone tree.
As long as business schools teach Maximizing Income and not Maximizing Value for Everyone Involved, we’ll continue to misunderstand what paradoxically produces outsized business profits.
Since every company—even the ones in the Fortune 500—started as an entrepreneurial venture, it’s worth asking how (and why) many of those organizations veered from what I hope started as an agreeable, perhaps even world-improving, vision. In many cases, somewhere along the line, a once-honest insight about how to make the world better through business turned into a singular pursuit to make the enterprise wealthier. It doesn’t take an entrepreneur, an MBA, or even a Scottish philosopher-economist to understand that creating mutual benefit is actually a good idea, but as long as business schools teach Maximizing Income and not Maximizing Value for Everyone Involved, we’ll continue to misunderstand what paradoxically produces outsized business profits.
Can Capitalism Survive As We Know It?
We’ve certainly come a long way from Smith’s philosophical vision of capitalism. Today, an MBA candidate practically drowns in drool-worthy Instagram photos of yachts, exotic cars, and private jets. Our society emphasizes, as pop singer/philosopher Rihanna points out, “the money, the fame, the cars, the clothes.” Meanwhile, few pop-culture icons sing songs about giving free shoes to impoverished children. I suppose it’d be tough to rhyme.
That said, it wasn’t so long ago that we were occupying Wall Street and rethinking Gordon Gekko’s assertion that “greed is good.” Post-2008, we heard some of the best and worst arguments for and against capitalism. We recognized a shrinking middle class. We witnessed otherwise dulcet Americans railing against the 1 percent, and we experienced a whole host of finger pointing aimed mainly at Wall Street and the federal government. But, silver lining: from the ashes of that financial catastrophe there arose an organization whose sole purpose is to remind us about Adam Smith’s original intention for capitalism. The organization—which has turned into an international movement—is called Conscious Capitalism, and it’s helping to evolve business right back to where it started.
Conscious Capitalism, led by millennial CEO Alexander McCobin, believes that capitalism is about maximizing profit for all constituents involved—from customers to vendors, employees to managers, and everyone in between. It’s a modus operandi that inserts the human equation back into the income statements of our enterprises. The organization teaches businesses how to maximize the value of every affected party instead of only stuffing the pockets of executives and shareholders. Its credo describes a belief system that seems old-fashioned compared to today’s state of commerce, in which the lines between Kardashian and corporation are blurry at best and companies inexplicably survive on shady advertising and sexual harassment alike.
“We believe,” the credo begins, “that business is good because it creates value, it is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange, it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity. Free enterprise capitalism is the most powerful system for social cooperation and human progress ever conceived. It is one of the most compelling ideas we humans have ever had.”
In a world where Theranos and Vice can swindle smart investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, I wouldn’t blame you for asking why we should be so conscious about the way we do business. Well, in an increasingly transparent world, there’s more incentive than ever. Customers are voting—not with ballots but with dollars. They are choosing, among an incredible number of options, to do business with you or with your competitors. Today, buyers’ rationale for opting to do business with your company extends far beyond the value of your product or service. Travelers start with Kayak reviews before they even consider booking. Employees check Glassdoor before even applying. And millennials? In Nielsen’s 2018 review of sustainability trends, it found that a whopping 75 percent of millennials are willing to change their buying habits to reduce their environmental impact, and 90 percent are willing to pay more for sustainable brands.2
A whopping75 percent of millennials are willing to change their buying habits to reduce their environmental impact, and 90 percent are willing to pay more for sustainable brands.
In part, this transition—the one already happening right underneath our feet—is what has enabled Conscious Capitalism to spring forth as a growing, global institution with communities in more than seventy cities worldwide and thousands of event participants each year. The movement features board members like John Mackey, the cofounder of Whole Foods, and supporters like Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks.3 Thousands of Conscious Capitalism followers across a wide variety of industries have realized that it makes a lot of sense to be a little more honest about the mission, vision, values, culture, and code of conduct at their organizations, which range from small businesses to massive enterprises. With a little help from a pie-in-the-sky credo and an earnest belief in the good that business can do, these leaders have deliberately chosen to make their companies into community support systems rather than production facilities that simply take inputs and produce profits.
MEASURING UP TO CONSCIOUS COMMERCE
Lying is not new; throughout the ages, we’ve consistently struggled with the balance between advancement at all costs and virtuous behavior. Now, in our newly transparent world, the pendulum is swinging back to what used to reside at the heart of free-market enterprise when the idea originated. Organizations like Conscious Capitalism are paving the way for how to do honest-to-greatness business in the twenty-first century.
Depending on your own value system, you might judge Conscious Capitalism’s ideals as obvious or scary. Either way, the point is that society is moving toward honesty, and the signs are all around us. Even if your organization has begun thinking consciously about supporting every constituent you interact with, how will you know it’s enough? That’s going to take some honesty—with your employees, with your customers, with your prospects, and with the way the world is evolving.
Employees, customers, and others trust and even love companies that have an inspiring purpose.
To check if your organization is embracing a conscious way of doing business, consider the four pillars of Conscious Capitalism to see where you stack up.
1.Higher Purpose: While making money is essential for the vitality and sustainability of a business, it is not the only or even the most important reason a business exists. Conscious businesses focus on their purpose beyond profit. By focusing on its deeper purpose, a conscious business inspires, engages, and energizes its stakeholders. Employees, customers, and others trust and even love companies that have an inspiring purpose.
2.Stakeholder Orientation: Unlike some businesses that believe they only exist to maximize return on investment for their shareholders, conscious businesses focus on their whole business ecosystem, creating and optimizing value for all their stakeholders, understanding that strong and engaged stakeholders lead to a healthy, sustainable, resilient business. They recognize that without employees, customers, suppliers, funders, supportive communities, and a life-sustaining ecosystem, there is no business. Conscious business is a win-win-win proposition, which includes a healthy return to shareholders.
3.Conscious Leadership: Conscious leaders focus on “we” rather than “me.” They inspire, foster transformation, and bring out the best in those around them. They understand that their role is to serve the purpose of the organization, support the people within the organization, and create value for all the organization’s stakeholders. They recognize the integral role of culture and purposefully cultivate a conscious culture of trust and care.
4.Conscious Culture: A conscious culture fosters love, care, and inclusiveness and builds trust among the company’s team members and all its other stakeholders. Conscious culture is an energizing and unifying force that truly brings a conscious business to life.
How would your organization rank according to these four pillars? Even if your report card needs some work, the key is to develop an organizational habit—the habit of being conscious about your purpose, stakeholders, leadership, and culture. If you’re a leader in your organization, you can create change by introducing these ideas and helping shift your organization’s beliefs about business. If you’re not a leader in your organization, you can still create enormous change in your organization—and with the help of the CEOs in this book, you’re going to learn how.
The first step, though, is becoming conscious that an alternative, even old-fashioned, view of business is quickly gaining traction around the world. In fact, Conscious Capitalism’s credo reminds me of Rotary International’s Four-Way Test4:
1.Is it the TRUTH?
2.Is it FAIR to all concerned?
3.Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?
4.Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
Apparently, way back in 1905 when Rotary was founded in Chicago, the first group of professionals realized that honesty, fairness, and mutual benefit form the foundation of prosperity. They also understood that honesty comes first—and today, 1.2 million members in more than 35,000 clubs worldwide rely on truth to guide their actions. Today, getting honest about the shifts in our societal beliefs requires the same level of thoughtfulness, mindfulness, and awareness to accept that change is here and real. Whether we think we’re going back to old-fashioned values or forward into an evolved take on honesty, the truth is that every challenge your business faces, in every department, is an opportunity in disguise, waiting for you to figure out the win-win-win solution.
Unfortunately, not every business thinks this way, as many newsworthy, dishonest organizations show: take Wells Fargo, which falsified customer accounts, or VW, which lied about their diesel emissions. Conscious Capitalism’s CEO, Alexander McCobin, reminded me that “what we need to undo and try to help people understand is that business is about something much bigger than (short-term) profits—it’s about a higher purpose, creating value for everyone. In some ways it’s about reminding ourselves that business involves big, philosophical, moral questions about what is valuable and what is good.” If we listen to what our society is whispering, we’ll hear what McCobin hears: his organization reflects where we are in human evolution, the state of our world today, and the innate potential of business to make a positive impact on the world.
Every challenge your business faces, in every department, is an opportunity in disguise, waiting for you to figure out the win-win-win solution.
Choosing sustainability, supporting people, and being honest—these are core concepts. It ain’t rocket science, people. Which is why it’s so odd that we have to talk about it in the first place, and why it’s sort of sad that an organization like Conscious Capitalism needs to exist at all. “A lot of this actually is pretty simple,” McCobin told me in conclusion. Fortunately, capitalism is returning to the way it was always meant to be—as McCobin says, “valuable” and “good.”
That is, good for everyone—and especially good for the bottom line. And that’s exactly how we know we’re not in ancient Egypt or Renaissance Rome anymore. Instead, we’re here—at a crossroads where the right thing to do is quickly becoming the most profitable thing to do. We’ve never had near-perfect information like we do today; we humans have never experienced an environment that makes it profitable to be honest and ineffective to lie. And if you believe, like I do, that we’re only at the beginning of this trend, then congratulations—you’re in the perfect place to capitalize on it.
QUESTIONS FOR HONEST REFLECTION
1.Which people and organizations have influenced you to be more or less honest? What impacts have they had on your belief system?
2.When might you justify telling lies? Under what circumstances is lying a good idea vs. simply telling the truth?
3.Does the organization you work for believe in supporting all stakeholders, or just a few? How might your organization become more “conscious” about the way it operates?