The Key to a Winning Organization
“Goodness is the only investment that never fails.”
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
My wife, Teresa, probably doesn’t remember it, but I will never forget it. Several years ago she was talking about me to my in-laws (I call them my “in-loves” for they are like my parents). My precious mother-in-law had remarked how she was glad that we had married each other, and Teresa looked at me with that inimitable smile of hers and said, “Momma, I married a really good man.” I thought to myself, And what size diamond do you want to go with that new ring?
Anyone with a moral compass pointing true north wants to be known as a “good person.” I mean, does anyone really want to be known as a bad one?
I still laugh when I remember Teresa coming home one time from the grocery store with this horrified look on her face. I asked her what was wrong. She said that she and our oldest son, James (who was about five years old at the time), had been standing at the checkout behind a man who had put a six-pack of beer on the counter. James innocently asked Teresa what it was. My wife smiled and simply said, “Beer.” Without warning and loud enough for this man (and half the store) to hear, James pointed to him and said, “Beer? He must be a really bad man!”
Like you, I want to be a good man, and I want to live a good life. That statement, however, begs a question: What is goodness and what is the good life?
The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau once said, “Happiness is a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.” Many people today would eagerly adopt Rousseau’s definition of the good life. Some say that the good life is physical. They believe it just doesn’t get any better than a hot tub, back rub, and drink at a pub. Others say the good life is material. They think that if you’ve got the mansion, the Mercedes, and the money, then you are living the good life.
I beg to differ. The good life is moral, ethical, and spiritual. Contrary to many opinions, goodness is not feeling good, looking good, or having the goods; it is being good and doing good. I define goodness this way: Goodness motivates a person to attempt to do what is best for others regardless of the cost. It’s what some might call character or integrity.
God, for Goodness’ Sake
Contrary to much popular thinking, I don’t believe that goodness can possibly exist or be known apart from God. If any meaningful standard determines whether something is good, it must be a universal standard; otherwise, goodness is a matter of opinion. David, the great songwriter and king, once wrote, “I said to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing’ ” (Psalm 16:2). Indeed, apart from God there can truly be no good thing.
After all, Hitler thought the annihilation of the Jewish race was a good thing. Homicide bombers think the killing of innocent humans is a good thing. How can such thinking be countered with a simple, “That is not good”? What is to keep a Hitler or a bomb-toting extremist from saying, “That’s just your opinion”?
A universal standard of goodness can be determined only by One who is universally good, and that One can only be God. The very word good comes from an Old English word with the same connotation as God. Good-bye is an abbreviation of the phrase, “God be with ye.” The word good literally means “to be like God.” The word itself implies that when godliness declines, so does goodness.
Once while in the nation’s capital, my wife and I visited the National Archives Building to see the Declaration of Independence. We noticed that the handwritten original was extremely faded and hard to see. Unfortunately, what is happening to this treasured document illustrates what is happening to America itself. The principles, virtues, values, and beliefs that once seemed written on the hearts and minds of this country are fading. At this point, there appears to be little anyone can do to stop the decay.
I recently asked an assistant principal who has been in education for 15 years what she saw as the biggest change that has taken place with schoolchildren. She said, “I know that you would expect me to say demographics with all the influx of immigrants in this area, but the biggest change is society itself. I’ve been amazed by how the coarseness and loss of goodness in culture as a whole is reflected in the children.”
More than 40 years ago, Robert Fitch wrote something that still rings true today:
Ours is an age where ethics has become obsolete. Morality is now superseded by science, deleted by philosophy, and dismissed as emotive by psychology. It drowns in compassion, evaporates into aesthetics, and retreats before relativism. The usual moral distinctions between good and bad are usually bathed in a maudlin emotion in which we feel more sympathy for the murderer than the murdered, for the adulterer than for the betrayed, and in which we have actually begun to believe that the real guilty party—the one who somehow caused it all—is the victim and not the perpetrator of the crime.
As a baby boomer, I have witnessed how many things that once were considered either black or white have now been placed in the gray category. Goodness that used to meet a universally held standard is now a matter of personal preference.
Over the last two decades our country has conducted a national debate on the importance of character and goodness in the private conduct of elected officials, from the mayor of the smallest town to the president of the United States. One of our founding fathers, James Madison, would have been astonished at such a debate. The “first aim” of the Constitution, he said, was to ensure wise and virtuous rulers and to prevent what he called “their degeneracy.” Consider what he avowed:
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous [read good] whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
The second president of the United States, John Adams, concurred. He said, “Public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, all her power and glory established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty.”
Adams understood that public virtue depends upon private character. The lack of the latter will always lead to the demise of the former. With a little careful thought, one can see the connection between the private character of a nation’s citizens and national peace and prosperity. National prosperity largely depends upon goodness in private character.
If lying, laziness, irresponsibility, dishonesty, and corruption become commonplace, the national economy grinds down. A society that produces white-collar criminals and blue-collar predators has to pay for prison cells. A society with rampant drug abuse will have to pay for drug treatment centers. The demise of families and marriages begs for many more foster homes and lower high-school graduation rates.
The less goodness exists, the more the government has to intervene—and the higher the cost of governing. Just as moral goodness leads to tremendous economic and financial benefits, the collapse of morality entails enormous financial and economic costs.
Goodness: Doing the Right Thing
Goodness cannot exist in a vacuum, nor does it live in isolation. We measure people’s goodness by how they treat others and how they respond in situations where one action is right and the other action wrong. Good people do what is right. John Wesley, the great preacher and the founder of Methodism, said he lived by this one creed:
Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.
What a way to live! But why is it always important to do what is ethical and moral? Why is goodness the one thing you should go to bed with every night and wake up with every morning? For one thing, even though you see what you are like on the inside, the only you others see is on the outside. Proverbs 20:11 says, “Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.”
In other words, talk is cheap. No matter how much you claim to be a good person, the only public measuring stick is your actions. You may think that by being good you’re not doing a lot of good. But never underestimate the power of even one person to exert tremendous influence by simply doing the right thing at the right place and the right time.
Bob Thompson is a case in point. Taskmasters don’t come much tougher than Thompson. For 40 years, he pushed his road and highway workers hard six days a week from April to December to finish the job before the first frost. Their loyalty, sweat, and hard work helped make Thompson a rich man.
But recently Thompson returned the favor. He sold his company, Michigan’s largest asphalt and paving business, and gave his 550 current and retired employees a $128 million chunk of his gains. Even workers’ surviving spouses got checks. Some 90 employees became instant millionaires.
Thompson started Thompson-McCully Company with $3500 that his wife, Ellen, had earned by substitute teaching. The first five years of the business were difficult. Thompson didn’t even draw a salary. Why did he later give away so much of his fortune?
“It was the right thing to do,” he said. “You realize the people around you have gone through all the pain and suffering with you. I wanted to pay them back.”
When the checks were handed out, Thompson stayed away. “I didn’t want to be there because it gets too emotional,” he admitted.
Goodness: Being the Right Person
Character cannot be manufactured on the outside; it emerges from what a person is on the inside. Being good is not a moonlighting occupation but a full-time job. The person of character is guided by the North Star of goodness that leads him to ask in every situation, “What is the right thing to do?”
One of my all-time heroes is the great former UCLA men’s basketball coach John Wooden. He tells of center Bill Walton coming into his office at Pauley Pavilion one day with a serious question. Walton’s knees had been causing him increasing pain over several months to the point that just running up and down the court hurt tremendously.
Walton walked into his mentor’s office and said, “Coach, I heard that smoking marijuana will reduce the pain in my knees. Is it OK with you if I use it?”
Wooden looked up from his desk and replied, “Bill, I haven’t heard that it is a pain reliever, but I have heard that it is illegal.”
Classic John Wooden—right and wrong was all that mattered. One of the reasons his players adored him is that they saw in his heart goodness—the unquenchable desire to be the right person and to do the right thing.
As I get older I realize just how important being good and doing good really are. I want my wife to say that I was a good husband. I want my sons to say that I was a good father. I want my church to say that I was a good pastor. I want those special to me to say that I was a good friend. I want those who watched me from afar but never knew me up close to say from my actions that I was a good follower of Christ. I want those under my authority to say that I was a good leader.
One of my favorite presidents was Calvin Coolidge. When Ronald Reagan entered the White House, one of the first things he did was to put Coolidge’s picture up on the wall where he could see it every day. Calvin Coolidge probably could not be nominated, much less elected, in this telegenic age. He was a man of few words, even taciturn at times, bred of stern, puritanical New England stock. He would have shunned makeup, the one-liners and sound bites; probably he would have been criticized for an inability to connect with a cutting-edge voting audience.
Why do I admire Coolidge so much? In 1920, when he was mentioned for the presidential nomination, a reporter wrote this of him: “You just have confidence in Coolidge. He may not do what you want him to, he may not do what you think he ought to do, but you know he’s done his best to do right.”
What a breath of fresh air to hear a reporter say that about a politician. In my mind, that’s living the good life. Can you imagine how different our homes, businesses, schools, and government would be if we knew we could count on others and be counted on by others to do our “best to do right”? Cynicism toward government and those who govern festers like a sore on the face of our country. It must be lanced and heal for partisanship to be replaced with goodwill. Goodness is a balm that would hasten that healing.
Finding the Source
Still, where does goodness really begin, and how can we develop goodness and cultivate it in our daily decisions and actions? How can goodness not only survive but thrive in us both individually and corporately?
Some people think goodness is a matter of the head, that right thinking leads to right living. Today every politician feels the need to give lip service to the importance of education. They give the impression that improved education is the panacea for practically every problem. Yet education of the head, without an equal emphasis on integrity of the heart, will produce only clever devils.
Robert C. Cabot of Harvard University put it well when he wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century, “If there is not education of men’s purpose, if there is no ethical basis at the foundation of education, then the more we know, the smarter villains and livelier crooks we may be. Knowledge is ethically neutral.” If education alone could solve our most perplexing problems, then white-collar crime would cease to exist.
Others say goodness is a matter of the hands. They say that goodness means treating others well. But doing good does not make one good. Murderers on death row may be good to their mothers, but they are not good people.
Goodness is not found in the head or the hands; it is tucked away in one’s heart. According to Jesus Christ, who was not only a good man but also the only perfect person who ever lived, “The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart” (Luke 6:45). Goodness is not a matter of what we know or what we do; it is a matter of what we are.
Have you ever considered that a musician is judged not by how long he plays but by how well he plays? As you think about the life ahead of you, what really matters is not how long you live but how well you live. Sir Francis Bacon once said, “Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and, without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.”
My father taught me that there never is a right way to do a wrong thing. Reuben Gonzales came to the same conclusion. He was in the final match of a professional racquetball tournament, his first shot at a victory on the pro circuit, and he was playing the perennial champion. In the fourth and final game, at match point, Gonzales made a super “kill” shot into the front wall to win it all. The referee called it good. One of the two linesmen affirmed that the shot was in. But Gonzales, after a moment’s hesitation, turned around, shook his opponent’s hand, and declared that his shot had hit the floor first. As a result, he lost the match.
He walked off the court. Everybody sat in stunned silence. Who could imagine anyone doing this in any sport? A player, with everything officially in his favor, with victory in hand, disqualified himself at match point and lost. When asked why he did it, Gonzales said, “It was the only thing I could do to maintain my integrity.” Reuben Gonzales realized one of the greatest lessons we can ever learn in life—we can always win another match, but we can never regain lost integrity.
Every day you will get opportunities to do a good deed, to say a good thing, to show a good heart. These days will turn into weeks, the weeks will turn into months, the months into years, and the years into a life. To strive for anything less than doing good and being good cheats us out of the best.
Someone has observed that people may have to work for a bad boss, but they want to work for a good boss. As a leader, I want my people to want to work for me. I want to take our organization from “good to great,” but we can’t be great until we are good.
I have been married over 35 years to a good person. Teresa truly is the best person I know. She is sweet, selfless, sensitive—and I dare say sexy to boot! She has been not only a good wife, but a good mother and a good daughter-in-love and a good sister-in-law to my deaf brother. Teresa has modeled goodness in some way practically every day. She is the go-to person for our sons, her niece, her parents, so many friends, and for me because we all know that goodness flows out of her as naturally as water flows from the Mississippi. I often joke that my sons might die for me, but they would kill for their mother!
From caring two days a week for our grandson, to ministering to my 89-year-old mother, to advising her parents on a multitude of issues, to being a combination of Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and Martha Stewart to a husband and three sons who in some ways don’t want to grow up, she is a walking, talking, living definition of what goodness is all about. I know firsthand the truth found in Scripture that “he who finds a wife finds what is good” (Proverbs 18:22). She perfectly illustrates the principle that we all can be good and do good in whatever role we play.
One day we will all stand before the God who is good all the time and undergo a divine audit that will determine just how profitable our lives were to others. In that moment, when the entire universe is silent and we await the only opinion and verdict that really matters, I hope we will hear that word good used one last time: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” What a joy to know that goodness truly is within our grasp.
Yes, only God is good, but I take great joy in knowing the words, “How great is your goodness, which you have stored up for those who fear you” (Psalm 31:19). God is a wellspring of goodness from which we can daily draw if we allow him to live His good life through us.
Principle Six—Doing good always produces the best.