Ethics

It’s not rocket science | Kan & Company

January 25, 2018

2 minutes

I dropped in on a CEO the other day. We talked about the lessons we had learnt about turning around non-performing companies.

We chatted about how it was so much about reinforcing values. About upholding standards of cleanliness, everyone pitching in, opening up communications between people, creating safe environments so people have the confidence to speak up, building trust, bringing discipline to operations, customer service, sales and marketing, engineering and technology development.

I noticed he had a number of Summer interns working for him. I asked him if they were paid. Before he could answer, I explained why I asked.

It reminded me of a conversation around a board table many years ago. The discussion was about whether interns should be paid as we had noticed that there was a growing trend not to pay them. Fortunately they decided that they should be paid.

All of our interns are paid, he said. You can shaft someone, and there will be a short term benefit , but in the end, it comes back and bites you. You just have to treat others the way you want to be treated yourself. It’s not rocket science.

Indeed, I replied. It isn’t rocket science, but what catches people is a lack of courage. Often when the decision has to be made, money might be tight, and the temptation to get something for free is at its height, to pad out the meager resources available and thereby buy more time.

You’re right, it’s not rocket science, but you do need courage to do the right thing.

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Artificial Intelligence and the future of humankind

November 16, 2017

3 minutes

Yesterday I attended an informative and fascinating talk by Kaila Colbin, a Curator at SingalarityU about how technology is impacting and likely to impact society. The talk was facilitated by law firm, Anthony Harper.

She talked about how advances in technology were growing exponentially and that, the way humans are wired, makes us prone to underestimating the pace of change.

Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) meant that sentience wasn’t that far away.

Go is a board game that is much more complex than chess. Only a year ago, an AI program beat the world’s best human Go champion 4-1. A year later its successor has beaten the old program.

AI-enabled image recognition programs are better than human pathologists at recognizing cancer cells.

Law firms were already putting AI bots into play, carrying out the day to day research previously provided by Bots.

Already robots were turning out to be more economical than human labour resulting in mass lay-offs.

It’s clear, AI enabled technology can conceivably replace humans. Disturbing.

The societal questions these raise are fundamental. What will humans do instead? Can we trust AI-enabled tech to do the right thing?

At the talk, Geoff Cranko of Strategy Creative asked about what advances had their been in adapting law to meet these new technological challenges.

I found his question thought provoking, particularly in respect of Artificial Intelligence.

Law is just an expression of ethics and so it is developments in our ethical thinking in respect of AI that needs to progress. Then all we need do is bake this ethical system into the AI.

Azimov’s Three Laws of Robotics is one step in this journey of ethical development. On the other hand, as AI fast approaches sentience, perhaps we need not re-invent anything: the 10 Commandments might prove to be timeless, after all.

You have to know right from wrong, up from down | Kan & Company

August 10, 2017

4 minutes to read

Many years ago, I had the pleasure of travelling through Africa for several months.

A continent that is resource rich and fertile. Theoretically it should be prospering and even thriving.

But it isn’t.

After I returned, I had much time to reflect on the experience and decided the difference between New Zealand and Africa was what resided in our heads.

Over there, you couldn’t rely on the rule of law, and self (by that I mean personal) governance. Corruption, laziness, and a lack of integrity were endemic. Their moral compass had been skewed.

In recent times, I have witnessed first hand when business owners and managers have lost their moral compass.

If staff, suppliers and contractors can’t rely on their managers and owners to create a safe environment for them then a fundamental trust is broken.

Without trust, a key cornerstone of what makes a group of individuals into a successful team or organisation is lost.

Without trust, a sense of inclusion, commitment, loyalty and pride are all undermined.

A safe environment, is an environment where leaders can be relied upon to have a universal sense of what is right and wrong, what is good and evil.

Staff ought to be able to rely on their leaders to expect and enforce an environment where universal values are upheld. When they aren’t the reputation and performance of the organisation and business, are respectively, damaged and impeded.

Values are often gradually eroded. Few set out to become evil. But one small thing gets added to another. Years pass and things originally unacceptable have become part of the furniture.

Products being mislabelled as being a better quality than they actually are. Inflated hours being billed that were never worked because “the customer thinks the amount is reasonable”, or mis-classifying personal expenses as business ones. Some would say these are little things, but they mount up.

Because they creep up on us, its useful to take stock once in a while. Are we honest? Can we be described as being as pure as the driven snow? Why not? What message are we sending to one another if we tolerate it. How much does this kind of thing hold us back?

Sometimes our moral compass can be so eroded that we’ve unknowingly lost objectivity. When you take stock look for signs that things aren’t right. Are there things we’d rather hide from customers, staff, our spouses or the authorities? Do we say things like, what they don’t know won’t hurt them?

I believe even though we think we might be successful, there might be even more success if we could avoid the temptation to cut corners. It’s never too late to change course.

Intrigued? Want to talk about it? Click the button and we’ll get back to you.

Ethics

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