Musashi's Dokkodo (The Way of Walking Alone)

Businessman:
While all businesspeople will eventually die, few things in business
are life-or-death struggles outright. Unlike soldiers or law
enforcement officers we rarely face the probability of leaving for work
and never making it back home because of some inherent danger on
the job or jobsite. But, there are a lot of “career-killers” to be
concerned about such as failing to understand the culture or
navigate the politics where we work, becoming complacent, violating
company policies, behaving unprofessionally, or failing to deliver on
our commitments.
For us, I think the most relevant perspective about this precept is to
take it as an admonishment to do the right thing despite any potential

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impact to our jobs or careers. For instance, when pressed by
looming deadlines it’s easy to take shortcuts, to let things slip or look
the other way, but we all know that’s the wrong thing to do. And, that
at times it can lead to serious injury to our customers or our
company. When faced with an ethical dilemma we must never let
fear of repercussions prevent us from taking a moral, principled
stand. There is an ancient quote by Heraclitus of Ephesus that I find
apropos:
“The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on
those things that are in line with your principles and can
bear the light of day. The content of your character is your
choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your
integrity is your destiny—it is the light that guides your
way.”
Truly what we do is who we become, it’s one of the reasons that
businesspeople who over-focus on results without paying attention to
means or methods ultimately get themselves into serious trouble. If
we give in to temptation once in the name of expediency it becomes
easier to take shortcuts a second time, progressively leading us
deeper and deeper into a sewer of graft and corruption as we chase
after profits or promotions over principles.
This is exactly the sort of thing that has led to Enron and other
infamous corporate scandals of the past, and can easily lead to
future disgrace. For those who do not remember, Enron started out
as a niche natural gas pipeline company, but manipulated markets to
quickly grow into the seventh largest publicly-held corporation in the
United States. And, those same corrupt business practices that
buoyed their growth ultimately destroyed the company in 2001, with
16 former executives landing in prison in the aftermath. As their $90
billion empire shattered it wasn’t just the folks in charge who lost out,
however, their greed ruined people’s lives, displaced thousands of
worker’s jobs, and flushed retiree’s savings down the hole with them.
Everybody works for someone. For example, the buck may stop with
the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) of a publicly held corporation yet

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he or she is ultimately accountable to the Board of Directors who, in
turn, are held accountable by the company’s stockholders who can
vote them out of office. It takes courage to adopt a principled position
and stand up in the face of pressure from our superiors, but it is
something that we all must be willing to do if or when we find
ourselves in the unenviable position of being the only voice of reason
in the room. With the right culture, that’s not so hard to do. A simple
litmus test to demonstrate that an enterprise has created an ethical
culture is that even the lowest level employees in the company feel
comfortable pushing back on unscrupulous activities, even when it
means the situation is personally or professionally awkward.
Take for example the accounting profession. Back in the days before
the fallout from Enron and other fraudsters when congress passed
new laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley and Frank-Dodd to help keep
corporations in line, it was relatively easy for accountants to “cook
the books” and misrepresent how well a business was performing. In
those days a CPA friend of mine worked as an accounting clerk for a
rapidly growing company which was headquartered in the Seattle
area. While putting her company’s financial reports in order prior to
an IPO (Initial Public Offering), a stock sale that if everything went
right would make the company’s founders millionaires overnight, she
discovered a programming error that had been miscalculating their
capital equipment depreciation for quite some time. It wasn’t a huge
deal dollar-wise, just a few hundred thousand dollars that needed to
be restated once all the errors were added together since many of
them canceled each other out, but since she knew that any
accounting irregularity could taint public perception and torpedo the
stock deal so she was very concerned about bringing the error to her
boss’s attention. Nevertheless despite the lousy timing she knew that
it was the right thing to do.
Rather than responding angrily or trying to sweep the error under the
carpet to protect his reputation, when the CFO (Chief Financial
Officer) heard her story he immediately thanked her for her diligence,
told her to report the adjustments, and asked her if she needed any
help in order to ensure that the mistake wouldn’t happen again. It

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was a risk, but it paid off... Rather than backfiring and hurting their
IPO, the company’s restatement of their financials actually helped
convince potential stockholders that they would be a good
investment. My friend wasn’t senior enough to get rich at the time,
but she was well-compensated for her efforts and rapidly rose
through the ranks due to her intelligence, business acumen, and
integrity. In this fashion a junior member of the organization not only
did the right thing but also received support from her senior
leadership in doing so. Together their efforts protected the
businesses from scandal while enabling outside investment and
rapid growth for the company.
All enterprises should operate this way. Sadly many don’t. Have you
read about Volkswagen’s tribulations recently? Their stock
plummeted 30% overnight when it was revealed that they cheated
regulators and customers alike by lying about their diesel vehicles’
emissions. Imagine how things at VW would have worked out
differently if some engineer told his or her manager, “Hey boss. You
know this software we’ve developed to evade emission controls on
our diesel vehicles? That’s probably not a great idea. I mean selling
millions of cars that violate clean air laws probably won’t end well.
Beyond that whole illegality thing, most of our customers buy ‘clean
diesel’ cars because they’re environmentally conscious…”
Clearly someone on the program must have thought that, but either
no one carried that message forward or it was ignored by their
superiors. Either way, after a year of obfuscation and sparring with
the US Environmental Protection Agency, Volkswagen reluctantly
admitted on September 22, 2015 that 11 million of its diesel vehicles
contained software that was designed to evade emissions controls,
sparking a crisis that cost them more than 24 billion Euros (~ $26
billion) in market value overnight. Two days later CEO Martin
Winterkorn was forced to resign in disgrace and the company went
full-tilt into damage control mode. An unidentified company source
told reporters that the head of the company’s U.S. operations
(Michael Horn) and top engineers at Volkswagen brands Audi (Ulrich

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Hackenbergand) and Porsche (Wolfgang Hatz) were about to be
fired, regardless of whether or not they knew about the cheating.
“Brands are all about trust and it takes years and years to develop,”
brand consultant Nigel Currie told the press. “But in the space of 24
hours, Volkswagen has gone from one people could trust to one
people don’t know what to think of.” While VW set aside an initial 6.5
billion Euros (~ $7.3 billion) to cover the fallout and “win back the
trust” of its customers, they risk fines of $37,500 per vehicle, which
could total more than $18 billion if the full value is assessed. They
also face criminal investigations from European, Asian, Russian, and
US lawmakers and, of course, lawsuits from the customers they
cheated.
As of this writing it’s been 14 years since the Enron scandal yet it
seems that something like this makes headlines virtually every day.
With a little foresight virtually all of it is avoidable. It’s not that folks
don’t know when something is wrong but rather that they don’t take
action, standing idly by as leaders make uninformed, unethical, or
unsound decisions.
Don’t let it happen on your watch! If as a businessman or
businesswoman you do not fear death, it’s easy to do the right
thing… even if it may be career limiting. Who knows, in the right
corporate culture doing the right thing may even prevent scandal,
save your stockholders millions in lost value, and earn you a
promotion.

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