Monday Marketing Minute #10 Ethical Behavior

The following quote came across my desk today. It really made me pause and think about the state of business today. Do you have a code of ethics for your professional art business?

“Ethical behavior defines who you really are. If you believe in God, isn’t doing the right thing, honesty, accountability, transparency, humility and consistency all supposed to be our behavioral standard every day because He sees all?” -Mike Paul, The Reputation Doctor

I was struck by the fact that Mike is The Reputation Doctor. I can think of so may business people who need a Reputation Doctor today. I bet you can too.

So what has happened to the much-envied and much-emulated US business model, an ethical and quality concept the rest of the world hoped to achieve? A time when doing business meant being proud of your craftsmanship by providing outstanding service with a quality product. Not an easy way to steal money from others, but a way to make an honest living.

A recent USAToday headline reads: “Economic crisis leads business schools to meld ethics into MBA.” Why did it take an economic meltdown for schools to ‘begin’ teaching ethics to MBAs?

Chris MacDonnald on the Business Ethics Blog writes, “For practical purposes, ethics means providing reasoned justification for our choices & behavior when it affects others, and reasoned justification for our praise or criticism of other people’s behavior.”

I wrote this on my Revolutionary Women blog:

The world is indeed going through a cleansing process…and no place will this cleansing be more evident than in the world of business! We no longer trust big corporations balance sheets nor the executives who approved them. We see jobs disappearing and finances crumbling as a result of the virtual business model and greed of the past few decades.

It is time for a change. It is time for new thinking. It is time to restructure the way we work and feel about working. Small businesses will use this transition period to reshape and re-engineer the very foundation of our economic structure.

I believe that now, more than ever before, women are poised to lead these small businesses with an inherent skill and a pioneering spirit I call the (r)Evolutionary Women.

As artists, we make an impact on history every day with our visual representation of the world around us. Art remains when he artist is gone. How you present that art to the world is your professional signature. Do you operate within a code of ethics?