Page 4 - Green Builder Magazine June 2015 Issue

EDITOR’S NOTE By Matt Power, Editor-in-Chief

The Inside Scoop

2

Integrity is Not Negotiable

Building professionals have many good reasons to buck the current

Itrend toward shifty business dealing. my local sandwich shop,
S IT OLD FASHIONED to wish for still makes the best Italians
a return to the time when a man’s in town. But I go there not
word was his bond? Back in the just for the food, but because
early 1990s, as editor of Custom they’re people of integrity. If
Builder magazine, I met some great
homebuilders: guys like Alan Genet, they drop my sandwich on

Orren Pickell and Ray Tonjes—people the floor, they’re not going

with integrity, who told you they were to pick it up, brush it off, lie

going to do something, then did it. No to me about what happened

whining. No excuses. No passing the and charge me an extra

buck. As the top people in their field, handling charge.

they knew that their word was the golden More likely, they’ll make

rope connecting all of their present and me two new sandwiches,

www.greenbuildermedia.com 06.2015 future successes; not only that, it fueled apologize for the delay and

their own sense of purpose in their work. thank me for my patience.

For most of life’s daily transactions, that golden rope does And I won’t forget the gesture.

not exist. At least, not anymore. Integrity is not some quaint, nostalgic idea. It’s a key to

Let me play out for you what I would say is a typical business survival. Will I ever return to that used car dealer?

example of how business transactions work today. A few Of course not. Will I recommend them to friends? Just the

weeks ago, I bought a new vehicle: a half-ton work truck from opposite. And the same, of course, is true for any business,

a used car dealer. The engine in the vehicle proved defective, large or small.

and it had to be replaced. When I returned to the dealer with It’s also just plain stupid to treat your customers like

this information, they acted outraged. disposable batteries. There’s this thing out there called the

“That’s impossible! Those engines don’t fail. Tell us Internet that, for all its faults, is the world’s biggest megaphone

everything they did to diagnose it. They diagnosed it wrong.” of destruction for businesses. And if that megaphone is

But it wasn’t just this reaction that set me back. It was the leveled on your company, you might not even be aware of

series of smaller broken promises and injuries along the way. the severity of the impact.

“We’ll call you as soon as it’s ready.” One reason for this is a technological one. Say you’d like

“No problem, we’ll fix those lights for you.” your company website to be the first point of entry for

“This cost a lot more than we expected, so you’ll have to potential customers. You might be on top now, but Google is

pay us $500 more for that part.” constantly creating new, in-house results for people to find

Sure, used car dealers are almost expected to lack integrity, you. And guess what? You have no control over the comments

but this consumer-as-scapegoat attitude seems to be or opinions expressed on these sub-pages. A negative review

everywhere now. Apply for a construction loan advertised at could end up at the top of every Web search for your

2.75 percent, and you inevitably end up with a higher interest business—and stay there for years. That’s damaging.

rate. (Didn’t you read the fine print?) Ask for a rental car In other words, acting with integrity—saying what you

with great miles per gallon, and you’ll be told (repeatedly and mean and doing what you say—is not an option. It’s the

incorrectly) that “this midsize model performs better than the core of your business success—or collapse. Let’s break the

economy model.” Since when did saying something more than cycle of dishonorable behavior in the business world. Building

once become the alchemy that turns lies into truth? professionals can be the men and women in the white hats—

That’s not to say the scourge is universal. Many small the eco-leaders, the above-and-beyond, the zero-tolerance-for-

businesses have held on to their integrity, despite society’s unhappy-customers industry. Who would want it any other

larger turn toward consumer exploitation. Eddie’s Variety, way? —MP