For the first Christmas in my lifetime of Christmas memories, I slept past dawn. Until today, I was either a child awake at first light, rushing downstairs to look in my stocking; a parent waking to get my coffee made before the children woke; or a grandparent with grandchildren sleeping over.

This year, with Christmas barely happening at all, it’s quite clear to me that I have always had the benefit of approaching Christmas with hindsight bias. Click to Tweet After all, anyone raised in the Christian tradition (and I was, along with the Jewish tradition) knows that Christmas marks the beginning of salvation for humanity – at least for the people who believe in the child whose birth is celebrated on this day. We already know the full story; the virgin birth, the child’s intelligence and character from a young age, his charisma and leadership as a young adult, his new message about a loving God who wants us to minister to and respect one another, his willingness to die for his beliefs, and his resurrection – which saves us all.

So we celebrate his birthday as a way of celebrating the 31 years of his life and the promise fulfilled at its end.

But I’m sure that Mary did not feel any of that on the first Christmas. For her, the day her son was born was filled with, well, childbirth. Having a baby is certainly joyful, but only once it’s over and you know everyone is healthy. Until then, it’s frightening and painful and exhausting.

Mary was young, probably 14 or 15 years old. In the weeks leading up to Jesus’ birth, she didn’t get to stay home, plan baby names, and paint the nursery. Instead, she spent those weeks walking, far from home, with no idea where she would be if her labor began. Today, the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem takes two hours in light traffic. But in Mary’s time, it was at least a five day journey on foot. Whatever the reason for the trip (historians dispute the timing of a census demanded by Caesar Augustus), she would not have wanted to travel at that point in her pregnancy. It was a time of political and social agitation. Their ruler, Herod, heavily taxed the people, squandered their tax dollars, had an army of spies who constantly monitored them for any evidence of disloyalty, and capriciously murdered those he perceived to be a threat (including a wife and three of his own sons). Mary lived during a time of social tension, insecurity, and political theater.

Mary-the-Christian-icon had another burden to bear. She knew she was carrying a child who was meant for greatness, but would that give her any peace? Great men lived lives of increased risk, and were frequently murdered and imprisoned. Most mothers don’t desire for their children to be great at great risk – they desire for them to be happy and to live long, healthy lives. Any mother of such a child may feel blessed, but I imagine they would also feel dread.

So by the time Mary went into labor, she had been walking for days, and was exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and dirty. She probably had little security or control over her life, and she must have been deeply worried about her child’s future. Merry-Christmas-and-let-the-gift-giving-and-feasting-begin couldn’t have been further from her mind.

Our magical Christmas expectations are a product of our privilege. Click to Tweet Until the second half of the 20^th Century, very few of earth’s citizens had enough excess to throw a pile of gifts under a tree. Even in the 20^th Century, the Christmases of 1914, 1915, 1916, and 1917 were overshadowed by WWI. People probably were looking forward to the Christmas of 1918, but the Spanish Flu arrived and quarantined people for the Christmases of 1918 and 1919.  There were about ten good years, and then the Great Depression took away Christmas for everyone from 1929 – 1932. A few more years of recovery, then WWII made for very little to celebrate during the Christmases of 1939 – 1944.

Our notion that we have a right to big, bright, celebratory Christmases filled with cheer and holiday spirit and piles of presents is barely 80 years old. Just one lifetime.

Now Along Comes Christmas 2020

We have all felt the drag of global pandemic, economic insecurity, and political uncertainty this year, and those feelings have been heightened when juxtaposed against a holiday that we expect to be a cheerful respite, a time of largess, decorations, parties, and romance. Even my non-Christian friends are all complaining that this year just doesn’t feel like Christmas

But those are all very recent expectations of Christmas. If you put Christ back in Christmas from the Christian perspective, then it’s about the idea that God sent spiritual salvation in the form of a child. That child’s birth was the beginning of a new covenant between God and man, and the key to receiving that salvation was embracing the lessons that child would eventually teach. The birth wasn't the celebration of an achievement - it was the celebration of the beginning of learning a new way of being.

For those who are not Christians, there can still be meaning in this holiday. Take away the literal son-of-Godness, the prophesies of the Old Testament, the virgin birth, and the subsequent resurrection from the dead, and what do you have? A great philosopher, like Aristotle, Plato, or Socrates, who had some really interesting suggestions about what it takes to live a meaningful life.

So I’m going through a Christmas reset. Apparently, the universe doesn’t owe me the kind of comfort and security I crave. Cheer and conviviality are not a birthright. The presence of our children and grandchildren, or parents and grandparents, is not guaranteed.

What is guaranteed is that life will be difficult as often as it is easy. Look a little deeper, and we can see that the hard times are almost always the result of selfishness and greed, failure to care about others at least as much as we care for ourselves, and unwillingness to inconvenience ourselves for the benefit of others. Sure, nature throws in her bit of bad luck in the form of hurricanes, blizzards, and pandemics. But it is our response to those things that ultimately determines how miserable – even devastating – those experiences will be.

We can save ourselves by helping each other. The teachings of Jesus (messiah or philosopher – you choose) were for each of us to establish a more direct and loving relationship with God and not defer to the (possibly unwise) interpretations of those who set themselves up as intermediaries between us and God. Jesus implored us to love our neighbors, serve one another, demonstrate compassion. In his philosophy the fundamental virtues are kindness, service, and generosity. Taken as a whole, the real message of Christmas is that in a world that will often be hard, we must take it upon ourselves to make it better. For each other.

If we think about Christmas in this way, about the idea that salvation is most called for – indeed, birthed – during the dark times of need, then this Christmas may be the truest I have ever experienced.

So Merry Christmas. Now let’s go out and save each other.

Those people with the wild-ass crazy god - the god who only loves some of the people, who thinks it's OK to be violent in his name, who is fine with lying, distortion, and being cruel to others in word and deed, and who said somewhere "Oh, go ahead! Judge away! I'm happy for you to do my work for me!" — those people are getting a lot of press. But I know there are people who believe in much different gods and prophets - who believe in love thy neighbor, karma, let he who has not sinned throw the first stone, a worldly obligation to take care of those who have less than us, right speech (the idea that by speaking kind and helpful words we create trust and respect), the virtue of honesty, and mercy. Apparently we need to start saying crazy things like "God doesn't want children to go hungry and without health care!!", "God doesn't want us to cut education and give that money to billion dollar oil companies who will be profitable either way!!" "God gets to decide who is worthy enough to go to heaven!" - would that get press? Would that get people all hot and bothered and talking? Oh, you're right, probably not. Because only the really crazy stuff seems to get peoples' dander up. And these claims just aren't crazy at all.

It's been a long time since I had to report to anyone at work other than my customers or a Board of Directors. But not so long that I couldn't remember being asked to fetch coffee, pick up a birthday gift for the wife, have my suggestions mocked (instead of politely declined), or simply ignored. I'm fairly thick-skinned, and that type of treatment most often inspired a wait-until-I'm-rich-and-you're-still-working-here internal response. But when I witnessed this behavior happening to others, and ultimately to my children, my response was much more emotional. What does it mean to honor an employee's dignity? For starters, it means remembering that you are not doing them a favor. The employer/employee exchange is one of parity - one works, the other pays money. These exchanges need to be in balance for dignity to be a possibility. Second, it means that the employer takes seriously his responsibility to train, guide, and communicate. People don't come into any new job automatically knowing how things work. Even the same job in a different company can be radically different than your version of that job. To bring a new employee on and then doom her to failure due to lack of structure, expectations, or instruction is to undermine her dignity. Its a bit too easy, when you're the boss, to forget that there are often many ways to arrive at a particular destination. It's your responsibility to honestly identify which paths are nonnegotiable and which have some flexibility of approach. To deny others the right to think any way but your way is to discount their value - and therefore their dignity. Unfortunately, many business owners believe that the absence of profanity or yelling means they have created a dignified workplace, but some of the most demeaning behavior I have ever witnessed was done with a smile and polite language. To respect someone's dignity is to respect his essential equality, his inherent value, and his full potential to not only contribute, but to teach you something as well. To create a workplace imbued with dignity, we must endeavor to be genuinely dignified ourselves.

It takes a certain amount of ego to start a business, own a business, take a job as the president or CEO of a business - a healthy ego is a prerequisite to a lot of success stories. But what happens when that ego is out of control?

What happens when the personal maturity and wisdom of the business owner/leader/CEO are not equal to the task of leading employees with responsibility, empathy, and humanity?

A recent book by British Journalist Jon Ronson called The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness of Industry has even found that the incidence of psychopathy in CEOs is about four times that of the general population (4% versus 1%) - psychopathy primarily being characterized by lack of empathy, lack of guilt feelings, poor impulse control, inflated sense of self, etc.

In some cases those with out-of-control egos achieve huge financial results and market success, and are hailed as amazing business leaders - though Ronson suggests these are the anomalies, often representing short-term successes and longer-term failures. I continue to scratch my head about Steve Jobs. Of course he was wildly creative, but I just can't give him a hall pass for all the control-freakish, ego-fueled, belittling of others behavior he entitled himself to over his years at Apple. And of course, his ultimate business legacy is still undecided.

But let's not be fooled. For every ego-maniac who makes it to the heights of business, there must be 10,000 ego-maniacs who get in their own way so much that their businesses falter and fail. All of us have worked for one or more of them at some point in our careers, and if you have young adult children you've probably watched your kids suffer through at least one ego-maniac as well.

Why do I bring all this up? Because one of the most important things we as business owners can do is to constantly work on our own emotional health. When leading small teams of people toward challenging goals like positive cash-flow and profitable growth, it is essential to earn their trust and respect by being people worthy of those feelings. Of course, we all wake up on the wrong side of the bed or let our stresses get the best of us on occasion. But the more often that happens, the less our employees are capable of respecting us and rallying to our side.

Lack of ego strength shows up in a lot of different ways. The most obvious is a loss of temper or failure to communicate in respectful, civil ways. But condescension veiled in civility is almost as bad as a blow-up and ultimately leads to much deeper resentment than throwing a coffee cup. Failure to recognize that others' ideas are as good as our own - even if they are different; the inability to let others' find their own path to an agreed-upon desired end result; the need to tout our own superior concept even as we congratulate someone for their success; a tendency to discount another's intelligence or - God forbid - creativity; these are all indications of a lack of ego strength and examples of the types of behavior that lead our employees to give us less than their best.

A small business owner has immense challenges to overcome and very few resources to provide support. So here's a toast to self-awareness and emotional health - may we all find the balance between ego and humility necessary (in most cases) to achieve the long-term business success and retirement income we ultimately desire.

A slightly different version of this article originally ran in InStore Magazine in March, 2017. You can read the original here.

Sexual harassment isn’t about sex. It’s about power.

Where sexual harassment begins and where it ends isn’t always clear. Is a dirty joke sexual harassment? Is a lewd look sexual harassment? If your co-workers are constantly dropping f-bombs in the next cubicle, is that sexual harassment or just garden-variety rudeness? And what about paying a man with the same experience 30% more than what you pay a woman in the same job with the same experience? Is that sexual harassment? Is it gender inequality? And what is the difference? Some people use the lack of clarity around sexual harassment as a reason to dismiss it.  So let’s break it down.

Some situations are very clear. If an employer tells an employee “have sex with me or I’ll fire you,” that’s sexual harassment.

The word “or” in that sentence (have sex with me OR . . . ) is the most important word. Consider these threats for a moment:

• Have sex with me or . . .
• Put up with me rubbing your back or . . .
• Let me put my hand on your thigh or . . .
• Don’t complain about my lecherous comments to you or . . .
• Allow me to look down your blouse or . . .

If the person saying or doing those things is your boss or a person with greater power than you in an organization, then what follows the or – even if it is only implied – can be pretty scary. Or you’ll get fired. Or you won’t get a raise. Or you won’t get a bonus. Or you won’t get a promotion. The powerful person in this scenario is in a position to demand a quid pro quo: you do something for me, and I’ll do something for you. If you don't, you'll suffer a consequence.

If the person doing or saying those things is your peer or subordinate, then what follows the “or?” Or I’ll stop trying? Or I’ll go bother someone else? Or I’ll try to steal your sale? The person in this scenario is not capable of demanding a quid pro quo. He (or she) is, however, creating a hostile work environment.

But quid pro quo sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment are also something else. They are a terrible abuse of power. That power may be the power of the paycheck, or it may be the power of being larger, stronger, influential among your peer group, or simply capable of making you miserable every day. Either way, the result is the same – a human being who is afraid and angry and doesn’t want to be at work.

Claims of quid pro quo sexual harassment, hostile work environment, and gender inequality have all been leveled at Signet, and Signet has vigorously and consistently refuted them for over 10 years. When discussing this issue among my peers, I was told repeatedly, “But they’re innocent until proven guilty!”

Read About What Happened During the Gold Conference Panel on Gender Bias

But riddle me this Batman: How does a company get to the point where 69,000 of its current and former employees are participating in class action suits against it? Two employee class actions and a new shareholder class action, all stemming from accusations of rampant sexual harassment and pay disparity claims over several decades.

In general, companies find themselves facing sexual harassment lawsuits when they cultivate a culture in which abuse of power is a norm. This type of culture doesn’t just happen in large corporations. It may be happening in yours, even if there is no sex or groping involved. Because sexual harassment isn’t ultimately about sex. It’s about power.

Anyone in an organization with the ability to influence hiring, firing, pay, and promotions has power. This is typically an owner, an executive, or a manager, but it could also be an influential spouse, child, sibling, or adviser. Such power must be wielded with great care.

• The manager who automatically pays men a higher wage than women for doing the same work is abusing power.
• The boss who screams at and demeans employees is abusing power. After all, if he didn’t have the power to terminate their employment, why would his employees even put up with such behavior?
• The manager who insists that employees tell her how they voted is abusing power. After all, if she were just some random stranger on the street, her employees would tell her, “that’s none of your business!”
• The executive who tells his assistant, “I’d like you to start wearing more dresses, and keep the lengths above the knee,” is abusing power. After all, if he were a co-worker or some guy at the coffee shop, the woman would likely say, “why would I let you tell me how to dress?”
• The business owner who butts in on his employees’ lives outside of work, demanding that they answer phones when not working, lecturing them about their personal lives, or expecting them to listen to his opinions about their boyfriends, parenting skills, and vacation plans is abusing power. Unless that employee is also the business owner’s son or daughter, he has no right to an opinion about their lives outside of work.

What is not an abuse of power? Anything that is relevant to the achievement of the business goals, portrayal of the business brand, and critical to business success that is also applied to everyone in a given role in exactly the same way.

Why is sexual harassment such a hot-button issue? Because the abuse of power in a work environment so often expresses itself in the form of sexual overtones. Psychologists and sociologists have written extensively about why this is, but it all boils down to this: A person who is not inclined to use power to dominate others is unlikely to sexually harass others. But for people who like using their power to take what they want, sexual dominance is often one of the things they want.

If you look at an organization where sexual harassment appears to be rampant, you will see other problems as well. You will see an organization with different sets of rules for different sets of people. You will see favoritism, unequal pay, and unequal access to perks and opportunities. You will see a general atmosphere of fear and insecurity. You will see an organization where those not in power try to survive by staying under the radar. You will likely see as many unhappy men as unhappy women, but they will be unhappy about different things. And eventually, you will see an organization whose internal dysfunction seeps outside to its customers, in the form of poor service, unethical behavior, and erratic performance.

It takes tremendous character not to be corrupted by power. Yet anyone in a position of authority has power, and that power can be used wisely or for selfish reasons. If an organization is permissive of the abuse of power in any form, it’s just a few short steps to someone in the organization using his power to touch a woman inappropriately, comment on her appearance or sexual appeal, or suggest that she give him sexual favors.

Of course, no organization is immune from someone in its ranks abusing a subordinate or fellow employee, but there’s a big difference in the response. In an organization that is not permissive of abusive behavior, such actions will be reprimanded in the strongest terms.  In an organization that is permissive of power abuse, a complaint about sexual harassment will be met with denial, shaming, blaming, or framing the accuser. People who are victimized in the future will be silent, for fear of reprisals.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that a culture permissive of power abuse is bad for business. Sure, the business may do well for a period of time, as long as market conditions are favorable. But eventually, the negative aspects of the culture will have a damaging effect on brand equity, performance, profitability, and shareholder confidence. In contrast, organizations with strong, positive cultures inspire a feeling of ownership, shared commitment, and motivation in their employees – the attributes that are most useful when facing challenging market conditions.

And what of the other types of sexual predation? The person who presumes to grope you with his eyes; the acquaintance who keeps making lewd jokes, even though you don’t laugh along; the guy who insists on continuing to objectify women with the excuse that it's the natural inclination of men to notice what is beautiful about women (blech); the interviewer who won’t give you the time of day because you’re not physically attractive enough (to him); the person who comments on your weight (too skinny, too fat) as if weight is a measure of your worth – what about them? Is that discrimination? Is that sexual harassment?

In the legal sense, only if the behavior violates a person’s rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But come on. Do we really need legal frameworks to tell us it's wrong to treat people unequally or to make unwanted sexual advances? Here’s a guideline for the confused: You have no business making a sexual advance, sexual comment, or implying sexual interest in anyone, other than the person with whom you are already in a sexual relationship or unless you are on a date – specifically a date which has become hot and steamy due to mutual and enthusiastic interest in one another.

Here's another: You have no business valuing a person's job responsibilities or job performance based on looks, gender, or anything other than the actual responsibilities and performance.

These guidelines should be easy for everyone to follow.

What about the more subtle encroachments? For instance, is it OK to comment on a woman’s appearance? Well, start with the directive, “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” This applies to wives and girlfriends by the way. But what if you want to pay a compliment?

Start by asking yourself, “if this person were a man, would I compliment his appearance?” If the answer is “no,” then just stop already. Women are not here for your visual enjoyment, even though you may visually enjoy them. Keep it to yourself. But if you’re the kind of guy who is likely to say, “great necktie!” “Love the haircut!” or “I like your new shoes, where did you buy them?” Then it’s probably fine to say, “I like your jacket,” “great haircut,” or “purple is a terrific color for you.” Of course, only women who already know you would be aware that you make similar comments to men. Women who don’t know you may still be put off by your presumption to comment on their appearance.

Ultimately, our purpose with one another at the office, at trade shows, and at industry functions is to do business. Anything that causes another human to feel uncomfortable, unsafe, disrespected, confused, or ashamed interferes with the work, and anything that interferes with the work is a waste of time and resources and potentially damaging to our industry.  That’s the business reason to speak out against both abuses of power and inappropriate behavior.

Of course, there shouldn’t have to be a business reason, should there? Because it’s never OK to make someone else feel uncomfortable, disrespected, unsafe, confused, or ashamed.  It’s never OK to violate someone emotionally or physically. It’s never OK to be a jerk.

So why should we care about what is happening at Signet? Why should we care that women in our industry are regularly sharing personal stories of harassment that occurred at their offices and when attending trade events? It should matter to us because, as I said earlier, organizations that turn a blind eye to terrible behavior eventually suffer economically, and this is true for industries as well.

But mostly, it should matter to each of us on a personal level. It should matter what happens to other human beings.  Kindness, integrity, character, and respect should matter. Shouldn’t they?

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 When I was a really young adult I set a goal of becoming the president or CEO of some significant sized organization by the time I was 30. And I achieved that goal. And then the first day in my brand new office at my brand new desk, when I should have been feeling flush with accomplishment. The feeling of responsibility for that accomplishment hit me like a buss. And I felt not only responsible for the organization's health, but also for the 200 plus people who worked for me, and the families that depended on them. So I began the process of figuring out what it takes to be responsible for a company. And over time, I've discovered three really important things. The thing I started with, the thing that got me to that 30 year old goal, was appreciation for the importance of expertise. We have to invest ourselves every single day in being an expert. And being an expert in running a business is different than being an expert in marketing or in selling or in being a doctor. Being an expert in business means that you have to have sufficient expertise in all of the areas that the business depends on to be successful. You don't have to be the biggest subject matter expert in those things. In fact, it's wise to bring people to work with you that are the biggest subject matter expert in each of those areas. But you have to have enough expertise in selling, in marketing, in product development or product acquisition or product manufacturing, or finance, and management and leadership 0151 all of the moving parts that make a business work. You have to have enough expertise in each of those areas, to be able to listen to and appreciate and support the true subject matter experts that you assemble to help you achieve your goals. So, expertise is really important.

There's also never a point at which you get to stop developing that expertise.There's no such thing as achieving all the expertise necessary to be the successful business person you want to be, because the world keeps changing, and as we've seen in the last 25-30 years, technology keeps changing. So what it takes to be successful keeps changing. And when I say this I'm sure you're thinking, Well, duh. But I keep encountering people running businesses who stopped developing. Maybe they stopped in 1982, or maybe they stopped in 1992, or maybe they only stopped in 2006, but business has changed so much even since 2006, that these people are now operating at a disadvantage, and so are their businesses, and the people that depend on them to keep that business going so that they can earn a livelihood - and their customers and their vendors because all of these people are partners in your business. So there's never a point at which you get to stop developing expertise. The older we get, the tireder  we get and the more we think "I just kind of like to chill out a little bit," the easier it is to give up the knowledge development, part of our work.

So, we show up every morning and we we do the work that needs to be done that day. And the thing that gets sacrificed is the constant investment in new learning. In fact, I had a friend who told me, and this is like 10 years ago now, "I'm tired of learning new stuff. I just want a year when I don't have to learn a bunch of new stuff." But that's not a living goal. That that's not something that people who are alive to decide to do. So, you have to keep learning, and you have to recognize that if you're going to sacrifice anything, because we are busy and we're raising kids, and then we get a brief break and then we're taking care of parents and the business demands so much of us and blah blah blah blah blah. The thing you cannot sacrifice is the professional and personal development. That doesn't get to happen.

So, we need to have expertise, and then we need to keep developing that expertise, because we realize that the world is going to change. And we need to keep changing with it. And then at some point, that expertise actually gets in our way. It got in mine, and I see a lot of other people for whom this is true. So I think it's something we have to watch out for. There is a hubris that comes with expertise, the sense that "I already know what needs to be done. I've done it well already, have done it well for years, I've had some crazy success stories so obviously my expertise is the answer."

But it's not, it never is or it might be enough of an answer but not the best answer. So the other thing we have to do is surround ourselves with people who are more innovative than us, or more intuitive than us, or more technical than us. We need to surround ourselves with people who have different types of deep subject matter expertise. But it's not enough to just surround ourselves with them. It's not enough to just have fun meetings with them and do brainstorming with them. Because if we walk away and do our own thing based on our comfort with our own expertise, then we're just wasting everybody's time. So we also have to make it safe and possible for those people that we surrounded ourselves with to actually have an impact. We have to listen to them, we have to try their ideas.

So there are two things that most of us have to get past in order to successfully do this. Well first,, there's these three things we need to do. 1) We need to get to a level of deep expertise, 2) we need to commit to never stopping developing that expertise, and then 3) we have to surround ourselves with people who have different types of intelligence in greater doses than our own, and we have to listen to them.

So what are the two barriers that get in the way of that? Well, the first is the resistance to learning. Most everything you need to know to learn to run a business is entirely within your grasp. So it's not like acquiring new knowledge is outside your ability. But when we're faced with learning something new, and technology is a good example, a lot of business leaders don't want to figure out how the technology in their business works. Or, they may be totally comfortable with understanding how the technology in their manufacturing environment works, but they don't want to have to learn how the technology in their marketing environment works. So technology is a good example.  We have this resistance to learning something new, and it's based on fear. We're usually intimidated by the idea that we have to learn this new thing, or it's based on just feeling like it's going to take more energy than we have. I mean, the truth is if you can get up and get in the car every morning and go to the office, or if you can get up and work at your bench, or if you can get up and jump on a plane and go visit customers, you're exerting the same level of energy that's needed for learning. You're just exerting it in a different area. We can get past our resistance to learning, if we can stop and say, "I need to learn this new thing, and I can."  Then that breaks through one of the two major barriers to be successful with 1) developing expertise, 2) continuing to develop our expertise and 3) inviting opposing and challenging viewpoints.

The second thing we have to do is to resist our own tendency to feel threatened by somebody who knows more than us. I thought this issue was only true for people in corporations, where everybody's climbing up the ladder and everybody wants their manager's job and the manager wants the next manager's job. So there can be a real tendency to feel threatened by people coming along who know more than you do or who are more organized than you are or who are more charismatic than you. In the corporate world we started talking 20 years ago about the fact that if you didn't prepare the person behind you to take your place, that you couldn't go anywhere. I'm sure that seems like it should have just been really rational, and I'm sure there were business leaders going back 200 years ago that understood that. But about 20 years ago we really started trying to push this, because corporate politics being what they are, people were being held back instead of moved forward. So we were trying to introduce this idea of self interest, that if you don't prepare the people around you to replace you, then you can't go anywhere else either. And I thought that was going to be mostly a corporate type of behavior - that the politics of corporations lead to managers feeling threatened by strong people around them. But I found out that's not true. The more I work with independent business owners, the more I've discovered that it's a human trait, not a corporate/political trait. And I recognize it in myself. It's something that I've had to always work to make sure it didn't play an important role in my decision making.

It's really importan to challenge our tendency to feel threatened by people presenting new ideas and challenging the ideas we have, and it's probably because ideas and expertise and our thought processes, they're very personal to us. So there's a, an underlying threat to having the things we're comfortable with get shaken up. But if we can do those two things, if we can resist the resistance to learning, no matter how old we are, and if we can resist the tendency to feel threatened by others that bring different types of intelligence to the experience, then we have a really good shot at running a successful business, no matter what size it is.

This week, at Initiatives in Art and Culture’s Gold Conference, the opening evening event – normally reserved for an outing at an atelier or exhibit – was instead devoted to a panel on issues facing women in the jewelry industry.

The topic of gender bias is hardly unique to our industry. But as a small industry, it is perhaps more important to our overall success and more difficult to discuss than for other industries.I won’t try to recap the conversation in a linear way. I don’t think I could. Hedda Schupak kicked things off by asking the panel how the jewelry industry was managing gender bias relative to other industries, and within three or four minutes, the entire audience was involved in the conversation.

Immediately, women began telling their stories. One woman’s career was ruined by a male colleague's idea of a  “joke.” He liked to tell their co-workers that she had slept her way to her current position. After being passed over for promotions for which she was more than qualified, she approached Human Resources. The HR representative told her that the belief she had been sleeping with higher-ups had led to her being passed over. An investigation discredited the male colleague and his “joke,” but it didn’t matter. Her career there could not recover. She transferred to a different company, and the male colleague suffered no consequences.

Another woman, a senior marketing executive, spoke of advocating to be included in a major advertising agency meeting as part of a powerful diamond industry group. She was the only trained marketing executive in the group, and the only woman — in a market that sells almost exclusively to women. And yet, when the meetings commenced, they made her leave the room. It was humiliating for her (and genuinely stupid of the men).

Participants spoke of women in our industry being belittled, ignored, talked over, humiliated, passed by for promotions. Groped. Raped. Trapped in jobs they could not afford to leave. Of women contemplating suicide.

At one point during this free-wheeling discussion, a women in the audience expressed how upset she was with the panel. She said she had expected this to be a positive experience, claiming, “All I'm hearing is negativity! Stop with all the man vs. woman stuff! ” I could see that several women agreed — and many more empathized — with her.

Then I looked at the faces of some of the men I know well — some alone, and some with their wives. Men who would gladly make gender discrimination disappear. It occurred to me how difficult this conversation must be for them. Yet, I could see that these men were fully present, along with us for the pain and discomfort, willing to listen, learn, and participate. And I could see that none of their wives felt the need to shield them, nor make excuses for them. These wives trusted – and expected – their husbands to handle it.

Painful Things are Hard to Discuss

Ask anyone who has ever been on the brink of divorce, only to turn the corner and go on to have a stronger marriage, what changed. You will almost certainly hear that they finally learned to discuss the hard things in a productive manner. Not necessarily a positive manner — it’s practically impossible to have a hard conversation without saying difficult things, and difficult can be scary and painful. But productive conversations lead to positive outcomes.

This isn't just a painful topic. It's a confusing topic. So much of what we know about being men and women, and communicating with one another, is indoctrinated, inculturated social behavior. Much of what we enjoy about hanging out with members of the opposite sex is the dynamic tension and and perspective that comes from being different from one another. But we aren't really equal, are we? When two groups come together to share experiences and work, and one group has inherently more power than the other, even seemingly innocuous statements and behaviors can be fraught with hidden meanings and interpretations. So there are sandtraps and land mines everywhere we turn.

It's also very difficult to understand privilege from the perspective of privilege.

One of the things it is hard for men to recognize is how insidious gender bias is. Most men would agree that groping and rape are wrong. But what about all the other behaviors that undermine women? Studies demonstrate that women are expected to answer phones, set up meetings, fill out paperwork, take meeting notes, fetch beverages, bring or order food for office events, and head thankless committees at more than twice the rate of their male peers working the same jobs. Women are still treated as a servant class within business.

Men are more likely to take calls from other men, more likely to return voice mails left by other men, and take chances on men when making decisions about investments. In other words, men have more access to power and money than women have. They are also the often unconscious beneficiaries of presumed excellence. According to Forbes magazine, “when symphony orchestras started using blind auditions by placing candidates behind screens and drapes, the number of women in the five leading orchestras in the US increased five-fold.”

Women Still Lack Representation in Jewelry Business

In the jewelry industry, it is difficult to identify the percentage of women in leadership, as so much of the industry is very private and family-owned. However, of nine major jewelry industry associations, women make up only 20.5% of overall board seats. This is a far cry from the 50.8% of US population represented by women, or the fact that – other than engagement rings (which, even if men buy them, women still heavily influence) – women make a whopping 78% of women’s jewelry purchases (and wear over 90% of all jewelry sold).

When women cannot penetrate places of power, and cannot benefit from the same presumed excellence that men experience, it damages our ability to improve our lives.

The solution to these problems isn’t A) try harder and B) be patient. We’ve been trying damn hard, and we’ve been more than patient. The solution is for men to make a point of bringing women into their circles of power. If every enlightened man would do that for just two women, how fast could things change? Educated, qualified, hard-working women are extremely easy to find. If you’re reading this and you don't (realize you) know some of these women, give me a call. I’ll be happy to make the introductions.

In addition to issues of access, presumed excellence, and equal treatment, many women on the panel and in the audience agreed that sexual harassment continues to be an issue in our industry. Jenny Luker and Brandee Dallow talked about the sexual harassment training initiative the Women's Jewelry Association (WJA) has put together with the Jeweler's Vigilance Committee (JVC) to educate jewelry  businesses. We need this training at all levels. If people won't stop harassing one another because it's the right thing to do, then at least let them be aware of the legal consequences. If you have never been through a sexual harassment training before, please avail yourself of it immediately. Apparently, character and ethics are not sufficient to solve this problem. So let's all get educated. The more of us who understand what sexual harassment is, the more likely we are to take the proper legal action when it occurs.

But what about all the behavior that is discriminating, yet doesn't meet the threshold of illegal?

The Difference Between Sexual Harassment and Hostile Work Environment

I am a big fan of public shaming. It doesn't happen often enough, because women are trained to politely laugh off inappropriate comments and behavior, and men are trained not to notice it (or to not go against other men). But imagine this: What if, every time one of us – male or female – heard someone else (male or female) make a gender discriminating comment, we said, “That’s not cool. Don’t say things like that.” Publicly, calmly, in-the-moment. If we consistently shamed the behavior, the intentional discriminators would become intimidated, and the obtuse would (hopefully) become educated.

It’s unrealistic to expect people to stand up for themselves in this way. If you’ve ever been at the receiving end of a personal attack, even a joking one, then you know it can take your breath away and leave you feeling unable to respond until after the moment has passed. We must step up and denounce discriminatory behavior for others.

Where's My Prize?

Later that evening and again the next day, several people asked why some are women so averse to discussing the topic of gender bias. I suspect that some have simply drunk the social Kool Aid. Issues of gender bias are currently all caught up in our divisive political discourse - though frankly, they shouldn't be identified with any political position at all. Some people don’t like to think deeply and resent being required to do so.

But some women are carrying around the pain and shame of their own victimization, and self-preservation demands that they keep it buried. My heart goes out to them. It takes a lot of resilience to discuss terrible things that have happened in the past. And now, I have another insight, which came from a woman in her 30s who was in attendance. As we left the building that evening, she asked me – her eyes filled with tears – “Where’s my prize for sucking it up all these years? Because that’s what I’ve had to do."

That, perhaps, is one of the hardest things to explain to gender-discrimination-deniers and the chauvinism-blind. How we suck it up. How we laugh it off. Not because we want to. Not because we think it’s funny. Not because we aren’t humiliated and angry and sick of it. Tired of it. All of it.

As Barbara Palumbo said, we suck it up because this may be the only jewelry company in town, and we can’t afford to spend 15 years in a different industry learning new skills and getting back to what we are earning now. We suck it up because we don’t want to move away from family and friends to do work we love, work that supports our families. We suck it up because the next place could be just as bad, so why make the sacrifice in the first place?

One of my male colleagues asked me the next day, “Is it any better? Is it getting better?” And I told him, yes, it is. If I compare now to the late 1970s, the statistics support (and I’ve seen) a steady, incremental, improvement. But better isn’t the same as fixed, and gender discrimination is still a real problem that holds us back and leaves women more vulnerable to violence and poverty than men will ever experience.

I do feel bad for some men right now. Men who would never use the phrase “like a girl,” or discount a woman. Men who are conscious that, even though they don’t discriminate, they bear the burden of being part of the solution. These men must take accountability for their gender to make things right. These men suffer the skepticism and distrust of this moment; distrust they haven’t done anything personally to earn.

I even have some compassion for the tin-eared men who say inflammatory things about women because they think they are being funny. Men who may be good husbands and fathers, but who struggle to understand their own bias in order to overcome it. This can be a painful, confusing process. I hope they are tough enough to stick with it and get through it.

But I could never, ever feel bad for men the way I feel bad for women. From the mouthy to the meek, young to old, optimistic to jaded — women have put up with men’s insistence on our second-class personhood while expecting us to keep their homes, extended families, and communities functioning for over a millennium. We’re so conditioned to this bullshit that we don’t recognize it when we do it to each other.

So we must have these hard conversations. We must vent, and listen, and strengthen one another. We may have to re-hash the topic many more times, because we’ve been holding it in for so long, and real change requires a lot of attention. These conversations will help us confess our pain, find our support networks, put on our armor, then get out there and change our world. One chaotic, painful, and exhilarating panel at a time.

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Thank you to Lisa Koenigsberg, PhD, founder of Initiatives in Art and Culture, for making this panel happen at the 8^th Annual Gold Conference. Thanks also to Hedda Schupak, panel moderator, and panelists Wendy Brandes, Brandee Dallow, Jenny Luker, and Barbara Palumbo.

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Data published in Tim Smedley’s "The Inclusive Workplace" found that teams that are representative of their target client are up to 158 percent more likely to understand their client. No wonder the diamond industry is in such a mess right now.

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Gender Makeup of Jewelry Industry Boards

Organization	Male	Female	% of Women
MJSA	11	4	26.7%
Jewelers of America	15	9	37.5%
American Gem Trade Association	13	3	18.8%
American Gem Society	12	6	33.3%
Jeweler's Vigilance Committee	30	11	26.8%
Diamond Manufacturers and Importers of America	26	2	7.1%
Diamond Dealers Club of New York	21	0	0.0%
Natural Color Diamond Association	13	3	18.8%
International Diamond Manufacturer's Association	6	0	0.0%
Total gender balance	147	38	20.5%
The only jewelry association with a strong female board makeup is the Women's Jewelry Association
Women's Jewelry Association	2	29	93.5%

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References

Bergstein, R. (2017, August 9). Female Self-Purchasing Isn't Just a Jewelry Industry Pipedream. Forbes.

Catalyst. (2018). Women's Representation on Fortune 500 Boards Inches Upwards. New York: Catalyst.

Joan C. Williams, R. D. (2014). What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know. New York and London: New York University Press.

M. E. Heiulman, J. J. (2005). Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions to Men's and Women's Altruistic Citizenship Behavior. APA PsycNET, 10.

Pham, T. (2016, December 20). Think You're Not Biased Against Women at Work? Read This. Forbes.

Sheryl Sandberg, A. G. (2015, February 6). Madam CEO, Get Me a Coffee. New York Times.

Smedley, T. (2014, May 15). The Evidence is Growing - There Really is a Business Case for Diversity. Financial Times.

Tristan L. Botelho, M. A. (2017). Research: Objective Performance Metrics Are Not Enough to Overcome Gender Bias. Harvard Business Review.

Williams, J. C. (2014, April 16). Sticking Women with the Office Housework. Wall Street Journal, p. 1.

It’s hard to know what is true in the world. I don’t think it’s a modern problem; I suspect it’s always been this way. The only difference now is that we have access to so much more information. So whereas in the past it was hard to know what was true because there was so little information, today it’s hard to know what is true because we have so much.

I don’t think it’s impossible to know what is true, though sometimes it is very very difficult. I would like to form an opinion on what, if anything, the United States should be doing in the Middle East. But the more I try to learn the issues, the more perplexing and often contradictory they become. This is likely why people with great knowledge and experience on the Middle East disagree on our responsibility and approach.

Other truths are difficult to learn because they are always changing. The truth of who I am is a moving target, and it should be, because growth demands constant evolution. The same is true of knowing one’s spouse, children, parents, and siblings. If we don’t commit to constantly reevaluating the truth of them, we risk only knowing them as they were at a single point in time.

Perhaps the only real truth is what we choose to believe.

This sounds a lot like the religious concept of faith, but faith is definitely not truth. When someone says he believes in God, that’s superficial at best. What he believes about God is where the truth lies. Does he believe in a loving God who cares about how we treat one another and the earth, does he believe in a God who wills him to judge others to prove his own worthiness, or does he believe in something else entirely?

We all see the world through a lens with which we either distort or clarify. To believe that some humans can actually have more value than other humans bends the lens one way; to believe that all have similar value with differing gifts bends the lens another. The way you bend that lens then determines what you believe about poverty, race, gender, other cultures, and other belief systems.

To believe that there is only one acceptable gospel (news channel, political party, theory) for life bends the lens one way; and to believe there are many different sources that each shed their own valuable light bends the lens another. The way you bend that lens then determines who you will follow, what and how much you will learn, and how you will teach others.

To believe you are always the smartest in the room bends the lens one way; to recognize how much you have to learn and how much others have to teach bends the lens another.

To believe the world owes you something bends the lens one way; to believe you owe the world bends the lens another.

To believe your needs must always come first bends the lens one way; to believe that meeting needs of yourself and others will always be a balancing act bends the lens another.

To see the world as a reflection of yourself bends the lens one way; to see yourself as a reflection of the world bends the lens another.

Some truths we are taught and some we discover. But always, truth is what we decide, and once we decide our truth we then live our truth and we fit the world into that definition.

Scary how much power we have, isn’t it? How do you bend your lens?

From my earliest days as a business leader, I understood that a business had to have a clear, unified purpose in order to be successful. It was drilled into me – in school, by business thought leaders, by my Boards of Directors, that the ultimate purpose of a business had to be profit. I believed it. No – I accepted and embraced it. At my last business, we articulated our purpose as “to make more money now and in the future.”

I was wrong.

It always felt a little hollow, to be working for profit above all else. Yet it also made sense. After all, why have a business that doesn’t make a profit? But had I stopped to think deeply about it, I would have realized much sooner that profit and a higher purpose are not mutually exclusive.

The first real challenge to my profit-purpose-assumption came when I started my current company. As I began the strategy process, I started from the top down. “The ultimate purpose of this business is to make more money now and in the future.” But it didn’t sit right with me. Without partners to negotiate with or a Board of Directors to appease, I kept recoiling at the idea of being primarily focused on “making more money now and in the future.”

So I threw that purpose out and began to list the reasons I was opening this business. Some were very personal, such as the freedom to always put my family first, the desire to put into action business concepts that I have long pondered but which met with resistance, and working within an ethical framework from which I never felt pressure to deviate.

Other reasons were more philanthropic. I wanted to create a very human, uplifting and creative employment experience. I wanted to further refine the practice of collaborative management. I wanted to pay a meaningful wage for meaningful work. I wanted to serve a specific community of customers with services they needed, and I wanted to see that community become increasingly successful.

What I realized is that a business must have a bigger purpose than profit. That instead, the purpose of profit was to serve the higher purpose of the business. It was like I had been wearing my slacks inside-out for 20 years. Suddenly, with the pockets and buttons on the outside, they felt better. Everything fit better.

Does this make me a granola-eating-Birkenstock-wearing-naïve-excuse-for-a-business-owner? Well, I am some of those things, but I don’t believe I am naïve. What I am is more motivated. More motivated to have my business produce a profit so I can remain committed to our higher purpose, which is:

To create a fulfilling, enriching, and life-balanced work experience for my employees and myself while making significant contributions to the success and well-being of small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Eight years later, this purpose continues to serve my company well. When we have discussions about wage increases, we discuss them in terms of creating the profit to support them. When we discuss creating new services or products for our customers, we talk about them in terms of the profit we must generate with them to make them widely available. Over and over again, profit serves purpose.

More importantly, the stakeholders in this company understand that this company exists for them and for the customers to whom they have become committed. If the purpose was merely profit, how could they possibly feel as committed, even if a portion of that profit was set aside for them?

I’m sure there are people for whom money as a purpose is very exciting. But I suspect that far more people are motivated by the things that money can do, can create, can cause. Now that I understand that profit is the means to an end, and not the end in itself, I will never look at business purpose the same way again.

What’s your business purpose?

Look in a thesaurus for synonyms for integrity and you get a lot of stuffy, judgy words. Probity and rectitude on the mildly gross end, virtue and purity on the annoying end. So as you might imagine, it’s hard to write about integrity without coming off like a prude. Yet, here I go, because I like a challenge I guess.

As I write this I’m still in Jewelry Week mode, though certainly it applies to every type of business. Yet, I do think the stakes are higher right now for the jewelry industry than most.

There was never a time when honesty in business didn’t matter, but there have been times when businesses could get away with, um, less. Times when business wasn’t under a microscope, times when communication was from business-to-consumer, and the only way consumers could talk back was to call the Better Business Bureau. Times when the moral compass of the country wasn’t the topic of hundreds of thousands of conversations each day on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. We are no longer in those times, and I think that’s a good thing. A great thing.

But here’s the deal. An integrity-infused approach to business is all-or-nothing. You’re either feeling it or you’re not. If you’re not fully feeling it, you’re not going to be fully acting on it. And if you’re not fully acting on it, it’s going to bite you in the reputation/employee-turnover/vendor-relationships/bottom-line. So if self-accountability isn’t enough for you (and I do believe it is for most of us), perhaps market accountability can serve as a more potent motivation.

What do I mean by all-or-nothing? I mean that integrity is a cultural thing. I’ll never forget my first sales call, over 30 years ago. I was sent out with one of the top salesmen in the firm; a hard-driving, competitive guy with a strong South Side Chicago persona. During the sales call, I oversold our capabilities. I could tell he didn’t like what I was saying, and somehow I managed to shut up. When we got back to his car he scolded me. He told me, “That’s not how this company works. We only promise what we can deliver with confidence. Don’t ever do that again.” Here was a guy whose entire paycheck was based on how much he sold, and yet the company ethic was that ingrained in him.

You know that moment when you don’t feel like paying one vendor bill because others are due and you’re unsure of your cash flow in the next few weeks? It’s not as simple as saying, “Just pay the bill,” because there’s a good chance there’s nothing to pay it with. Integrity goes deeper. It’s about doing (learning how to do) all the things you can do to anticipate and manage cash flow in the first place, so you don’t put your vendors in that position. After all, they have vendors to pay too. Yes, it really is a thing, anticipating and managing cash flow. It’s a business owners’ ethical responsibility to learn it.

We all know people who blatantly take credit for others’ ideas, and those people are ultimately made pathetic and laughable by their actions (or they just fade away). But integrity goes deeper; it’s about all of us trying to see if our ideas are original before forging on. You know that idea that just popped into your head? Maybe it’s for a design, maybe it’s just for a social media post. Do you stop and think about whether or not that idea actually came from you? I know that sounds funny, but it happens to all of us every day. Our brains hold on to every impression and every experience we’ve ever had, and then dish those thoughts up at random times. We do a lot of writing at my company, and one of our disciplines is to run every idea through Google Search and an academic plagiarism database. Very few ideas are genuinely new, but we have a responsibility to ensure that we are offering at least a new perspective and/or to acknowledge the originator.

The way we talk about people is an important part of integrity. Some women in my town are having a field day posting Facebook pictures of a very handsome yet very odd man who is seen about town. They aren’t cruel about him, but they are catty. I know these women – they’re good people. They also own businesses. I just cringe every time a new post goes up, because I can imagine how this reflects on them professionally, and I’m terrified that poor guy will somehow get wind of it and be hurt.

I’m also still surprised by how some people talk to other people. It really doesn’t matter if the other person is an employee, a family member, a competitor, a stranger, or a business colleague – there is never an excuse for approaching another person without concern for their dignity. When someone yells at, talks down to, or in any way belittles (passive aggression and left-handed compliments included) another human being, they are stating clearly and emphatically that they lack self-control and respect for others.

In the jewelry industry we have these crazy debates over doing the right thing. Doing the right thing isn’t the crazy part, and some of the issues (particularly as they relate to human welfare in countries we depend on for our industry wealth) are extremely important. So we should be debating the issues, but we get in our own way when we start splitting hairs over what the right thing is. That speaks more to our desire to rationalize and equivocate than our desire to do the right thing. I suspect a lot of people don’t even realize when they’re doing it.

Having integrity involves looking at yourself carefully, and questioning whether or not you are putting self-interest over the interest of others. I’m not suggesting we all become a bunch of martyrs – we each have a responsibility to look out for the welfare of ourselves, our families, our businesses, and our communities. But welfare is not a zero-sum game. When people are committed to ethical behavior, they seek solutions that benefit all with vigor, open-mindedness, and a dose of humility.

My dad is a retired federal judge, and he spent his adult life adjudicating the rights and wrongs of things. I remember how he would sit at his desk late at night with just the desk lamp on, poring over his notes with his hand on his forehead. Deciding what is right and wrong is heavy work. But for his own children, his advice was simple. We were taught that a small wrong is essentially as bad as a big wrong, because if you can rationalize wrong at all, even just a little bit, even for just a minute, you’ve given yourself permission to accept wrong as right, and once you do that, everything else is just a matter of degree.

So now, in our world of intense market scrutiny, awareness, and discussion, the stakes are very high for doing the right thing. If we want to do the right thing on the big stuff, we need to make sure we’re looking at all the little stuff. Because integrity is an all-or-nothing proposition. We will stumble and be human about it, but let’s get on the path and stay on it. If we are accepting of anything less than integrity from ourselves, then everything else is just a matter of degree. And I suspect that the market will ultimately judge us on that. Harshly.

Most men indeed, as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error.

—BEN FRANKLIN, AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL WRITINGS (LAST SPEECH)

It is a complicated world we live in. A world in which we require conviction about certain things in order to center ourselves and make our way. A world in which those same convictions can sometimes blind us to a greater truth or realization about life, love, and God.

Most of us Christians, Jews, and Muslims don't understand the history of our religions, the social contexts in which they were developed, and the ways in which all of the sacred texts have been manipulated by various kings, emperors, and tribal leaders to support their personal political agendas. We understand the religious history that was taught to us by our parents, their parents, and their parents' parents, and we accept this verbal history as the truth.

Some of us go so far as to conclude that only those who believe as we do will get to heaven. I'm still shaking my head over a signature line on a colleague's personal email account that reads "If you don't believe what I believe, you'll have an eternity to regret it." It's no small surprise that true biblical scholars – not divinity students, but scholars of the bible and its history – go through a crisis of faith at some point in their studies. They learn how fallible the socially accepted religious texts are. Those who continue to have faith do so because they choose to believe, in spite of all the human error and meddling. What a powerful faith theirs is, to choose not from denial, but from a place of light (truth) and spiritual hope.

We hide behind our beliefs, afraid to challenge or question them. Psychologically that makes sense. If we suspect our spouse is cheating on us sexually, we go through a phase of not wanting to know. The truth can be difficult and painful because it may cause change. Some people choose to never confront the truth of their spouse's infidelity, and live instead in a state of denial and suppressed pain.

If we have chosen not to confront the infidelity, then woe to the well-meaning (or not-so-well-meaning) friend who points it out to us. Their recognition of the truth means that we must deal with it, and if we have used denial to create a false reality, we don't appreciate someone else shining a light on it.

All of us hide behind denial to some extent. It's a complicated world that presents us with too many contradictions. One person's acceptance of nudity is another person's violation of modesty. One family's arranged marriage for the strengthening of family ties and responsibilities is another person's violation of marriage as an institution dependent on love. One person's pacifism is another person's weakness. One person's polygamy is another person's violation of the sanctity of marriage. One person's martyrdom is a violation of another's sense of God's peace.

Cultural norms and mores simplify life. Merely 200 years ago nearly every human being lived within a community which enjoyed the simplicity of entirely shared values. Well, that's not quite true. For instance, in most western cultures 200 years ago, if a married woman was miserable – whether she was beaten , taken for granted, or anywhere in between – she could not leave her marriage. She couldn't own land, hold a job, or vote. So whether she shared the norms and mores or not was irrelevant – she had to pretend to in order to maintain what little place she had in society. And slavery has been part of the world since time immemorial, continuing still today. Still, most communities 200 years ago benefited from general sharing of cultural values.

 As the world has become more integrated, we experience challenges to our beliefs and values. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently advanced an argument that England should consider Sharia law for the purposes of negotiating marital and civilian disputes. The world immediately split over his suggestion – some suggesting that social cohesion is not possible when multiple legal systems are contending for primacy, and some suggesting that it's about time western culture recognized that Muslims within their cultures require Sharia law to function. Who is right? As the Archbishop of Canterbury has learned, even raising the question of how to accommodate religious views and rights within a secular society can have grave implications for one's career.

 State by painful State the US has been debating whether or not gay couples should have the same rights under the law as married couples. Proponents of the bills argue that gay couples should not have to worry about whether or not they will be able to visit their loved one in a hospital, make medical decisions when necessary, or maintain their joint property after a loved one's death. Opponents of the bills argue that gay marriage mocks the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and that the fabric of society will be permanently torn if gay unions are legally recognized. Who is right?

 I like to reflect on another quotation, this one by Robert Green Ingersoll, who in 1955 said:

 "Whenever a man believes that he has the exact truth from God, there is in that man no spirit of compromise. He has not the modesty born of the imperfections of human nature; he has the arrogance of theological certainty and the tyranny born of ignorant assurance. Believing himself to be the slave of god, he imitates his master, and of all tyrants, the worst is a slave in power."

 There is room for all of us, whether believers or non-believers, to recognize a certain personal responsibility in Ingersoll's challenge. The challenge is this:

 We cannot simultaneously uphold our own fundamental rightness and offer genuine respect to human beings who believe differently than us. The two positions are mutually exclusive. We can condescendingly agree to accept that the other person has a different opinion, but that is not the same as valuing that person equally to ourselves.

 If we wish to take no risks with our salvation, our only hope is to choose to see the Godliness in every other human being, and to strive to understand how their Godliness leads them to believe differently than we do. We cannot condemn another person without condemning ourselves. We cannot judge another person without likewise turning our judgment on ourselves. If we are among those who believe in God, how egotistical it is to believe that God requires our judgment of others to make His world whole. Don't we think He can handle that aspect Himself?

 If we are not worried about salvation because we don't believe in God or a hereafter, our only hope in life is to learn as much as we can from every other human being we encounter, because this one life is the only one we've got and the only way to live it to the fullest would be to allow its fullness to live in us. 

 One sure path to the truth is to be willing to view our own beliefs with as much skepticism as we view the beliefs of others. An even surer path to the truth is to challenge all of our systems, our laws, and our social structures to uplift and uphold the dignity and supreme worth of every human being. In every choice we make, if we would stop to consider the worth and dignity of those involved – and not just our own views of how the world should work – I believe that we would consistently make better choices.

 In 1902 William James lamented that out of fanaticism "crusades have been preached and massacres instigated for no other reason than to remove a fancied slight upon the God." History does not provide an example of it, but can't you imagine a world where people are seekers of truth and clear thinking? It would be impossible to wage a war, starve a child, beat a woman, or cheat a friend if the only enculturation we knew was to shine the light of equality and love on every person we met.

 No one of us is more special than any other. But we could be incredibly special together if we put our minds – and not our blindered beliefs – to the task.

Several months ago I received a personal email from a long-ago friend who is now a protestant minister. Apparently he had (finally?) learned that I am gay, and felt compelled to express to me his concerns about my choice and therefore, my soul. I was a little surprised that he felt so compelled to impose his opinions on me that way, but chose to use it as an opportunity to write the "what I would say to a minister if he out-of-the-blue decided to preach to me about my queerness" blog.

Here it is.

Thanks for your email (I guess). Not surprisingly, I have a rather different view. Men of God have powerful control to shape society and influence how people treat one another. More control even than politicians or parents. So the influence of ministers, priests, rabbis, and other spiritual leaders is of paramount concern to me as it relates to the shaping of a just and loving society.

In the times of the old testament the religious leaders determined that rape was OK if the man paid the father of the woman he raped 50 shekels and then married her and never divorced (Deuteronomy 22:28). Lucky girl, right? But society was influenced by this determination, as dictated to Men of God by God himself. Rape in that time was condoned. God's instructions (as interpreted by Men of God) on how to take a second wife are found in Exodus 21:10 - in those times polygamy was also an acceptable practice. Also in Exodus, 21:7, you can learn the rules about how to sell your daughter and what to do if she fails to please her new master. These are really old references, right? But these are excellent examples of how men interpreted for other people the Will of God - and thereby shaped the society of their times with their interpretations.

I believe that it is perfectly fine before God's eyes for blacks and whites to marry one another. But as recently as 40 years ago (and in some places, it probably continues today) preachers used the Bible to justify their position that blacks were less human than whites, and therefore intermarriage was an abomination and a sin. They relied largely on the Book of Numbers for this, though there are ample references throughout the Old Testament decrying any form of intermarriage between the Israelites and others considered to be 'lower' than them.

And now preachers use the Bible to say that being gay is a sin, and they can find a few Biblical references to support this, just as there are a few references to the acceptability of rape, polygamy, slave-keeping, and other things that we all agree are abominations today. Yet science can show that gays have existed since the earliest recorded human history. How long will it take- 40 years? 50 years? - before we look back on this time and shake our heads, just as we look in shame at the time when we kept slaves in the United States backed by numerous Old Testament references to the acceptability of keeping slaves, or at the times when blacks who married whites were punished by death or jail? Humans have used their interpretations of the Bible - primarily the Old Testament - to support our biases and fears for many centuries, and I don't expect that to change. We are champions at rationalizing our bad behavior.

But there is no reference to Jesus Christ saying that being gay is a sin. His entire message was to focus on our own spirituality, treat one another with love and without judgement, and to let God worry about the rest. I sometimes wonder - is God more likely to be upset with us for judging someone that He actually loves unconditionally, or would he be more upset with us for loving someone unconditionally that he ultimately judged?

So that is what I believe. Our references are probably somewhat different. As a Jew, I still love to study the Torah and other sacred texts. As a person who went entirely to Catholic schools, my Bible of choice is the New American Bible. As a protestant, I suspect you rely more on the King James. But ultimately, I'm just a spiritual human being, and I can't bear to watch the world justify hatred, bigotry, and war by searching for references in various religious texts that are more relevant to the times in which they were written than to the actual intent of God - whom we all agree is most difficult to understand given our less-than-perfect state. I can only support messages that are closest to that of Jesus himself - a message that says "love one another, be kind to one another, accept one another, don't throw the first stone, and let God worry about the rest." Because honestly, if we started feeding the poor, sharing the wealth, condemning all forms of war, and treating one another as if we could see God's face in the face of each person we looked at, the world would be a beautiful place. And the fact that some men slept with men and some women slept with women wouldn't matter at all in a world like that, would it.

I just read that key advertising copy drivers for 2010 marketing include Anger, Greed, Fear, Guilt, Exclusivity, Salvation, and Flattery. Really? Ick. I don't care what era it is or which demographic group is ascendant. You'll always engage more, excite more, connect more, and sell more if you appeal to people's better angels.

When it comes to survival, innovation, and evolutionary improvement, no business theorist has anything on Mother Nature. Her success record running the business of Earth is quite undeniable. Even as her most destructive creatures grow increasingly effective at polluting and fracking and discarding, she continues to evolve and survive.

Business owners and leaders can learn a lot from Mother Nature. And the lesson that supports all the other lessons exists in all of us, in our DNA. She figured out a long time ago that the more you mix up the DNA of things, the stronger those things would be. Oh, no doubt she developed some beings destined for dead ends (Neanderthals, perhaps Aardvarks), but those relatively few false starts didn’t turn her off on evolution. No, she kept going, full steam ahead, committed to the idea that DNA could be strengthened, could survive, if it kept seeking and accepting new elements.

Of course, organisms do reject certain DNA modifications, and some DNA modifications can lead to disease and death. The process of evolution can be messy. But the one constant is change, the structural variations that lead to human and plant genetic variation. The other constant is that the less the DNA changes, the more likely it is to suffer disease and undesirable mutation – which is the scientific reason why close family members are discouraged from procreating (that and the blech factor).

I read yesterday that Starbucks employee demographics include over 40% minorities, which is within striking distance of the actual ratio of white to non-white people in the United States. But Starbucks doesn’t just tolerate the diversity. They honor and embrace business diversity as an important part of their company culture, whether through their constant and high-quality focus on professional development for their employees (75% of store and district managers are internal promotions), or by creating forums for employees to openly discuss the issue of race in America. They’re not perfect (see above: evolution can be messy), but Starbucks is working hard to keep their DNA as diverse as possible.

As a strategy consultant to small business owners, I spend an extraordinary amount of time in workplaces that are homogeneous at best. Some of this is natural. If the business only employs three people, and those three people are mom, dad, and junior, then the gene pool is pretty slim. But this lack of diversity extends way beyond small family companies, and it exists in companies owned by people of all cultures. Even when there is ‘visual’ diversity, with a token someone-or-other as a nod to social compliance, I often observe that the token person is sidelined, either through genuine bigotry in the back office or passive discrimination in the form of un-inspected biases present in the other members of the group.

This isn’t just about race either. Businesses that won’t hire millennials, senior citizens, people with tattoos, gays, trans-gendered, people of different religions, the differently abled, people who dress funny; those businesses are crimping their DNA just as surely as a business that won’t hire someone of a different race or culture.

Why do we need these people, these different people, to work with us? Sure, it’s the right thing to do, but I’ve noticed that this doesn’t motivate a lot of people.  No, it all goes back to Mother Nature, or at least, that fatty organ that sits in the center of your skull. That organ, your brain, may be the consistency of warm butter, but think of it like a muscle (really it’s not, it’s mostly fats). But still, think of it like a muscle. If you don’t use a muscle for a long, long time, it atrophies. When you go to use it again, it fails you. If you only use a muscle one way – for instance, if the only time you use your lats (upper back) is to put away the dishes – then your muscles will fail you if you must throw a punch to protect yourself or push something heavy.

Your brain has similar characteristics. It builds itself around the things you do all the time in all the same ways. If you find yourself in a rut, there is an actual rut in your brain, a tiny groove that reflects that you are doing things the way you always do them. The brain can be a lazy little guy if we don’t stimulate it. And businesses can become very, very lazy entities. Businesses readily fall into the rut of doing things the way they always did them. They look at all potential customers as a mirror-image of themselves. When they consider their competitors, they start from assumptions that are borne of their own thinking patterns. They fail to evolve. Neanderthals. Aardvarks.

When a business embraces many different perspectives, thought processes, world views, and communication styles, it fires up the collective brain, which – when stimulated – is more than willing to create new grooves. They improve the way they do things, they envision more multifaceted consumers, and they outthink their competitors. They evolve.  It’s sort of a chicken-and-egg thing; Did the business that welcomed diversity make the people within it more diverse, or was it people that were willing to be diverse in the first place that welcomed and created a diverse workplace?

The business case for diversity continues to build, and business owners who ignore it do so at their own peril. Learning to embrace and fully incorporate people with different backgrounds and experiences, even if the differences sometimes confuse you or even make you uncomfortable, will improve your business bottom line.

Since the majority of us are either just finishing or just beginning our Sabbath, or possibly using some part of the weekend for the restoration that a bit of meditation can bring, I thought it might be a good time to do a whirlwind ethics review.  You say it's been a while since you took a philosophy class? Well hang on to your hats - we're going to make this one a quick romp through business ethics and decision-making.

Everyone has their boxers in a twist these days over all the corruption associated with Chinese-based business and Chinese products. Of course, American business has had its fair share of run-ins with the moral police in the past seven years. But when we dig deeply into where ethics problems in business start, we end up asking, "was that person a bad apple, or were they in a bad barrel?" If we're really honest, we might say some version of "there but for the grace of God go I."

People don't generally understand ethics. Most of us understand character, and nearly all of us will readily agree on black and white ethical issues, like murder and stealing. Well, stealing big things anyway. But the issues we are faced with as adults are frequently shades of gray, and in a fast-paced business environment we must have a clear understanding of ethics and an ethical framework for decision making - before a snap decision trips up and makes us wish we'd had better sense.

A psychologist named Lawrence Kohlberg developed a theory to explain how we develop moral reasoning skills. His research focused on how people make decisions and determine what is right, and his theory is that there are three broad ranges of moral cognitive development, each with two stages. Hang with me here - this really is interesting.

Level 1: Preconventional. People who are at this level are rules based. The rules for deciding what is right and what is wrong exist outside their thinking, and they are moral because they are obedient. When these people are not sure what to do, they consult an authority or a rule-book.

• Stage 1: Obedience and punishment orientation - people do what is right to avoid being punished.
• Stage 2: Self service and exchange orientation - people do what is right when it is in their immediate interest to do so. They decide what is right based on whether or not it feels like a "fair deal" to them.

Level 2: Conventional. People at this level have internalized the shared norms of society or of their immediate societal group (family, church, work group, etc.). Their sense of what is right is based on the rules and laws of their group, and they are motivated to do what is right to live up to their roles and responsibilities within the group. Kohlberg's research found most American adults were in Level 2.

• Stage 3: Conformity, mutual expectations and interpersonal accord. The individual lives up to what is expected of them by their peers. They demonstrate stereotypical "good" behavior, and are unlikely to hold opinions about what is right or wrong that conflict with the group.
• Stage 4: Social accord. Individuals uphold the laws and contribute to the group and society as a whole. Their only conflict with upholding laws is if/when laws conflict with their group norms. Most of the debate around abortion, for instance, is between adults at a Level 2/Stage 4 in their moral cognitive development.

Level 3: Postconventional, or Principled. A principled individual has gone beyond the expectations of and identification with other groups' norms, laws and expectations. They make decisions autonomously, consistent with principles of justice and rights (for a great review of what these principles of justice and rights are, go to Robert Cavalier's brief and readily understandable description of deontological theories). Kohlberg asserts that very few adults in society actually function at this level.

• Stage 5: Social contract and individual rights. Individuals at this stage are aware that people hold a variety of value systems, and they understand that rules are relative to each group. Therefore, they uphold rules because they are a social contract, and they uphold nonrelative values and rights regardless of the majority opinion.
• Stage 6: Universal ethical principles. The individual follows self-chosen principles of justice and rights, and acts in accordance with those principles even at great personal cost.

Well, at least we know what it is we're supposed to be striving for here. It's definitely beyond the scope of this blog to walk us through an ethics course, but if you're interested in an accessible text on business ethics, I highly recommend the book Managing Business Ethics, Straight Talk About How to Do it Right by Linda Trevino and Katherine Nelson.

So, how does this help us? Well, mostly it gets us thinking. It's useful to know there are levels and stages to moral cognitive development (at least, according to Kohlberg's theory), and to consider at which level we are operating. Just knowing there is a structure causes us to think about ethics in a more sophisticated way.  Now, if you just add a few ethical framework cheat sheets, you'll find yourself less likely than the average Jane to make a decision you regret later.  Here are a few examples of ethical tests used by some organizations:

Rotary International has a four-way test. They suggest members consider these points when making a decision:

• Is it the truth?
• Is it fair to all concerned?
• Will it build good will and better relationships?
• Will it be beneficial to all concerned?

This next test is attributed to Texas Instruments, but many companies use something very similar:

• Is the action legal?
• Does it comply with your best understanding of our values and principles?
• If you do it, will you feel bad?
• How will it look in the newspaper?
• If you know it's wrong, don't do it! Period.
• If you're not sure, ask.

Over the years I have developed my own decision-testing system that I use in conjunction with a set of clear values that I have written down (we can't decide if a decision is consistent with our values if we're not perfectly clear what our values are).  Having these tools doesn't keep me from agonizing over the really difficult decisions, but it sure lets me sleep better once I've made them.

The point to all of this is that ethics require thinking. History has provided us with a huge offering of moral texts- the Bible, the Talmud, the K'oran, the I Ching, the Sutras - and even their combined wisdom can't provide a prescription for every situation we will confront in our lifetimes. The ability to function ethically is dependent on being conscious of our value systems, the implications of the decisions with which we are confronted, and our reasoning for making each decision.

Wow. Don't you just feel more righteous already? Yeah, OK, but that's just conventional, and who wants to stop there?

Reference:
Kohlberg, L. (1976) Moral stages and moralization: The cognitive-development approach. In Moral development and behavior: Theory, research and social Issues. Ed. Lickona, T., New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

(c) Andrea M. Hill, 2007

Watching the movie "Something's Gotta Give" last night got me thinking about power paradigms and how they play out among individuals and within small businesses. In the movie, Jack Nicholson portrays a 63-year-old over-the-top stereotypical playboy who only dates 20-something women. He is simultaneously an anachronism and a highly sympathetic character in the movie, partly because the one 20-something relationship we see him in is one in which the woman enjoys a balance of power with him.

Balance of power. This is the thing that determines the difference between an off-color joke and a sexual harassment. Balance of power differentiates between a fist-fight and an assault, an argument and an attack, a gamble and a fraud. Every business owner, manager, and supervisor must be acutely aware of the balance of power between them and their subordinates.

My particular reason for thinking about this issue now is that this super-heated political season has brought to my attention numerous instances of employees feeling discomfort and dismay over the political climate at their places of work. After spending many years as the only center-left member of an organization with far-right ownership, I can certainly relate to the tip-toeing and side-stepping one must do to avoid an argument that has no value to the business at hand. But for people reporting to a supervisor, manager, or worse - business owner - who holds political opinions significantly different from their own, the discomfort goes beyond the desire to avoid fruitless discussion. It touches on their fears about keeping their job or being considered viable for promotion. The imbalance of power can turn political discussion and pressure into a form of abuse.

The same is true for holding forth on religious beliefs, divisive social issues, or any other non-business - and therefore unnecessary - topic. Even if you would never discriminate against someone because their belief system is different than your own, it is the mere perception of threat - due to imbalance of power - that causes employees to feel threatened or uncomfortable.

The primary goal of a business is to create value for its customers, and each business relies on its employees to deliver that value. Employees who feel respected, safe, and appreciated do a much better job of delivering customer value than employees who feel compelled to put up self-protective walls. One way to cultivate happy, confident employees is to tell them to leave the political buttons, cause t-shirts, religious missives, and other non-business messages and opinions at home. Let them know you respect and honor each member of your organization, and part of that respect means allowing them to feel safe and harmonious at work so they have energy and motivation to pursue their individual interests and causes when they are off the clock.

Beyond avoiding unnecessary conflict at work, keeping divisive topics out of the workplace will yield one other essential benefit: Creativity. The more commonality a community enjoys the less creativity that community puts out, so the more diversity you can encourage in your people the more that creative sparks are likely to fly.

Which only sort of explains why Diane Keaton's character in the movie would ultimately choose Jack Nicholson over Keanu Reeves. That part of the movie just didn't make sense to me. But hey, the point is, to each her own, right?

(c) 2010. Andrea M. Hill

I'm a big fan of consultants, and not just because I launched a consulting firm this year. I've hired consultants often throughout my years as a chief executive at several large firms, and have found their assistance to be invaluable. I start with the premise "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room," and go from there.

I had to figure out how to use consultants. Nobody taught me, and I used them incorrectly several times before I learned my lessons. Interestingly, the consultants themselves were rarely willing to tell me what I needed to know to benefit from them the most. So this column is for all those willing learners out there who may wish to hire a consultant and want to know how to extract every dollar of value.

Hire the Right Consultant

This sounds crazy simple, but it's not. It seems like every laid-off executive from one coast to the next is a consultant. Many consultants claim to have skills they cannot actually demonstrate in real life. Just because a person has ideas about marketing doesn't mean they've actually tested those ideas on their own budget. And just because someone worked directly for a CEO, say, as an HR Executive, doesn't mean they know beans about how to lay out a business strategy.

Vet your consultants carefully. Make sure the consultant has actually had a job directly in the area of expertise for which you are seeking their advice. Ask them to tell you about their biggest mistakes in those roles. One of the things you are paying for with a consultant is the opportunity to learn from the consultant's mistakes and possibly avoid making some of your own. If they haven't made any noteworthy mistakes, they either weren't doing much or they weren't doing it for long.

Do your due diligence. Interview carefully and check references. While it is much easier to cut the cord with a consultant than an employee, you risk spending a lot of money on inadequate consulting services before you realize it. Hire a consultant with the same care you would hire an employee.

Ensure potential consultants enjoy the highest level of professional respect for their integrity and business ethics. This person will be in a position to suggest that you do certain things with your business. You don't want to be at the starting gate wondering if you are about to do something shady.

Ask potential consultants how they would approach specific issues in your business. If they are reluctant to discuss their methodology, either they don't have one or they are paranoid that you will take their idea and run with it. A good consultant isn't just selling a great methodology - she is also selling her thought process and her ability to analyze issues and grasp nuances. A confident professional will happily discuss actual business issues and give you lots of ideas about how you could resolve them - with or without her.

A Consultant is Not a Contractor

This is an area that is often confusing. A consultant is someone who advises you on your business or a segment of your business. The consultant participates in reviewing history, analyzing performance, and making recommendations about how to proceed. Typically this work is done with the expectation that people within the organization will be taught to do the work the consultant is spearheading. A good consultant is an excellent teacher, handing off business knowledge with each recommendation, analysis, and suggestion.

Consultants are often confused with contractors. A contractor may be hired to manage a specific project or do specific jobs. This person sets his own schedule and bills by the project or by the hour. The contractor may or may not set direction (he may take direction from the consultant).

When the Consultant is Doing Nothing

Beware any professional who blazes through your doors with suggestions flying. Sometimes the most important work a consultant can do is observe. Every business that is still in business is doing many things right. A good consultant doesn't wish to undo those things - she wants to supplement and refine them. So if she tells you she needs time to observe, ask questions of your staff, and observe some more, trust that.

A Consultant is Not a Magician

Just because your consultant knows how to do something that you don't doesn't mean she can make it happen tomorrow. Are you looking for cultural change? Give it two years. A major shift in your brand perception? Minimum 10 months. Implement a new selling strategy? Same. Implementing new operating systems? Six months to plan, 4 months to implement/go-live, 2 more months before people stop complaining, a year to true benefits. A consultant's superior knowledge and experience in an area of change can make the process go smoother, but some things take as long as they take, and many things are dependent on your organization's acceptance and participation style.

A Consultant is Not a Genie

If a person tells you he or she can guide you through a major business initiative without making mistakes, run for the exits. You aren't paying for the benefit of someone who never makes mistakes - that doesn't exist. You are paying for the benefit of someone who makes more sophisticated mistakes because the dumb mistakes are behind her. You are paying for the benefit of someone who knows her craft well enough to suggest something new and possibly groundbreaking with reasonable expectation of success. You are paying for the opportunity to take it up a notch, not play it safe. If you just want to play it safe you can do that without consulting expense.

You May Not Always Understand - or Agree With - Your Consultant

If you already knew everything you wouldn't need a consultant (remember the saying "If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room"). If your consultant is truly an expert, she will talk about things you don't understand. Ask her to break it down for you, explain where she is coming from and to help you understand it. That's an appropriate role for the consultant-as-teacher.  But if you're arguing with your consultant about whether or not she is right, take a step back. You may actually be arguing about your fear of taking a risk or your need to understand something better before you proceed - and those arguments are understandable. But if you're arguing about something you don't know as if you know it, what's the point?

Your Consultant is Not Your Employee

Your consultant is not your employee. Your consultant should be a challenger, ruffle your feathers, and tell you want you need to hear (versus what you want to hear).  Your consultant should be unwaveringly direct.

Your consultant will not drop everything when you need her. If she's good (and remember, that's what you need), she has lots of other customers.

Good consultants aren't cheap. You want a consultant with the skills and experience to be paid at the top of her field, and her hourly rate will reflect that.  Think of it as rent-an-executive for business owners who otherwise couldn't afford that skillset.

Still Want to Hire a Consultant?

Does this sound daunting?

Well, business is demanding. It makes us take risks, spend money we don't want to spend, and put our identities and self-worth on the line. We hire consultants to help us take those risks and make necessary changes.  An excellent consultant can make a huge difference to your bottom line and your optimism for your business. Once you find the right one, remember that she is not a magician, a contractor, a genie, or an employee. Plan it right, and you'll have engaged an expert, a business partner, and a support system.

Thoughts on avoiding knock-off designer jewelry for custom jewelers

The subject of whose idea was it anyway is a sore one in the world of jewelry design. Designers throw their life savings and energy into creating a jewelry line, and worry (with good reason) about being knocked off. When they try to get a design patent, it’s nearly impossible. Why? Because it’s difficult to prove an original concept in a medium that has been well-documented for thousands of years. So how do we address the issue of knock-off designer jewelry?

Here’s the advice I give my design clients: Do what you do better than anyone else. Refine your designer aesthetic so it is clearly your own. Design cohesive collections that will work well at retail. Establish yourself as a quality, reliable manufacturer and service organization. And keep innovating – within your specific and identifiable design aesthetic – to ensure a steady supply of new, exciting products. Sure, someone will likely copy you at some point, but your strong business model will protect you against one – or even a dozen – individual knockoffs of your line.

Enter the Custom Jeweler

For the most part designers have come to accept this reality, even if it bites from time to time. They realize the one sure way to stay ahead of competitors is to keep innovating and improving. But there’s another area of possible infringement that is grayer than being knocked off by another jewelry designer, and that’s the design role of custom jewelers, particularly custom jewelers carrying designer lines.

I am often asked by sales staff and managers at retail stores producing custom work to tell them how to handle consumers asking for designer knock-offs. From a designer perspective, it’s a simple answer (absolutely not!). From the retailer’s perspective the problem is more complex; it involves everything from dealing with a tricky customer issue to being able to recognize the request for what it is.

The problem presents itself like this. A customer looks (often extensively) at the designer jewelry in the showcase (or online, or at another showroom). Next, the customer asks to speak with someone about creating a custom design. And she says something like:

“I’d like a ring. I want it to be made of yellow gold, but a really bright, rich yellow gold. And can you give the surface a really textured finish, like maybe with a lot of fine hatchy lines in it, but still shiny? Also, I like those rough looking diamonds, in gray or black. And maybe a lot of the little square gray diamonds set in a channel around the band. And when you set the big diamond, I don’t want those prongy things. I want the metal that comes up all around the main diamond like a tiny wall, matching the shape of the diamond.”

Oh, you want a Todd Reed ring?

The customer is often a lot less subtle. “I have an antique locket. Can you clean it up and put it on a chain like those lockets from Just Jules, and maybe add a few gemstones to the chain like she does?”

When the request is a blatant attempt to knock-off a designer at a lower price, a jeweler with integrity always says no. A good jeweler usually knows – or can find out – what their client has been looking at prior to the request – their jewelry inspiration. If it’s clear that the customer wants a custom-made designer knock-off, the response must be clear. “That look is the result of a designer pouring his heart and probably all his finances into creating it. My store will always honor that and will never copy it.”

Sometimes the request is less cut-and-dried. For instance, maybe someone absolutely loves the hammered look on the Pamela Froman jewelry, but doesn’t like the scale or design style. On the one hand, Pamela’s finish is a deeper, somewhat chiseled finish – in my opinion more distinctive than most hammered metal finishes. On the other hand, history is filled with examples of hammered metal finishes. As long as the jeweler seeks to create something entirely different, with the only similarity being a hammered finish, this can be an ethical choice. I view this as an example of a customer using a designer’s technique to express an element that they appreciate but for which they do not have the words (i.e., “hammered finish”).

I Made That Years Ago

If there’s one thing I hear over and over in retail stores – and which I admit sets my teeth on edge – it’s a custom jeweler looking at a piece of a designer’s collection and saying, “well that’s not original. I made something like that 10 (15, 25, 30) years ago!” (if you’ve said this, don’t cringe too much – I’ve heard it from at least several dozen custom jewelers by now). Well, that may be so, but one item with a similar element or look is hardly an example of preceding a designer’s entire design aesthetic. Most people who have made jewelry for any period of time will eventually create a version of just about everything.

So what’s the difference between a having on occasion designed with byzantine elements (mixed precious metals, mixed colored gemstones, scrollwork, granulation, talismans) and, say, Chanel’s 2010 Paris-Byzance collection? Well mainly, it’s the word collection. The Paris-Byzance collection is the result of a very intentional act of using Byzantine elements to create a cohesive and entirely self-contained grouping of jewelry (and apparel in this example). So to knock-off a piece of jewelry from that collection isn’t simply to draw a similar page from history. When a designer creates a cohesive collection using historical elements, they augment history.

What’s a Custom Jeweler to Do?

One of the most important things we can do is create a strong sense in our communities of being trustworthy. Even if the occasional customer doesn’t appreciate being told no (and will invariably find a less ethical jeweler who will accommodate them), word will get around that your jewelry store is the one that can be trusted. That’s worth more than any one commission. But that just addresses the risk of saying no.

What about the more challenging problem of recognizing when you’re being asked to create a knockoff? It’s impossible to know all the designer jewelry lines on the market. But it’s also essential for anyone in the jewelry industry to be particularly curious about and interested in the work that is being created, so one of the best tools in your toolbox is to be informed. Even if you don’t carry designer goods (though why wouldn’t you?) shop the designer areas of jewelry trade shows, look at designer news in jewelry trade magazines, watch particularly savvy designer retailers like Gump’s, Ylang 23 and I Gorman, and study your craft. And at the very least, it’s easy to ask a customer where they got their idea from.

Learn to distinguish (and make sure your staff knows how to distinguish) the difference between a request for a knock-off and a request for an element using a designer’s work as an example. You’ve chosen to be in the jewelry business, so let’s all be serious about jewelry. If you can’t immediately think of other examples of a particular technique or design element, do some research. If something is truly unique, be prepared to say you won’t copy it, and suggest to the customer that they invest in the real deal.

Most of the custom jewelers I know take immense pride in creating custom jewelry that fits within the design aesthetic and standards of their own shop, and wouldn’t be at all satisfied with simply knocking of someone else’s work.  And perhaps this overview of how to think about the designer/knockoff issue will prove to be useful as you continue to refine and promote your very own designs and brand.

I can't believe I even have to say this, but . . .

Now that the election is over and we are all moving forward with our lives, I just have to call out one form of business owner behavior which is never acceptable.

We don't get to tell people how to vote.

I heard horror stories from neighbors and friends of letters from the CEO coming home on Monday November 4, warning of dire consequences if one candidate or the other won. I talked to a shaken business acquaintance who was pulled aside by her manager and scolded that he expected more of her than her professed affinity for her candidate (employees who favored the manager's candidate were not similarly demeaned). Business owners took it upon themselves to tell their employees how to vote - in some cases or else.

We don't get to tell people how to vote. This violates one of the most important responsibilities we have as human beings - respect for the other's right to his or her own values and opinions.

We don't get to feign concern about our employees' preferences, using the condescending narrative that we worry they don't know what's best for them. We don't get to make it uncomfortable for some employees to talk about their politics but not others (i.e., those who agree with us).

We hire people for their talents and their dependability. We want them to bring their whole selves to work, so we can benefit from their ideas and their motivation. When we discount their personal authority by telling them how to vote, we show our employees that we don't trust them to make adult decisions. How can that that message possibly help our businesses thrive?

I know the next general election is four whole years away. But let's try to remember this. We don't get to tell people how to vote.

We discuss both Fairtrade and Fairmined in relation to jewelry industry supply chain transparency, and it’s no wonder that people get confused by the two.

First, don’t think they’re both part of the same thing! At one time they did have a partnership, but after that they decided to pursue their “metals” goals separately. The major difference is that Fairtrade covers a broad range of goods – well beyond metals and mining. In fact, entire communities in Europe call themselves “Fairtrade Communities,” and work hard to only provide goods that are certified as Fairtrade. Fairmined is only concerned with mining. On the other hand, Fairmined has more mines signed up, since they have been in the metals business much longer than Fairtrade. Both are working hard to sign up new members, though the process is intensive and takes a long time to complete.

Second, don’t confuse “Fair Trade” with “Fairtrade.” The Fairtrade label is a standard. Fair Trade - with a space - is the concept of fair trade, but not a specific standard or program.

Finally – get involved. When you buy your metals through a Fairmined or Fairtrade initiative, you become part of the social standard, which means your metal supply chain is audited. This is a good thing. Each of us must take a position in the supply chain as part of the sustainability movement. One of these two standards for metals is a great place to start!

So here is a quick comparison of these two different approaches to supply chain transparency and responsible behavior:

Issue	Fairtrade	Fairmined
Purpose	Fairtrade is about better prices, decent working conditions and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers. It’s about supporting the development of thriving farming and worker communities that have more control over their futures and protecting the environment in which they live and work. And it’s your opportunity to connect with the people who grow the produce that we all depend on.	Fairmined is an assurance label that certifies gold from empowered responsible artisanal and small-scale mining organizations. It transforms mining into an active force for good, ensuring social development and environmental protection, providing everyone with a source of gold to be proud of.
Guiding Principles	http://fairtrade.org.uk/en/what-is-fairtrade/what-fairtrade-does	http://www.fairmined.org/what-is-fairmined/
Governing Body	Fairtrade Foundation	The Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM)
Set Payment to mine based on weight	$2,000 per kilo	$4,000 per kilo
Price of Gold paid to mine	101% - 105% of London Fix	95% - 97% of London Fix
Who can use the mark?	Members	Members
Full Standards	https://intranet.fairtrade.org.uk/ fairfile/index.php/s/T2CJodBX959CvmS	http://www.fairmined.org/the-fairmined-standard/

If you go online and search for information on business ethics, you’ll find a few interesting things. The first thing you’ll notice is that the people doing the most thinking about ethics in business happen to live and work in academia. There is a lot of theory about business ethics.

Of course, theoretically, if every business person behaved in an ethical manner, we would have little need for any sort of regulation or legislation around business activities. I know. That sentence cracks me up too. In reality, we take the most egregious offenses and legislate them. Discrimination requires legislation, because there will always be some numskull who thinks it’s OK to only hire people just like him. Stealing requires legislation because . . . well, I can’t come up with a reason, but somehow it does.

I don’t think we need a lot of theory around business ethics – though ethics theory has kept philosophers busy for thousands of years. Fun to study, harder to disseminate. No, I think business ethics can be made pretty, well, basic.

Basic Character

When my now-adult children brought home their Character Counts homework from elementary school, I was a bit mystified. I agree wholeheartedly that children must be taught trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring, and citizenship from their earliest days. But I didn’t understand why they were using precious school time for a big Character Counts roll-out. Then I hung out with some of the other parents, and I began to understand why. But I digress. The fact is that basic character concepts such as these, when thoughtfully applied all day every day, are a powerful business ethics application.

The tough part is achieving the thoughtfully applied all day every day aspect. This is work for real grown-ups.

Let’s take a look at what Character Counts says about Trustworthiness.

Be honest. Don’t deceive, cheat, or steal. Be reliable – do what you say you’ll do.
Have the courage to do the right thing. Build a good reputation.
Be loyal – stand by your family, friends, and country.

Plain and simple, right? Maybe not so much. The toughest one is the one right in the middle: have the courage to do the right thing. That one is tough, because when we do the right thing, people might (probably will) get upset with us. Because doing the right thing often comes with some personal or professional sacrifice. Because doing the right thing will often set you apart as naïve or rigid in the eyes of your peers. That’s why courage is part of that sentence.

Now let’s take a look at what Character Counts says about Fairness.

Play by the rules. Take turns and share. Be open-minded; listen to others.
Don’t take advantage of others. Don’t blame others carelessly.
Treat all people fairly.

Don’t take advantage of others. If you stop and think about it, really think about it, it’s shocking how often we take advantage of others. If you stopped shopping at The Gap, H&M, or Abercrombie & Fitch when you found out they used child labor, then you have a grip on this concept. As an 8-year-old, you likely interpreted this concept to mean not tricking your 4-year-old sibling into doing something naughty. As adults, the executives at The Gap seriously failed to abstract the concept.

The Character Counts section on Responsibility says to think before you act – consider the consequences. In 3^rd grade that means not going to the park instead of doing your homework. As a corporation, that means considering the consequences for all your stakeholders (consumers, employees, stock holders, vendors – in other words, people) well into the future.

Well into the future. That’s one of three things that sets the elementary school version of Character Counts apart from the adult version of Business Ethics. Children are capable of being responsible for a much shorter future than adults. Their responsibility typically extends to days or weeks, not months or years. When adults make decisions, we need to be responsible for months and years, decades. Business leaders, particularly those in corporations that have significant global reach or access to capital, need to think in terms of generations.

The second thing that sets the elementary version of character training apart from the business version is distance. Ask a child what you can do to help a person in need (part of Caring), and their answer will likely point to someone very close to home. As adults and business leaders, we must be able to abstract this concept to people very different from us and often very far from us. As a society, we’re not even very good at this close to home. To be ethical in business we must be able to consider people far from us, and extend things like respect, responsibility, caring, and trustworthiness to them.

The third thing that sets the elementary version apart from the adult version is to consider these principles in conjunction with one another. Imagine Vikram Pandit (CitiBank CEO) thinking through the purchase of a $50 million private jet after taking $45 billion in taxpayer funds.

Lesser Self:           “I hate the jet I have to fly around in right now. It’s not as comfortable as I would like.”

Better Self:           “It’s probably not as bad as flying around in coach on a commercial airline, like most business people have to do.” (be compassionate)

Lesser Self:           “But I work so hard for my $11 million dollars per year!”

Better Self:          “I dunno. Is that actually logical? Do I really work 261.9 times harder than the average person? I mean, I don’t actually work over 10,000 hours per week. I work a lot, but so do people who have to work two or three jobs. I have to think hard, I guess, but so do small business owners with their lives mortgaged to the hilt, many of whom are my borrowers.” (be accountable for your words, actions, and attitudes)

Lesser Self:           “Well, maybe I don’t work more or harder than everyone else, but my work matters 261.9 times more than everyone else’s!”

Better Self:           “Now I’m just being an ass.” (resisting the urge to suck one’s own exhaust*  *Not found at the Character Counts website)

Better Self:           “My company just accepted a major payout from the American taxpayer because we’re in financial trouble. Maybe the right thing to do at this moment is suck it up and fly around on my older model, less comfortable private jet. I can buy a new one later.” (Set a good example for others.  Use self-control. Think before you act. Etc. etc.)

If you want to develop stronger business ethics in your place of work, here’s my recommendation. Using the Character Counts website, or any other good resource of solid universal values, create a set of principles that you would like your business to live by. When you need to make a decision about how to treat someone, who to hire, whether or not to implement a policy, which vendor to choose, how to respond to a customer complaint, how to address an internal manufacturing deficiency – the list goes on – when you need to make business decisions, refer to your business principles.

Make sure you consider each decision as it extends into the future, as it affects those far away, and using multiple principles in conjunction with one another. Does this take a bit of time? Yes, particularly until it becomes second nature. But this method will ensure you sleep better at night, it serves as a powerful role model, and in my experience, it ultimately returns significant financial rewards to the business. Not bad for a little grade-school philosophy.

Last week as I was driving home from the grocery store I was dangerously cut off by a driver who couldn’t wait for me to make a safe left turn. Apparently, she had just gotten a phone call that her house was on fire, because she cut around from behind me and turned left in front of me. I’m long past being shocked by poor driver behavior, but I was pretty disgusted to see that the woman was roughly my age and had a car full of kids in the pre-teen to teenage years. When I made a comment to the effect of “what can those children possibly be learning from that woman?” my five-year-old sagely responded, “not all grownups do the right thing you know.”

Yes, I know.

I remember having a wonderful discussion with my teenage son about ethics, when we talked for hours about why some things are ethical but not legal, and why some things are legal but not ethical. Both his world (the world of school and peer pressure) and my world (the world of business and peer pressure) present ample fodder for the ethical/legal grist.

I got a little more fodder today.

A colleague has invented a new product, and is working to bring it to market. When speaking with someone in his industry, he shared a small amount of information about his new product, and he was probed by that someone (let’s call her The Donna) for more details. He bought an item from The Donna, and that was it. Well, sort of.

Today I was looking into something for him, and I saw that the domain for the specific brand name he is in the process of trade-marking has been taken. I looked it up, and saw that it had been taken by The Donna. Her take? It’s just business, right?

Perhaps it depends on what business is synonymous with. To me, business means a profession (indicating specialized knowledge), a means to make a living, a way of providing a means to make a living to others, a way to provide customers with goods and services they need at a price they are willing to pay. Business should be honorable, meaning that one can give one’s word and have it respected and trusted as if it were a signature on paper. Business should be competitive, which means working harder and practicing harder so you get ahead based on doing something better – meaning more creatively, more passionately, with higher quality – than everyone else. Business should result in the honorable creation of wealth beyond oneself.

There are some who believe business is synonymous with a racket, who believe that competition means getting ahead at all costs, who think free enterprise means they have the freedom be disingenuous to get the result they want. Fortune Magazine published an article last week entitled “What Were They Smoking,” about the head honchos of the investment firms who lost so much money on the subprime mortgage fiasco. Honestly, if 10% of the subprime mortgages actually went into default (our national current homeowner default rates are actually lower than they were in the early 1980s), we would only have 1.5% of all mortgages in default. That’s devastating to the individual homeowners, but not to the economy at large. You know what is devastating to the economy at large? The way the investment firms packaged, repackaged, then re-boxed and ziplocked the subprime mortgage paper to make insane amounts of money on their money. That is not honorable creation of wealth beyond oneself – that is getting ahead at all costs.

Just like Enron. Like Arthur Anderson. And I believe, like The Donna.

Because at the heart of that behavior is a broken belief that just because something is legal, that makes it ethical. Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe it’s a failure to consider what is ethical in the first place. Maybe it’s such a supreme sense of selfishness that other people don’t actually matter. Kant says that we are only behaving ethically when we are treating others as an end unto themselves. The investment companies who are suffering subprime fallout didn’t consider the other players – they were only looking at their own spreads and market shares. Enron didn’t consider their thousands of stakeholders and business partners – they were only looking at their market value and personal gain. And The Donna didn’t consider my friend the inventor. She only considered an opportunity to make a buck on another person’s idea.

As my friend rightly pointed out, The Donna doesn’t understand Karma. But she should. Because choosing not to consider others ultimately results in not being considered ourselves, which is fitting. And if the failures of massive institutions such as Arthur Anderson and Enron, if the billions of dollars of losses of Merrill Lynch and other Wall Street firms don’t teach us that karma happens, then what will?

I know this may sound old marmish, and I’m only in my early 40s, so that’s not my excuse. But I do remember something my great Aunt Carrie taught me a long time ago. When I once became a bit snarky about an esoteric table manner, she said to me, “Honey, your table manners aren’t for you. They are to demonstrate that you have respect for others. But using them might just prevent you from messing up your lovely dress.” So the next time we’re thumbing our nose at some big business CEO or billion dollar financial institution for doing something that ruins wealth for thousands of people or puts a dent in the economy, let’s try to remember that our own failures to be mannerly – to be ethical regardless of legality – are just a small-scale demonstration of the same behavior.

Just what will our children learn from adults like us?

(c) 2007, Andrea M. Hill

I got to thinking this morning about one of my more entertaining (in hindsight) experiences with the venerable TSA (Transportation Security Administration). In 2005, as I rushed from one geographical location to another, a highly trained (I'm sure) TSA agent did a hand search of my purse and retrieved from it a short tweezer in a tiny leather case. This was a travel tweezer, designed to take up very little space in a handbag and measuring only 2" in length. With flat tips (I don't like the pointy ones).

The agent informed me that I would have to surrender the tweezers.

I laughed and said, "you're joking, right?" The young man was clearly not born with a sense of humor, and my laughter didn't improve his mood.

"No," he said. "I'm serious."

"How can that be? Tweezers aren't listed on any TSA unauthorized list I've ever seen!"

"Ma'am, as a TSA agent I'm authorized to use my judgment to remove any item I believe could compromise the safety of an aircraft. I'm afraid you'll have to surrender the tweezers." (I am not exaggerating – the conversation was so crazy it is ingrained on my memory).

This is where I perhaps lost my intelligence, if not my cool. Without raising my voice or acting angry, I said, "Then perhaps we should be discussing your judgment here. It would be a lot easier for me to kill the pilot with one of the pens you left in my purse, than it would be to kill him with a 2" tweezer with flat tips."

OK, obviously, we should be talking about my judgment here, and not the humorless young fellow's. Because as soon as I uttered the words "kill the pilot" I was quietly escorted to a small cubicle at the corner of the security area, to be interviewed by another serious fellow who clearly found it feasible that a chubby, middle-aged woman with more round-trip tickets to her name than the average consumer was planning to murder the pilot with a Sharpie or a 2" tweezer.

After about 45 minutes of lecture, a serious admonition never to utter the words "kill the pilot" again (I'm serious), and the ultimate loss of my $12 tweezers, I boarded the flight. I'm sure the flight crew had been warned and was terrified.

Some of our communication is insane. Let's not get into the types of insane conversations we have had the past eight years as a country. Let's just talk about the insane conversations we have at work and in our inter-job (i.e., traveling businesswoman and TSA agent) communications.

The word insane means to be lacking in logical or practical basis. I started thinking about the TSA incident this morning as I reflected on a business team that recently debated an issue that seemed to be entirely lacking in logic or soundness. But unfortunately, that team is not unusual.

Insane business communications include:

• Discussions about whether or not to allow two consenting adults to hug one another upon greeting, for fear that a sexual harassment suit will result.
• Discussions about whether or not to inform customers of a significant flaw in a product they purchased in good faith.
• Customers desperately trying to explain to customer service reps a problem with a product, only to be handed off repeatedly to a new person, requiring a new explanation, because nobody has the authority to simply solve the problem.
• Invasive oversight of adult behavior. For instance, one company instituted a global "no-walking policy" after a group of employees decided to use their half-hour lunch for walking instead of eating.
• Employees hiding a minor employee injury, because the consequences for safety infractions are perceived to be greater than the consequences for employee injury.
• Employees hiding errors, because the consequences for making mistakes are so great at the personal or department level that the employees do not consider the global customer impact of failure to correct mistakes.

The list could (and does) go on and on. Why do we have insane business conversations? Two reasons: insufficient ethics, and policy constraints.

An ethics constraint occurs any time an individual has failed to develop sufficient control over their own feelings, behavior, and actions, or any time a company's policies or management expectations create conflict between ethical behavior and company requirements. Ethical individuals will stand up to the policy or expectations, but the individual cost can be extremely high.

Policy constraints occur any time a business policy has been drafted for a narrow purpose, but is implemented in such a way that it must be applied to a broad swath of issues. Rigid controls limiting employee empowerment, punitive safety and error policies, and authoritarian control over adult behavior are all examples. Other policy constraints, such as extreme reaction to sexual harassment rules and regulations, exist because of the real fear of litigation and the high costs associated with it. As with any law, there is always risk that unethical individuals will distort them for their own benefit, at the expense of the intention of the law.

Those of us who still possess an appreciation for what is logical and practical, and most importantly, for what is ethical, must redouble our efforts to demonstrate in all aspects of our lives sane communications. This includes asking questions when a policy or practice is not ethical or logical. We may not get the policy to change, but at least we have introduced the question of its sanity to others. 

(c) 2008. Andrea M. Hill

This year Pope Francis washed the feet of women, the disabled, prisoners, and non-Catholics. A symbolic and archaic act to be sure, but no less radical now than it was 2,000 years ago. To wash someone's feet is to submit yourself before them; to say that you are no more important than they are. I am not a Catholic, but this act of humility speaks to me; it inspires me.

I spent the past week in Las Vegas at a trade show. I saw many acts of kindness, friendship, and even love. Trade shows can be such an exciting time as friends and business associates across an industry gather together for what may be the only time each year. But trade shows are also a microcosm of the world we live in, and if you are aware, you will see many instances of jockeying for power and position.

The most obvious is the behavior with service people. Sure, if you were gentry in the Victorian era, it would have been considered untoward to be thanking and greeting your 'staff'. But seriously? We don't have royal or noble classes in America, and those Victorian rules don't apply. So when I see people treating service staff as if they are invisible, it makes me cringe. These people aren't serving us because they owe it to us, they are serving us because they need a job and the hotel/restaurant is providing an experience. Plus, it would be disruptive if all of us were running to the kitchen for glasses and flatware. Not only do guests in these environments fail to say please and thank you, many of them speak to service staff with disdain and disrespect. What, they didn't anticipate your need for more ice in your water or fetch you a new fork fast enough? Put on your big girl panties and ask nicely.

I have also grown weary of the false power paradigms in place in business settings. The boss power paradigm I won't even go into here (though my friends are encouraging me to write a book entitled "How to be a Boss Without Being an AssHat"). The Buyer Power Paradigm is the one we see in abundance at trade shows. Ah, the buyer, the person who holds the purse strings. He knows he has power and the vendor does too. The truth is, the buyer needs the vendor and the vendor needs the buyer. That sounds pretty equal to me. But purse strings mean a lot in our society, and that simple truth plays out in the most basic of our interactions.

And of course in many industries (particularly small ones) the adults also form and protect hierarchies. Isn't there always a cool group, an in-clique? It looks a lot like high school, when our teenage brains were still a hot mess of hormones and social confusion. Sorting people into castes creates a sense of order to the chaotic adolescent mind. But, at least theoretically, we're all adults now and we've sorted out that we're all people with gifts differing but value the same.

We continue to be part of a world in which women and people of color are paid less than white men, in which people of various religions hold that their own religions are better than the religions of others, in which brown boys suffer dramatically shorter lifespans than all other boys, in which children of poverty aren't even aware of the opportunities that children of the middle class take for granted. Most of the people reading this blog post have the vantage of looking at all that tragedy as outside themselves. But is it? Or is it part of a much larger problem? Isn't that behavior just part of a world in which people feel more important than their servers, discount others who think or believe different things than they themselves believe, or even look down on someone for her fashion choices and body type?

The truest truth is that none of us is more important than another. The saddest truth is that philosophers and prophets have been saying the same thing since time immemorial and yet the compulsion to elevate ourselves at the expense of others seems to have a biological grip. And maybe it is biological, but if it is, it's no more valid in these modern days than an appendix or a gall bladder.

There is a Buddhist belief that we must try to see the face of God in everyone we meet. Perhaps we should also try to see our own face in everyone we meet. The ability to see someone else as "other than" is the ability to see ourselves as "better than." And crazy optimist that I am, I do believe we are all capable of being better than that.

When Will We Start Treating Lab-Grown Diamonds Like a Product Instead of Like an Intruder?

The jewelry industry continues to take polarized positions on lab-grown. It seems like every time we've grown past this debate, another social media group comes to virtual blows over the topic. I'm not surprised - it was the same conversation when Chatham first started offering lab-grown emeralds and rubies. But it's not useful. Not to us, not to our customers.

You don't see grocery stories saying, "we won't carry organic/gluten-free/paleo/pick-a-theme" groceries because they interfere with our other grocery sales. They evaluate consumer interest and potential demand, and offer choices. Fashion has done this with alternative fabrics. Car companies had a harder time doing it with alternative fuels, but that's largely because of the expense of tooling up to produce new equipment coupled with wanting government assistance to do so.

When it comes to lab-grown diamonds, we get all tied up in our shoestrings with our own preferences, fears, and perceptions, and in the process lose sight of the customers.

In the most recent social media post and following thread, I saw all the same black-or-white arguments. Diamond mining concerns are doing great! So much change! Mined diamonds are terrible, so much abuse. Lab-grown diamonds are not ecologically friendly - so much electricity! Lab-grown diamond producers are abusive, they're all in (pick a country). None of these tropes serve the industry, our businesses, or our customers. But if we're going to have honest conversations and learn from each other, we need to get comfortable with shades of gray - because that's all there are right now.

Shades of Gray Shadow Both Mined and Lab-Grown
The social and ecological issues are very challenging to sort. Tens of millions of artisanal miners around the world rely on mining to feed their families. Anything we do in the mining sector must be done not only with regard for their health and safety while mining — but also with regard to their health if they cannot mine. In that regard, the pandemic is causing horrific food insecurity around the world.

Want to help support artisanal miners suffering from food security caused by the pandemic?

On the other hand, diamonds do not "do good" yet. Not by a long shot. They are "doing better," and better is a good direction to go in. So we must keep applying pressure on the mined diamond front.

But let's never demean progress. The natural diamond sector was pretty bad for a long time, they've made progress, and if we treat progress as an all-or-nothing proposition, it tends to stop. We don't want that.

So, are lab-grown diamonds a more or less ethical solution? Like natural diamonds, it all depends. If you're talking about factories abusing their labor, then no. But just because a factory is in China doesn't mean it's abusive. I spend a lot of time in manufacturing facilities around the world, and I've seen rotten treatment of employees everywhere — including in the United States — and excellent treatment of employees everywhere — including in China.

Are lab-grown diamonds more or less ecologically sound? Again, it depends. I know of growers working to use the most responsible power generation possible, and some that don't care about that at all. Until lab-grown producers start disclosing some of those details, it's just impossible to know.

But, if you have a customer who has a really hard time with the concept of digging and blowing holes in the earth, then lab-grown may be the flavor of "responsible" she's looking for. I don't agree with making green statements that can't be validated, but I'm uncomfortable with blanket statements that lab-grown producers are all disruptable too.

Which Holds Its Value Better (Hint: It's a Red Herring)

Do lab-grown diamonds hold their value for the future? That's a laugh — a discussion we shouldn't even be having. Not because lab-grown will or won't hold their value for the future — nobody knows that yet! It's a laugh, because mined diamonds don't hold their value. We should never treat diamonds of any sort as if they are a financial instrument. A very small number of collectors in the ultra-rare mined color diamond sector do use diamonds as a financial investment, but that's it. We should never make any promises or inferences to customers about the future value of a diamond.

Should you Sell Lab-Grown Diamonds?

So - should you or should you not sell lab-grown? Well, you could base that on your own preferences, fears, and biases, but I'll suggest that's a terrible business approach. You should make every business decision based on your businesses core values (which are different than biases), and on the desires and interests of your customers. It won't be the same answer for everyone, nor should it be. If analyze this question with intellectual rigor, self-awareness, and deep interest in your customers, you'll have the right answer - and nobody else can tell you otherwise.

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Why Character Matters in Small Business

I love going through my daughter's mail. Oh, I wouldn't go through it without her! But her mail still comes to my house (that's another story - she has had her own place for ages), and it's frequently filled with tiny boxes and envelopes from all over the world. Like so many people her age, she uses the internet as her shopping mall, and she finds interesting and eclectic items from wherever on the globe they are sold. Her options are endless and exciting.

It's not new news that this is a troubling development for traditional retailers. Consumers have never had so many, nor such interesting, options. Furthermore, consumers want something from their purchasing experience - something that historically played a smaller role in consumer demand. The new consumer expects the purchasing experience to also deliver meaning, experience, and relationships - or some combination of those three.

Many things must be done to attract and keep the new consumer - from merchandising strategy to experience to branding and marketing. But at the heart of all the changes (fun changes by the way) is your brand. At the heart of your brand is your character.

The dictionary defines character as "the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual." Likewise, a business must have distinct mental and moral qualities, qualities that make it matter to certain customers. Your qualities won't matter to all the customers, and they don't have to. You don't need all the customers to be successful, you just need the right customers.

If you know precisely who you are, why your business matters to you, and why that should matter to your customers, you have the beginnings of a brand. If you take that beginning further and stay true to your core purpose, expressing your values as part of your unique and meaningful offering, your brand will begin to grow. When you ask and answer every question through the lens of your values - from how you work with your vendors to what merchandise to offer to the messages in your marketing materials to how you treat your customers - your brand will be come powerful. And that, in a nutshell, is character.

The most powerful thing a small business owner can do is be an effective leader, and ensure his entire organization conveys a strong message of character and integrity to his business community. This core strength will benefit your business in every possible way.