Good afternoon! I trust that today’s adventures are keeping you engaged and having fun in your work today.

I had the great honour of hearing the Canadian philosopher John Raulston Saul speak at an event on the weekend. In the session, he spoke of the importance of governance, and most especially what he called ‘honourable governance’. Now he was speaking here of political governance; that is, how we as a nation are governed. Most such governance he noted held “efficiency” as paramount. For example, the often asserted idea that government needs to be as efficient as business in order to be considered good government. Saul argued, quite convincingly actually, that efficiency was not paramount in political governance, much more important was ‘honour’. That is that I as a citizen need to believe that the government will be trustworthy and therefore honourable. Even if I disagree with a decision the government makes, I need to know that they made the best decision they could, that they worked through a duly diligent process, and that our common humanity was considered.

Now, as tempted as I am to go on a little rant here about “honourable governance” as the second of the Presidential debates is about to occur this evening, I’d much rather ask about the place of such “honourable governance” in our lives and work as leaders? I suggest, as leaders, trust, rather than efficiency is paramount in our work. Not to say that efficiency is not vital, rather that when working with people, we are only as good as our word. We are only as good as  our last decision; was it the best decision could make at the time, was there a duly diligent process and did we consider the common humanity of all concerned? If we can answer yes to those questions, we will find that the people with whom we work are more likely to continue to choose to work with us; and that will mean we are more consistently successful. I wonder what you think?