Absolute Honesty: Building a Corporate Culture that Values Straight Talk and Rewards Integrity

Honesty isn’t just the best policy—it’s also best practice.

WorldCom. Enron. Tyco. Shocking accusations of dishonesty and silent complicity have dominated headlines recently, and cost the American economy trillions of dollars. Clearly, dishonesty doesn’t pay.

Drawing from these stories, as well as from more positive ones, Absolute Honesty shows how to establish and maintain a culture where honest communication is the norm, and employees can speak openly without fear of retribution. The book illustrates the impact that truthfulness and accountability can have on organizations, attacking the sort of passivity that allows little lies to grow into giant disasters.

Structured around the Six Laws of Absolute Honesty, this insightful book goes beyond simply extolling the virtues of ethics to provide a template managers can use to maintain an environment of healthy debate. It also contains a toolbox of techniques anyone can apply to improve his or her ability to confront and resolve difficult issues.

Companies can reap huge benefits from cultivating an atmosphere of trust. Absolute Honesty is an important, timely book that provides readers with the tools and strategies to establish a culture in which communication thrives and results speak for themselves.

About the Authors

Larry Johnson is an internationally renowned speaker and business consultant who speaks to more than 10,000 potential buyers of this book every year. His clients include Lloyds of London, Harley-Davidson, JP Morgan Chase Bank, Loreal/Matrix Cosmetics, Nordstrom Department Stores, American Express, American Medical Association, and Southwest Airlines. Larry has presented to more than 2,000 audiences in every state in the Union, as well as in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Canada, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. He has been a regular speaker at Inc. Magazine’s international conferences, and has been a featured speaker at eight conventions of the International Customer Service Association. Larry recently presented at the International Convention of the American Society of Association Executives.

Larry has published more than 40 articles in national and international journals on the topics of leadership, customer service, and teamwork. Prior to his speaking and consulting career, Larry worked as a training manager for a chain of private psychiatric hospitals, and then for the City of Phoenix. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Education from Arizona State University and a Masters of Education in Counseling Psychology from Northern Arizona University. He also has earned the designation of Certified Speaking Professional from the National Speakers Association (NSA). Of the 3500 members of NSA, fewer than 8% have earned this distinction.

Bob Phillips has more than thirty years’ experience as a human resource professional with some of America’s most recognized companies: Intel, AT&T, U-haul, Sequent Computers, Tektronix, and Digital Equipment Corporation. At both Intel and Digital, he oversaw the successful creation of the human resource departments for brand new manufacturing facilities in four different locations throughout the US. This involved establishing and overseeing the functions of recruiting, hiring, pay and benefits systems, executive compensation packages, employee training, executive coaching, succession planning, preventive labor relations, legal compliance, and managerial support - for operations that employed as few as 500 and as many as 10,000. Bob’s accomplishments were especially notable because these expansion projects were first-time efforts by both companies to extend manufacturing operations beyond their original facilities.

As Vice President of Human Resources at Tektronix, a manufacturer of electronic testing instruments, professional broadcasting equipment, and color printers (two billion dollars in sales and 7500 employees at the time), Bob was pivotal in effecting a major organizational restructuring of that company. This included overseeing the transition of Tektronix’s European division from thirteen separate business units into a three-business, pan-European structure that transcended international borders. This reduced Tektronix’s cost structure by 25% and increased sales by 15%.

As Vice President of Human Resources for Grass Valley Group, a company of 700 employees, with revenues of 200 million plus, he recently managed Grass Valley’s merger with the French electronics giant, Thomson Multimedia, which involved collaboration with executives in Hong Kong, Sidney, Paris and the US to integrate all functions of the two companies into an 80,000 employee, 10 billion Euro company.