You carve out the organization's character through your daily choices. You shape its conscience as you exercise your own.

Ethical dilemmas have a way of sneaking up on a person. If something smells funny, stay away from it. Or help get rid of it.

Notice that "I" is at the center of the word "ethical." There is no "they." Achieving the ethics of excellence is our individual assignment.

But when we get enough people who don't care, and who don't accept personal responsibility for high ethical standards, our organization gets the "M" disease. Mediocrity. Anybody in the place can be a carrier. By the same token, every individual can carry the cure: the ethics of excellence.

...Force yourself to use the optimist's explanatory style: 'The situation is temporary. The effect will be limited, not pervasive. And it's due to external causes.' If you just can't make that work for you, refocus your attention...Turn your attention in a totally different direction for the time being. Replace the distressing thoughts with other ideas. Distract yourself.

How can we be trusted with big things if we're not trustworthy with things that are small? Don't allow your finer instincts to become a casualty of the little everyday crimes of ethical compromise.

Who is this vague "they" we blame for so many of our problems? "They" is the obscure party we use as our whipping boy to camouflage the fact that we - you and I and other specific human beings just like us - have to start doing things differently. "They" can't fix anything. We can.