You have to get beyond blaming others . . . give up your excuses . . . stand responsible for what you do . . . ultimately, ethics ends up an individual exercise.

Give people, including yourself, clear permission to make mistakes . . . and to fix the problems. Since nobody's perfect, mistakes should be allowed. Cover-ups shouldn't. Cover-ups create twice the trouble.

We can't win the struggle for high standards if we just talk a good game . . . we've got to play a good game.

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.

"You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by-"* You'll find universal agreement on the value of a behavior code, on the need for some sort of ethical system. Even the crooks count on "honor among thieves," and countries actually wage war according to certain rules. On the job and in the rest of our day-to-day living, we each need a "code for the road."

We need timeless principles to steer by in running our organizations and building our personal careers. We need high standards --- the ethics of excellence.

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.