An In-Depth Look At Morals, Values and Business
I had originally planned to write a post on the single biggest mistake anyone in business makes, but I had a very pleasant surprise yesterday. A fellow Twitterpeep and a passionate SEOer known as Suthnautr (David Curtis in the real world) posted a response to my post “Do Morals and Values Affect Your Writing?”
He took it quite a bit further than I did, and frankly, did an excellent job. I fully agree with his points and wanted to share that with you as well. In reality, I think this is something that everyone should consider whether you get a paperroute or are starting with a fortune 500 company. Without further delay, his guest post/response:
Having studied philosophy, morals and ethics a bit I believe that I owe it to people to tell them the truth.
There is more than one way to tell the truth, however. If a little girl’s cat runs away and gets run over (and I know because I have seen it get run over) I won’t tell her the truth – I’ll tell her that most cats that run away get found by nice families and are given a new place to live. Technology needs its own truth – if I were explaining technology to a tribe living in a jungle led by a medicine man with rattles and a string of animal claws who didn’t understand it, the truth I would describe would be something quite different from how I’d word it on my Web site meant for more technically experienced and educated people. I have taught basic computer to people for years – and I know for a fact that these same people often can’t figure out how to set the clocks on their microwaves, VCR’s, etc – you know the old joke from www.internethelpdesk.com (no longer around, I’m afraid), where the tech refers to them all as just “Serious 12 O’Clock Blinkers”.
There are PLENTY of them around – a whole LOT of them around – and a whole LOAD of them are business owners and executives. Special considerations have to be made explaining things to them, because someone told them once (and they will NOT let it go) that there is just one thing and one thing alone that’s important – (when it’s not and hasn’t been for ten years) and if you don’t agree with that, then you’re, well, just no “good”. So if they can’t be educated, you still owe it to them to help them because they’re so ignorant and mis-informed that for their own good you have to take them on as clients because if you don’t, they are going to get ripped off big time.
Morality and ethics are a bit different from “truth” – and maybe more akin to philosophy – where perceptions of reality are shifted based upon whichever philosophy you adhere to (Whether you know it or not – we all view the world through the veil of some kind of philosophy or another). Sometimes I have to help shift someone’s philosophy slightly to let them see an advantage in something I’m proposing.
In general a lot of Web copywriting in the past has relied on print advertising scenarios and solutions (fear tactics, keep up with the Jones’, jump on the bandwagon, be the first in the neighborhood etc. etc.) or whatever else made sales happen as expected. More recently the “Imagine that…” scenario seems to have worked well… but now the Web copywriting model is more of a “dialogue with the people, and do it genuinely, they’ll find you out if you don’t” (with which I agree). But the fact is that in all I do, I personally believe in my true heart of hearts that what I do now, right now, is the right thing or I wouldn’t be doing it. Tomorrow I may learn differently and change – but keeping up with what works today is the best way to do things.
As far as (finite) money goes, making money is a game of musical chairs (visit my site http://www.buildingcapital.us ) to see why someone MUST lose even if everyone did everything exactly right – and everyone was a CPA keeping every rule and doing everything by the book. My job is to get the money that’s out there. Someone has got to get it, I do my job better than most, and I owe it to my family, my wife and my kids to get it first – by convincing those who will get ripped off if they hire someone else that I’m the right man for the job, even if I have to say I agree with his idea that we must do something I know no longer works.
The economy is full of artful and successful con-artists and rip-offs who truly do not care whom they hurt. The economy is such that some will always make it and some will always go bankrupt – and my job, my number one job, my obligation and moral duty, is to do whatever it takes to make sure that the guy living in the tribe in the jungle (whether it be filled with trees or tall office buildings, whether that non-technical guy has a title like chief or CEO, CFO or is just some citizen operating a small to medium family owned business) is to make sure he doesn’t do worse (out of ignorance) by hiring someone not as good as me at performing the services I perform or by hiring someone who is promising the world and is going to rip him or her off for quadruple what I would charge. It is also my duty to lead him in the right direction if the job is beyond me and he needs someone better. I will NOT screw him up just to make money.
My personal morality and ethics play a major role in writing, all the time.
(Image provided by MacieKlew)
March 31, 2009 at 11:30 am | Business | No comment
