Recently as I was clearing out a closet I found my twenty-plus year old tattered and worn copy of In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, Jr. I was struck by the following:

When I was building the new website for my speaking services, I wanted some references and quotes from people who knew me. I wrote to one of my previous managers and asked him to write me a short paragraph or two for my site. This is part of what he wrote:

Do you walk your talk as a professional sales person? Are your personal and professional ethics consistently demonstrated 24/7? Do you have a credible reputation within your sales territory?

If you believe that your reputation is impeccable, then what behaviors are you demonstrating to those within your marketplace? For example, do you respond to every phone call or email promptly?

I would like to tell you a short story about a conversation that I had with a man I met in the lobby of a hotel. We were both attending a food exposition and had some time to kill before our taxis came to take us to the exhibition hall.

Are you frustrated and appalled at the low ethical standards you see in business and in corporations these days, perhaps even the one you work in. Well, one should not be too surprised at the low ethical standards, as we see kids cheating on their tests, reports and research papers. We see bureaucrats mis-abusing government credit cards and we see our politicians taking bribes.

Much is written about the lack of integrity, poor work ethics and business ethics of the rank and file employees. Yet, is your management team or executives costing you business because of poor ethics and no integrity?

The etiquette system in Japan is perhaps one of the world's elaborate. It involves every aspect of one's life, with its strict codes of behavior governing daily etiquette and manners. Although the Japanese mostly adhere to these codes, it is not expected that people visiting Japan be familiar with them and would not be reprimanded.

1. Company Values Should Reflect Staff Values

Before we even begin to discuss some of the general business practices in the United States, there are two key points in American culture that we need to understand. Individualism and egalitarianism are two important elements in American culture that have significant effects on their business etiquettes.

The quickest way to tell if your stock broker is a scam artist, using your account for broker profits rather than yours, is to look for evidence of "churning."