Throughout the 1990s it seemed that everyone was on the path to learning how to get rich quickly. If you invested in an Internet business you were considered a genius.
Yet in the spring of 2001, the beginning of a major shift in how we all looked at business, and life, started to take place. The dotcom bubble popped. Markets took a dive. We all kind of took a blow to the chin. Business owners and individuals started reassessing their priorities when it came to spending and investing. With pressure to show profits, some turned to alternative and questionable means for reporting their results in order to continue to attract investment funds.
Then, on September 11, we took a major blow to the midsection. The greatest and most horrific act of terrorism we have ever known was played out before our eyes, over and over again. With the terrible events that day, priorities took an even bigger shift.
Until that awful morning, we thought we were invincible. We thought nothing could touch us. But we were wrong. It came to many of us in a flash that nothing was safe—not our offices, not our government, not our airplanes, not even our mail. It was time to get serious about what really mattered in life, because it was actually possible that we might not have tomorrow. It wasn’t just about how much money we made, it was about the people in our lives and assessing what was really important.
Corporate scandals, one after the other, eroded our hope that the people we worked for, or invested money with, could be trusted. The list of questionable business practices, like those in Enron, WorldCom or even revered institutions like Arthur Anderson, just kept growing. Now we wonder, where is their Code of Honor? It has become painfully clear that either none existed, or nobody enforced it, or it was not a Code of Honor but a code of deceit.
My point is this: In the absence of rules, people make up their own. Those differences can become catastrophic in the heat of the battle, particularly where stress is high and confusion is prevalent. Those who are successful have a very clear Code of Honor that is easy to understand and is not negotiable or subject to multiple interpretations. It’s a strong set of rules that everyone around them agrees to and it’s part of what makes everyone around them successful as well.
But it’s not enough to just have a code. If all the players on a team don’t know the rules or don’t interpret them in the same way, the team can’t win. The players on your team have to understand the code, and commit themselves to respecting it.
The heart and soul of every team is its Code of Honor. Rules like being on time, practicing, showing up, attending training sessions, committing to personal growth or never abandoning a teammate in need. These rules not only ensure success, they make the game a lot more satisfying to play. Great relationships don’t happen by accident. There is usually a common understanding and set of rules holding you together.
A Code of Honor is the cornerstone of the culture of any organization because it is the physical manifestation of its thoughts, ideals and philosophies. People talk about creating culture in organizations. I have been part of several large culture creations, revitalizations and change initiatives with clients. The core of the culture and the number-one tool used to establish, refresh, broadcast and demonstrate the culture is the Code of Honor.
Developing a Code of Honor creates accountability and a feeling of support and is a powerful statement of who you are and what your team stands for. It defines you and your goals. It’s that important.
So how do you develop a Code of Honor that all team players will respect and adhere to, whether it’s in your business, your family or your community? That’s what you’re about to find out.
Chapter One
Why Do You Need a Code of Honor?
In the absence of rules, people make up their own rules. And some of the biggest collisions in finance, business and relationships occur because well-meaning people are simply playing by different sets of rules. By the same token, the most miraculous results come from “like-minded” folks who band together under some invisible bond to achieve greatness.
By experience and default, we all formulate our own sets of guidelines, rules and assumptions. That’s natural. But when we start coming together with other people, organizations and cultures, we sometimes have a tough time figuring out why “those guys” don’t understand, or how they could so blatantly turn their back on our feelings, our way of doing things and our rules. In most respects, “those guys” feel the same way about us. Why? Because we assume that certain basic rules are the same. Bad assumption.
This book is about revealing the process for eliminating one of the biggest causes for financial loss, frustration and heartbreak. It is about surrounding yourself with folks who subscribe to the same sets of rules and how to establish them so that you can ensure peak performance, fun and incredible results in all you do.
For about twelve years now, I’ve actively studied teams, looking at what makes them successful and how they are able to operate at peak performance. And after all this time, I can tell you this: You cannot have a championship team, in any facet of your life, without a Code of Honor.
If you are interested in building a great relationship, whether it’s with your business, your community, your family or even yourself, there have to be rules and standards for the behavior that will ultimately achieve your goals. A Code of Honor is the physical manifestation of the team’s values, extended into behavior. It’s not enough to have values, because we all do. What’s so crucial is knowing how to put physical behavior into practice to reflect those values.
Let me illustrate what I mean. When I was in high school in Ohio, I was on the cross-country running team. Typically, any human being of the male sex living in the state of Ohio was expected to play football. But if you could see my size, you’d realize that I was just not built to go up against a two-hundred-pound linebacker, even though I love the game. Cross-country was more my style.
What a lot of people don’t know about cross-country is that there are typically about five to seven runners per team racing at the same time. Usually there are several other teams running at the same time. The only way your team can win is if the whole team finishes relatively close together close to the front of the pack of runners. In other words, having a superstar who runs ahead of the pack and places first doesn’t do the team any good if everyone else is all spread out across the field. Cross-country is a lowscoring sport, meaning that first place receives a point, second receives two points, and so on. The idea is to get the whole team to finish near the front, so your team gets the lowest score possible. If we could get fourth-, sixth-, seventh- and ninth-place finishes, then even if another team got a first, second, twelfth and eighteenth, we would still win the meet.
So for the entire two-and-a-half-mile race each of us would push the others on, encouraging, threatening, supporting, and yelling with each gasping breath for air. With muscles burning and body strength faltering, it was as much a race of emotional endurance as it was physical. We pushed each other both on and off the course. If someone was slacking, you can rest assured the rest of the team would be on him quickly to pick it up. It took ALL that each of us had for us to win. Whatever it took for us to cross that finish line close together, that’s what we did. In other words, part of our code was to do whatever it took to support everyone to win.
We won most of our cross-country meets, or placed very high, even though we had very few superstar runners. We were a championship team. It was my first experience with teams, at the most basic, physical, gut-wrenching level, but the lessons it taught me remain the same today. I have always surrounded myself with people who would push me that way and who would allow me to push as well. It serves them and it serves me. As a result, I have always been blessed with incredibly