Is Cheating Good For Business?

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Let's go. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Naked Insider Channel. My name is Boz Fisher and I have Peter Natterer. Welcome back.

Thanks, Boaz. Nice to be back.

Long time no see. Absolutely. In this video, we're going to be touching on a really interesting topic, which is, is cheating good for business? Who would, by the way, who would have thought of such a, sort of like such a headline? But let's start with. Let's define what cheating is all about.

Well, let me just have a quick look at your crib notes.

Yes.

So cheating is to find a shortcut to achieve a particular end. Very simple. It's to get an advantage to make life easier, to smooth the waves. I mean, we come up with lots of euphemisms for it.

Yeah. How would you compare to, for example, because we talk about, from a misconduct behavior to, for example, to someone who's committed fraud or theft or, you know, assault and so forth.

Yeah. So there is an integrity and there is a morality going on in that as well, too. To a certain extent, I think we are being trained as, as we go into adulthood and as we sort of progress through life, we're actually being trained to view cheating as something that you can do. I mean, I use the example of the video game. You know, if you, if you play the video game as a kid and you just go through the levels, you plod through them, it'll take you forever to do. But if you get the cheat sheet, well, you know, all of a sudden we can power through that. We can brag to everybody that we've completed the game in two weeks when this is going.

Correct. Correct. And so I was going to step sideways. So cheating is not something that you're born with, but you sort of quickly adapt to it as a kid. And it's not something that, oh, I've just suddenly come into a business environment as an employee that I've learned what it's all about.

And it's interesting as a kid, we get taught life lessons that we move along with integrity and we stick to our lane and we do everything by the book. And all of a sudden we're at the tail in Charlie. And everybody that has not been doing that, they're sitting up on the winner's circle or whatever the prize might be, and they're having a good old laugh at us. So it's not just. There's a human nature ele side of that as well, too.

Correct. Another side question. Is there a point, for example, where you could say, well, that is not cheating. So for example, let's say you come to a, a crossing. Okay. A red light crossing. You know that it's safe to cross, but the. It still says red. Yes, you cross. Is that considered cheating?

Yeah, I would say.

Is cheating done against someone? Or what about cheating to oneself?

Cheating to oneself? Absolutely. I mean, what's being crashed there is one's personal integrity. You know, we all run around saying, yes, we're very moral, but do we do things like that? Then you know, that's something that we will brush into the memory hole. But the reality is if we do exhibit that behavior, then we're actually more, not that as moral as we'd like ourselves to be.

So what causes employees to cheat? So your perspective.

I'm going to ask you a question.

Oh yeah, please.

So is there a difference between cheating and innovation?

I've looked from my perspective, yes, there's a big, big difference because I look at, from a morality perspective. So I looked at someone that cheats, cuts corners, someone that innovates, has had to spend time, think, create, find the resources to bring that thought idea into reality. So for me there's a clear definition. Yes, correct.

What I'm looking at at this point is that in business that what used to be thought of as cheating as a methodology to get from A to B is now actually an innov that is being adopted across the board. And if you don't adopt that kind of methodology, let's call it that.

Correct.

Then you're going to plod along and not be as competitive.

Correct, Correct. But coming to the original question, so why would someone try and cheat?

To get personal advantage. I think if I can look at it, to answer my own question, personal advantage is cheating. And to get corporate advantage to advance the technique of an organization, I would imagine is innovation.

Alright, so first, for example, the Volkswagen emissions scandal was a classic tricky software. Yeah, tricky software. We had the Wells Fargo where the people there were asked to create fake accounts so. To make it look like as if they're generating more revenue.

Exactly, yeah.

So I mean, we can keep on going.

Yeah.

As such, is there an underlying emotion to it?

Yeah. So I mean, let's look back at the Volkswagen scenario. Not that condoning it or anything, but if you look at that as an example of a seemingly impossible target to be reached in an impossible time frame, kind of makes people look at how do we achieve that without actually. Without actually being able to achieve that.

Yes.

So unrealistic goals, unrealistic expectations will create cheats.

All right, which, which brings Me to the situation and maybe I want to talk about later, but let's talk about China. Right. So they have clearly articulated that they won't become the premier superpower. Yep. So they've set very high level of expectations. Yes. They know what sort of industries they want to go after.

Yep.

And they are pretty blatant in how they go about it. Right. So, I mean, obviously we. We from, you know, the people who live in countries like the US Or Australia or whatever, we. Or from the Western world, we. We see that as a form of industrial espionage and so forth. From China's point of view, it's a way to quickly gain that advantage of innovation.

Absolutely. And then surpass.

Surpass. Yes.

And rightly or wrongly, there may be enough intellectual horsepower within that country to be able to achieve that. But it's, again, I think, an unrealistic, unachievable, inside of a time frame goal.

Correct.

So they need to find other ways of expressing that. I'm not. I'm not judging one way or another, but it's kind of like, okay, guys, we've set this incredible goal. Now how do we go about achieving it?

Yes. Correct. Correct. So let me. Let me sort of bring it down again. So we talked about cheating as a sort of a human behavior. Let me throw this thing out. Could we say that all employees. Now I'm just generalizing here. All employees cheat to a certain extent.

So if somebody can find a shortcut to make their life easier, whether it's now they've got skills on a spreadsheet that nobody else has, or they've got an inside knowledge on how this might work, or they've got the secret system inside of their own head to achieve that? Yes, they will. So everybody will give themselves their own advantage.

Yes, Correct.

To achieve what is required of them inside of a corporate goal. And the rationale is, if I can achieve that and advance the corporate goal by my doing this, then my morality is satisfied.

Correct. All right. So would you say it is sort of a climate of cheating?

Yeah, I think so. Look, the more we digitize, the more our communications become remote, the more we are absent from basically facing the furnace on a boardroom level. We are depersonalizing our communications. And there's an old experiment that the further you reduce or the further you extend the barriers between two entities, the more impersonal and the more ruthless the interaction becomes. And I think we're finding that in this day and age.

Yeah. Interesting. Do you think there is a situation where you could have, like, loyal cheaters so I'll give you an example. You know, the famous cyclist Lance Armstrong basically was supported by a team of cyclists and managers that supported his cheating.

Yes. Enablers.

Yeah, enablers. Yes, very much so. So do you see that as sort of maybe becoming more and more normal? Because if you have organizations that are looking to take advantage, obviously you have to bring your people to agree to that vision.

As such, it's very easy. And one of the things that you'll find is that people are very capable of convincing themselves of the rightness, possibly not the morality, but the rightness of a particular conduct and they become quite adamant about it. So if that now becomes evolved inside of a team, the team then takes on that ethos.

Yes, correct.

And that becomes the nature of the team. What needs to happen is you need to look that in the wider respect. You know, if that one team is doing it, is that moral? Is that a morality inside of that team? How is that going to affect the other person?

Yes.

You know.

Correct.

It's like somebody, a weightlifter working on steroids and a weightlifter working natural, which is the. Which, you know, you're achieving results, but is that enhanced results or is that real results?

Correct. Which leads me to the following question. So has cheating changed in the last 10 to 20 years? Has it has gotten worse?

Yeah.

And is there sort of an expectation?

Is there an expectation? I think, I think the individuals have an expectation on themselves that if they're not doing something clever, let's call it clever. That's that self satisfying word. If I'm not doing something clever, then I'm not, then I'm not doing, then I'm not advancing myself. Because it becomes a principality of one.

Correct? Correct. Yes. How has the digital age that we now are sitting in, for example, we're going through a pandemic, a lot of people are working from home. So we've become more virtual.

Yes.

More anonymous. How has that changed?

We've hardened our stance. It's very hard to become obstinate, let's call that with somebody that you're sitting together like this.

Correct.

Yeah. Because you're a human, I'm a human. We have this human interaction going on. Now if we were to sit across from each other in a, in a cubicle and shout at each other and say, hey, you know, Boaz, can you do this? Then our communication just lacks a little bit of that humanity and gets back to that distance thing.

Yes.

The more obstacles, the more distance, the more telegraph you have to do to actually communicate with someone. Somebody, the more formal and the more, shall I say, robust the communications can be. And that's why text messaging is so interesting. You know, people say things on text messaging that they wouldn't say to somebody face to face.

No, exactly. But it also happens on email. But you're absolutely right. Yes.

I mean, people break up on by text messages. I'm sorry, I don't like you anymore.

Yes. So, I mean, we sort of talk about cheating. Is there a negative impact to those organizations that sort of practice it? I mean, do they lose complete morality with themselves, but also with the relationships that they have with other partners, with other vendors, the clients, how they're perceived? Yeah, I mean, I take for example, Enron. I mean, let's start right at the top, the CEO. Right. So. And now they're no longer. Yeah, but you had an organization, one of the top four, that supported their shady accounting practices and so forth like that.

So the word that springs to mind, and I think that was just used to describe the Enron. That management became detached from the reality of what was going on for them.

Yeah.

So the, the concept of detachment means that you're out of touch with.

The.

Root base of what your organization is. And the ability to make grandiose phantasms about what you should or shouldn't be doing become. The opportunity for that grows. Which means that you can suddenly start taking things into a direction that is completely out of, out of orbit of what you should be doing.

Yeah, yeah. So the question then sort of summing it up is basically, is cheating good for business? And I sort of. Are we taking some of the humanity?

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, if we, if we had businesses that were run by AI, it would be extremely ruthless. And look, we are literally compartmentalizing people to the point where they are almost functioning like little islands of AI and you know, emotional AIs to boot.

Yes.

I don't like what you just said to me. Oh, I'm just gonna bang.

Yes, exactly. So how do organizations then set the expectations that governess the morality or the environment for people to succeed and be honest, for example.

Become more human and less transactional? I think that's the most important bit. I mean, everybody, everybody awares that there is a bot. Everybody's aware that whatever organization you have, there has to be a bottom line. We need to achieve the bottom line. Yeah, let's not lose our humanity in how we achieve that. And I get back to, yes, we can innovate.

Yes.

If we can make that company work better.

Yep, yep.

Still within the morality like, you know, the. The team you mentioned before. But if we can do that ethically, then we're on the right track.

Yep.

If we start to cheat and everybody is out for their own, they're all in their own rowboat, then I think we've got a problem. And people. This detachment starts.

Yeah. Becomes a big problem.

Yep.

Okay, so what is the key takeaway here?

Cheating. Bad. Innovation. Good.

Well, there you have it, Peter. Great. Thanks. Thanks for coming again. Much appreciated.

Thank you.

And look, more videos are coming again, so stay in tune. Thank you very much.

Thanks, guys.

Cheers.