Global Ethics 101

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• Create and maintain a strong company culture. It starts at the top. In my career, I've run into very few truly "bad" people, but I have run into plenty of bad situations. That's why ethics—particularly among a company's leadership—is not simply a box you check during annual training. Ethical missteps have serious consequences, and it is a company's responsibility to make sure that the ethical bar is set high for each of its employees.

HP moves swiftly to deal with employees who breach the code of ethics, whether that requires termination or other disciplinary action. While the number of people involved may represent a small fraction of our workforce, it only takes one person to damage a company's reputation. As a leader, one of my most important jobs was to make sure all of my people were equipped with the training and the tools to help them navigate through the gray areas properly.

And nothing does more to create gray areas than acquisitions, which are a way of life at a large, global company. In the past three years alone, HP has acquired 22 companies and 22 different cultures. I remember working with new colleagues from a particular software company we acquired years ago. The company had been run by hard-charging go-getters—people who operated under a "Win! Win! Win!" mentality. They were exciting, they were bold, and they brought a new energy to my division that I appreciated as a manager.

But their win-at-all-costs mentality didn't fit in at HP. I was dealing with a clash of cultures. And while I valued the expertise and passion that these colleagues brought into our workplace, I was forced to have more than one tough conversation with them about the way HP does things. As a leader in my division, that was one of my biggest responsibilities—to retrain and refocus this acquired workforce and immerse them in our ethical culture, while maintaining the best parts of theirs. I made it perfectly clear: Not only were some of their specific actions not right, but they could—and would—lose their jobs if the actions continued.

• Winning isn't everything. At HP, any employee will tell you that numbers and the bottom line are important. But I'm proud to say that in more than 30 years, I was never afraid to walk away from business when, for any ethical reason, it wasn't right.

I had a sales rep once who was frustrated with the prices we were quoting a potential client because, like any competitive professional, he wanted to win. He forwarded to the sales team a competitor's quote (slightly lower than ours) that the prospect had shared with him. That's precisely where he went wrong. His intentions weren't bad; he just wanted to help HP win. But once that confidential information had been forwarded to the group, we took ourselves out of the running for that piece of business because it put us at a distinct, unfair, and illegal advantage. And while we didn't win that piece of business, we maintained our ethical principles so that we could win another day.

I can rattle off not only people—but entire companies—that just aren't around anymore because they didn't play the game ethically. Whether it's growing responsibly in emerging markets, operating a conscientious supply chain, maintaining a strong company culture, or not being afraid to walk away from a deal—good corporate behavior always pays off in the end. Quite simply, good people want to buy from good companies, and that's always good for business.

Over the past few months, I've reflected on what I did say, didn't say, and should have said to the students at Dartmouth. To be sure, globalization is changing the way we do business, but the core concepts of ethical behavior remain unchanged. Early on, I learned that numbers determine a company's financial health—its sales, its profits, its stock price, and its shareholder dividends. But at the end of my career, I know that it's a company's behavior that determines its value.

Novia is managing director and senior vice-president at HP's Technology Solutions Group—Americas.