There is a ton of value in reading this book as it causes one to think about complicated ethical issues and provides one person's perspective on them. I was already familiar with many of the industry stories and there a few parts that felt overly simplistic to me, however, there were many, many examples and scenarios that I found interesting and challenging. I also learned of a couple of new team norms that I found intriguing such as "How do you want to be remembered?" and "Is there any part of this document/project that makes you uncomfortable?" What a great question to ask. The author, being a lawyer, is very focused on providing specific rules to cover as many areas as possible. I did struggle with that approach a bit. At two startups that I was part of the leadership team we had a value of being the easiest company you have ever done business with for our employees, customers, vendors and investors. Having a ton of rules would have made that near impossible. I believe there is a risk/benefit trade-off in having too many rules vs guidelines.

I'll close with a couple of quotes that I hadn't heard before that resonated with me:

"Bad news is good news if you do something about it" James Morgan

"As a leader the character of your company will never exceed your own" James Morgan

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for a fair and honest review (even if it took me a bit to get to this one:)

I was given an Advanced Reader Copy of this book by the publisher, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“Today a leader can come from anywhere and look like anything. There isn’t a look of a leader. What matters is how they behave. They have to have a much longer time horizon.” This quote from the author’s CEO at Airbnb towards the end of the book was one of my favorite parts, and how applicable it is today, when these types of leaders are so needed and seemingly hard to come by. I think the quote nicely sums up the idea behind Intentional Integrity— it’s doing the hard work of determining your values, and your company’s values, and acting in honest, ethical, strategic ways that protect and reflect those values, even when the short term “cost” may appear steep.

The “Code Moments” at the end of each chapter— ‘based on a true story’ examples of how complex these issues can be— were also a nice touch. My only criticism is that in most of these, the ‘wronged’ party was a straight female harmed by a male, and while this certainly occurs (and disproportionately), I know harassment and lack of integrity sadly exists in all directions in 2020.

Overall, I enjoyed Mr. Chestnut’s perspective as ethics officer for major tech brands like Airbnb and EBay, and he reminds me of my current legal counsel at work — who is also a great example of leading with Intentional Integrity. And how privileged I am, indeed.

I am reviewing this book in the September-October issue of Global Business and Organizational Excellence, a Wiley publication. If you contact me via email, I will send you a pdf when the article goes to print.

Also, I usually tweet about the article when it comes out, and post something on LinkedIn. Thank you so much for sharing this book with me - very timely.

An interesting, if polyannaish look at corporate culture and suggestions for how companies can create a more ethical workplace. A top down approach, so the audience for this book may be quite narrow.