Act with integrity
The acronym for WWT’s five core values
is EPATH, or the EPATH to employee and
company success.
It stands for embracing change and diversity of people and thought; passion and a
strong work ethic; attitude and being positive and open-minded; being a team player;
and honesty and integrity.
“I put a bunch of things down and
thought about what I felt were the most
important,” Kavanaugh says. “You’re never
going to capture everything, but I think it’s
critical that you keep it simple enough that
people can understand it, and you also
keep it consistent.”
Honesty and integrity is the most important one out of the group in the eyes of
Kavanaugh. It is the foundation upon
which the values of embracing change,
passion, work ethic and attitude are built.
“People need to feel that the organization
has a high level of integrity all throughout
the company,” Kavanaugh says.
The conveyance of values begins at the top.
“The CEO needs to do what’s right,”
Kavanaugh says. “When the organization
and the people see those types of decisions
being made with consistent integrity, that
begins to resonate and drive the values and
the culture of the organization.”
These are decisions that are made both
inside the company and with external
clients and vendors. Internally, it may come
down to a longtime employee who has
developed relationships throughout the
company but did something that clearly
crossed the line of integrity.
“It would be very easy to try to overlook
that specific action or that specific thing that
individual did and just allow them to continue to work for the company,” Kavanaugh
says. “If you do that, all of a sudden now
people start questioning the integrity of the
CEO and the executive management team
because they don’t walk the talk.”
If you have honesty and integrity as one of
your core values and you respond consistently each and every time someone crosses that line, the message gets delivered.
“We expect you to treat people with a
level of respect and integrity, and your
actions need to demonstrate that,”
Kavanaugh says. “We all know what we
need to do. You need to have an organization that is willing and ready to make those
decisions. If you don’t make that decision
at that point, you jeopardize the integrity of
the entire organization.”
Externally, it could come down to a
business deal in which you might be
asked to break a commitment to generate more money.
“You could look at it and say, ‘That’s an
easy decision; you’re going to make a lot
more money if you go with this other partner,’” Kavanaugh says. “We absolutely
believe it’s the wrong thing to do from an
integrity perspective. If we committed to
that partner, we’re going to stay with that
partner. If we end up jeopardizing profit
margin on this deal because of that or even
potentially losing the deal, we’ll lose the
deal before we jeopardize the integrity of
the company and the integrity of our
employees.”
Experience has shown Kavanaugh that
honesty wins out in the long run.
“The old adage is desperate people at desperate companies do desperate things,”
Kavanaugh says. “It doesn’t make you
happy at the time that some of it is going
on. But those types of business practices
and behaviors are normally very short
term. You can’t let them pull you down to
react at their level.”
