Tom Hagen: Your father wouldn’t want to hear this, Sonny. This is business not personal.
Sonny: They shoot my father and it’s business, my ass!
Tom Hagen: Even shooting your father was business not personal, Sonny!
Sonny: Well then, business is going to have to suffer. And please, do me a favor, Tom. No more advice on how to patch things up just help me win, please?
…
Sonny: You’re taking this very personal. Tom, this is business and this man is taking it very, very personal.
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Michael Corleone: [to Sonny] It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.
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Tom Hagen: Don’t get personal. Keep it business.
The Godfather
One of the deep themes about the Godfather, a theme I’ve not seen developed elsewhere, is the boundary between “business” and “personal”. These days, any business school dean would find such a boundary of intense interest, not least because of the recent advent of the MBA oath.
My recent blog posting on Forbes.com argued that the effectiveness of an oath depends on four considerations: timing, consequences, the support of a community, and whether we believe business is a profession. The notion of an MBA oath continues to garner attention-for a sampling, see the Economist.com, Financial Times, and BusinessWeek Online. Thus, far, I think that all this discussion has missed yet another important point, which regards one of the limits of institutionalizing behavior.
A standard oath or pledge institutionalizes expectations about behavior. The Honor System at Thomas Jefferson’s University of Virginia commits students not to lie, cheat, or steal-the pledge is made at the beginning of our MBA program. Expectations expressed this way are the clear will of the community. If you break the pledge, you know that you are acting out of line. The institution has spoken. That’s business, not personal.
But the existence of a pledge is no guarantee of future behavior. It has to be internalized. At some point, business must become personal. The ranks of any profession–such as lawyers, doctors, and accountants-are mottled with the cases of individuals who broke the pledge of ethical behavior. It is not sufficient to write an oath, or take it. You must live it. You must “walk the talk,” as they say.
Learning to live by an oath is a matter of leadership and culture. It starts with a CEO who is prepared to set an example, and talk about it. And it extends to leaders throughout the organization. The oath is reinforced by exhortation and example. The best organizations actually indoctrinate their members in the values behind an oath. Business schools have a role to play here: teaching new MBAs about best practices of virtuous leadership and culture and by giving them a medium in which to practice.
We should worry if a new generation of leaders graduates from business schools believing that it is healthy to behave one way at home and a completely different way at work. Ultimately all business is personal.