<span style="color: #000000;">If you knew a replacement part would add an </span><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/04/01/emails-show-cost-to-gm-of-a-better-ignition-switch-90-cents/"><span style="color: #0000ff;">extra 90¢ in costs </span></a><span style="color: #000000;">and yield only a dime in warranty savings, would you authorize use of the more expensive part?</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">Probably not. Managers would crunch the business case and find the spending increase unjustified.</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">But suppose you knew the additional cost would prevent costly accidents and even save lives. </span>

<span style="color: #000000;">Would your decision be different?</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">I’m sure a character-based leader would decide to go with the more expensive part. Why? </span>

<span style="color: #000000;">Because a character-based leader knows the business of business is business and practices that by watching the bottom line AND doing the right thing.</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">What’s happening with GM’s ignition switch issue fills me with horror and fascination. GM folks crunched the numbers in 2005 and made the business decision not to fix the problem because it </span><a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/03/31/297312252/the-long-road-to-gms-ignition-switch-recall"><span style="color: #0000ff;">“would take too long and cost too much money.”</span></a><span style="color: #000000;"> GM is but the latest in a long string of companies making economic-driven decisions that ignore societal impacts. Think Toyota, Lehman Brothers, Halliburton, Exxon.</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">There are those who passionately say the sole responsibility of business is making money. If this is so, must it mean that there’s no room for ethics, honor, and compassion? That the size of annual earnings or stock price increase is the only measure of success? That if the focus is on the numbers then values must get lost in the shuffle?</span>

<span style="color: #000000;">Why must it be one or the other? </span>

<span style="color: #000000;">Why can’t be it both? Both numbers and values, earnings and integrity, profits and principles.</span>
<blockquote><span style="color: #000000;"><em>Institutional logic holds that companies are more than instruments for generating money; they are also vehicles for accomplishing societal purposes and for providing meaningful livelihoods for those who work in them</em>. ~Rosabeth Moss Kanter</span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #000000;">There’s no doubt managing these dueling, tension-filled dualities is challenging work, but isn’t that what character-based leaders do? What say you?</span>

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