Where Do Your Loyalties Lie?

When I first enlisted in the United States Navy I had to take an oath of loyalty; to protect the constitution and obey the orders of the President of the United States and officers appointed above me. It was a short and simple oath, but one I, and would assume most persons, did not fully understand until some time later. You see, in no point of that oath was a name other than my own given, only the offices held by the President and my superior officers. It is an oath to the country as a whole, not one single person or group of persons.

The underlying meaning of that oath is something, once understood, that I took with me into the corporate world upon my return to civilian life. Within each and every company that I have worked for there has always been a level of office politics; some very subtle and others that could only be termed as an outright coup. Through it all, that underlying principle of loyalty has been my guiding light, my moral compass in a world where office politics has engulfed so many people. It is often a difficult practice to hold onto, and a stance that has from time to time even ruined friendships.

The principle of my professional loyalties is simple, protect and do what is best for the company I am employed by, for as long as I am employed by it. In a sole proprietorship it is easy, the owner is the company, in other structures it becomes much more difficult a practice. One has to look beyond the internal politics and see the overall mission of the company and follow what is best for it as a whole, not just one man or woman's vision, but the long term survival and growth of the company, including all the people who work under its umbrella. To protect those people and the mission statement that really is the company.

While the principle is simple, in reality the practice is difficult. No one person within a company possesses all the information necessary to know which actions or inactions are best for the company. What I have found as a best practice, for myself at least, is to use the policies and procedures laid out by the company as a primary guide and to hold all employees under the same level of accountability, from the lowest cubicle worker to the CEO. Given a choice between actions, I will always try to choose the one that provides the greatest good for the whole or at the very least, in some no win situations, inflicts the least amount of harm to said company. It is, far too often, not a very popular stance.

One of the saving graces (for my sanity) given this choice of loyalty is in viewing business as business and personal as personal. Some people get that, others don't. I have had to personally fire people who have remained friends years after the fact, but have been ostracized by fellow employees who were upset when I remained with a company after they left. Such business decisions can be upsetting at times, when others allow it to flow into the personal, but were those who take that stance ever truly my friend? And would I even want them back having seen their metaphorical true colors?

I take heart in having seen that these kinds of people are those who (wrongly) feel the company (life?) owes them something. People who are guided by greed and never able to see past their own self to how their actions affect others. Perhaps, in some instances, I am wrong in that view, but the principle of loyalty that I will continue to hold myself to is not wrong, not for me. And some people will get it, and others won't, but it is where my professional loyalties lie.