Companies that lack integrity do not develop overnight. A series of small, subtle choices led them to their fate; each decision set the stage for the next, more corrosive act.

For that reason I usually turn down offers to design an "ethical training" course for employees. Essentially, I don't believe that ethics can be taught. The problem actually lies in the company's culture, and how it encourages individuals to consider deviant behavior as standard operating procedure.

How likely is it that you would recommend a company with which you do business to a friend or colleague?

That one-question survey likely serves as the best metric of customer satisfaction. So many customer satisfaction surveys are opaque and bury as much data as they reveal.

In a commentary published in The Financial Times last week, Fred Reicheld and James Allen - consultants with strong ties to Bain & Company - argue that a direct satisfaction metric helps a company focus on earning customer loyalty. General Electric and American Express agree, according to Reicheld and Allen: "[They] focus on one statistic that nets the percentage of customers who are unhappy (scoring 0-6 out of 10) from the percentage who are loyal promoters (scoring 9 or 10). The Net Promoter Score [NPS] provides a single number as clear and actionable as net profit or net worth...GE ties a significant portion of managers' bonuses to meeting NPS goals."

Prepare yourself for a shocking expose: Scores of your colleagues are bringing God to work every day.

That idea might scare some of you given how polarized religion has become in our time. Fear not. The vast majority of spiritual seekers are not out to convert or condemn you. Some of your colleagues are looking to God for wisdom, others turn to God for comfort or courage, and yet others find God in the connections they make with others. The fascinating element here, of course, is that God takes on many different faces. Put more familiarly, God has many names.

Former Enron executive Andrew Fastow's testimony this past week the offered a fascinating window into the pressure cooker at the top of a major public company. Sure, greed was a major factor that drove senior executives at Enron. But the weight on the back of the senior managers at Enron to deliver short-term results should not be overestimated.

When you run a public company "you have a gun to your head." That's how Micky Drexler, former chief executive of Gap Inc. and AnnTaylor Stores describes the day-to-day life in a public firm. BusinessWeek recently featured Drexler and a flock of senior managers who have fled public companies for the shores of private equity. "CEOs are freer to do the tough but necessary things to repair companies for the long term, with less focus on quarterly results and placating public shareholders...," reports BusinessWeek (Feb. 27, 2006 edition).