Nice guys finish first

By Scott Hayman

In business, "integrity" is something companies love to promote. It's a recruiting tool. A way to win a "best places to work" award. And when your company wins that award, as a leader it feels good, right? But the awards won't necessarily make your team happier, and won't make your client partners trust you.

Every day of my career has been driven by the core principle that I want people to trust me. Why?

First of all, I'm a human before anything else. Human beings crave friendship and attachment, and when you can trust someone . . . I mean REALLY trust someone . . . there's simply no better feeling in the world. I want to be that kind of person to my friends, my family, and people I do business with.

But in operational reality, integrity isn't just a warm-and-fuzzy sentiment. It is a competitive advantage and the best long-term strategy for creating a sustainable business. Integrity builds compounding enterprise value over decades, and leads to becoming a trusted figure in whatever community or business you operate within.

Integrity as a business plan should come naturally to just about anyone with a soul. But what exactly is integrity when it comes to business?

I tell my team everything I know, good or bad. A team that has all of the information available with no gates kept is aligned, focused, and determined to deliver the best product possible. Hidden agendas and mismanaged expectations force teams to spend countless hours writing defensive emails, second-guessing decisions, and navigating internal politics. Radical transparency dramatically cuts project overhead, accelerates feedback loops, and keeps the focus strictly on delivering exceptional work.

I tell it like it is. I expect everyone on my team to be forthcoming and honest too. Whether communicating with a high level VP or an entry level coordinator, operating with fair boundaries, clear expectations, and actionable feedback keeps turnover low and attracts high performers who want to do the best work of their careers. Turnover is emotional, time consuming, and expensive. Retaining teams who've generated years worth of trust and shorthand with one another is crucial to delivering a consistent, high quality output.

I keep it real with my client partners. Delivering exactly what you promise, communicating operational hurdles before they become emergencies, and owning mistakes immediately eliminates the anxiety clients feel when outsourcing critical projects. This might include telling client partners things they don't want to hear when necessary. Maybe we disagree with the brief. Or maybe we aren't even the right partner for a particular engagement. I'll admit that offering alternative solutions contradicting weeks or months of client side work and planning is a little scary. Turning down a project that might hurt revenue in the near term can be downright terrifying. But taking money for work you can't proudly deliver destroys your brand equity forever.

Client retention is everything. Client acquisition is expensive and time consuming. Telling a client that the situation is less than perfect might seem like exposing weakness. But it's not. It's showing strength. It's creating trust. Trust creates stability that generates relationships that can last longer than one project or one campaign. It maintains relationships that can last a lifetime.

Being opaque, telling half truths, and lying takes a lot of energy and makes you feel yucky. It's not necessary nor beneficial to operate that way. Operating with integrity, and surrounding yourself with others who champion this philosophy isn't about being nice. It's about building a business resilient enough to endure even the most challenging environments.

If you've read this far, you are probably thinking . . . boy I'd like to play poker with Scott. And I'm okay with that if it means you trust me so much that you can't wait to take advantage of my honesty and transparency. But if you do want to sit down at a poker table with me, be warned . . . you're not getting the same guy there!

Scott Hayman is Head of Gaming at Mocean.