This is a short book review I did for my operational behavior class and I thought I would share!
Winners Never Cheat
We live in a world where the means seem to justify the end, where the word of a person does not mean much, and the line between what is wrong and right seems hard to find. In every aspect of life our integrity is challenged, we are asked to make a stand for our character. Often times, we may not receive an instant reward in being honest, but we will gain much more from establishing ourselves as honest people. In the book Winners Never Cheat, Everyday Values We Learned as Children (But May Have Forgotten), Jon Huntsman, the author, teaches that it is possible to succeed in business with complete honesty, that we can be an example to others in our efforts to be honest. Huntsman also argues that these are principles that we already knew as children.
Huntsman takes a refreshing and optimistic stance on having integrity in business. He explains that all of us want “the American dream”. Though that dream has changed Huntsman explains that, “Achieving your dream requires sweat, courage, commitment, talent, integrity, vision, faith, and a few breaks.”(6) It is through the hard work that you come to appreciate the dream and a way that you can win for life. Huntsman then goes on to explain that it is misleading to think that you have to fudge your way through business or cheat in order to keep a competitive edge. He explains that “The path to perdition is enticing, slippery and all downhill. Mortal bankruptcy is the inevitable conclusion.”(7-8)
Once we make the choice to overcome that slippery slope, we should still be competitive and compete fiercely and fairly to win! We can not only be winners ourselves, but we can lead others. We can lead them by using risk, responsibility and reliability and all win.
Huntsman then shows that we should help them win by treating them as an extension of the family. By doing this it changes the way we view our workplaces and encourages us to treat our company as a family business. We will then take pride in our work and be examples to others.
Jon M. Huntsman himself is a testament to his philosophies. He started with almost nothing and is now the founder of Huntsman Corporation, a very successful chemical company. He has been on Forbes’ list of America’s wealthiest people.
Huntsman is an example to me of how I want to live my life and conduct myself in business. I know that having integrity and knowing what I stand for is an important part of who I am. Cheating never makes anyone comfortable and I like that people can depend on me and trust me to be dependable and do the right thing.
I think now while I am a student that the biggest trial that I have to overcome in cheating is at the University. There seems to be more and more people cheating (or maybe people are just quicker to justify it). Maybe society has come to the point where it is okay to cheat. This semester I have been surprised at how many people I have heard confess to cheating in classes. I am fairly certain that the penalty for cheating is an automatic fail in the class and even possible suspension from the school, but a worse punishment is the loss of personal integrity and self-worth. Are people ready to risk so much?
Even in our class there has been talk these last few days of students who have found the test question bank for the final. Also I heard a woman in my operational behavior class telling a fellow classmate that she saw nothing wrong with having the test bank of questions for this class and that others who were “not smart enough” to find the answers were at their own fault. I question why students who share these opinions and similar ones bother to even attend college. If all that they are learning from attending a University is how to cheat and cut corners, then they are doomed to lose their character and start a life-long process of dishonesty in business. I stand with Huntsman and feel that we need to do all that we can to remember lessons we already know, ones we knew in the sandbox, to stand for our self-worth and to shine as an example to others.
