Overview

Using any one of ten common phrases about sticks, participants will select one and relate it to the ethical position taken by their corporate leaders.

Purpose

To develop insight concerning the ethical climate by regarding it from a fresh perspective.

Group Size

Any number of individuals can participate.

Room Arrangement

If possible, arrange table groups of four participants each.

Materials

Projector for transparencies or for PowerPoint slides

Transparency 21.1, “Ten ‘Stick’ Phrases”

Flipchart

Method

1.Introduce this activity with the proviso that what is said in the room remains in the room. Advise the group that you’d like them to protect the innocent—and perhaps the guilty—by working on an exercise that asks them to project the ethical positions of organizational leaders. However, you’d like them not to identify any one person by name.

2.Explain that one of the best ways to garner original insights is to find a connection between two unrelated things. To that end, you’d like them to think in terms of “sticks” and to relate a “stick” phrase (such as “Stick with it”) to the company’s sales philosophy. That philosophy may be formally presented in a mission statement or may be informally expressed in statements made by the organizational leaders.

3.Divide the group into subgroups of four or five participants and show Transparency 21.1, “Ten ‘Stick’ Phrases.” Explain that you’d like them to select any one of the phrases and relate it to some aspect of the organization’s sales philosophy. (If they respond that there is no such philosophy, ask them to create an ideal one and then to continue with the exercise.)

After selecting one phrase, the subgroups will explain via specific examples how the stick phrase applies to the way salespeople are expected to make sales. Or they can explain how the stick phrase may be the tone of their sales meetings. Or how a particular stick phrase relates to the training salespeople receive. Basically, participants will engage in a creative expression that combines a stick phrase with an element of their organization’s sales philosophy.

4.Appoint a spokesperson from each group to meet in a breakout room or a corner of the room and to synthesize the reports from all the separate groups into one single report, in a creative fashion. They might compose a poem, a rhyme, or a rap song. They might illustrate their discussion using symbols on the flipchart. They might even make a sales “pitch” to the rest of the group, encouraging them to buy into the corporate sales philosophy.

5.Meanwhile, write the word E-T-H-I-C-S along the top of a flipchart and make columns (six in all) beneath each letter. Divide the remaining participants into six groups and challenge them to come up with as many words, related to ethical sales, as they can think of. Each word must begin with the letter (“E,” “T,” “H,” “I,” “C,” or “S”) assigned to them.

6.While you wait for the synthesizing spokespersons to complete their assignment, call on each team (in continued rotation, if need be) to select one word and explain its ethical significance to the rest of the class.

7.Bring closure to the exercise by having the synthesizing team make their presentation.

8.Conclude the debriefing by pointing out that the juxtaposition of initially unrelated ideas can stimulate necessary thinking about sales and the ethical bases on which they are, ideally, made.

Variation

Ask the group to come up with additional “stick” phrases, such as:

Can’t beat it with a stick.

Get on the stick.

Get the short end of the stick.

Quicker than you can shake a stick at it.

Stick ‘em up.

Stick around.

Stick by him.

Stick in your craw.

Stick it out.

Stick with it.

Stick out like a sore thumb.

Stick to your knitting.

Stick together.

Stick up for him.

Stick your foot in your mouth.

Stick your neck out.

Stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong.

Then ask small groups to select one of the posted phrases and relate it to the ethical climate of a larger institution, for example, the presidency, Wall Street financiers, corporate America, the Olympics, the Catholic Church, the automotive industry, et cetera.

Invite participants to form committees to either create or revise the organizational sales philosophy.

Discussion

To what extent do the values of the organizational head cascade down to the average employee?

How difficult would it be for you to challenge the tone (positive or negative) that’s been established by the head of your organization?

What’s the connection in your organization between sales and ethics?

Quotation

“An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”

—Victor Hugo

Points of Interest

In The Best Seller, author D. Forbes Ley asserts, “The problem here, as well as all across the profession of selling, is that few salespeople take the time to develop any new openings. They want to stay with what they have rather than be creative and take the chance of coming up with something new and exciting.” He suggests using the concept of mystery as a means of stimulating creative thought.

TRANSPARENCY 21.1