Integrity

Integrity means a lot of things to a lot of people. I define it as:

Doing what you say you are going to do.

Small example. Someone invites you to a party. You RSVP that you are going. Three hours before the party, something comes up. It is now inconvenient to go to the party. Do you stay home and take care of the minor emergency, or do you press on and go to the party, because that is what you said you are going to do?

Big example. You get married. Hot stranger attempts to seduce you. You made a promise, right?

An example that many of us will be faced with in the private sector: you have an employee that Is doing exceptionally well at his job. You promise to give him a huge raise or bonus at the end of the year. The end of the year comes around, and the company has done not so well and there is less money to go around. You can still give him a huge bonus, but it would be problematic, because there would be less money to go around to more politically important people. Do you keep your promise?

Let me tell you how I do things. From 2001-2003, I lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, at which point I moved two towns up the road to West New York. But for a time, I was still getting my hair cut at a barber shop in Hoboken. One day I had a haircut appointment and goofed and got on the wrong bus to West New York instead of Hoboken. I got off at the first stop in Weehawken and sprinted two miles, in my suit, in the summer, so I wouldn’t miss my appointment in Hoboken. I arrived completely disheveled, dripping with sweat. I told them what happened, and they were like, dude, you could have just missed your appointment, and I said, no way was I going to miss that appointment. I do what I say I am going to do.

I am in the business of not letting people down. I do manage to let people down from time to time, like if I have a Zoom call and I don’t put it on my calendar and I space. That actually happens a lot. But I don’t intentionally let people down. I’m disorganized, but I have integrity.

There are some people who you just cannot count on under any circumstances. They say one thing, and do another. My nephew has a friend he calls “Flakemaster 5000” because the guy just absolutely never shows up to anything. So what happens? Whenever he says he is going to a party or an event, everyone is like, surrrrrrre you are, and nobody takes him seriously. He’s the Flakemaster. Whereas if I tell you I am going to be somewhere at a certain time, I will be there—a half hour early. I can be counted upon. There is a professor friend of mine at Coastal Carolina University who I go out to lunch with from time to time. I flaked on him twice in a row, both times because I had my ass on fire at work and was so engrossed in writing that I completely missed the reminders on my phone. I felt pretty bad about that. Nowadays, when we go out to lunch, I set about a half-dozen reminders to spare myself any further embarrassment.

I mentioned marriage. Marriage is a funny one—you make this promise in your 20s that you’re never going to scrog with another person in your life. It’s a bit early to be making that promise, to say the least. And then there are opportunities. And you are tested. I can say that I am not great-looking and I look grumpy all the time and I don’t really give off any vibes, so it is pretty rare that I am tested. And the older you get, the easier that promise is to keep. There is more money at stake, there are kids, there are houses, everything is so much more complex, and you’re going to trade all this money and experience all this pain for just five seconds of bliss. Infidelity looks like a pretty bad deal, the older you get. And then you find yourself with a secret life, buying extra phones and telling lies and making excuses and it is all impossible to keep track of after a while. Just a bunch of chaos. I prefer to keep my life simple.

And then there are things like dentist appointments. If you don’t show up to a dentist appointment, you are an asshole. You are literally stealing money from the dentist. The dude has to run a business. What’s wild is that when people who actually run businesses do this to dentists. The funny thing about all of this is that appointment-based businesses (dentists, doctors, hairstylists) now use technology to remind the shit out of you so you don’t forget. My hairstylist uses something called Vagaro to manage appointments, and I’m getting text messages 3 days out, then 2 days, then the day before. I suppose this cuts down on the Flakemasters, but it kind of clogs up my phone. I don’t generally miss haircut appointments—after 3 weeks, I’m getting pretty shaggy and it starts to bug me. But the doctor’s appointments every 6 months are a bit tougher. I put those in my phone and set it to remind me two weeks ahead of time, and by that point, circumstances may have changed. Then I call the doctor’s office and reschedule the appointment. We used to do all this on paper.

In the Big 5 personality test, one of the attributes is conscientiousness. Conscientiousness, for the purposes of the test, is the tendency to be responsible, organized, hard-working, goal-directed, and to adhere to norms and rules. That’s not quite integrity—there’s nothing in there about keeping promises—but it’s close. I score about in the middle in terms of conscientiousness—I have the best of intentions, but I am not very organized. I will say that I am very good with deadlines, because I deal with them all the time. But if I give you my word that I am going to do something, I will do it. And if I ever tell you “I swear on my cat’s life…” you know that is as good as gold. I recall the scene in Jerry Maguire where the father of the college school football player shakes hands with Tom Cruise and says that his word is “strong as oak” and then proceeds to throw him under the bus. I suspect that a lot of people behave this way when there is money involved. I mean, that pretty much describes all of Wall Street. Call me old-fashioned, but I am one of those people who believes that verbal commitments are binding, just like signed contracts. It’s probably because I used to transact hundreds of millions of live deltas that way. As a trader, if your word wasn’t your bond, you would have a very short career.

Most people, when thinking of the word integrity, believe it only applies to the big stuff: marriages, and such. But it applies to the little stuff, too. Some people compartmentalize and keep big promises but let the little ones go. And some people are conscientious and keep the little promises but then fuck up the big ones. Integrity is about keeping your word in all situations—big and small. In Ocean’s Eleven, when Matt Damon and Brad Pitt are observing Terry Benedict, Matt Damon says, “That guy is a machine.” Benedict, played by Andy Garcia, is a man of integrity, which is another way of saying that he does what he says he is going to do. And there is a quote that I came up with, years ago:

There is no commodity in this world so rare as the man who does what he says he is going to do.

I used to work with a guy years ago who would miss deadlines and fuck things up all the time. His boss would come over to him, and ask him where the deliverable was, and he’d start flapping his arms around and say “O.B.E.” O.B.E. stood for Overcome By Events. But that’s the key—if you’re a person of integrity, then you will never be overcome by events. You’re in the no matter what club. You will get it done, no matter what. You will be there.

I could go on, but I’ll stop there.