The Dilbert Ethics Game

By raising awareness of ethics among its employees, Lockheed has found that people are more willing to communicate about ethical dilemmas they may be facing. Lockheed's ethics help telephone lines have been getting more calls since the program started (always anonymous), with "maybe 1 in 10" persons complaining that a widget might not be set correctly. "That's good, we consider the complaint a compliment," said Baker. "Usually it's unsubstantiated but it's better to find that out now than to have to rebuild the plane." Lockheed Martin's ethics program goes beyond eliminating the potential legal and financial liabilities: through it, the company strives to promote a positive work environment. "All employees want and deserve a work place where they feel respected, satisfied, and appreciated." But with a work force of over 170,000, training in the gentle art of ethics can be a sticky job.

"You have to get people to communicate," says Baker. One way to do this is to stablish common ground. A flash of inspiration led Baker 's team to design, with the help of Dilbert creator Scott Adams, the "Dilbert Ethics Challenge," an interactive workshop where players are faced with a selection from 50 different ethical problems. An additional 50 questions are slotted for use in the 1998 version. This is no "should I eat the last doughnut" ethics challenge -- the questions come from real case studies that cover a broad range of ethical issues--integrity, honesty, respect, trust, responsibility, and citizenship.

Baker conducts her workshops for up to 40 employees at a time. The players break up into groups of five or six people, and have a characted from the Dilbert comic strip as their mascot. They are dealt a card from a deck of questions, and each group has about 3 minutes to choose their response from a list of five options. Group responses need not be unanimous. Once all groups have settled on their response, players form a single discussion group and go over the reasoning that lead to each group's decision. Their responses are awarded points, and players move their group mascot on the board according to the points they receive. The idea behind the board game is to get players interested in figuring out what responses are seen as more ethical than others, and why.

To help people work through an ethics problem, Baker offers a decision-making model (printed on the game books, award certificates for completion, and souvenir poster-calendars). The model breaks the decision process into four steps:

1. Evaluate information;
2. Consider how your decision might affect stakeholders;
3. Consider what ethical values are relevant to the situation; and
4. Determine the best course of action that takes into account relevant values and stakeholders' interests.

Simple though the game may seem, it poses real-life situations to the players. A sample problem question addresses intellectual property and goes as follows: "You receive a paper from a colleague for peer review. You discover that a paper you are still working on reaches similar conclusions. If this paper is published before yours, you will be 'scooped.' What do you do?" Questions like this that don't have clear answers, prove to be very fruitful in getting people to communicate and work through a problem. Responses covered a broad range of solutions. The top two answers aimed at establishing open lines of communication and scored the same number of points.

Baker and her team measure the effectiveness of this workshop and the ethics training program by the number of calls to the ethics help line. The lesson to learn here from teaching ethics with comic characters? Get 'em at the funny bone.

Fundamentals of Lobbying

Sidman and Morris boil lobbying down to the three Cs--convincing, compromising and counting. Convincing pertains to the importance of good advocacy in making a strong case--proposed legislation ultimately succeeds or fails in becoming law on the merits of the argument. Compromise refers to the need to negotiate: to know when to cut a deal. Counting refers to the ability of a good lobbyist to understand how many votes a particular issue will need, and her ability to determine a course of action based upon the likelihood of passage of the bill.

At the core of the workshop was how to assess the problem and decide what you need from government. Government sees every new technology as a pot of gold--a new tax source. One of the main functions of a lobbyist is to point out the destructive effect that taxation can have on new technology. To succeeed in lobbying, the lobbyist has to be highly experienced in the legislative process. She must know who the key committees and figures involved in her particular area of interest are, and how and when to approach them. Meetings with government officials should be carefully planned and kept concise and honest for maximum effectiveness. It is also important to establish a productive relationship with legislative staff. In most instances, the staff plays as important a role in the process as the official. Another key to success is working with the interests of both political parties: the majority of bills passed into law arise through bipartisan efforts.

A successful lobbying effort also depends on coalition building. Such a process depends on the ability to find or convert supporters and potential allies from industry, government, and interest groups. Strategies to be developed may include using the Internet as a lobbying tool, talking to the press--when to use the press and when to keep a low profile, and developing an effective grassroots strategy. Sidman and Morris illustrated with examples from lobby efforts related to cable regulation and telecommunications legislation.

Participants were then given an opportunity to undertake a case study involving lobbying for Internet gambling. We were asked to develop a plan of action to protect a profitable Internet bingo site operated by a tax-exempt charity from an upcoming bill that would outlaw gambling on the Internet. This involved developing an argument to defend the site and distinguish it from other forms of online gambling. We had to identify the key figures in the senate and congress whom we would approach, and discuss possible organizations and interest groups that would strengthen our position on a coalition. We also tried to predict the most likely opponents of our stance and the arguments they would make.

Workshop participants included computer scientists, engineers, and individuals from the financial and entertainment industries. A number of participants were facing issues where they would soon have to lobby congress, and many of the questions concerned the development of effective strategies.

Verner, Liipferd, Bernhard, Mc Pherson & Hand, Chartered, is a Washington law firm that has evolved into a lobbying powerhouse. Its reputation is due in part to its acquisition of such high profile political figures as Bob Dole, George Mitchell, Lloyd Bentsen and Anne Richards to act as lobbyists for the firm. Verner Liipfert integrates traditional law practice with specialized work in legislative and federal affairs, ranging from traditional coalition activities to conducting grassroots campaigns and political coalition building. Sidman is an experienced lobbyist who has participated actively in favor of enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the 1992 Cable Act. Morris is a telecommunications consultant with experience in lobbying the U.S. House of Representatives.