Page 176 - 6 Secrets to Startup Success

Integrity of Communication 155

INVEST TIME TO CULTIVATE INTEGRITY

As noted in this book’s introduction, the much-sought-after secrets
of entrepreneurial success are not so secret. They are known to most
founders, which begs the question: Why do we, as founders, not do what
we know to be good for us? What gets in the way of doing the right things? I’m
convinced that a major obstacle is the unrelenting urgency and
haste—the perceived lack of time—that dominates most startup en-
vironments. It can be argued that time is a founder’s most precious
resource. Infusing your venture with high-integrity communication
requires the use of this resource. Venture-changing conversations
can’t always be scheduled in advance or put on a convenient agenda,
and they don’t lend themselves to hurried shortcuts.

Social psychological research supports the idea that hurriedness
is a major culprit in our lack of attention to things we say we value. In
a famous study conducted in 1973 at Princeton University, John M.
Darley, a professor of social psychology, and doctoral student C.
Daniel Batson researched the phenomenon of “Good Samaritan” be-
havior. They wanted to know what kinds of personality traits and sit-
uational factors influence a person’s likelihood of stopping to help an
obviously distressed victim. In the study, they asked seminary students
to walk across campus, one at a time, to a building where they would
give a presentation. En route, each subject encountered a man (an
actor) in obvious need of help, slumped in a doorway, moaning and
coughing. The question of interest was: Which students would stop
to help and why?

Upon analyzing the results, the researchers were surprised to find
no relationship between subjects’ personalities and whether or not the
individuals would stop to help the victim. Instead, helping behavior
was mostly tied to a single variable: the degree to which subjects were
in a hurry. Of those subjects who were told they had plenty of time to
arrive at their presentation site, 63 percent stopped and rendered aid
to the victim. People who were told they had a few minutes to spare
stopped 45 percent of the time. And a third group of subjects, those
who were told that they were already running late to their presenta-
tions, stopped only 10 percent of the time, even though they passed

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