Many of us know Diogenes as the ancient Greek philosopher who walked around all day carrying a lamp and proclaiming that he was, “Looking for an honest man.”

Wikipedia doesn’t let us know when, or even if, old Dio ever succeeded in his quest.

Quoting that same Wikipedia article (and how did we ever survive, pre-Wikipedia?), “Diogenes believed that virtue was better revealed by actions, than theories.”

Score another one for the Big-D. I suspect that if he were walking the streets of Washington, DC, today, his “lamp” would be powered by at least two Pratt and Whitney jet engines.

Diogenes came into my mind just recently, while I was contemplating just how far our society has strayed from the principles espoused by him and, among others, President Harry Truman. Some months ago, I finished reading Pittsburgher David McCullough’s biography of Truman, which reveals a man obsessed by the truth. And because of this obsession, Truman was both admired and feared by those who dealt with him day-to-day.

This is because Harry Truman lived and died with facts. Facts, President John Adams reminds us, are “stubborn things.” Adams goes on to say, “whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion,” facts and evidence are immutable. “They cannot be altered.”

McCullough’s book about Truman depicts a man tortured by phonies and those who regularly deceive themselves. He frequently refers to men who go through life, “living their lies” … each day “dressing up” in a persona that, and while it may serve them in their profession, “rots their inner-integrity.”

Some time ago, I was engaged in a conversation with a prospective customer. I faced a dilemma; I needed the self-made entrepreneur I was selling to “front” the full contract amount so that my company could make its payroll for that month. But, if I revealed to the prospective client the true reason why I needed the cash right away, I risked killing the deal altogether as this individual would surely think twice about putting his hard-earned cash into a company that was barely able to pay its own employees.

I thought this through very carefully. “I guess I could give him a significant discount for pre-paying.” I thought to myself, “But what if he put more value on preserving his cash than he did the amount of this discount?”

I also thought of telling him that “Payment in Advance” was a “brand new policy” -- just recently instituted. The ramifications of that were quite ugly; after all, everyone talks to everyone else.

I conjured up and dismissed a half dozen such scenarios. Each one just created more problems. So, I went straight at him and said, “Look, Mr. Smith, I don’t know how else to put this, so I’ll just say it --- we need the money for our payroll!”

To which he almost immediately replied, and while chuckling out loud, “And that’s exactly the same reason why I can’t give it to you. Looks like I’m just as broke as you are!”

After a good long laugh, we came up with a very clever way to actually help one another, and the story ended beautifully.

Would I have been so candid in my youth? This is also a great question. One of the few nice things about getting older is that you more or less adopt a, “who the hell cares” attitude about such things. You just put your cards on the table and sit back and see what happens.

Maybe this is the best reason for keeping young people out of government and executive management?

In the business world, you see people dancing with the truth all the time. You see it with the kinds of negotiations I just described, and you see it in the interactions between and among managers and their subordinates.

I’m just guessing, but I’ll wager that “white lies” are at the core of many personnel-related lawsuits and arbitration hearings. You know what I’m talking about here; the boss, and either under the guise of an “informal review,” or in the “day-to-day,” tells his or her subordinate just what a “great job” they are doing. But then, when it’s time for the formal meeting related to salary increases, the meeting attended by top management, both mid and upper-level managers find that they must often saw off the very limbs they have been sitting on.

I particularly remember a situation at a university where an individual was constantly praised for the “exemplary work” that he/she regularly turned in. However, in his/her annual review, this same individual received an extremely low rating.

Why? Simply because a salary increase commensurate with the malarkey that the manager had been spewing all year would have resulted in a 20-plus percent raise. A raise of this magnitude would have wiped out the entire budget for the department in question!

So, the mid-level manager had to back out of his earlier praise and instead write, and for the record, that the employee was instead merely “pedestrian” in his/her work.
 You can imagine the turmoil that this incident caused, not only in that department, but throughout the entire organization.

Perhaps the one individual with whom we are most dishonest is the guy/gal we look at in the mirror every morning. Man, are we good at fooling ourselves!

We tell ourselves that, “we are capable” of completing Herculean tasks on time and under-budget when we absolutely know that the opposite is much more certain to happen. Similarly, we stand in front of a group and mesmerize the room with tales of our exploits in the business world. Unfortunately, only half of what we are saying rings true. Nonetheless, people buy off on what we’re saying and the consequences of such self-deception are often severe.

One of my favorite “modern-day poets” is Bob Segar. Some of you younger readers might not recognize the name, and so I’ll just say that Bob Segar, and while famous for such songs as “Night Moves and Running Against the Wind,” actually did most of his best work with more obscure recordings like, “Till It Shines.” Till It Shines is a song about a lonely biker who hops on his Harley and heads west, ending up on top of a mountain, watching a great American bald eagle soar with the wind. This recording actually has two signature lines, only one of which relates to this article:

“Like an echo through a canyon, never coming back as clear.

Lately I just judge the distance, not the words I hear.”

Diogenes, the only man to publicly mock Alexander the Great and live to tell about it, would, I’m sure, have absolutely loved Bob Segar.