Mackay: Even white lies can erode credibility in business

One day, a man named Truth and a man named Lie stood by a river just outside of town. They were twin brothers.

Lie challenged Truth to a race, claiming he could swim across the river faster than Truth. He laid out the rules, stating that they both must remove all their clothes and at the count of three, dive into the freezing water and swim to the other side and back.

But when Truth jumped in, Lie did not, instead putting on Truth's clothes and parading around town pretending to be Truth.

When Truth made it back to shore, he refused to put on Lie's clothes and walked back to town naked.

People stared and glared as naked Truth walked through town. He tried to explain, but because he was naked, people mocked and shunned him, refusing to believe he was really Truth.

The people in town chose to believe Lie because he was dressed appropriately and easier to look at. From that day until this, people have come to believe a lie rather than believe a naked truth.

Many people don't believe what they hear because they've been burned in the past.

What kind of society have we created? Why can't people tell the truth? Don't they realize that a cover-up only adds to the loss of credibility?

That's a shame.

As the father of three children, one of my rules — especially when they became teenagers — was to tell me the truth immediately. Not in a day or a week. If not, they would pay severe consequences.

That philosophy seemed to work for me, and quite frankly, I've always believed that telling the truth is the best policy. In business, it's a must.

At MackayMitchell Envelope Co., we don't tolerate anything less than honest negotiations and delivery guarantees. Envelopes today can be beautiful, colorful, complex products with foil and embossing, or unique in a variety of styles. It can be a very complex manufacturing process.

Customers wouldn't stick around for long if we made their job harder. Can you blame them?

President John F. Kennedy said in a commencement address at Yale University: "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."

Of course, there will always be those who connive to dance around the truth for their own benefit.

Consider the following story. The wife of an art dealer, who was anxious to sell some Gothic tapestries to a renowned art lover, was amazed and annoyed when her husband woke her at 3 a.m. and commanded her to say, "I'll pay you a million dollars for your Gothic tapestries."

An odd request, she thought, but sleepily she complied, repeating the suggested words, and then rolled over and went back to dreamland.

Alas, a shady business never yields a sunny life.

Mackay's Moral: Speaking of truth, we should have regular checkups to avoid truth decay.