A CEO recently enlightened me about the transformative power of a robust safety, diversity, or ethics program: It can institutionalize a culture of employee engagement, process management, open communication, and continuous improvement.

Safety, diversity, and ethics have value in and of themselves. Where they have value beyond themselves is in their ability to align people with a shared vision. Everybody shares the vision of a safe workplace. Everyone shares the vision of a diverse workforce (well, maybe not everyone, but nobody’s going to argue against it). Everyone shares the vision of working for an ethical organization.

Leaders can use safety, diversity, and ethics to rally people around ambitious goals and get them nodding in agreement, establish the habit of adhering to policies and procedures, focus people on measurable results, communicate a consistent message, pursue process improvements, and celebrate success. In other words, safety, diversity, and ethics are levers that leaders can use to transform their organizations. They are large-scale pilot projects for how to make your organization more systematic, holistic, and aligned.

For example, if you are an executive for a bank with dissatisfied customers and employees, declining revenue, and escalating costs, and you want to do something about it, you may want to change your bank’s culture. Rather than give in to the quick-but-fatal temptation to invest in dubious risky ventures, you can buck the trend by becoming a role model for the ethical bank.

You involve employees in writing a Code of Conduct that everyone who works for the bank must sign—and that you and your leadership team exemplify. You set visible goals to be the benchmark for ethical behavior in your industry. Your organization develops policies and procedures for ethics training and reporting and handling ethics violations and complaints. You establish measures of ethical performance. You talk about these measures and about ethics every time you speak to employee groups, write a column in the company newsletter, report on the company’s performance, and plan for the company’s future. You form a cross-functional team to manage and improve your key ethics processes. You lead the celebration of each step along the path to world-class ethical results.

So what happens? First, your bank becomes a role model for ethical banks. Second, you rally everyone around a vision they will proudly share. Third, you create a culture of action toward and alignment with goals, strategies, measures, and processes. Fourth, you engage every employee in the day-to-day effort required to meet your organization’s goals. Fifth, you become a better leader through more frequent and focused communication and your personal involvement in spearheading the initiative.

Each of these benefits is transformational. Taken together, they are a “backdoor” approach you can leverage to create a world-class organization.

To read more, click on these articles:

• Co-Creating a Shared Vision
• Fixing the Financial System
• The Priorities of Leadership
• Why Organizations Fail
• Hands-On Leadership

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