Book Review – Dividends of Decency: How Values-Based Leadership will Help Business Flourish in Trump’s America

Part business manifesto and part memoir, The Decency Dividend shows why and how doing the right thing in business is also doing the right thing for business. Principles and profits are not mutually exclusive; in fact, conducting business in a principled way can significantly improve profits as well as relationships with all key stakeholders—employees, customers, suppliers and partners, shareholders and the community at large.

After decades of corporate scandals—including Enron, and Lehman Brothers and the other firms who precipitated the Great Recession of 2008-09—the ethical bar for business has fallen to a new low in Trump’s America. The Decency Dividend is a timely reminder of what is truly important in business, and a guide to values-based leadership that will help American business indeed be great again—by being ethical, accountable and sustainable.

Don Sheppard rose from modest beginnings in a Northern Ontario mining town to become an executive, entrepreneur and philanthropist. His varied business career took him from Sudbury, Ontario, to California, rapidly being promoted through the ranks at Manulife, Mercer and Johnson & Higgins. Don then built and sold his own employee communication consulting firm, Sheppard Associates. He has completed three Ironman competitions, one long-distance cycling fund-raiser, had a significant positive impact on youth soccer in America, and has received several awards for outstanding community service.

John Lawrence Reynolds is the author of more than two dozen works of fiction and non-fiction. He has won a National Business Book Award, two Arthur Ellis Awards for his mystery novels, a National Magazine Award, and an Author’s Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters.