In November last year, I had the pleasure of speaking on campus at Harvard Business School and returned to the classroom there for the first time in twenty years.

Being in the amphitheater-style room again brought back many memories and some new perspective. My cohort, the class of 1991, was the first to take a required ethics module when we started in 1989 – a response to the unethical behavior of the junk bond era.  During those first few months, Mike Milken’s trial was in full swing, Ivan Boesky and Ira Sokolow were in prison for insider-trading, and Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker (an expose on Salomon Brothers) had just been published.

Among Amazon’s current business bestsellers is a rather depressing book. Jim Collins’ How the Mighty Fall, And Why Some Companies Never Given In asks: How do once-great companies fall into decline? It is a question of personal urgency for leaders, employees and investors since the demise of Lehman Brothers and the near-bankruptcies of Bank of America, General Motors, AIG and other admired companies.

Last month I had the good fortune to partner on a joint talk with John Kador, author of Effective Apology, to explore how compromise and apology might be linked.

What I learned is that the ability to apologize when an apology is due is a healthy compromise. It means giving up the need to be right, to reinforce some fantasy image of who we are, because we value our relationships more than our egos. It requires owning up to our blind spots, weaknesses, and bad habits, but brings us back in touch with reality and frees us from the compromise trap.

Lately I’ve been hearing a new type of story as I’ve talked with people about compromise at work.  “We could air our dirty laundry all day,” said one director I met with recently. “You see the same dysfunctions over and over.”   “I confess I’ve defaulted to the ‘playing to live’ strategy,[i]” said a manager in another industry. “It is so frustrating to try to really engage and make a difference.”  Heads nodded around the table as she spoke.

What's new is that the stories are revealing the business side of the compromise trap -- the ways businesses are inadvertently undermining their own results and the frustration that causes for employees.