All Posts in Business Ethics

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Worthy of note:

Item #1: Last week I accidentally denigrated the WWF when I said business leaders are, metaphorically, “… trapped in a cage match without the script.” Unbeknownst to yours truly the World Wildlife Fund successfully sued the World Wrestling Federation and the wrestlers are now WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). Allan West, who informed me of this, did like the mental image of panda bears in a ring jumping off the ropes to smash one another. I find it disturbing.

Item #2: Some additional correspondence solved the mystery. A reader who had complained about my apparent bias two weeks ago explained that in the 2000 election, many commentators described George W. Bush as the candidate you’d rather have a beer with. I recommended that you not choose who to vote for based on who you’d rather have a beer with. His conclusion? I was covertly suggesting you vote against Bush.

For the record: Don’t vote for the guy with whom you’d most like to have a beer. Don’t vote against him, either. When you choose who to vote for, leave the beer out of it.

You’ll need it after you vote.

Item #3: Last week’s column, about making ethical choices when none of your choices are particularly good, generated quite a bit of mail.

A couple of readers contested the main point — that when all of the choices available to you are bad, you should hold your nose and choose the least wrong among them. One said I was “playing the victim” because we can always say no and walk away, or stand up for what’s right and take the consequences.

We can. That doesn’t make these good choices. Maybe they’re less wrong than the alternatives, but even that assessment is uncertain. For those who have families to feed in a shaky economy, for example, walking away or getting fired for standing on principle can be downright irresponsible.

Keep in mind that while for some, “getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to me,” many more end up unemployed or underemployed for months and even years. I know. Some contact Advice Line for suggestions.

They just aren’t the ones in a position to write inspirational books.

Item #4: Okay, don’t call it the Vince Lombardi syndrome.

Few contested my suggestion last week that we’ve changed from a society that values fair play above all to one that values winning above all.

But many wrote to defend Vince Lombardi, who, it appears, never said, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” Brad Mitchell was the first to provide Lombardi’s actually statement. It’s “Winning isn’t everything — but wanting to win is,” an admirable sentiment.

So it isn’t the Vince Lombardi syndrome. Call it the Bobby Knight syndrome instead. He deserves it.

Not that winning is a bad thing. Even if the game is a stupid one, if you have to play, winning is better than losing.

Which brings us the OODA loop, mentioned here before.

A military theorist named Colonel John Boyd developed this formulation for winning at maneuver warfare: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA). Then do it again.

According to Boyd, whichever side has the faster OODA loops wins. The faster you can observe a situation, orient yourself to it (which includes recognizing your own biases and how they affect your perceptions), make a decision on how to proceed, then act on that decision — and then go through it again — the more likely you are to win.

There’s a fascinating consequence: According to OODA theory, thoughtful analysis loses to quick decisions and disciplined execution. It’s an unsettling proposition for those of us who consider careful thought to be a worthwhile investment of time and energy.

OODA still values thinking, but quick thinking: Observe, Orient, and Decide. Speed beats perfection. When, that is, you’re engaged in a contest to be won in real time — OODA’s domain. OODA is the wrong tool for (for example) good science, good policy, or even good chess. But like the guy with a hammer who sees a world filled with nails, many who excel at OODA loops limit their view of the world to a succession of battles, which is to say, time-constrained transactions with one winner and one loser.

OODA masters win the battles they fight. That gives them a tremendous advantage and confers tremendous power. It also creates a very real danger: They’re unlikely to make sure they should be fighting in the first place. They’re winning, after all.

So why should they care? Winning is, after all, the only thing.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

While most of the correspondence responding to last week’s column — about how to choose in the upcoming presidential election — was favorable, a couple of readers thought commenting on the election in this space was inappropriate. They also thought I revealed a clear bias (although toward which candidate they didn’t say).

I’m puzzled: If someone thinks it’s biased to suggest you base your vote on each candidate’s vision, programs, knowledge of the issues, ability to lead and manage, and how well each one presents himself, I’m left to wonder what would constitute an unbiased set of criteria. Perhaps Fox News could prescribe something more Fair and Balanced(TM). If not, I’m sure Al Franken would be willing to help.

The election tactics pursued this year … to some extent by every major candidate; this isn’t the proper venue for evaluating the candidates’ relative rank on the rankness scale, let alone the childish question of who started it … is simply a symptom of something relevant to you in your job every day you show up for work. It’s the philosophy that winning justifies any and all tactics. Call it the Vince Lombardi syndrome, from Lombardi’s famous statement that “Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing.”

From all accounts, by the way, Lombardi would be horrified, having advocated sportsmanship above all else. As a country, though, our culture has mutated — from the “it isn’t whether you win or lose that matters, it’s how you play the game” values of my youth to the “do whatever it takes to win,” philosophy so many Americans now apparently admire.

Increasingly, the organizational cultures in which you’re likely to find yourself exhibit the Lombardi syndrome. Why is that?

It’s easy, and pointless, to try to determine whose fault it is that we find the Lombardi syndrome on the increase. As with so many other circumstances, the “blame” belongs to systemic traits, not to the individuals and corporations trying to succeed within the system.

My own opinion is that business leaders are trapped in a sort of “tragedy of the ethical commons.” It’s like a WWF cage match without the script: If your opponent is willing to hit you with a chair or a hidden baseball bat and you play by the rules, you’re going to lose. Every time. It’s why regulation, and the enforcement of regulations, is important. It lets business leaders who prefer to behave ethically do so without losing competitive ground to those who don’t. But regulation has fallen out of favor — deregulation is on the increase, regulations are increasingly written by the industries being regulated, and enforcement of the regulations that remain is declining.

So what do you do when you find yourself working for a Lombardi-syndrome company? How do you maintain your own equilibrium? How, that is, do you behave ethically when every choice in front of you is, to your moral palette, distasteful? (Harkening back to last week: If you dislike all the candidates, do you abstain or vote for one of them anyway?) The answer, I think, is that ethics is a filter, not a guide.

We live, after all, in a capitalist economic system, predicated on the idea that each of us is expected to act in our own self-interest. Acting in your own self-interest just doesn’t have much moral substance, but acting against it violates the core premise of a capitalist society.

Still, Americans generally figure they’re supposed to “do the right thing.” It’s much like Ginsberg’s restatement of the three laws of thermodynamics: You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t quit the game. So unless you’re willing to eke out a living as a self-sufficient scratch farmer, or are confident you can find a job with a company that adheres to a set of ethical values close to your own, you have to figure out how to deal with this ethical paradox.

“Do the right thing,” is simply unhelpful. It assumes the conclusion. “Don’t do a wrong thing,” is more useful; “do the least wrong thing,” is often the best you can do.

When it is, hold your nose and do the least wrong thing. What other choice do you have?

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