Sunday, June 27, 2010

Ethical Dilemmas of the Workplace

President Obama fired Stanley McChrystal, the general-in-charge in Afghanistan. For insubordination. For making insulting and competency-challenging remarks about much of the Washington civilian leadership. To a Rolling Stone magazine reporter, of all people. Remarks specifically cutting about Obama, his CEO/commander-in-chief. On a very personal level, not a conceptual or philosophical debate. And apparently not the first time he has tried to out-word his commander. So Obama fired him. Rightfully, in my opinion.

By all accounts, McChrystal is an excellent, dedicated soldier. A Special Forces alumni who sleeps 4 hours/night, and eats 1 meal a day after a morning’s run. A soldier’s solder who emphasizes “the team.” But perhaps crossing over into one of those overly gung-ho types that become a stereotype of “we versus them” toward outsiders. I.e. non-military folks outside of McChrystal’s circle just don’t get it and are a nuisance to “the mission”?

Comparisons have been made by various commentators to President Harry Truman’s confrontation with General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War. MacArthur famously saw all other beings as lesser than himself, including the president and generals in his chain of command. MacArthur wanted to take the war into North Korea to punish them for their unprovoked incursion into South Korea, arguing that there was no danger of China coming in to defend them. Truman argued for the more limited objective of simply pushing North Korea back to within its borders. (It was sort of like Bush 1 versus Bush 2: H.W. Bush wanted to just push Iraq out of Kuwait and stop there; W. Bush said go all the way to Bagdad as liberating heroes and throw Hussein out – with disastrous consequences.) After a number of blatant instances of personal disrespect to his superiors (including Truman), MacArthur opted to take to the press his disagreement with Truman on the fundamental objectives of the Korean War. So Truman fired him – not for his differences of opinion, but for taking his case outside “the chain” and publicly challenging the competency of the country’s leadership during wartime. By most historical judgments, Truman’s foresight and actions were the right ones on all accounts.

I am quite sure that Stanley McChrystal is an intelligent and honorable man. Apparently he has his concerns about his reporting line’s view of his job and his mission, versus his own view. Why he chose a Rolling Stone interview to publicly air those concerns, in the words that he chose, is a mystery, perhaps even to himself. But what does a person do when personal goals and beliefs do not seem to be matching up with the goals and beliefs of one’s superiors or the collective institution as a whole?

This is the recurring dilemma of the workplace. Be it the military, the multi-national corporation, the local franchisee, or the mom and pop pizza joint down the block. Ethical choices challenged some Enron personnel, some SEC inspectors who suspected Bernie Madoff early on, some oil drilling engineers who were told by BP to cut corners and hurry up their drilling in the Gulf, and an untold number of whistle-blowers who have sought to push out into the open questionable actions that some would have preferred to keep hidden.

The ethical dilemma in the workplace happens in 2 parts:

• Where to set the ethical line of conduct, that point at which actions and decisions become personally unacceptable;

How to respond to that unacceptability – e.g. ignore it and go on; develop a scheme to go around it; raise it quietly up the ladder; raise it loudly across (&/or outside) the organization; quit and go elsewhere.

Setting the line is hard because ethics so often can be made to be “relative,” not absolute. Watergate, and more specifically its cover-up, crossed almost everyone’s line. The financial mis-dealings of the last decade became very relative, as the perpetrators seemed to easily pass the buck on to the next link in the chain. (Note how few of these individuals have ever said “I blew it and take responsibility.”)

If we do decide the line has been crossed, which action step do we choose in response? I personally have never had much trouble with the first decision – “the line” – even if my expectations were perhaps overly intolerant. The response part has always been more difficult to determine, and I have used each of the available options in one situation or another. I have done battle with the enemy within and without, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. But what I have learned over time and many experiences is that:

• No boss gets fired from the troops below, only the bigger cheeses above;

• The troops can sometimes make the impacts of a bad boss a big enough nuisance directly to the higher ups sufficiently for them to take an action;

• Complaining outside the chain may win you some supporters, but it is probably a sign that you’ve already lost the bigger battle inside;

• The ethical conflict is about TWO perceptions of ethics colliding with each other, so an internal debate about “who’s right” is usually fruitless;

• A leader cannot/should not expect everyone to agree with his/her every decisions and actions. And it can be OK if people acknowledge their disagreements openly. But every leader must expect that, once a decision and direction have been determined, people are supportive and capable of working together towards that objective without continued backbiting, arguing and turmoil (e.g. “I personally might have chosen a different option, but this is the decision and we all need to work together to accomplish it”);

• You always need to keep your life positioned so that when your response doesn’t change the landscape, you can know that it is time to go – and then go. Quickly.

I sympathize with Stanley McChrystal and his ethical conflicts, as I sympathize with all who struggle with such dilemmas in their workplace. He appears a man of principle and discipline who turned loose of both in one very bad judgment. He further made the disagreement personal, and he did so publicly and irretractably. In any work environment, when that happens HE now becomes the object of discussion, not the policy disagreement. But when the work environment is 90,000 troops under your leadership in a life and death situation, that moment of bad judgment is a moment too long. It was time to go.

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