Right Versus Right

We have all experienced at one time or another, situations in which our professional responsibilities unexpectedly come into conflict with our deepest values. A budget crisis forces us to dismiss a loyal, hardworking employee. Our daughter has a piano recital on the same afternoon that our biggest client is scheduled to visit our office. At these times we are caught in the conflict between right and right. And no matter which option we choose, we feel like we’ve come up short.

Managers respond to these situations in a variety of ways : Some impulsively “go with their gut” others talk it over with their friends, colleagues or families: still other think back to what their mentor would have done in similar situation. In every case regardless of what path is chosen, these decisions taken cumulatively over many years from the very basis of an individual character. For that reason I call them as testing moments. As managers move up in an organization, testing moment becomes more difficult to resolve. In addition to looking at the situation as a conflict between two personal beliefs, managers must add another dimension: the values of their work group and their responsibilities to the people they manage.  For example How should a manger respond to an employee who repeatedly shows up for work with the smell of alcohol on his breath? How should a manager respond to one employee who has made sexually suggestive remarks to another? In this type of testing moments, the problem & its resolution unfold not only as a personal drama within one’s self but also as drama among group of people who work together. The issue becomes public and is important enough to define a group’s future and shape its values.

Many managers suffer from kind of ethical myopia, believing that their entire group views situation through the same lens than they do. This way of thinking rarely succeeds in bringing people together to accomplish common goals. Differences in upbringing, religion, ethnicity, education, make it difficult for any two people to view a situation similarly – let alone an entire group of people. The challenge for a manager is not to impose his/her understanding of what is right on the group but to understand how other members view the dilemma.  A classic example which I have seen is stated below (name changed)

A 38 year old manager, Saket Bakshi headed the marketing department of ABC co. He was married & has three children. He had spent most of his career as successful salesperson and he eagerly accepted his current position because of its varied challenges. Three senior managers reporting to Saket supervised the other 50 employees in the marketing department and Saket in turn reported to one of four vice presidents at corporate headquarters.

Saket has recently hired an account manager Rashmi Agarwal who was single mother. Although she was highly qualified and competent, Rashmi was having hard time keeping with her work because of the time she needed to spend with her son. The pace at work was demanding, the company was in the middle of finishing a merger and 60 hour work/weeks had become norm. Rashmi was also having difficulty getting along with her supervisor Lisa Ray a midlevel manager in the department who reported to Saket. Lisa was an ambitious, hardworking woman who was excelling in ABC’s fast paced environment. She was irritated by Rashmi’s chronic lateness and unpredictable work schedule. Saket has not paid much attention to Lisa’s concern until the morning he found a handwritten note from her on top of his pile of unfinished paperwork. It was her second note to him in as many weeks. Both notes complained about Rashmi;s hours and requested that she be fired.

For Saket who was himself a father and sympathetic to Rashmi’s plight, the situation was clearly a testing moment, pitting his belief that his employees needed time with their families against his duty to the department’s bottom line. Saket decided to set up meeting. He was confident that if he sat down with two women the issue could somehow be resolved. Shortly before the meeting was to begin, however, Saket was stunned to learn that Lisa has gone over his head and discussed the issue with one of the company’s senior executive’s. The two then has gone to Rashmi’s cabin and had fired her. A colleague later told that Rashmi had been given 4 hrs to pack things & leave the premises.

Where Saket saw right versus right, Lisa saw Right versus wrong. She believed that the basic ethical issue was Rashmi’s irresponsibility in not pulling her weight and Saket;s lack of action on the issue,   Rashmi’s customer account was crucial and it was falling behind schedule during a period of near crisis at the company. Lisa also believed that it was unfair for one member of the badly overburdened team to receive special treatment. In retrospect, Saket could see that he and Lisa had looked at same facts about Rashmi and reached very different conclusion. Had he recognized earlier that his view was just one interpretation among many, he might have realized that he was engaged in a difficult contest of interpretations?

Identifying competing interpretations, of course is only part of the battle. Managers also need to take a hard look at organization in which they work and make realistic assessment of whose interpretation will win out in the end. A number of factors can determine which interpretation will prevail: company culture, Group norms, corporate goals, company policy and the inevitable political jockeying and battling inside organizations.

Planning ahead is at the heart of managerial work. One needs to learn to spot problems before they blow up into crisis. The same is true for testing moments in groups. They should be seen as larger processes that like any other needs to be managed. Effective managers put into place the conditions for the successful resolution of testing moments long before those moments actually present themselves. What happened between Saket & Lisa after that incident is not important. Important is the lesson.