The Fading Ethical Divide

Two major events that kept the social media engaged in India, over the last two weeks, were from completely different domains but had a common streak somewhere deep down their behavioural origins. For the cricket lovers, it was the rude shock of a team’s collective involvement in deliberately altering the condition of the ball and thereby unethically reverse the swing. For others, it was the alleged complicity of a well-known and well-respected top-notch banker in some business transactions involving her husband’s company and that of a large client of her own bank, that could well have crossed the proverbial ‘Lakshman Rekha’ between business ethics and improbity.

In the corporate world, we are much familiar with the pressures of performance. With large scale commercialization of sports, the same pressure is felt amongst the sportsmen as well – be it an individual game or a team sport. With multi-million-dollar advertising and media industry lapping up sporting heroes at mind boggling remuneration, the motivation and urge to stay on top surges manifold. Winning becomes more important than playing the game.

With big money involved, the sporting world has also been corporatized to a large extent. There are equal number of managers, coaches, motivators and other support personnel as the number of players in a team. A lot many professionals are involved in sports management and that has emerged as a serious, lucrative career option. The high stakes bring in cut-throat competition and razor-sharp performance measures. The game hasn’t remained a game anymore. It is a business venture and hence it unconsciously propagates the philosophy of winning by all means – fair or unfair, right or wrong, by hook or crook, by shining the ball or by roughening its surface.
Like in sports, the leaders in corporate world too want to emerge as winners all the time. They typically have a more formal education in the management of winning. The purpose of their engagement at a corporate is solely for winning. Winning for the organization and thereby winning for themselves. With the ‘winner takes all’ policies of HR /Compensation managers, the young minds get attuned to focus only on winning. The process takes a back-seat.

All the leadership programs that the young managers attend during the course of their early career are all focussed on ‘winning’. And most of them also bring out ‘networking skills’ as one of the key skill to ‘winning’. All through my professional career, I have had an overdose of such tutelage on ‘networking skills’ in all forms of pedagogy. Nothing wrong with that – just that they fail to alert the young minds on the risks and the perils of crossing the ethical line. Using reference of the personal connects of one’s spouse to expand one’s own business line is one aspect. It may indeed be considered as a good, neat, harmless ethical networking. But when it involves one’s business connects – and particularly in an enterprise where public money is involved – it surely is not the best example of professional ethics.

In the corporate world, motivating, enticing and threatening individuals to stretch their goals to elasticity-defying levels is not a very uncommon scenario. And the high stakes attached with these goals – be it a business target or a sporting milestone – infuses the individuals with such an intoxicating urge to succeed that they tend to believe that achieving such a result is the only raison d’etre of their existence on this earth. The results become most important and any questions on the probity of its means become meaningless.

Somewhere along my mid-career crisis, I once had an outburst with my Manager on various seemingly ‘unethical’ practices. My otherwise upright Manager, in a resigned tone, just said – ‘they are smart people’. So, the smart corporate leader has learnt to keep the ethical line hazy. He has learnt to be ‘legally right’ and be ‘politically correct’, while staying on top of that hazy line so he can reach on both sides of the ethical divide, without seemingly crossing the line. Just that, sometimes, the sun shines brighter and people catch him on the wrong foot. And that is the only solace the upright, conscientious few can get – that some sunny morning, the rough side will get exposed on its own to check the illegitimate reverse swing.

VVIP Racism – from Politics to the Corporate World

I was watching a television show running stories on ‘VVIP racism’ – one case where a lawmaker was instructing a railway official to stop all trains and allow the one his boss was traveling on. The other story covered another lawmaker forcing his entry, with a bunch of his supporters, into a cricketing venue, albeit without a ticket. There is no dearth of such stories in the national polity. The sense of entitlement is quite deep rooted in this society.

When you think about a sensitive political scenario, where the leaders would not want any bad publicity, the cadre of lawmakers could still get away with such adventurism. But why can’t the boss show them the door? Because, in a democratic political canvas, the cadre lawmakers hold the key to success. The grass-root level support is critical as that forms the bottom of the political pyramid. And, therefore, the boss may not want to risk his support base by taking a harsh view, howsoever upright he might be. The unscrupulous, rogue lawmaker, most often, will get away with any such delinquency.

The corporate world too has its own version of such ‘VVIP racism’. An ex-colleague of mine summed it up well when he told my boss during his farewell drink – the Line Managers in your team work like a mafia. If and when they wish, they can inflict failure on you and if and only if they wish, you succeed.  Those were the golden words that my boss reminisced on multiple occasions, all through her tenure.

Sometimes we wonder, as to why a certain loudmouth, or a certain lawmaker with dubious records is given a long enough rope to tarnish and destroy the positive image of an authority. To an extent that such a tolerance often alienates many a straight thinking follower. Unfortunately, in the business of politics, the strength of mass appeal, enjoyed by an individual, dwarfs any other shortcomings accompanying his association. And unfortunately, such a mass followership often admires the power wielded on a railway employee or on the gatekeeper of a stadium.

In the corporate setup as described above, the boss is overly dependent on a few high performing Managers. The Managers are well aware of this and hence they set their own rules of governance.  This assertion of one’s own viewpoint in contravention of the boss’s operational plan, starting on the sideline activities and then veering into the mainline events, establishes the egoistical independence of such Managers. The boss’s dependence on the Manager, for the mainline, forces him to ignore the fringes. But when, where and how the sidelines merge with the mainline of governance is completely lost on the boss. And from then on, the governance runs on crutches.

Be it politics or the corporate world, if the leader does not identify and check the subtle recalcitrance in time, it leads up to a sense of entitlement and to the VVIP racism. Imagine a scenario where a certain top police official shows the audacity of behaving with another top bureaucrat colleague in a manner that would have put a common man behind the bars. And yet, this policeman, who was credited with efficient tackling of terrorism, was not only allowed to get away with his acts of eroticism, he was also awarded the highest civilian honors.

This hero-worshipping country needs to learn to be more professional in handling individuals. When we place an individual on a high pedestal, be it polity or the corporate world, we must also not hesitate to put a check on any unacceptable behavior. Whatever be the achievements of an individual, the respect for rulebooks and the basics of behavioral decency should not be allowed to be compromised. The behavioral span of an individual is not a zero-sum game.