Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right by Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.

The commercial tells us life is messy.  More than that it can be destructive.  For centuries philosophers, statesmen and clergy have sought to give us theories to handle the vagaries of life with certainty.  But they suffer from not being encompassing, and worse they are generally sterile thought experiments that do not work in the real world.

Joseph Badaracco wrote this book to provide managers practical guidance for making decisions when the courses of action are all the right thing to do within competing values.  He argues that these right versus right decisions are not well addressed by what he calls the “standard answers” of “follow the law, serve the shareholders, consult the company credo, do the right thing…” (Badaracco, 1997, p. ix).

He begins with a thorough understanding of why these decisions are so difficult.  Three business cases of increasing complexity are offered.  The first is about a young finance analyst at an investment bank being asked, on short notice, to join a presentation team, when analysts are not normally on presentation teams.  He suspects it is because he is black, and there is a desire to show the prospect how enlightened the bank is.  The young analyst has only responsibilities to himself and the company. If he declines, another black analyst, with more time at the bank, is prepared to go.  The decision is about more than just the trip, it is about personal identity and character of the analyst as an analyst, a black man, a Christian, etc.

The next case introduces us to a marketing director who has been asked by his subordinate to fire one of her direct reports, a newly hired single mother.  The difficulty here is our director is not only responsible to himself and the company, but he is also responsible for other’s careers and success.  The conflict is the company’s high-tilt work environment is in conflict with its stated desire to be family friendly.  A recent merger has created a debt load and drives the need for long hours from everyone, with no letup in the near future.  The new employee while working 60 hour weeks, is not putting in the time as others are, and her work is behind.

The final case is the about the marketing of the abortifacient, RU 486.  The chairman of the manufacturer, who is a doctor, had to make the final decision on introducing the drug.  His personal beliefs were that the drug could save lives by preventing botched abortions.  But the head of a company has obligations to shareholders to insure profitability.  Public pressures from anti-abortion groups created actual threats to his employees too.  Their safety was a concern also, as was the possible damage to the business by wholesale boycotts because of this one product.  Pharmaceutical companies and other organizations in society share responsibilities for the character and quality of the society; that is the extra complexity introduced by this case.

After examining the uselessness of the “standard solutions” in light of the cases, Badaracco develops a framework of questions for dealing with these complex issues in general, and the cases in specific.  These questions are developed through philosophical principles of Aristotle, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and James, who offer practical advice that puts theory into real-world action.  They force the decider to examine himself, the context, the history and how others involved might see the same facts, including what hidden agendas they may have, as well as the possible impacts of the courses of action available.  Badaracco also provides advice on how to make this all work, with the demands of a complex society.

There are very few organizations the detailed ethics guidelines as the US military.  From personal conflicts of interest to the law of armed conflict, ethics are critical to the mission of national security and the public trust.  Ethics training covers not only these rules, but also the principles behind them.  It is a part of the curriculum at every stage of military education.

Defining Moments elevates the thinking to a whole new level.  Starting with chapter three, “The Futility of Grand Principle,” Badaracco lays out the limitations of traditional methods to deal with right versus right issues.  For example, he explains that if the head of the drug company looked to stated values he would have found things like “’to continuously increase the long-term value of the company’…’meet people’s basic needs and improve the quality of life while safeguarding and raising living standards’” (Badaracco, 1997, p.28).  So do those values endorse RU 486, or decry it?  That is the problem with mission statements: they are too vague.  They have to be because they are frameworks for guidance that try to cover all possible situations, which they cannot do in practical terms.  Worse, they are sometimes put together without consideration for how they may be used.  Meanwhile to address vagueness, many organizations create detailed codes of ethics outlining what is right and what is wrong behavior, and create training programs on conflicts of interest, sexual harassment, equal opportunity, etc.  However these rules-based programs can only deal with right versus wrong.

Where the book goes is to the questions derived from Aristotle, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and James.  Four of the questions Badaracco posits are:

·         How do my feelings and intuitions define, for me, the right-vs-right conflict?

·         How deep are the moral roots of the conflicting value that are creating the right-vs-right conflict?

o   Look at your previous defining episodes for patterns of ethical commitments

o   Look at how those relate to your memberships: family, company, society (local and global)

·         This is my way, where is yours?  Examine your goals and motives for achieving them, and how this decision impacts them.

·         What will work in the World as it is?

Clearly these are deep questions which require thought and reflection, not just on the matter at hand, but on the history which created it, how we fit into it with our experiences and morals, who will have to deal with the effects of the decision, etc.

For example, taking the question of what works in the real world, given the knowledge of the work environment and the needs of the company at the time, perhaps hiring a single mother was a set up for failure.  Since he did that, the marketing director should examine his role in creating the situation, and his motives.

This one example scratches the surface, the cases are examined with all the questions, and the background philosophies that generated them.  Machiavelli is better understood and tempered by the others, and they are in turn tempered by each other.

This treatment of the cases make this book critical for all managers, and in fact valuable to anyone wishing to develop a capacity for dealing with right versus right problems.   Analyzing what happened gives us a perspective that is both wide and deep.  This allows for practical exploration of the problems.  It is an outstanding guiding framework to take action.  If it could do more, it would better structure the process to help managers move with alacrity on difficult questions with a limited shelf life.  Having said that, no other treatment of the right versus right subject I have seen, comes close.  This goes in the library.