When Organizations Make Poor Choices

A well established institution of higher education in Sudbury, Cambrian College, was recently named in a lawsuit; alleging they encouraged information sharing through a proposed partnership agreement, then told that future partner they had decided not to pursue that specific direction of learning opportunities for students. 

The contractor who had brought their idea to the college would never have known of the real intent had it not been an ad placed in November 2012, looking to replace the retiring president.  What transpired after that is the content for a ‘based on real life’ movie.  You know the kind I mean, where the little guy has to struggle with the decision to walk away or take on the big guy. 

The contractor, feeling they had a good vision for the future direction of the college, decided to apply for the position.  In doing so and while preparing for subsequent interviews, research into the strategic direction developed for the board of directors of the college and created by the out-going president were reviewed and revealed the very project, that had been extensively discussed within the previous year, had been included. 

Contacting the board of directors for a meeting to present the case on their (contractor) complaint against the then president proved fruitless.  The chair of the board passed the contractor off onto the president, citing this as an operational issue.  Since the complaint dealt with the president, the actions of the board were not in keeping with creating an amicable solution.  There was little the contractor could do, but seek legal advice. And so, now, the college with its reputation on the line must defend an action taken over what could be some very poor choices.  

The ramifications for an organization, making poor choices, can spell disaster; especially when those choices are made in a setting that stresses transparency, accountability and adherence to a strict moral code.  For these types of organizations, the results could be devastating to the public confidence and ultimately the survival of the organization!

How often have you wondered while you're listening to yet another tale of someone absconding with charitable funds or encouraging deception among employees to conceal less than ethical behaviour - what made them do that? Or better yet - what made them think they could get away with that? 

It's not easy to be proactive all the time, and yet, the effort expended to ensure your corporate integrity remains intact is surely worth it - is it not?  

Apparently, not, is the answer too many people have went with, to protect their jobs, secrets or organization. Damage control is so much more expensive than proactive dealings and forward thinking. 
Organizations that become rooted in reactive behaviour are not broadening their proactive skills and is akin to trying to mop up water before the leak is stopped. Deception, mendacious behaviour, closed door policies become the order of the day and are all far greater energy consumers than openness and opportunity.  

Not all the bad guys wear black hats!

It would be so easy wouldn't it, if like in the old westerns, the good guys wore white hats and bad guys wore black hats?  

There are the people within organizations that purposefully work towards defrauding others for their own gain.  You'll probably remember Bernie Madoff, someone entrusted with investing money for others. But does anyone remember Enron? Enron used an elaborate shell game to defraud their investors and was the largest bankruptcy of its time.  And, by all appearances it started out as a perfectly respectable organization, until they hired one man.  Now, whether they hired this person to perform this deception or not is unclear. But, it happened and the outcome destroyed a company, investors and the public trust. Or, closer to home, Bre-X, the failed gold mining operation accused of salting the mine to produce favourable samples.  How far up the chain of command did this deception go?  We’ll never know. These examples ended in bankruptcy and/or disaster. Millions of investor dollars were lost; reputations and lives destroyed!  

With great power,...

But those were examples of people/corporations whose focus was making money.  But, you can't look at what happens with public companies without looking at what happens in public service.  We entrust our public servants with great responsibility. The results are sometimes very disappointing.

The Canadian Senate (upper house) has been rocked with scandal recently and not for the first time.  It would seem that failing to ensure proactive, self governance in providing fairness and equity for the Canadian tax payer has resulted in multiple Senators undergoing scrutiny for their questionable declarations, not to mention, accounting habits. 

And will we soon forget the Toronto Community Housing Corporation?  The CEO lost her job in that one, along with others, but, process and policy seemed to go with mob mentality.  The overspending and misuse of funds had occurred prior to the CEO’s tenure and she should have been given direction to fix the problem.  Unfortunately, for her, the mayor of Toronto felt the leadership had lost all credibility and would need to be purged.  And that is exactly, what he did.  Since then, his credibility has been called into question on numerous occasions; ironically, I guess he has a different play book for his activities.

So, what is the upshot of all this?  Fairness, proactive thinking and acting, accountability and transparency should be the course of the day, every day.  Think of the character traits you would like to see from your elected officials and apply them to your own life, your own company. There will always be greed and scandal enough to go around.  Making a difference requires more than good intentions. Expend your energies where it is going to make a difference.