Role Models

Why New Managers Fail to Stop Unethical Behavior Among Subordinates

June 17, 2024 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Unveiling the Causes Behind Managerial Failure in Ethical Oversight Embarking on a new role presents a host of challenges, and discovering unethical or potentially illegal practices within the organization can be a pivotal moment. The real question that emerges is whether you will be the catalyst for change in the face of such issues.

Imagine stepping into the shoes of a new retail banking sales manager at Wells Fargo, where fraudulent accounts were the means to achieving targets. Picture yourself becoming a manager at Volkswagen, only to uncover the manipulation of emissions tests by engineers using software. In both scenarios, middle management failed to intervene as these unethical practices took root.

As individuals rise to positions of authority, they wield the power to address unethical practices, yet sometimes, they don’t. Personal character flaws such as greed, sexism, or an unwavering pursuit of self-interest can drive this inaction, fostering complacency. Preserving the status quo and maintaining their position may become a higher priority than confronting misconduct.

Another significant factor at play is group identification. This involves adopting the group’s values, beliefs, and behaviors, becoming intertwined with one’s self-concept. Higher-ranking individuals often intensify this identification, feeling a stronger bond with their group or organization. Their membership becomes a point of pride, and they are more motivated to contribute to the group’s objectives than their lower-ranking counterparts.

However, this deep identification with the group comes with an ethical downside. It can obscure a manager’s ability to recognize ethical issues within the group. In simpler terms, those in higher-ranking positions may fail to perceive unethical actions because their strong identification blinds them to ethical violations. Consequently, they may hesitate to take action or intervene due to a lack of awareness.

Idea for Impact: Companies need to explore strategies that instill a strong moral compass in future business leaders. These leaders must maintain their ethical integrity as they climb the corporate ladder. Creating a safe environment for whistleblowing is crucial, empowering individuals to report dishonesty without fear of retaliation. It’s time to foster ethical leadership and ensure that the ascent up the corporate hierarchy aligns with an unwavering commitment to integrity.

The Deceptive Power of False Authority: A Case Study of Linus Pauling’s Vitamin C Promotion

May 2, 2024 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Allure of the Famous Word

The Deceptive Power of False Authority: A Case Study of Linus Pauling's Vitamin C Promotion In the 1970s and 1980s, Linus Pauling, the American chemist with not one but two Nobel Prizes to his name, started championing the extraordinary potential of mega-doses of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) as a wide-ranging panacea—a solution to a myriad of ailments, in fact—from the common cold to cancer and even heart disease.

The world of medicine and science didn’t greet Pauling’s bold claims with open arms. Skepticism abounded, and rightly so. The reason? A scarcity of compelling scientific evidence to bolster his audacious assertions. Leading medical institutions turned a critical eye toward his ideas, raising ethical red flags. They feared that people might be swayed to forgo established medical treatments based solely on the strength of a seemingly authoritative endorsement of Pauling.

This controversy is a classic case in point of a brilliant person daring to traverse the boundaries of his expertise, venturing into unqualified territories. While a handful of studies explored the potential benefits, a universally accepted scientific consensus on the effectiveness of high-dose Vitamin C for these purposes remained frustratingly elusive. And even today, Pauling’s views on Vitamin C’s health benefits continue to spark fierce debates.

Truth Demands a Deeper Call

Make no mistake; Linus Pauling was a luminary in the realm of chemistry, but his credentials didn’t extend to the domain of medicine. This tale serves as a reminder that intelligence and judgment are not always cut from the same cloth. While Pauling’s claims may hold water in the world of chemistry, blindly accepting his assertions on Vitamin C would lead us down a path of fallacy – the “false appeal to authority,” or “Argument from Authority,” also known as “Argumentum ad Verecundiam.”

Celebrity endorsements, expert testimonies, and references to popular figures in non-expert fields can be a deceptive trap for those who unquestionably trust the statements of authorities. The assumption that truth is inherent in the words of a prominent figure, regardless of solid evidence or sound reasoning, undermines critical evaluation and neglects the necessity for substantial support.

Idea for Impact: Brilliance in one arena doesn’t guarantee infallibility across the board. Approach “expert” opinions with a critical eye, assessing them within the context of the evidence and rationale that underpin the argument. In the quest for understanding, always judge each assertion on its own merits. Context matters.

Expanding the Narrative: Servant Leadership beyond Christianity

August 21, 2023 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

During the 1970s, Robert Greenleaf, an executive at AT&T, began popularizing a concept that challenged the idea of a heroic leader. He advocated for leaders who embraced humility and empowered their followers to lead.

According to Greenleaf, great leaders see themselves as servants first, and this fundamental understanding sets them apart. He taught, “Servant leadership begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions.”

Interestingly, this notion of “leader as a servant” aligns closely with the principles and teachings found in Christian scriptures, where Jesus Christ is often regarded as the ultimate example of a servant leader. Jesus exemplified humility, compassion, and selflessness in his interactions with others. In the Gospel of Mark, he declared, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45, NIV.)

While Christianity inspires its leaders to emulate the servant leadership model by prioritizing people, valuing service, and fulfilling their role as stewards, it is essential to note that servant leadership is not exclusive to Christianity. The concept can be found in other religious traditions as well. For instance, even the Śvētāmbara Jain Jñātādharmakathāḥ Sūtra (“Stories of Knowledge and Righteousness”) monastic texts contain elements of servant leadership.

In a past life, the monk Megha was an elephant. Frightened by a forest fire, he created a clearing to provide refuge when the fire next hit. He rushed to the clearing with all the other animals during a future fire. At one stage, he lifted his foot to scratch himself, and when he came to put it down again, he saw that a hare had squeezed into the space. So he stood on three legs for the entire duration of the fire — several days — and as a result, he fell over and died. This exceptionally compassionate act resulted in a human rebirth.

The Mahākapi Jātaka relates Buddha-to-be on his Bodhisattva path:

The story runs that the Bodhisattva was born as a monkey, ruler of over 80,000 monkeys. They lived near the Ganges and ate the fruit of a great mango tree. King Brahmadatta of Benares, desiring to possess the mangoes, surrounded the tree with his soldiers to kill the animals, but the Bodhisattva formed a bridge over the stream with his own body and, by this means, enabled the whole tribe to escape into safety.

Devadatta, the jealous and wicked cousin of the Buddha, was one of the monkeys in that life and, thinking it was a good chance to destroy his enemy, jumped on the Bodhisattva’s back and broke his heart.

The king, seeing the good deed of the Bodhisattva and repenting of his own attempt to kill him, tended to him with great care when he was dying and afterward gave him royal obsequies.

Servant leadership goes beyond any specific faith and encompasses a broader philosophy of putting others and organizations before oneself. It emphasizes the importance of valuing and prioritizing the interests and well-being of others. As the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others” (Philippians 2:3-4, NIV.)

Why Groups Cheat: Complicity and Collusion

July 2, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

News broke out that Ernst & Young revealed this week that its employees cheated on ethics exams. The accounting behemoth is being fined $100 million. That’s one of the biggest fines ever levied against an audit firm.

It’s absurd that specialists responsible for keeping things straight and steering moral enterprise cheated on ethics exams! Ernst & Young’s leadership evidently disregarded the internal reports about the cheating. Perhaps because when people identify so strongly with a group, they’re much more swayed to view the group’s actions positively and accept that group’s norms.

Research by Vanderbilt University’s Jessica Kennedy and colleagues suggests that high-flying people are sometimes more inclined than low-ranking people to adopt what their group recommends, even when it represents an ethics breach. Power sometimes provokes people to so strongly want to identify with their group that they’re willing to overlook when the group’s collective actions cross an ethical line. This affinity is, therefore, urged to sustain transgression instead of stopping its spread, especially when the odds of being caught and punished are slim.

Book Summary: Jack Welch, ‘The’ Man Who Broke Capitalism?

June 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Man Who Broke Capitalism (2022) by New York Times columnist David Gelles contends that the pernicious greed spawned by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is exceptionally responsible for exposing the structural failings of capitalism in recent decades.

The danger inherent in any ideology grows stronger when it starts to thrive because it swiftly morphs into temptation—a voracious appetite for ever better “returns” in the present case. Welch was indeed the most visible catalyst and a much-imitated champion of brutal capitalism. But Gelles’s narrative draws his book’s lengthy subtitle (“How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America”) excessively, thrusting ad nauseam the well-founded thesis against Welch’s ploys and “the personification of American, alpha-male capitalism.” See my previous articles (here, here, and here) about how the faults of Welch’s strategy become evident many years after his retirement.

Gelles does an agreeable job of outlining the socioeconomic paradigm that has made modern western capitalism’s shortcomings ever more apparent. Starting with influential economist Milton Friedman’s decree in the ’70s that the one and only social responsibility of a business is to maximize profits, Gelles explains the revering of Welch’s “downsizing, deal-making, and financialization” strategy. Without balance, it provided short-term benefits for shareholders, but the long-term well-being of corporations and society lost out. A sense of restraint is most pertinent to the power of capitalism.

Capitalism isn’t irretrievably bound to fail, as Gelles rightly argues, but it needs to be rethought. It’s morally incumbent upon the social order to inhibit the embedded incentives that create powerful tendencies towards short-termism. Gelles offers no more realistic, objective insights than the familiar solutions prescribed by our career politicians.

Overall, Gelles’s pro-Fabian polemic falls short of a fair-minded assessment of the epoch’s economic forces. Indeed, many of Welch’s tactics were timely and necessary, but he pushed them farther and longer. Too, Gelles fails to study counterexamples of many corporate leaders who’ve thoughtfully copied Welch’s playbook and helped their businesses and communities prosper, not least because they were restrained enough to avoid Welchism’s blowbacks.

Recommendation: Speed Read The Man Who Broke Capitalism for a necessary reappraisal of the legacy of Jack Welch. There isn’t much eye-opening here, but author Gelles affords a relevant parable about the power of restraint and the time- and context-validity of ideas.

A Quick Way to Build Your Confidence Right Now

June 20, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Guilt, anxiety, and fear usually manifest as a creeping mindset of what’s lacking. You feel you’re not enough, and you don’t have the resources you need to achieve your goals.

Lack of confidence will probably hold you back more than you may acknowledge. Be mindful of your thoughts and address these negative thinking patterns. Notice how you speak to yourself—harping only on what isn’t enough of or what isn’t working doesn’t instill your self-assuredness.

When you spiral about what is lacking, try the Abundance Mentality—it empowers you to believe in your extant ability. You can make do with what you have and overcome any difficulties. This isn’t some naïve “can do” temperament, but it’s an earnest endeavor to muster hope and agency instead of doubt and helplessness.

Idea for Impact: The less you do, the less confident you’ll feel.

Don’t wait until you feel more confident—often, more ruminating leads to analysis paralysis. Self-confidence comes from successful experiences, and to create these successful experiences, take action.

Take a low-risk action to increase your confidence. Assume you’re the most confident self you’ve ever been and do what that self would do. Prioritize your choices and direct your resources to pressing needs, ignoring other goals.

The Tyranny of Best Practices

May 9, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

By all means, acquaint yourself with the management practices of Dell (in supply chain management,) Toyota (quality control,) Ryanair (working capital,) or whatever company is the present-day shining exemplar of the pertinent best practices. But beware of the risks of taking their best practices out of context and applying them to your business.

Some advantages are unlikely to be accrued by borrowing fashionable ideas from other companies. It makes sense, for example, to study how Apple’s innovations have changed the world, but the visionary in Steve Jobs can’t be replicated.

Best practices can offer deceptively simplistic solutions. Some of them aren’t implementable—even relatable. You can try replicating Google’s policy of allowing employees to spend 20% of their time on their own ideas; that initiative isn’t likely to transform a company designing gasoline engines.

Many of the basic principles of innovation are universal. But management methods succeed—or fail—in a specific context. A company’s industry, maturity, location, and leadership structures influence this context. Unless you develop a thorough understanding of all the factors that have contributed to others’ success, there’s a risk that you’re learning the wrong lessons.

Idea for Impact: You can’t truly become another company. You can only become a better version of yourself, not an inferior version of someone else. Be inspired by others’ best practices, but don’t imitate them blindly.

“Follow Your Passion” Is Terrible Career Advice

April 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

The cliché “follow your passion” is easily the worst career advice you could ever give or get.

My guidance: Don’t do something you love. Do something you’re good at, even if it may not be something you’re passionate about.

Contentment isn’t likely to come from figuring out what you love and doing it for your career. Career success really comes from doing what other people will love you—and ‘compensate’ you—for doing.

Idea for Impact: You don’t have to give up your dreams, but pursue them as a hobby. Don’t try to find a perfect job. Find a good, if not a passion-filled, career and find the gratification of pursuing your passions outside of work.

Besides, people don’t really know what reality is like until they’re doing it. Therefore, perhaps a better way to choose what you do be to follow your effort? Be flexible. Have a broad view of what you wish to achieve, and be prepared to compromise on how you make it happen. Enjoy the work that you do, and discover aspects of it you’d enjoy regardless of being paid or not. True career contentment comes from an appreciative boss, helpful coworkers, the opportunity to learn and grow, a reasonable commute, and a middle-class living.

Don’t Be Deceived by Others’ Success

November 15, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Imitating successful competitors is a leading pathway to business innovation. Benchmarking can offer meaningful insights into comparative performance and help discover learnings for improvement. However, adopting others’ best practices can be surprisingly misleading and ineffective.

Four perception biases that come with benchmarking other companies can fail to make yours any better.

Many companies luck into success.

As I’ve noted before, you can’t reproduce others’ luck. Successful companies tend to significantly overvalue the effect of their leaders’ deliberate decisions on their performance and understate the role of chance—being at the right time, at the right place, with the right people. Alas, what worked in their circumstances may not work in yours.

The set-up-to-fail syndrome.

Benchmarking can be remarkably misleading when you make oversimplified comparisons to superstars who may not represent your situation. You could sink your business if you blindly copy celebrity leaders’playbooks in the wrong context, product, strategy, or market.

Companies that benchmark Apple and Steve Jobs and sidestep market research often disappoint themselves when their product launches fail. The leaders of these companies neither have Jobs’s brilliant intuition nor his extraordinarily talented creative team to build what customers want but didn’t know they wanted yet.

In the same way, companies that imitate the 20-70-10 “rank and yank” processes from Jack Welch’s playbook often fail to realize that several factors contributed to their success at General Electric. Welch had a robust organizational culture that insisted on regular and candid employee feedback and robust personnel processes for recognizing and developing the best talent within the company.

Corporate culture is a tricky business.

Your company’s culture—the prevailing way your people feel, think, behave, and relate to one another—cannot be changed easily. One industrial company aborted trying to imitate Google’s culture. This company couldn’t get its managers and employees to be more autonomous and innovative because the company’s and the industry’s ingrained culture did not lend itself to experimentation, risk-taking, and the celebration of fast failure.

Benchmarks look backward, not forwards.

In a competitive, ever so fast-changing world, what has succeeded in the past ten years may not necessarily do so in the next 10. The management guru Tom Peters once warned, “Benchmarking is stupid! Because we pick the current industry leader, and then we launch a five-year program, the goal of which is to be as good as whoever was best five years ago, five years from now.”

A strong focus on “quick wins” can turn out long-term losers.

Benchmarking can make short-term gains but have adverse long-term effects that may not manifest until many years later. By imitating an industry leader, a capital goods company decided to boost efficiency by outsourcing design to its suppliers. Years later, it discovered the debilitating effects of the loss of vital technical knowledge.

Idea for Impact: Best practices only add value when applied in the proper context

Applying best practices in the wrong context is a sure-fire way to hold your company back.

Pay attention to all ideas, mull them over, test what makes sense, adopt what works, and discard what doesn’t.

Sure, help yourself to great ideas wherever you can get them, but be mindful of the context. Try to understand how the top performers’ circumstances and culture may be causing their success. Think through the long-term consequences of any decision you take or any practice you adopt.

Hitch Your Wagon to a Rising Star

October 28, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If it becomes apparent that someone above you on your department’s org chart is a superstar, let them know that you want to join their team or continue to work with them as they move up. Especially if you sense you’d connect with them intellectually as well as emotionally.

Companies identify their A-players, pour training into them, give them growth opportunities, and build their experience using “stretch assignments.” Partner with such a superstar. Even if they get hired away by a competitor, you’ll stand a chance of moving with them.

Contrarily, if you wind up working with someone whose career is about to implode, try to get a transfer away from that person as quickly as possible.

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Role Models

Wondering what to read next?

The Allure of the Famous Word

Truth Demands a Deeper Call

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: The less you do, the less confident you’ll feel.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Many companies luck into success.

The set-up-to-fail syndrome.

Corporate culture is a tricky business.

Benchmarks look backward, not forwards.

A strong focus on “quick wins” can turn out long-term losers.

Idea for Impact: Best practices only add value when applied in the proper context

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?