Conversations in Management
He
was known in later life as the Sage of Potato Hill (less
flatteringly, Time magazine dubbed him the Potato Sage).
Earlier he achieved success as the founder and editor of the
highly respected—and profitable—Atchison Kansas Globe. He
was also a nationally recognized author. His best known work,
The Story of a Country Town was praised by Mark Twain and
served as an inspiration for later writers such as Stephen Crane
and Sinclair Lewis. But more than anything else, Howe was a
common sense observer of the human condition. And in that
capacity, he was an unrepentant curmudgeon. After selling
the Globe in 1911, he retired to his Potato Hill farm and for 22
years published,
E. W. Howe's Monthly,
"Devoted to Indignation and Information."
As editor and sole contributor he
produced a blizzard of aphorisms like: “As soon as a man
acquires fairly good sense it is said he is an old fogy.”
Howe may have been an old fogy, but he had a keen eye for things
that could lead to ethical missteps. He well knew, “the way
out of trouble was never as easy as the way in.”
There are
lots of models to help folks make ethical decisions. They range
from universal truths to the sleep test. And there are
even more people willing to explain ethical decision-making
including luminaries from Aristotle to the Dalai Lama. But what
happens when someone’s assumptions about life are flawed to
begin with? How can anyone make an ethical choice when they
don’t recognize that they’re ethically challenged? It’s a
dilemma we’re faced with from an early age. Every parent has
either heard or will eventually hear the youngster’s plaintive
cry, “But everyone else is doing it!” The truth is most
kids actually believe that somewhere, some luckier kid really is
doing it and having a lot of fun in the bargain. We never
quite outgrow this ourselves and an entire industry is dedicated
to making sure we don’t. Through a barrage of
advertisements in every conceivable media, we’re prodded (some
would say lashed) into accepting that other, more savvy people
are getting, doing or experiencing something that we
aren’t. By the time we roll into bed at night we’re left with a
gnawing feeling that we’re missing out—and therein sprout the
seeds of envy.
Envy is
behind a lot of ethically flawed decision-making. The envious
person sees the world in terms of equivalence. If you have
something, I should have it too. Now if this envious desire was
for things like spiritual fulfillment, true love or a charitable
heart, there would be no problem. But it’s almost always for
meager blessings such as a nicer chair, a new pencil sharpener
or colored sticky notes. The envious person is always on the
lookout for someone catching a break because they’re afraid they
won’t catch one too. And so it devolves into greater degrees of
pettiness—if you go home early one day, I need to go home early
too. From there it’s just a short leap to behavior that is
unarguably wrong. Lying, cheating and stealing are all justified
by the envious because they suspect other people are doing it
and getting away with it. If someone else benefits from bad
behavior why shouldn’t they?
Why
indeed. It’s not an easy challenge for leaders to confront envy
in the workplace. But an effective way to start is by modeling
good will. Giving others and the organization the benefit of the
doubt pays off over time. Importantly, behave in ways that would
make your mother proud. Don’t do things you wouldn’t condone in
others. Remember, you’re one of the team not better than the
team. With persistence you can overcome envy and maybe become a
Potato Sage in the process!
—Ebert
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