When Failure Gets Fatal, Careers Get Dead

Ever notice how some people, when they don’t like a decision someone else has made, make it a question of ethics? For example:

• A coworker cleans out the fridge on a Friday afternoon, throwing out what was to be another coworker’s after-work snack in the process. Coworker #2 screams “Why wasn’t I informed?!” and “Coworker #1 is a thief!” Coworker #2 insists that someone—SOMEONE!—owes them $4.29 to reimburse them for their wasted Lean Cuisine.
• The boss’s kid calls the work team asking everyone to buy boxes of cookies for her school band. Someone claims the move is nothing more than a grown-up version of a milk-money shake down.
• Options are discussed in a marketing meeting about how to address a competitive threat. Some unsavory tactics are bandied about during a brainstorming session, but when the leader asks if anyone’s comfortable executing those tactics, there is a universal “No!” and the ideas are summarily discarded. One of the people present at the meeting nonetheless reports the head of the meeting for unethical behavior. Anonymously, of course.

The list of grievances that get painted as “unethical” go on… and on…

Now. Pay attention, because this is important: two people can disagree about the best course of action without either one of them being unethical.

In fact, two people can disagree about whether or not a decision even rises to the level of “a question of ethics” without either one of them being unethical.

In double fact, two people can disagree about what the ethical thing to do would be in a particular situation, still without either one of them being unethical.

In triple fact, just because someone you don’t like does something you don’t like doesn’t automatically make that person unethical.

And, in quadruple fact, the more you get totally burned up and insist that an issue is one of ethics, the more you’re probably in the wrong yourself.

When Failure Gets Fatal

When something becomes a question of ethics, it becomes a capital crime. In that moment, failure becomes fatal—you’re no longer answering for a decision, you’re answering for your very being; you’re character is put on trial. Which is when fear sets in and forward motion stops dead.

And not just forward motion for the person who supposedly messed up, mind you, but for everybody. The collateral damage here is nothing short of catastrophic.

That’s not hyperbole.

Think about it: when you label someone as unethical, you excuse yourself from ever listening to anything that person says, ever again. Making something a question of ethics erases the acceptability of perception, interpretation, pragmatism, priority, or any one of the myriad factors people use to make decisions on a day-to-day basis in the discussion.

Worse, it shifts focus from the issue at hand to the character of the people at the table, meaning that the issue festers while people debate whether or not one another are as morally bankrupt as the charge against them implies.

Here’s the million dollar question: how many times do you think, in the typical organization, a mistake needs to be treated as an ethical lapse before employees become scared into inaction?

Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical. When even simple mistakes become potential career-enders, people stop tolerating mistakes in any form.

Bang, You’re Dead

When someone clears out the fridge at the end of the day on a Friday without you knowing about it, is it possible that the person still have a moral compass? Could it be that you didn’t get the memo? Or weren’t paying attention? Could it have been an honest mistake? Might someone have stolen your Lean Cuisine at 4pm, before the clean out? Or, might it be that the person did throw it out, feels badly, and is more than willing to buy you a new one on Monday?

Because as soon as an ethics charge is levied, these options all disappear. Everything in that “middle ground” between “oops” and “damn you!” gets nuked. It becomes all or nothing: either you’re right, or the other side is right, and whoever wins, the other guy loses.

And gets shot.

Bang… bang, bang, bang, bang… We’re All Dead

If owning up to something is tantamount to saying, “I’m unethical,” then taking ownership of anything is suddenly out of the question. There are real costs to being unethical, including financial penalties, relationship penalties, and legal penalties.

The consequences never end.

So much for accountability.

Oh, by the way, something else happens when all mistakes become fatal: everything becomes a political issue. (Aside from the death of accountability, I mean.) We lose the ability to solve our own problems—in short, by throwing the “unethical” label on an issue, we excuse ourselves from listening to the other side—leaving us calling for “mom and dad” to solve (all of) our problems for us.

Which means, rather than spending time working it out, we spend our time figuring out how to plead our case.

So now not only do the real issues get hidden in backlog of petty junk that gets sent up the corporate ladder for resolution, but they get hidden in all the political posturing that happens when we try to “sell” our side of the story.

Oh, yeah… hold on: one more thing.

When failure is fatal, and everything needs to be elevated to the top for resolution, relationships take strong precedence over functional work. Now, relationships always matter—I have a whole book about how functional ability alone is insufficient to guarantee career success, but as I say in training: interpersonal posturing should always and only come after a job well done. But if doing a good job can get me shot, and good connections can get me saved, then short term incentives create organizations that are political shrewd and functionally incompetent.

Which guarantees long term failure.

Sweet, spectacular failure.

How to Make Failure Acceptable

To solve this problem, a few things you need to know:

• You can’t do it alone.
• You have to decide to trust the other side.
• You have to work on your relationships every day—you can never take them for granted.
• You have to be productive with your anger and frustration. You are allowed to show these emotions, but you need to do so in a way so that the emotion (a) passes, and (b) doesn’t influence your decisions.
• You’re going to have to let things slide. Don’t loosen your standards, just accept that not every time you get the short end of the stick does it mean that someone tried to screw you.

That’s pretty much the foundation for the acceptance of failure. Sound impossible?

Yeah, it does to me, too.

Hey, anyone want to come chase a few windmills with me?

Maybe—just maybe—we can topple one… and make a few people a little less afraid to risk failure.

Because, after all is said and done, if you want to succeed in life, you have to open yourself up to the possibility of failure.

There is just no other way to live your story than full out, open to whatever comes… including those mistakes that are inevitable when you’re moving at life speed.

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