I have always held the opinion that people in private sector are on an average more honest than people in public sector. People in any kind of job are more honest than people in politics. I am not so sure any more. It seems to boil down to opportunity.
To put the question more bluntly, would you steal when no one is looking. How hard would you play when no one is watching. How hard would you work when you know you wont't get the credit(but the project will get boost). Even worse someone else will take the credit. Would you take credit for something someone else did.
And when I apply this, I guess most of the people I have come across in my work life would go for an unfavorable response on these questions. A lot of them seemingly nice and hard working. They probably have worked out an acceptability threshold to corruption/immoral behavior and politicians would be justified when they say (they will never) that they just pushed it.
The Dark Knight, one of my all time favorite movie has an excellent premise. The villain isn't out to get money. He is out to prove his theory - "When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other". I, kind of agree to his theory. You will see the masks falling at the slightest chance of trouble/possibility of gain and everyone almost feels justified in doing that. The movie however, ends on a positive note, because in the face of death, people decide to do the right thing. And Batman, figures out that the greater good lies in sacrificing himself, does so. But that was in the movie, right.
Here are two questions that I will leave you with:
- If the only way forward for your team/project is by sacrificing yourself, would you do it?
- If the only way you can make your presence felt is by letting things fail, would you do it?
To put the question more bluntly, would you steal when no one is looking. How hard would you play when no one is watching. How hard would you work when you know you wont't get the credit(but the project will get boost). Even worse someone else will take the credit. Would you take credit for something someone else did.
And when I apply this, I guess most of the people I have come across in my work life would go for an unfavorable response on these questions. A lot of them seemingly nice and hard working. They probably have worked out an acceptability threshold to corruption/immoral behavior and politicians would be justified when they say (they will never) that they just pushed it.
The Dark Knight, one of my all time favorite movie has an excellent premise. The villain isn't out to get money. He is out to prove his theory - "When the chips are down, these civilized people will eat each other". I, kind of agree to his theory. You will see the masks falling at the slightest chance of trouble/possibility of gain and everyone almost feels justified in doing that. The movie however, ends on a positive note, because in the face of death, people decide to do the right thing. And Batman, figures out that the greater good lies in sacrificing himself, does so. But that was in the movie, right.
Here are two questions that I will leave you with:
- If the only way forward for your team/project is by sacrificing yourself, would you do it?
- If the only way you can make your presence felt is by letting things fail, would you do it?
I think the "Only way to do a thing.." situations are far fewer than they appear to be. Most of us unfortunately are wired to decompose choices badly and deliberately invent constraints because it is somewhat easy to be left with no choices than take lead.