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M
OMENTS
credo? More than 800 product liability suits were filed over Zomax,
and by 1988 all but 3 had been settled out of court. The settlements
included provisions that barred the plaintiffs from revealing what
they had learned about the drug.
5
In 1986, a second Tylenol episode took place. It, too, cost a
human life, because someone penetrated the triple-protective seal
Johnson & Johnson had introduced after the six deaths from poisoned
Tylenol in 1982. In other words, it took yet another death to induce
the company to stop selling capsule products over the counter. Was
the company’s first response to the first death a case of ‘‘too little,
too late’’?
In 1990, Johnson & Johnson introduced a new fiberglass cast,
using technology that a court concluded was stolen from 3M. A
judge in the ensuing litigation ordered the company to pay $116
million for patent infringement and misappropriation of trade se-
crets.
6
A few years later, Johnson & Johnson was fined $7.5 million
for shredding documents and otherwise obstructing a federal agency
that was investigating charges that, for years, Johnson & Johnson
had illegally marketed one of its drugs.
7
It is easy to imagine an alternative interpretation of Johnson &
Johnson’s recent history. Its centerpiece would be Zomax, not Ty-
lenol, because the Zomax episode was the first of a series of incidents
in which the company seemed to ignore its credo. The famous
Tylenol episode, from this perspective, is the exception—and a
rather feeble one—that proves the rule. That is, the decision to pull
the product can be viewed as a no-brainer. National news broadcasts
about the six deaths had instilled almost-universal fear of Tylenol,
Johnson & Johnson’s reputation was in peril, and the financial cost
of pulling the product was far less than $100 million, because few
consumers wanted to play Russian roulette to cure their headaches.
What, then, is the ‘‘truth independent’’ about the Tylenol episode
and Johnson & Johnson’s commitment to its credo? Why did one
interpretation of the company and its values triumph over the others?
James Burke gave part of the answer when he said that, during the
1982 Tylenol episode, the media became, in his phrase, the com-
pany’s ‘‘handmaiden.’’ This was hardly an accident. Instead, as we
will see, it is compelling testimony to Burke’s management skills,
values, experience, tenacity, shrewdness, and tactical instincts. As a
Truth Is a Process 91
result, the Tylenol story became a defining moment, revealing and
renewing the company’s commitment to the important human values
in its credo. One interpretation among many had won the contest
of interpretations.
Had Adario understood this, his chances of success would have
been considerably higher. He acted as if his personal view of the
ethics of the Kathryn McNeil situation were the objective truth,
rather than his interpretation. For example, where Adario saw right
versus right, Lisa Walters saw right versus wrong. She believed
that the basic ethical issue was responsibility—or, more precisely,
McNeil’s irresponsibility for not pulling her weight and Adario’s
irresponsibility for not taking action. The IBM account was crucial,
and it was falling behind schedule during a period of near-crisis for
the company. Walters also believed it was unfair for one member
of the badly overburdened team to get special treatment.
Had Peter Adario recognized that his view was just one interpreta-
tion among many, he might have proceeded more successfully. Once
Adario was clear about the values he wanted to encourage in his
department, he should have asked himself the first of four important
questions: What are the other strong, persuasive, competing interpre-
tations of the situation or problem that I hope to use as a defining
moment for my organization?
The answer to this question might have been a wake-up call for
Adario. It might have helped him to abandon his lofty view of
events and realize that he was engaged in a difficult contest of
interpretations, not a righteous quest for truth and goodness. Peter
Adario’s ‘‘family-friendly’’ cooperative worldview was vying against
Lisa Walter’s competitive, ‘‘Let’s give it all we’ve got and save the
company’’ ethos.
T
RUTH
‘‘W
ORKS
’’
What kind of interpretation is most likely to win a contest of interpre-
tation inside an organization and influence the thinking and behavior
of other people? William James gives a complex and subtle answer
to this question, an answer that managers like Peter Adario need
92 D
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M
OMENTS
to understand if they want to succeed in getting particular ideas,
interpretations, and values to become ‘‘true’’ for their organizations.
For James, successful ideas, victorious ideas, are the ideas that
work. This may sound simple, but it is actually a complicated and
unusual way of thinking about truth. The conventional view of truth
is much simpler. It holds that a statement is true if it corresponds
to some external reality. For example, the statement ‘‘That bug is
dead’’ is true if someone makes it about a dead bug. In other words,
a true statement is like a mirror held up to reality.
This approach to truth runs into serious difficulties, James be-
lieved, when we are dealing with complex, important matters such
as ethics or religion. Our experience continues to matter critically,
but not in a simple, mirror-of-reality, dead-bug way. Ideas become
true, James writes, when they work, when they meet real humans’
needs and pass the test of lived experience.
Put more formally, true ideas have three characteristics. First,
they have ‘‘cash-value in experiential terms’’ and are ‘‘profitable to
our lives.’’
8
Second, they can also be grafted onto ideas we already
hold to be true, without causing much disturbance. Third, true ideas
are down to earth, not esoteric. ‘‘The finally victorious way of looking
at things,’’ he writes, ‘‘will be the most completely impressive to the
normal run of minds.’’
9
What does this way of thinking imply for managers? Had Peter
Adario thought in these terms, he would have worked hard to find
ways of presenting his view of work-family issues in ways that might
have proven valuable in the immediate experience of others, that
would disturb their worldviews as little as possible, and that they
could hear and understand in simple English. This might have meant
changing the way he phrased the issue. ‘‘Work-family’’ meant roughly
the same thing to Adario, to his wife, and to McNeil. Its meaning
was their constant fatigue, their everyday sense of being pulled in
a thousand directions, and the frustration of never catching up on
all they had to do. For them, this was what James would call the
cash-value, stream-of-experience meaning of work-family issues.
In contrast, the phrase meant little, in experiential terms, to most
of the other employees at Sayer MicroWorld. Few were parents,
almost all were young and single. In their everyday stream of experi-
ence, however, the cash-value meaning of ‘‘work-family’’ was that
Truth Is a Process 93
they sometimes had to work longer hours because other employees
with children had left for soccer games or doctor’s appointments.
Had Adario used phrases like ‘‘a balanced life’’ or ‘‘time for recharging
one’s batteries’’ as a way of describing and interpreting the values
he wanted his department to follow, he would have had some pros-
pect of grafting his ideas onto the views and experiences of other
employees.
For Adario’s boss, the vice president who was preoccupied with
cash flow and operating performance, ‘‘work-family’’ was a red flag.
It smacked of political correctness, promised more task forces and
policy statements, and threatened to raise costs and make his job
more complicated. For Adario’s hopes to have any chance of success,
he needed convincing ways of describing his agenda in terms of
raising productivity or improving recruiting. An interpretation is
much more likely to succeed and become the truth for a company
if it makes the business stronger or meets the needs of the people
running it.
These suggestions for Adario can easily be misunderstood. They
may look like verbal sleight of hand, clever sound bites, or political
propaganda. Although it is true that ethics must often sneak in the
back door of a company or cross-dress as economics and self-interest,
James isn’t recommending devious tactics. He is calling for acts of
creativity, insight, and skill that enable a manager like Peter Adario
to express ideals and values in ways that resonate with the experience,
needs, and values of the people he manages. This requires a talent
for looking beyond ‘‘the facts’’ and discerning what they mean to
other people.
James Burke, with his long and successful experience in marketing,
relied on this talent in a crucial early moment of the 1982 Tylenol
episode. Some managers at Johnson & Johnson argued that the
company faced a ‘‘Tylenol problem’’—a business problem affecting
a single product. Burke’s diagnosis was different. He sensed, quite
correctly, that the media would run with the story as a ‘‘Johnson &
Johnson problem,’’ that the government would view it as a public
health problem, and that the company’s customers would define the
problem as simply fear of Johnson & Johnson’s products.
A talent for understanding what facts and events mean to others
is especially valuable when managers confront difficult ethical issues.
94 D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
These issues often stimulate intense feelings and conflicts, and dis-
agreements about values can be interpreted as attacks on others’
character and integrity. And the managers who must resolve difficult
ethical issues are just as vulnerable to these hazards as anyone else.
For example, when Adario devised his plan, he was convinced he
was, unambiguously, doing the right thing: McNeil would keep her
job and the IBM account would get back on schedule. Having
positioned himself firmly on the moral high ground, Adario thought
Walters and the vice president were the ones in need of ethical
guidance.
Adario might have fared better had he worked hard to answer a
second basic question for managers whose organizations face defin-
ing moments: What is the cash value of this situation and of my
ideas for the people whose support I need? A sound answer to this
question might have helped Adario refine his message and shape it
to the specific psychological and political context in which he was
working.
T
RUTH
H
APPENS
TO AN
I
DEA
William James had another valuable insight about truth, one that
expresses something that leaders like James Burke understand and
that managers like Peter Adario need to learn. Like his idea that
‘‘truth works,’’ it seems to depart from the standard correspondence
(or dead-bug) view of truth. James’s insight was this: ‘‘The truth of
an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to
an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an
event, a process.’’
10
This is a profoundly important way for managers to think about
defining moments. Viewed from this perspective, a defining moment
for an organization is far more than a courageous executive decision
or a climactic event like Johnson & Johnson’s decision to recall all
Tylenol capsules. The final, dramatic moment is often only the final
and most visible part of a complex political, psychological, and
administrative process. To think otherwise is to mistake an exclama-
tion point for the sentence that precedes it.
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