Truth Is a Process 95
For managers, process does the heavy lifting. It gives victory to
one interpretation, defines it as ‘‘the truth’’ for an organization, and
makes a defining moment possible. What Adario had forgotten about
the Tylenol episode was all that preceded it. He was impressed by
what the company did; he should have been impressed that it was
ready to do what it did.
Burke’s actions, in the moment of crisis, were only the latest in
a long series of efforts to renew the company’s commitment to
its basic values. The company credo was decades old and closely
associated with the company’s revered, long-time chairman, General
Robert Johnson, who created it. The credo had been carefully crafted,
occasionally updated and clarified, and, above all, it had proven to
be good business. By ranking mothers and doctors well ahead of
shareholders in its priorities, it discouraged short-sighted profit seek-
ing that risked the entire firm’s reputation. Moreover, several years
before the Tylenol episode, Burke had asked the company’s execu-
tives whether the credo was still relevant, and the ensuing discussions
reaffirmed its value to the company. Even the Zomax episode and the
negative publicity resulting from it may have encouraged Johnson &
Johnson to take its credo more seriously.
Because truth is a process, Adario’s campaign for a more family-
friendly workplace should have begun even before McNeil began work-
ing at Sayer MicroWorld. From the start, Adario should have realized
the difficult, vulnerable position he was putting McNeil in. For
example, McNeil had told him during a recruiting interview that
she had firm plans for child care and would be able to work ten-
hour days. That statement alone, unfortunately, was good enough
for Adario. He gave no thought to several other equally plausible
scenarios. Her day-care arrangements might fall through, as these
arrangements often do. Her son would occasionally be sick, and she
would need to stay with him or take him to the doctor. And the
wear and tear of single parenthood and a demanding job would
eventually take their toll on McNeil. Even if he had asked about
these contingencies, and even if McNeil had said she was prepared
for them, Adario should have been skeptical and planned accord-
ingly, especially because almost everyone trims his or her sails to
raise the chances of a job offer.
96 D
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M
OMENTS
Adario also erred when he told McNeil that there would be only
rare occasions when she had to work at night or on weekends. This
was careless, if not naive. Adario knew that the company’s position
was too fragile and its industry too turbulent to project a schedule
like this into the future.
Worse, neither McNeil nor Adario asked the hard questions about
how family-friendly Sayer MicroWorld really was. Its executives
gave lip service to the idea but had no policies in place. Whereas
most people endorse ‘‘family-friendly’’ policies in theory, especially
when the rhetoric from headquarters makes it the politically correct
thing to do, their views can change when the pressure builds and
they have to pick up the slack for a parent who is falling behind
schedule. More candor and realism, even a dose of skepticism, might
have helped both Adario and McNeil understand the challenges that
she might face at Sayer MicroWorld.
After he decided to hire McNeil, Adario should have taken other
steps to lay the groundwork for her success. It was crucial, for
example, for Adario’s superiors, as well as her coworkers, to support
his decision to hire her. In particular, he needed to help them
understand the skills and experience, particularly with IBM, that she
brought to the company. He also could have created opportunities
for them to get to know her personally, or even to meet her son,
in order to help others understand and appreciate what she was
accomplishing.
Once McNeil started work, Adario could have supported her in
other ways. For example, he could have let his bosses know how
hard she was working and all that she was accomplishing. This might
have given her some allies at headquarters, making it more difficult
for Walters to go over Adario’s head and get her fired so quickly.
In short, Adario didn’t realize that a defining moment is only one
step in a long and complex process. Unfortunately, he did almost
no spadework. Then, when a crisis occurred, he defined the issue
as a scheduling problem or an interpersonal misunderstanding and
hoped that one successful meeting would induce everyone to rise
with him and salute the ‘‘family-friendly’’ flag. Adario had failed to
think through the third basic question about defining moments for
organizations: Have I orchestrated a process that can make the values
I care about become the truth for my organization?
Truth Is a Process 97
P
LAYING FOR
K
EEPS
Machiavelli would probably have listened politely to most of the
advice given to Peter Adario in this chapter. The idea that truth is
an interpretation that works, that powerful ideas have cash value,
and that truth is a process—all these ideas are consistent with his
view of the world. But Machiavelli would have had more advice for
Adario.
In all likelihood, he would have viewed Adario’s world of mergers,
debt, layoffs, and bureaucratic maneuvering as child’s play, in con-
trast to the perils and treachery of Renaissance Italy. There people’s
lives—including Machiavelli’s, at one point—sometimes hung in the
balance. Machiavelli was, above all, a lifelong student of what Peter
Drucker has called managing in turbulent times.
Adario might have been shocked at Machiavelli’s first question:
How much longer did Adario expect to keep his job? Lisa Walters’s
star was clearly on the rise. While Adario was out of the office, she
worked with one of his bosses to swiftly resolve an important issue
he had neglected. The vice president didn’t reprimand her for going
over Adario’s head; no one even suggested she go through the
formalities of consulting him. On this decision, Adario was a non-
person.
Contests of interpretation, Machiavelli would tell Adario, can be
power struggles. The victorious interpretation can determine not
just the values of a company, but bonuses, promotions, and careers.
If Walters didn’t have her eye on his job before McNeil was fired,
she probably did afterward, because top management seemed to like
her take-charge style. While Adario was lobbing nice, underhand
softball pitches, Walters was playing hardball. Machiavelli’s question
to managers facing defining moments for their organizations is this:
Are you playing to win?
He might also mention that winning is more than having the
biggest pile of goodies—money, perks, titles, and so forth—at the
end of the game. Nietzsche believed that deeper, more powerful
forces—which he called the ‘‘will to power’’—fueled people’s motives
and shaped their interpretations of events. He wrote, ‘‘We seek a
picture of the world in that philosophy in which we feel freest; that
is, in which our most powerful drive feels free to function.’’
11
In
98 D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
other words, Walters’s disagreement with Adario may well express
bedrock personal assumptions about life, work, and ethics. When
the stakes are this high, people play the games of organizational
life to win.
In a world like this, the simple, inspiring, do-the-right-thing view
of ethics is a path to obscure martyrdom. Machiavelli condemned
leaders who sought to live in ‘‘imaginary worlds’’ of ethical aspira-
tions, while failing to take action in this world. Adario had failed
to help McNeil, perhaps placed his own job at risk, and threatened
the security of his family. Adario’s heart was in the right place when
he hired McNeil. He believed she could do the job, he admired her
courage, and he wanted to lend her a helping hand and create
a workplace in which she could prosper. All this was genuinely
commendable. But such praiseworthy intentions need support and
protection, in the form of a talent for maneuvering, shrewdness, and
political savvy.
James Burke had honed these skills to a very high level, and he
used them brilliantly during the two Tylenol episodes. A remarkable
example occurred in 1986, after another poisoning death led John-
son & Johnson to announce that it would no longer sell capsule
products over the counter. Burke had agreed to a live television
interview, and an enterprising reporter, with an instinct for the
jugular, said this to him: ‘‘The mother of Diane Ellsroth, the girl
who was killed, said she feels that Johnson & Johnson was three
years too late. What is your response to that?’’
The reporter was trying to ask a question that might catch Burke
off guard. She was appealing directly and dramatically to the sympa-
thy of the audience. She was suggesting, rather unsubtly, that Burke
and his company had contributed to the death of an innocent young
woman.
Burke had no time to prepare an answer. He was facing a
camera under the hot lights of a television studio. The stakes
were very high: Johnson & Johnson had spent vast sums to rebuild
its image and Tylenol’s market share after the 1982 calamity.
Burke was addressing a world in which admitting a mistake invites
lawsuits, in which defensiveness or evasion by an executive triggers
cynicism, and in which a company reputation, like a piece of
Truth Is a Process 99
crystal created over months, can be destroyed in a moment. Here
is Burke’s answer:
My response is that if I were the mother of Diane Ellsroth, I’d say the
same thing. And I’d feel the same thing. And with the benefit of hindsight,
which is 20-20, I wish we’d never gone back into the market with capsules
myself.
12
This three-sentence answer, spoken in less than ten seconds, is
remarkable—for what Burke did and did not say. He managed to walk
right through the reporter’s trap, with his reputation and Johnson &
Johnson’s intact. Burke did not change the subject. He did not say,
‘‘We did the best we could,’’ or that the real villain was whoever
poisoned the capsule, or that Johnson & Johnson was also a victim.
He responded directly to the reporter’s question, without hesitation
or diversion.
Like the reporter, Burke also appealed to the audience’s feelings,
saying he would feel and say just what the mother had said. This
made it clear he was a human being who understood the tragedy
of this mother and daughter. At the same time, while he expressed
regrets about the original capsule decision, he briefly mentioned
that 20-20 hindsight lay behind his view. This enabled him to express
regret without making a statement that could be used against his
company in court.
Peter Adario showed few of the skills that Burke had plainly
mastered. He missed subtle signals and patterns—which would have
indicated to him that another process, quite opposed to his inten-
tions, was already under way. Recall that Lisa Walters had sent
Adario two notes, each suggesting that McNeil be replaced. What
were these notes really about? Were they trial balloons, proposals,
tentative announcements of a plan, or tests of Adario’s authority,
since he was supposed to make decisions like this? And what did
Walters make of the fact that Adario didn’t respond to her first note?
Did this mean he was too busy, that the issue wasn’t important
enough, that he thought Walters was on the right track, that he was
vacillating and she could take the initiative, that he didn’t think her
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