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Dirty Hands
T
HOUGHTFUL MANAGERS
sometimes face business problems
that raise difficult, deeply personal questions. In these situa-
tions, managers find themselves wondering: Do I have to
leave some of my values at home when I go to work? How much
of myself—and of what I really care about—do I have to sacrifice
to get ahead? When I get to the office, who am I?
Difficult questions like these are often matters of right versus
right, not right versus wrong. Sometimes, a manager faces a difficult
problem and must choose between two ways of resolving it. Each
alternative is the right thing to do, but there is no way to do both.
Consider, for example, the problem faced by Rebecca Dennet,
a branch manager for a major bank. Her boss, a senior executive,
told her that her branch would be shut down in two months, shortly
after the first of the year. The executive asked Dennet to keep the
information confidential because important regulatory papers had
yet to be filed, and she agreed to do so.
Two days later, a coworker asked Dennet if she knew anything
about the rumor that the branch would soon be closed. When she
hesitated, the coworker grew impatient and said, ‘‘Look, this is
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2D
EFINING
M
OMENTS
serious. There aren’t a lot of jobs around here. Do I cut back on
Christmas gifts? Do you know anything?’’
What should Dennet have done? The right thing, of course,
was to answer the question honestly—after all, she did know some-
thing. It is also right to be loyal to friends, and the woman asking
for help and guidance was a good friend. But saying nothing was
also right. As a corporate officer, Dennet’s duty was to maintain
confidentiality, and she had explicitly promised to do so. Clearly,
her choice was not between right and wrong, but between right
and right.
Rebecca Dennet’s problem is hardly unique. Although the details
differ, good managers often struggle with some version of this
predicament. They want to live up to their personal standards and
values, they have to meet the expectations of their customers and
shareholders—often in the face of relentless profit pressures—
and their own jobs are the foundation of their families’ security.
Most managers also want to be fair to the people who work for
them, lend a hand to people in need, earn the respect of their
families and friends, and maintain their personal integrity.
Most of the time, managers find ways to juggle all these responsi-
bilities and aspirations. In some cases, however, they cannot. Then
these responsible, successful, achievement-oriented people face the
prospect of a serious kind of personal failure: the failure to live up
to the commitments they have made and the standards by which
they want to live. For managers who struggle with these kinds of
situations, the stakes are very high. They go to the heart of what
it means to be successful manager and a decent, responsible person.
C
RUCIBLES OF
C
HARACTER
Situations like Rebecca Dennet’s are sometimes called ‘‘dirty hands’’
problems. This peculiar name comes from the title of a play by the
French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. The story takes place in war-
time. Its main characters include the veteran leader of an under-
ground unit of the Communist party and a zealous young party
Dirty Hands 3
member. At a crucial moment in the drama, the young man accuses
his leader of betraying the party’s ideals, through the compromises
he has made with reactionary political forces.
The older man answers this harsh accusation in the following
words:
How you cling to your purity, young man! How afraid you are to soil
your hands! All right, stay pure! What good will it do? Why did you
join us? Purity is an idea for a yogi or a monk....Todonothing,
to remain motionless, arms at your side, wearing kid gloves. Well, I have
dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I’ve plunged them in filth and blood.
But what do you hope? Do you think you can govern innocently?
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Do you think you can govern innocently? This is a powerful,
haunting question, to which we will return at several points in this
book. For now, however, the question has a single, clear, disturbing
implication. The old Communist suggests that men and women who
have power over the lives and livelihoods of others must almost
inevitably get their hands dirty—not in the sense of rolling up their
sleeves and working hard, but in the sense of losing their moral
innocence.
For Rebecca Dennet and other managers, the question is: Do you
think you can manage innocently? The veteran party leader poses
the question in a way that reveals his answer. Only the naive, he
believes, think that leaders can avoid dirty hands. But is this so? Are
dirty hands really the inevitable lot of successful men and women
with real power and responsibility in life? The Communist is a
political leader in wartime. What does he have in common with a
business manager?
Consider the reflections of Chester Barnard. Although few people
know his name, Barnard was among this century’s most insightful
observers of business leaders. He combined an incisive mind with
years of hands-on management experience to write The Functions of
the Executive, a classic of management literature. First published in
1938, the book remains in print after more than 40 editions.
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OMENTS
For many years, Barnard lived a remarkable double life. He spent
his weekdays as the president of the Bell System in New Jersey, at
a time when the phone company was a leading high-technology
company. He spent evenings and weekends writing his masterwork
on leadership and organization.
Barnard discusses managers’ responsibilities at length. At one
point, he makes an observation as remarkable and disturbing as the
old Communist’s. ‘‘It seems to me inevitable,’’ Barnard warns, ‘‘that
the struggle to maintain cooperation among men should as surely
destroy some men morally as battle destroys them physically.’’
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This passage is remarkable as much for Barnard’s realism as for
the strength of his convictions. Management is not, for Barnard at
least, the upbeat adventure described in many management books.
It is the ‘‘struggle’’ to get people to work together. Moreover, he views
his troubling conclusion as a dead certainty, calling it ‘‘inevitable.’’
Even more striking is the similarity between Barnard’s conclusion
and the view that Sartre expresses through the old Communist. Both
men believed that positions of leadership impose difficult personal
challenges that can destroy some men and women and strengthen
others. For Barnard, leadership brings the risk of moral destruction.
For Sartre, it raises the prospect of ‘‘dirty hands.’’ Both men believed,
in essence, that positions of leadership are crucibles of character.
How did two such different men—an American business executive
and a French existentialist philosopher—come to share this conclu-
sion? Part of the answer is that both were deeply engaged in the
same quest: the effort to learn the bottom facts about the lives and
decisions of individuals who have power over others and struggle
at times with their responsibilities.
The other part of the answer is best understood by looking at
the origins of dilemmas like Rebecca Dennet’s. Positions of power
carry complicated responsibilities. On some occasions, these respon-
sibilities conflict with each other. At other times, they conflict with
a manager’s personal values. All of these responsibilities, personal
and professional, have strong moral claims, but often there is no
way for a manager to meet every claim. These are not the ethical
issues of right and wrong that we learn about as children. They are
conflicts of right versus right.
Dirty Hands 5
Neither Barnard nor Sartre believed that right-versus-right con-
flicts were purely intellectual issues. They knew that choices between
right and right are fraught with personal risk. In these cases, when
managers do one right thing, they leave other right things undone.
They feel they are letting others down and failing to live up to their
standards. The loss of innocence seems real, their hands feel dirty,
and sometimes the moral calamity that Barnard warned of seems all
too close.
Right-versus-right conflicts become questions about life and not
just management for another reason: their finality. Once Rebecca
Dennet makes a decision and implements it, there will be no turning
back. She will have written a paragraph or a page of her personal
and professional autobiography. Her choices will be recorded, not
on a word processor that permits endless revisions, but in life’s
permanent record.
Right-versus-right issues are troubling, complicated, and serious.
They are also too important to ignore. Good people in management
jobs must sometimes make very hard choices. At issue is what it
means to be a successful manager and a thoughtful, responsible
human being. On this, Barnard and Sartre agree. So, too, would
countless thoughtful managers, who struggle to balance their con-
flicting obligations in responsible, practical ways.
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EYOND
I
NSPIRATIONAL
E
THICS
This book examines the right-versus-right conflicts that every busi-
ness manager faces. It presents an unorthodox and pragmatic way
to think about these conflicts and resolve them. For managers, right-
versus-right decisions are uniquely important choices. They can have
powerful and often irrevocable consequences for the lives of the
men and women who must make the decisions and for their organiza-
tions as well.
The approach presented here parts company with the standard
inspirational answers to hard management problems. Most managers
have heard the speeches in which executives champion a corporate
credo or mission statement and exhort everyone to ‘‘Do the right
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