Managing in the Gray
76
factor was that Fletcher had given himself a 3.0 performance
rating, so he knew he wasn’t doing well.
Friedman’s situation wouldn’t surprise Machiavelli. Her
company described itself as a meritocracy with high perfor-
mance standards and a sharp focus on customer needs. This
is what Friedman was told, and what she hoped for, when she
joined the company. Instead, she found that several powerful
people in the organization took care of themselves and their
pals, tried hard to settle scores, and pressured other employ-
ees to play these games. As a result, even though Friedman
wanted to give Fletcher the rating he deserved, she knew that
political realities pointed her in the opposite direction.
In essence, the third question for managers facing gray area
issues asks if they recognize that the world in which they live
and work is unpredictable, constrained, and skewed by individ-
uals and groups serving their own interests. The question asks
managers if they are prepared to do what is necessary in this
world—to serve the interests of people who depend on them
and also protect themselves and advance their own objectives.
Human Nature, Realism, and
Pragmatism
The third question, like the first two, can easily be abused or
trivialized. As we will see, the abuse is interpreting the ques-
tion as a mandate for pursuing simpleminded, short-term
self-interest. The question can be trivialized by reducing it to
any of the familiar sayings that simply advocate suspicion and
distrust. Mark Twain, for example, wrote that, “Everyone is
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77
a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to any-
body.”
7
Two millennia earlier, the Roman philosopher, con-
sul, and lawyer Marcus Tullius Cicero advised, “Trust no one
unless you have eaten much salt with him.”
8
Another venera-
ble adage, attributed to a wide range of writers, says, “Believe
none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.”
9
These
are sensible sayings, but they don’t communicate what the
third question is asking you to think about. To grasp this,
you need to understand the deeper levels of meaning in the
pragmatic perspective.
The third question has deep roots in both Western and
Eastern traditions of thought. In fact, the intellectual roots of
this perspective may extend even further than the ideas of the
net, net consequences and basic human duties. At bottom, the
question is asking what you think about human nature: Are
human beings are predominantly good or predominantly evil?
Machiavelli wrote nothing about biology or evolution, but
the third question—at its deepest level—is consistent with the
findings of these two sciences. As we have seen, the human
creature may have evolved with some cooperative instincts,
and these may have enabled certain groups to survive, but
we are also deeply self-interested. The poet Alfred Tennyson
captured this in the famous phrase, “nature, red in tooth and
claw.”
10
In other words, we may be natural-born cooperators,
but we are also natural-born killers. All societies confront the
problem of alpha males. According to anthropologists, these
are primates or human creatures driven to acquire, aggran-
dize, dominate, and conquer. A kindred problem is the hard-
wired tendency, in almost all humans, to pursue and protect
their own interests.
11
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Managing in the Gray
78
At another deep level, Machiavelli’s ideas resonate with the
great religious traditions, and in a surprising way. The Prince,
his best-known work, is essentially godless. It barely mentions
sin, divine rule, or redemption. And yet Machiavelli’s view of
human nature is wholly consistent with long- standing reli-
gious perspectives on human nature, which show us as mal-
leable, easily corruptible creatures.
At the beginning of the Old Testament, for example, Adam
and Eve violate God’s rules and eat the forbidden fruit. Cain,
one of their sons, proceeds to betray, deceive, and kill his
brother Abel. Then book after book of the Bible describes the
foibles, perversities, treacheries, and cruelties of individuals
and groups, of ordinary people and exalted rulers—despite
the clear edicts and harsh sanctions of an all-powerful and
all-seeing God. Other religious traditions give us a similar
view. For example, one account of ancient Hindu traditions
says, “The human condition is thus an ongoing experience
of fragmentation, isolation, and loneliness. Consequently, our
social worlds are riddled with crime and hostile conflict.”
12
Ancient secular texts also give us a similar view of our fel-
low human beings—and ourselves. Perhaps the best-known
classical Chinese guide to effective leadership is The Art of
War, written in roughly 500 BC. Its author, Sun Tzu, was a
philosopher, so he thought deeply about basic questions, but
he was also a general and understood the practical challenges
of leadership. Sun Tzu wrote to advise other military leaders,
but men and women in many other walks of life, in Asia and
in the West, have turned to him for practical advice.
Sun Tzu saw the world as a battlefield, where success
demands foresight, strategy, cunning, adaptability, and
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What Will Work in the World as It Is?
79
psychological acuity. So he gives advice that Machiavelli
would endorse and that the third question emphasizes.
13
He
tells his readers, for example:
Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formless-
ness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point
of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the direc-
tor of the opponent’s fate. All warfare is based on
deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we
must seem unable; when using our forces, we must
appear inactive; when we are near, we must make
the enemy believe we are far away; when far away,
we must make him believe we are near . . . O divine
art of subtlety and secrecy!
14
We see a similar perspective if we look at the practical-
minded thinkers in our modern era who tried to devise
the best forms of government. They advocate transparency,
checks and balances, countervailing power, and other ways
of restraining what governments, rulers, and politicians do.
In the spirit of Machiavellian realism, they tried to design
governments that would protect us from ourselves and from
our governments. They weren’t trying, naively, to suppress
self-interest; all they hoped to do was channel it constructively.
Giambattista Vico, the seventeenth-century Italian political
philosopher and historian, wrote: “Legislation considers man
as he is in order to turn him to good uses in human society.
Out of ferocity, avarice and ambition, the three vices which
run throughout the human race, it creates the military, mer-
chant, and governing classes, and thus the strength, riches
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Managing in the Gray
80
and wisdom of commonwealths. Out of these three great
vices, which could certainly destroy all mankind on the face
of the earth, it makes civil happiness.”
15
A deep current of thought running through contemporary
biological science, the great religious and political traditions,
and Machiavelli’s worldview says, in effect: Look closely at
human nature, see it for what it is, and don’t kid yourself.
Some of the people around you are self-interested, coldly
rational, and strategic. They are in the game for themselves
and themselves alone, and they are dangerous because they
know how to play the game. Then there are others, who are
also pursuing their self-interest, but in shortsighted, ham-
fisted, ineffective ways. Finally, there are people who have
more or less sound characters and try to do what seems right
and sensible. All these types of individuals—the brilliantly
devious, the inept and confused, and the mostly solid citi-
zens—are out there, all around us. They are continuously
acting, reacting, vying, jostling, maneuvering, scheming, and
colliding. That is the world as it is.
Perhaps the deepest and most challenging theme in all of
Machiavelli’s thinking is the idea that the turbulence, uncer-
tainty, and danger all around us create special ethical responsi-
bilities for men and women who have to make hard decisions
in organizations. They have to confront the hard realities of
human nature head-on. If they don’t, they are much more
likely to fail and hurt everyone who depends on them.
The philosopher Stuart Hampshire stated this idea suc-
cinctly and powerfully. “The safety of the morally innocent,”
he wrote, “and their freedom to lead their own lives, depend
upon the rulers’ clear-headedness in the use of power. If their
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