Managing in the Gray
18
Mill’s reaction to this experience was extraordinary. His
grueling education and devastating collapse would have
crushed many people, but Mill soldiered on and recast his
life. He rejected his father’s plan for him to attend Oxford
or Cambridge. He dramatically widened his reading and
thinking, became devoted to Romantic poetry, and ultimately
worked for several decades in a “day job” as a clerk in the
British East India Company. Mill also wrote books and articles
on a wide range of topics and became Britain’s most import-
ant nineteenth-century philosopher and public intellectual.
Why does Mill’s journey in life matter to us? Essentially, it’s
that he accepted Bentham’s mandate to think broadly about
hard decisions but rejected Bentham’s focus on happiness. Mill’s
painful experience taught him that we have to think broadly
and deeply, if we want to make good decisions and live good
lives. Mill agreed with Bentham that, to make a good decision,
you should think about everybody affected. You should be as
objective as possible and put aside your own self-interest. And
you should think carefully and analytically and be as specific as
you can about the consequences of your choices.
But Mill added a crucial humanist insight: be careful not
to oversimplify, and don’t be a reductionist. Life is a rich
canvas, not a cartoon, and there is far more to human expe-
rience than pleasure and pain. Thinking about the full con-
sequences of the decision means thinking deeply—trying to
understand consequences in terms of everything that matters
to us as human beings: hope, joy, security, freedom from haz-
ards, health, friendship and love, risk, suffering, and dreams.
Thinking deeply isn’t easy. It takes time and imagination,
empathy and compassion. But it is profoundly realistic and
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What Are the Net, Net Consequences?
19
important. For Mill, it was actually the best way to live, as
well as the right way to make decisions. In Mill’s words, it is
better “to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied;
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”
5
In practical terms, Mill is saying to us: If you have to make
a hard decision, don’t make Bentham’s mistake. Don’t over-
simplify. Don’t just focus on what you can count or price.
You should certainly think carefully and analytically. If you
are a manager, you should get the best data you can, apply the
relevant techniques and frameworks, consult the appropriate
experts, and work the issues hard in meetings and around
the water cooler. But, when you finally have to decide what
to do, make sure you are also thinking concretely, imagina-
tively, vividly, and empathically about the consequences of
your options. And, as you think, consider everything that
your fellow humans need, want, fear, and really care about.
That, in essence, is what the first great humanist question
asks us to do.
How much weight should we give to Mill’s thinking? His
ideas seem sound—at least at first glance—but Mill had a
bizarre childhood and a traumatic early adulthood. He may
have clung to these ideas like a life preserver, but does that
mean the rest of us should follow them? The answer to this
question is yes, and to see why, we have to put aside the notion
that these are Mill’s ideas.
Mill basically did what many of the great philosophers
have done. He distilled and expressed, in clear, simple lan-
guage, a set of powerful ideas—ideas that run like bright
threads through the thinking, reflections, and insights of
many important philosophers, religious figures, and political
Chapter_02.indd 19 10/06/16 11:01 PM
Managing in the Gray
20
leaders. Put differently, the ideas and insights Mill encap-
sulated have, for centuries, been the inspiring and shaping
forces in individual lives and across societies.
For example, in China, in roughly 400 BCE, Mozi—an
important Eastern philosopher and a contemporary and rival
of Confucius—wrote something that could easily be a pas-
sage from Mill. “It is the business of the benevolent man,”
he wrote, “to seek to promote what is beneficial to the world
and to eliminate what is harmful.”
6
Mozi believed in what he
called “inclusive care.” Good men and good rulers, he said,
were concerned—in their decisions and throughout their
lives—about everyone in their communities, and not just
themselves, their families, and their political allies.
7
The power of this idea, during the ensuing centuries and
millennia, is hard to exaggerate. It has been rediscovered
again and again and applied to a vast range of situations.
It also reinforces other central ideas, like justice and fair-
ness. For example, the idea of thinking about the conse-
quences for everyone is a basic ideal of democratic societies.
You can see it in the great speeches of many leaders and
the foundational documents of most countries. They refer
explicitly and repeatedly to serving the needs, interests, and
aspirations of everyone in a society or a country. Today, it
is the powerful rallying cry of countless groups, all around
the world, as they seeking to reform their governments or
throw off oppression.
The basic idea, which is Mill’s idea, is that everyone
counts the same. This is because all of us can suffer, face
risk, and carry hard burdens, and we can all feel pleasure,
delight, satisfaction, and pride. Religious believers reach
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What Are the Net, Net Consequences?
21
the same conclusion—that everyone matters—because they
see everyone as a creature of God. And this religious pre-
cept actually resonates with a basic tenet of evolutionary
theory.
British philosopher and historian David Hume sketched
this idea more than two centuries ago, when he observed,
“There is some benevolence, however small, infused into
our bosom; some spark of friendship for humankind; some
particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the
elements of the wolf and the serpent.”
8
The contemporary
version of this idea says that early humans and prehumans,
the creatures who survived and ultimately evolved into us,
probably had cooperative instincts. These would have made
it easier for them to work together to collect and store food,
find shelter, care for their young, and fight off attacks. In
contrast, the less cooperative prehumans were less likely to
survive because they squandered precious time and energy
fighting each other.
In short, the first great humanist question is a powerful
and perhaps even instinctive way to think about complex,
uncertain, high-stakes decisions. The question succinctly
expresses the wisdom and guidance that have endured and
mattered profoundly for many centuries. It says to men and
women struggling with gray area problems that they should
think broadly and deeply about the full human consequences
of a decision. This means asking what you will be doing for
other people and to other people, depending on the option
you choose. Then choose the plan of action with the best net,
net consequences. Thinking and acting this way makes for
good decisions and a good life.
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Managing in the Gray
22
The Practical Challenges
The first question seems directly relevant to thinking
through gray area problems—as long as we put aside two
serious problems. One problem is out in the real world, and
the other is inside our heads.
The real-world problem is that we can’t see the future.
None of us has a crystal ball, so how are we supposed to
assess the full, all-in consequences? It’s a cliché that the
future is uncertain but, because we like to have some sense of
control over our lives, we often underestimate how uncertain
the future actually is. This challenge is so great that highly
regarded experts do bad jobs of prognosticating, even in their
own fields.
9
The reason, in many cases, is the reality of com-
plex interactions. Much of today’s world resembles a vast pin-
ball machine. A manager makes a decision—the equivalent
of firing a pinball—and then it bangs around unpredictably,
setting off other chains of events, and some of these, in turn,
interact with each other. As a result, it is very hard to know
where the pinball will end up.
Experts aren’t the only people with this problem. Robert
Merton, a highly regarded sociologist, posited what came to
be known as Merton’s Law. This is the disconcerting propo-
sition that the unintended, secondary consequences of deci-
sions and actions—ranging from our minor, everyday choices
to massive public policy decisions—often outweigh the con-
sequences we intend.
10
This may, in fact, have been part of
Aaron Feuerstein’s problem. How was he supposed to know
what might happen, years down the road, when he decided
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