Marc Le Menestrel

The Wise Power of Utopian Thinking

Marc Le Menestrel — 2019-05-10T01:57:00Z

Imagining an ideal world is a powerful tool for enhancing proactivity and leading organisational transformation.

Today's shifting global dynamics have increased the pressure to navigate into the new and the unknown. Alas, afraid of how the world is evolving; eager to keep for ourselves what we have; willing to preserve the certainties that we have built in our heads; enticed by a new philosophy where we are supposed to maximise happiness — we continue to resist and reject change. Why embrace the future if it is this painful? Why become aware that our world is collapsing?

To avoid a growing sense of helplessness and despair, we then run faster towards that light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of embracing the unknown, we become even more blinded by what we think we know.

Companies only learn agility in order to increase productivity, grow their revenues and make more profit. Governments engage in stakeholder consultations but their conclusions, coincidentally, always happen to confirm the initial intentions of those in power. People are concerned about plastic in our oceans but they ignore why this issue has become so salient. We change in order to remain the same and this is not good enough to meet today's challenges.

As Einstein wrote in 1946, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”

Utopian rationality

Business rationality is at the core of how leaders think. Yet, it has to evolve. In my teaching, I invite executives and directors to become smarter than rational. I do not propose to throw out rationality. Rather, I want to overcome a rationality that imposes itself upon a complex reality in a totalitarian fashion.

To identify a goal, choose the best action to reach it, then measure the consequences and finally claim success once the task is done is not smart enough. In a world full of surprises, we need to dream beyond our goals if they are to have meaning. A sense of purpose is essential for long-term value creation, as the dream that drives our goals will ensure the relevance of work beyond the next quarter or business cycle. We also need to realise that we may not attain our goals, and that can be an opportunity because they may need to be changed. We should never be prisoners of our goals. In a world ready to be deeply disrupted, we need to love what we do right now. Anchored in our values, we can appreciate where we are at present and have our eyes fully open. Instead of serving a system that is at risk of destroying our humanity, we should make sure to put the framework of rationality to the service of our values and dreams.

The ability to dream our future world into being can help us survive. It is also a powerful strategic exercise. At INSEAD, my experience is that the building of a utopia allows executives and directors to free their minds from confining intellectual prejudices. The method draws from the three core principles of Wise Power: duality of mind, emotional maturity and generosity of soul. It is a way of thinking, feeling and dreaming that enhances our ability to meet the world half-way. It is especially useful for important and difficult decisions. Wise power consists of the ability to face surprising, even unpleasant truths bravely and honestly, although they may directly contradict our firmly held beliefs and preferences. Wise leaders are much less susceptible to the fear of the unknown that underlies defensiveness, because they perceive the deeper dynamics of the landscape around them. Instead of being fixated on the light at the end of the tunnel, they learn to pause and see that the tunnel is in fact made of beautiful trees, each of which is also a door to another space where they can discover, learn or just be.

How to generate a utopia?

Now more than ever, strategic business decisions must be taken in light of other realms of power. It is thus essential that utopias encompass the political, social, technological and natural spheres, as well as business. This allows leaders to embrace the growing expectations of multiple stakeholders across myriad issues.

Complex, ambiguous grey zones have a perfect right to exist in these utopias. For example, you do not have to choose between business having freedom to operate, and governments possessing scope to regulate – you can have both.

As participants present their utopias in class, it is liberating for them to express these contradictions. Executives are typically constrained in a discourse where business interests dictate everything. However, they are also citizens eager to exist more fully and freely at work. As they share their utopias and listen to others', they become conscious of common predominant themes: a form of social equality, a government that cares for the common good, technology at the service of humans and not the other way around, and harmony with nature, among others. These commonalities transform what might have seemed an exercise in fanciful idealism into something highly relevant to the everyday exercise of executive power. The unthinkable suddenly becomes almost feasible. The lines between utopianism and executives' habitual “realism” begin to blur.

Why utopia?

Peel back the layers of realism, and you will often find cynicism and pessimism feeding fear a steady diet of rationalisation, e.g. the world is so corrupt, boldly engaging with it is useless. Some cynicism and pessimism can also be valuable. Life is not black and white — and we also need to tame some messianic tendencies that bring us back to the authoritarian form of leadership that we want to transform.

Utopian thinking enables us to perceive the big picture, including the things that upset or even repel us, in a usefully optimistic light, in terms of what could be. It gives us the courage and confidence to see the distance between reality and our dreams as a space of opportunity rather than ipso facto defeat.

Applications of utopia

Utopian thinking can be open-ended, but it can also be tailored to address specific business problems. I have used it to find solutions for a multinational energy company facing a disastrous situation. The company was heavily criticised in the media for its role in the environmental devastation and worsening quality of life of local communities. In response to being painted as villains in the press, executives had adopted a stance of denial of their responsibility. Their relationships with community leaders and government officials were at an impasse.

By inviting participants to conceive of the best resolution imaginable for such conflicts, we foster within them an appetite for the unknown. They start envisioning ways to use their companies' wealth and power for mutual value creation, together with locals on the ground. Most importantly, they become more aware of the pitfalls of a confrontational non-market strategy. Instead of maintaining the belief that they can save the world if they become a force for good (another way to remain in the ego-driven authoritarian form of leadership), companies can cultivate a global vision in which they interact with other forms of power in a more respectful and harmonious manner.

Imagining utopias can also be useful for established organisations in the midst of market flux. For instance, a session on utopian thinking applied to the future of mobility allowed executives of a car manufacturer to better appreciate the multiple facets and layers of their situation. Rather than being constrained by the established discourse and culture of their company, they could engage at different levels and discuss the deeper changes driving the shifts in their industry. They were developing a sense of where they stood within this larger ecosystem and could find new levers to shape their culture and their identity. Instead of nurturing fear and helplessness, their uncertain future provided meaning.

Developing utopia

You do not need to wait for other people to apply utopian thinking. You can start yourself as an individual. Just think of a high-level challenge facing your organisation, industry, or even the nation or region in which you do business. Then apply your imagination to the problem, working through the different perspectives of the relevant stakeholders. Do not fear contradictions and allow space for the commonalities of good intentions and diversity of values. As a transformation of your own mind-set, the exercise will teach you to fear less and embrace more. You can scale up the benefit by involving your team – sharing your ideas with them and adding their contributions until a collective utopia emerges. This dream will help you select your objectives and identify the key stakeholders that can help you. It will also change your attitude to the world. Less afraid to envision change, you will look for opportunities to contribute to a better world beyond strict business objectives.

Marc Le Menestrel is Visiting Professor for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at INSEAD.

I thank Benjamin Kessler, editor at INSEAD Knowledge, whom I met when I arrived in Singapore. It has been the start of a productive and pleasant collaboration, writing short pieces for this online outlet.

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Three Inconvenient Truths about Corruption

Marc Le Menestrel — 2019-01-29T02:53:00Z

Having honest, adult conversations about corruption requires accepting that none of us is ethically pure.

These days, I sometimes begin my classes on corruption with an unusual admission. I announce to my students – who may be judges, police officers, military investigators, bureaucrats or any other variety of public official – that corruption is not a problem removed from me. I am corrupted too.

This is only partly a gesture of humility. It is also my attempt to initiate a dialogue on business ethics that is honest, for a change. The common thing to do when the subject of ethics comes up is to grandstand and make sweeping moral declarations, as though combating corruption were simply a matter of finding the “bad”people in an organisation, agency, justice system, etc.

But corruption has always existed and goes on everywhere. It is indeed very likely that it will always exist. Why not also in myself? Of course, I can avoid thinking about it. Even more convenient, I can choose or invent a definition of corruption that does not include my actions. In doing so, however, I am indulging a self-protective fantasy in which corruption has lost some of its most valuable meaning.

Most of us are very uncomfortable when confronted with the truth of our unethical behaviours. Since we tend to think in exclusive categories, we fear being bad because we think it implies we are not good. However, the truth is that ethics is a grey zone. Each one of us is both good and bad. We are not saints.

In my experience, the more I know the extent to which I am corrupted, the better I am at navigating the grey zone of my own ethics. Finding moral orientation in the grey zone sometimes entails resisting my own imperfections and striving for something higher. At other times, it is a matter of accepting some of my own “badness” so that I can keep my attention focused on the real world, on things as they actually are.

It can be difficult to determine what to resist and what to accept. Here are three ideas that I have found useful in my moral and ethical decision making.

A zero-tolerance stance towards corruption is neither necessarily honest nor desirable

When I invite business executives and civil servants to consider “accepting” their own corruption, it is not an invitation to moral nihilism. Instead, it is a reminder that none of us is perfect. We all have flaws and blind spots that we must be willing to face head-on if we are to learn and improve. If we adopt an unrealistic standard for ourselves (and others), we will be incapable of choosing our moral battles wisely.

For my part, I am trying to embrace the fact that, as a Western male individual, my thinking is biased by an education, a culture, social norms and habits that constitute my identity. This has both good and bad ramifications. Teaching all over the world, I have come to realise that some of my attitudes could be perceived as discriminatory, even racist sometimes.

When a student points out some hidden negative bias in my teaching, I strive to show interest and curiosity. Then I can learn, instead of pushing away any information that contradicts the temptation towards self-conferred sainthood.

So overall, I have very good reasons to have some tolerance about my ethical vulnerabilities. As I am intolerant of the aspects of myself that I really want to fight, I can be tolerant of the aspects that I accept as part of my fallible humanity. I can bring those aspects to a clearer and more peaceful conscience.

Abandon the business case in order to re-invent it

Being clear-headed and emotionally mature – i.e. adult – about corruption means confronting the tensions that can arise between moral and profit-making imperatives or, if you like, between business value and stakeholder value. These are both moving targets, and it is a rare moment indeed when the two are aligned such that they can be pierced with a single arrow.

Yet executives persist in the belief that they can popularise anti-corruption by stressing the “business case” for doing the right thing.

I believe that an insistence on the business case contains fatal contradictions. The search for profits – i.e. the core cause of corruption – cannot also be the core of anti-corruption. Treating anti-corruption like a strategy that must yield financial returns is like treating a disease with its very cause. It almost ensures that we will miss the most meaningful opportunities for positive change. Yet this is the situation we face today, in which anti-corruption itself risks becoming corrupted. If, however, we submit our way of thinking to principled self-scrutiny, positive change can be the catalyst for improving all stakeholder relationships and, ultimately, achieving sustainable and meaningful business success.

As corruption begins with temptation, it is important to promote anti-corruption for moral reasons, not just self-serving ones. It is only to the devil that ethics can be sold.

In my own teaching, I have had to abandon the business case. I needed to be prepared to teach outside my students' comfort zone instead of always telling them what they preferred to hear.

With time and hard work, I built sustained and profitable client relationships. Still, I continue to navigate the grey zone between my intellectual honesty and my own success. It is only because I am not confined to the business case that I can incrementally invent mine.

Altruism is not always ethically superior

Ethics and altruism are often wrongly conflated. Especially when it comes to corruption, doing what is best for others does not equate to acting ethically. In my experience, it seems that my students are spending a great deal of their time and effort pursuing goals – or working around constraints – other than their own. In many cases, their unethical behaviour serves the interests of their company. It may also stem from deference to authority, blinding them to the risks they personally incur by disregarding ethics. Hence, paradoxically, a deeper anchoring in their own self-interest could indeed promote more ethical behaviour.

Embrace paradoxes, not platitudes

Paradoxes can be unpopular in the boardroom. Nonetheless, they are essential because we do not live in a black and white world. Rather, we are complex beings navigating an even more complex world. An ethics suitable for such a world will be more tolerant of paradoxes than of the platitudes that too often dominate discussions about corruption in the corridors of power.

To be sure, complexity and contradictions are difficult to embrace and require a new way of thinking. But accepting them allows us to navigate the ethical grey zone in a way that avoids categorical judgments while acknowledging that some behaviours are more ethical than others.

It also clears the ground for more adult conversations about ethics and especially about corruption. These conversations are urgently needed today, as anti-corruption is at risk of itself becoming corrupted – converted to a moralistic mask designed to prevent us from looking unpleasant realities in the face.

Marc Le Menestrel is Visiting Professor for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at INSEAD.

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The 3 Principles of Wise Power

Marc Le Menestrel — 2018-09-27T01:48:00Z

If you know how to harness the power of your mind, heart and soul, you will be wiser in the face of surprises and disruption.

One of today's damaging and common leadership misconceptions is the confusion of power with external control. All too often, we think of power as the ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others, or to force the course of events to conform to a predetermined scheme.

But there is an equally necessary kind of power, which is exerted inwardly. It turns out that power is as much about the ability to adapt to the world around us as it is about shaping the world. As the global business landscape becomes increasingly complex, our ability to develop our presence and gravitas has become an indispensable companion of authority.

A harmonious balance of inward- and outward-directed power is what I call wise power. It is the embrace of dualities that helps us meet the world halfway: in between what we want and what is offered to us. Beyond the illusion of full control, wise power is an art of surprise.

So what is wise power? Fundamentally, it is the ability to master the deeper dynamics – not just the surface phenomena – affecting the world, an organisation, a team, an individual, a conscience. Leaders developing their wise power train their attention towards the underlying forces shaping their environment and themselves. They are not as easily blindsided by threats or challenges. As their thinking is not beholden to entrenched prejudices and patterns of behaviour, they can devise more effective and more meaningful solutions.

The first step towards cultivating wise power is to loosen our mental and emotional grip on the tools that enabled our success thus far: our knowledge, experience, skills, philosophy, etc. These dependable tools can still be retained – actually, they are part of us and could not be discarded anyway – but we must be prepared at any time to stow them and grab hold of the new. Especially for high-achieving leaders accustomed to emphasising the will, wise power requires letting go.

Three principles

Three principles in particular are key to developing the self-mastery that nurtures wise power.

First, a duality of mind that comprehends multiple sides of an issue, rather than being restricted to the side that conforms to our pre-existing vision of things. With wisdom of the mind we can go even further, overcoming the mind's natural tendency to create inflexible oppositions. We learn to see a world large enough to hold contradictions in tension without forcing resolution – i.e. a both/and instead of either/or mentality. By being conscious of the way we look at things, we also develop our ability to choose how to look at things.

Second, an emotional maturity that allows us to cope with distasteful things just as well as we naturally warm to other things. The world, after all, contains plenty on both sides. The tendency to shrink from things we dislike diminishes our sense of reality and, by extension, our cognitive agility. Emotional maturity develops our ability to know both our likes and dislikes and to recognise them as feelings that we project onto the world, not innate properties of things. We needn't abandon, nor even resist our natural judgements of goodness and badness. Instead, we need to be fully aware of them so that we can create some distance. Because we can feel without being controlled by our feelings, we learn to influence our emotions while we are influenced by them.

Third, a generosity of soul that feeds on dreams to inspire and motivate real action. When we are well connected with our fundamental dreams and aspirations, we are more susceptible to shift an unexpected turn of events into an opportunity. Instead of reacting to all the things that can make us fail to reach our goals, we learn when and how we must change our goals to succeed in life. Loosening our grip on transitory goals reduces fear of failure and discomfort with the unknown. Instead of being prisoners of our goals, we dream beyond them and learn to master the art of surprise that life can be.

The principles in practice

Let's take a practical example. How could we apply the principles of wise power to a business problem involving, say, technological innovation? First, the cognitive agility that comes with duality of mind allows us to better understand why innovation could be both a blessing and a curse. Indeed, innovation is a major source of competitive advantage for business, yet it can also pose a risk for the environment or for society, locking us into technological choices that are in fact detrimental over the long term.

Moreover, new technologies can often be frightening, as they carry the threat of our own obsolescence. Emotional maturity helps us recognise that the fear of technology has good sides, e.g. sensitivity to early warning signals, consistency of identity, healthy scepticism toward fads, etc. By accepting these emotions, we can avoid becoming the prisoners of innovation. Facing our fears thus feeds the process of cultivating wise prudence.

So what is the purpose of technology? What is the dream beyond innovation? These questions are of crucial importance. As leaders, our ability to answer them with a vision is a powerful asset for organisations. It creates motivation and develops passion for the future. It attracts and retains talent. The power of a dream helps us find a genuine purpose and a meaning in technology. It guides our technological innovation towards a better world rather than making innovation an end in itself.

A wiser approach to crisis management

Wise power also helps in managing potential ethical crises. In the face of a serious accusation of organisational wrongdoing (e.g. corruption or illicit business practice), the first principle – duality of mind – compels curiosity. Rather than immediately dismissing the accusation as inconsistent with what we know of the organisation, we need to seek out all available information. Instead of resorting to reflexive denial, wise leaders may ask the company's accuser, “Oh, if you know something that I don't, tell me everything. I may not be fully aware.”

The second principle – emotional maturity – encourages compassion. Instead of reacting in outrage, we might say to the accuser, “What you tell me makes me feel very bad. I want to do something about it.” Acknowledging and making space for the emotion not only establishes common ground, but it also builds credibility. This breaks the feedback loop of violence (verbal or otherwise) that can make a bad situation even worse.

The third principle – generosity of soul – points the way forward. As wiser leaders, we train ourselves to give substance to responses such as, “What we ultimately want is for the company to be useful to society.” If the accusation proves to be true, action can be taken to bring the organisation's culture and conduct back in line with its original ideal. The crisis can become an opportunity to return the purpose of the business to its rightful place at the very core of organisational activity. The organisation is likely to emerge from the firestorm both stronger than before and with a renewed sense of purpose.

With wise power, we care for end results while learning to forge our own path, aligned with what is most important to us and with a vision and purpose beyond the immediate goal.

Marc Le Menestrel is Visiting Professor for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at INSEAD.

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The Key to Cultivating Agility in Decision Making

Marc Le Menestrel — 2018-06-25T01:44:00Z

How do you think? Can you be aware of your thinking? Can you choose how to think? In this piece, I introduce my way to teach people to choose how they think about things.

Decision-making excellence requires self-awareness and the ability to choose how to think in different situations.

Let's say a store has been selling large snow shovels for $15. The morning after a major snowstorm, the store raises its price to $20. Is this acceptable?

A large majority of business people in my seminars answer that yes, it is acceptable to raise the price of shovels after a storm. They invoke the law of supply and demand; they quote the example of street selling of umbrellas when it rains; they explain that the competitive context would not let them survive otherwise; they blame the customers for not having anticipated the storm, and many other reasons that resemble excuses.

In reality, they don't really think about whether it is acceptable or not for the store to raise its prices. They react, and then they think about how they can justify their “choice”.

Their reaction mostly comes from an implicit and unconscious identification with the business owner. From this perspective, they expect that raising the price of the shovels will help them make more profit. This is the way they think.

But a seminal study found that 82 percent of people (not business people but a representative sample) do not think it is acceptable to raise the price of the snow shovels after a storm. If the local customers are similarly minded, they are likely to be angry and lose trust in the shop if it does so. They will certainly refrain from buying anything else they do not absolutely need, and will consider that the shop is out to exploit them as much as it can.

Over the long term, then, it could be bad for business to raise the price of snow shovels after a storm.

It is thus crucial to realise how business leaders tend to be conditioned to think a certain way, e.g. the idea that they should exploit all available opportunities for profit maximisation. When this way of thinking directly clashes with the ethics of their customers, respect for nature or the will of their government, it can lead them to take wrong decisions and eventually destroy opportunities and lose profits.

Thinking about how we think

The way we think is a part of our experience of life, but also helps shape it. It is what makes us smart, or not so smart after all.

Each one of you has a very unique way of thinking. I do too. No two people's minds operate in precisely the same way. Furthermore, each of us is capable of many different kinds of thinking, not only depending on what we think about, but also depending on what we want to do, say, understand, or even who we want to be.

Being aware of our way of thinking, of its uniqueness and at the same time of its commonality with others' ways of thinking, helps us exercise one of our most critical abilities as decision makers: namely, choosing the way we think.

At the global level, our historical moment demands that we make this choice carefully, because new technologies and political events are critically altering our world, including how we do business. Such sweeping transitions are dangerous and we often prefer not to think about them. Still, they can also be an opportunity to make things better. Above all, we need to adjust our ways of thinking to meet the fast-changing world around us. As Einstein put it, “A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels.”

Of course, we know that we are free to think what we want. But choosing how we can think about something is difficult. Often, we believe that there is only one way to think about something, as in our example of business owners esteeming five additional dollars per shovel above their most valuable asset: customer relationships. However, there are always many ways to think about something.

Consciously choosing the way we think is the expression of a unique freedom that human beings possess and can nurture. It is a way to be free, at the most evolved and beautiful level.

In my teaching, I invite participants to learn different ways of thinking in order for them to nurture their freedom and their power. With freedom and power comes responsibility. I am inviting them to be responsible for what they do with this thinking agility. They can use it to think more, or less, to think in a more altruistic manner, or in a more self-interested direction. They can use it to better understand the world of business and be more agile in their way of thinking.

Decision making for leaders

This is a crucial skill for today's leaders. Being able to understand different perspectives helps to anticipate the reaction of customers and to evaluate ethical risks in decision making. It is also critical to genuinely assess how various options align with the values of the organisation and of its people. Business people need to be trained not to make decisions blindly, especially decisions where core values are implicated. They need to learn to avoid the trap of justifications, to analyse and to think about all dimensions of a decision before acting, and especially before communicating.

For example, if you owned the store that sold shovels, the better business decision might be to lower prices after a snowstorm. How many more customers may come as a result? What would be the effect of securing their trust? How would this newly generated goodwill impact sales more broadly, beyond the snowstorm emergency? There is no definite answer to whether one should raise the price or not after a storm, but we should not simply react because there are compelling reasons to think seriously about both alternatives.

Leadership is an art as much as a science. It can be learnt by nurturing conversations where the mind is not necessarily driving the decision, but where the heart and the soul help remind it to stay open to other avenues of thinking.

Marc Le Menestrel is Visiting Professor for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at INSEAD.

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Is Anti-Corruption Corrupted?

Marc Le Menestrel — 2018-02-15T03:01:00Z

After some classes that I taught at the Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy in 2017, I developed my approach to corruption with an analysis of anti-corruption. I compared the narratives of Danold Trump and Xi Jinping to unveil how the bad can be seen in different guises depending from where you look at it. I also introduced the reasoning of day and night, inviting each one of us to vary our perspective. Once again, in ethics, we need to spuspend our judgement in order to complete our analysis. It is when we act that we draw a line in the grey zone.

This piece is a significantly longer and more developed version than the one published on INSEAD Knowledge. It has been published on global-is-Asia, the online outlet of the National University of Singapore.

Anti-corruption is becoming a strategic item in the agenda of countries, of international institutions, and of business organizations.

We need to approach anti-corruption with the wisdom of the time: complexity, systemic understanding and, most importantly, survival instinct.

For corporate boards, corruption can no more be addressed as a legalistic or compliance issue. It is neither enough to look at it as an ethical issue. Righteousness is not and will never be a guarantee for directors.

Corruption has to be treated as strategic; anti-corruption too.

Both have the power to disrupt a corporation by destroying its reputation, revoking its license to operate, infringing colossal fines, sending director or directors in jail, or even worse. Corruption and anti-corruption threaten lives.

And corruption is one of these complex notions for which no simple reasoning can do much more than giving an illusion of understanding.

For directors and boards to be really smart in the face of corruption and of anti-corruption, they need to think at another level.

The seriousness of this topic was explored during one of the courses held for the Corrupt Practice Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in Singapore where the LKY School and I delivered a programme on Ethics, Governance and Corruptions for 25 government officials from 14 countries. Especially in Asia where cases of corruption continue to hog headlines and where many countries are not well-ranked by Corruption Perception Indexes, questions of good governance and corruption remain global concerns and demands for rigorous discussions surrounding them are welcomed and encouraged. There is no better way to move one level up than expressing dualities and transcending them.

I will illustrate my method with a metaphor: corruption is to integrity what night is to daylight.

Daylight can be defined rigorously as the time between the sun rises and the time the sun sets.

But who would deny that dusk is already the night coming, that the crepuscule holds some daylight in it or that dawn announces the inexorable coming of the day?

Despite any of its definitions, corruption will remain a grey zone.

And if one wants to approach corruption in a dynamic sense, one has to remember that seasons affect the length of the day.

There are cycles and what is day today may be night tomorrow: a practice that is acceptable today may be considered corruption tomorrow.

Whether it may become acceptable again in the future is relevant. The damages may be done. Anti-corruption is also part of the system of power.

Anti-corruption is also a grey zone.

And for those who believe that anti-corruption should be a matter of principles, alas, whether what you are accused of is carried out by many others is also irrelevant. You will just lose.

When anti-corruption is a matter of competition, the issue is who is targeted.

And if one wants to approach corruption in a globalized world, one has to take into account that night and day, in practice, depends on where you are.

When the sun sets in the west, it rises in the east

There are different perspectives to look at corruption and at anti-corruption. They emanate from different historical, cultural, ideological, political, economic contexts and lead to different definitions and different priority actions.

They are perspectives of power driving the explicit and hidden dynamics of global governance.

These different approach to corruption and anti-corruption shape the agendas of countries, organizations, agencies, political and business actors depending on where they are, what they believe is right and for what they fight.

And this takes place at the highest level.

To illustrate my point, take for instance the discourse of Xi Jinping at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and contrast it with the National Security Strategy of the United States of America by Donald Trump.

Having both appeared at the end of 2017, these are two strategic documents directly implying their authors and their country in a high level formulation of national priorities.

Both documents use corruption as a central notion for their formulation of risks and indication of policies and actions. Let us first point out the commonalities.

Both documents consider corruption a governance issue.

Both documents embed the idea that corruption is antagonist to the rule of law which is formulated in both documents as a fundamental value.

Both documents refer to the benefit for the people to justify their priority against corruption.

Further, their perspective on corruption is like day and night with, of course, shades of grey.

For Xi Jinping, corruption is the greatest threat our Party faces. It is one of the tests confronting the party as they relate to governance, reform, opening up, the market economy, and the external environment.

Imbued in a long Chinese history of rise and fall of central governments, Xi Jinping wants to make sure that officials are honest, government is clean, and political affairs are handled with integrity.

The integrity of party officials will improve the political ecosystem of the party, strengthen[s] internal oversight as well as its close ties with the people.

Xi Jinping advocates anti-corruption to make the Chinese Communist Party better so as to contribute to the long term stability of the country.

For Donald Trump, corruption also arises from weak governance and the failure of the rule of law which serves to protect the individuals from government corruption and abuse of power, allows families to live without fear, and permits markets to strive.

In the search of a global environment based on democratic institutions, corruption is perpetuated by Transnational Criminal Organizations, corrupt foreign officials, corrupt elites, repressive leaders [who] often collaborate to subvert free societies and corrupt multilateral organizations.

Anti-corruption includes priority actions at the political, diplomatic, and economic levels which are aimed at fighting authoritarian states and allow U.S companies to compete fairly in transparent business climates.

Donald Trump advocates anti-corruption to influence the global playing field, protect the U.S. interests and contribute to political freedom and fair economic competition.

These two perspectives on corruption highlight two sides of what corruption can be.

On the one hand, corruption refers to the loss of integrity of a political system because of inappropriate economic incentives.

On the other hand, corruption refers to the loss of integrity of an economic system because of inappropriate political influence.

To fully understand the system composed of these two perspectives, one has to adopt higher level conceptual framework and then analyze the different dynamics proper to corruption and anti-corruption.

To this aim, a social interaction must be conceptualized as a mixture of a relation and a transaction.

In a relation, two identified parties cooperate to benefit from their joint activity. Most importantly, these parties share a common identity and exist together as a collective. It is this collective that they intend to protect by promoting the integrity of the relation.

The relation is a perspective on social interactions that is eminently subjective. It has value because it depends on parties who are who they are because they share something. Implicitly or even secretly, a relational perspective promotes the values of the parties, their agreed processes, their emotional engagement and even their spiritual co-existence.

In a transaction, two anonymous parties compete to benefit from an exchange. The object of the transaction is what is important because it is its attributes that makes the exchange beneficial for each of the party. It is this individual benefit that is the driver of the exchange and needs to be protected by the integrity of the transaction.

The transaction is a perspective on social interactions that is essentially objective. It has value independently of the parties because of what has been exchanged under specific conditions such as price and quality. Explicitly and preferably transparently, a transactional perspective promotes the value of what is exchanged and this is considered the guarantee of integrity.

For instance, a family relation can be enhanced with a transactional aspect, but would be perverted by the inappropriate influence of material aspects when they become excessive.

Similarly, a commercial transaction can be enhanced with a relational aspect, but it would be perverted by the inappropriate influence of relational aspects when they become excessive.

Corruption is not a one-way street where either the relational or the transactional pervert the other taken as a reference for integrity.

Integrity is not about purity. It is about the drawing of a line in the grey zone, a dynamic process that engages the actors, their references and their context.

The relation lies at the heart of politics like the transaction is at the core of economics. The value judgments that drive perspectives on corruption are thus reflecting ideological frames of references.

Whether economics or politics should drive global governance is the question of power that is coloring the perspectives of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump on corruption.

These two perspectives embed a major geopolitical debate about global governance and the appropriate path forward.

In the game for righteousness, these two perspectives will be used in turn to attribute responsibility and blame and to choose who to point at as good and as evil.

But the reality is that corruption and anti-corruption are inherently complex. Oppositions as much as commonalities should pave the way for a smart analysis of what is going on.

It is necessary to study the policies for fair competition promoted in Chinese laws to also understand how liberal capitalism, with Chinese characteristics, also shape the economy.

It is necessary to study the relations among individuals, families, institutions and corporations in the United States go also understand how relational structures of different sorts also shape politics.

A major difficulty lies in the need to express frames of reference as absolute, thus negating the complexity of the issues at play and their grayness.

There is a need for disentangling the multi-faceted aspects of corruption. And the search for establishing appropriate thresholds of discrimination suffers from simplistic discourses.

Because corruption is a grey zone, the inconvenient truth is that corrupted behaviors are not entirely evil. Similarly, those that are not corrupted may not be paragon of integrity either.

Unfortunately, zero tolerance discourses about corruption do not give credit to this complexity.

This is not to excuse the petty corruption or all the forms of relations or transactions that are so perverted that they should rightly be called crimes and punished for.

It is to avow that corruption and anti-corruption necessitate an acute analysis of the good and evil of social interactions, and that such an analysis will lead to necessarily contradictory judgments due to the complexity at hand.

A transactional perspective on anti-corruption bears the risk of dehumanizing social interactions. It somehow assumes global governance could rely on an objective system of anonymous actors exchanging good and services for defined price and qualities and under a transparent set of rules.

A relational perspective on anti-corruption bears the risk of idealizing social interactions. It somehow assumes global governance could rely on a community of actors sharing the same values, the same objectives the same methods and the same manner to find meaning in existence.

Social interactions are a mixture of relations and transactions and should be treated as such. Competition and cooperation are only the two sides of a mental model and should not pretend to capture the full reality alone.

Like many of the fundamental notions that shape the dynamics of the time, corruption and anti-corruption require navigating the frontier between day and night with full conscience.

And it is useful to recognize that such a full conscience embeds significant psychological and emotional attitudes.

For instance, whether corruption is intimately construed as coming out of one-self (reflective stance) or from others (projective stance) will shape the framing of the analysis and the assessment of risks.

The management of corruption and anti-corruption is not just a rational exercise. It requires the careful identification of dualities and their irrational counterparts.

If corruption is to integrity what night is to daylight, we humans know that our risks and our fears increase with our shadows.

The strategic approach to corruption and to anti-corruption requires a very careful analysis is how this impacts a company, its board and its directors in each of the environments they operate, including at the very personal level.

It is with such a complex, systematic and integrative approach that one can understand better what is happening in terms of political and economic dynamics of anti-corruption

Geopolitical, financial, legal, moral, rational, emotional, cultural, ideological, or even spiritual, there are a number of considerations for the teacher to share in order to help companies board to deal with corruption and anti-corruption.

What is essential is to understand that the context in which targets of anti-corruption efforts are chosen is biased. We can then develop the skills to address this multi-faceted complex issue at the board level.

About the author:

Marc Le Menestrel teaches and coaches senior executives and board directors on high level performance and leadership as well as the exercise of wise power in governance, sustainability, anti-corruption and risk management. Leading companies and academic institutions are using his expertise and innovative pedagogical approaches to inspire leaders in search of both performance and meaning. He is advisor to the World Economic Forum on its Partnering for Anti-Corruption Initiative. He was also a key facilitator for one of LKY School's Executive Education Programme on Ethics, Governance and Corruptions. For more information about Executive Education, pls visit http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/executive-education.

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Corruption: Drawing a Line in the Grey Zone

Marc Le Menestrel — 2018-01-25T02:33:00Z

In this piece, I introduce one of my preferred model of ethics: a grey zone between night and day. Inspired by Escher, it helps to understand the very special reasoning pertaining to the frontier between good and bad. I also develop a comparison between the anti-corruption of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump.

Corruption can no longer be addressed as a legalistic or compliance issue by executives and directors.

Nor is it enough to regard it as an ethical issue. Righteousness is not and will never be a guarantee for directors and executives.

Corruption is one of these complex notions for which simplistic reasoning can give no more than an illusion of understanding.

Consider the following metaphor: Corruption would be to integrity what night is to day.

Day can be defined rigorously as the time between sunrise and sunset.

But who would deny that dusk is already the night coming, that twilight contains some daylight in it or that dawn announces the inexorable coming of day?

Moreover, seasons affect the length of the day. There are cycles and what is day today may be night tomorrow: A practice that is acceptable today may be considered corruption tomorrow.

And if one wants to approach corruption in a globalised world, one has to take into account that night and day, in practice, depend on where you are.

When the sun sets in the west, it rises in the east…

Xi and Trump

I'll illustrate my point with a concrete example – China's President Xi Jinping's speech to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, contrasted with the National Security Strategy of the United States of America by President Donald Trump.

First, let's consider the commonalities between the two leaders' statements. Both documents consider corruption a governance issue. Both embed the idea that corruption is antagonistic to the rule of law, which is formulated in both documents as a fundamental value. Both documents refer to the societal benefits of combating corruption.

Further, their perspective on corruption is like day and night with, of course, shades of grey.

For Xi Jinping, “corruption is the greatest threat our Party faces”. It is one of the “tests confronting the Party as they relate to governance, reform and opening up, the market economy, and the external environment”.

Xi wants to ensure “that officials are honest, government is clean, and political affairs are handled with integrity”.

The integrity of party officials will improve “the political ecosystem of the Party”, “strengthen internal oversight” and protect “its close ties with the people”.

Xi Jinping advocates anti-corruption to make the Chinese Communist Party better so as to contribute to the long-term stability of the country.

For Donald Trump, corruption also arises from weak governance and the failure of the rule of law. But he fingers a quite different set of culprits: “Transnational Criminal Organizations”, “corrupt foreign officials”, “corrupt elites”, “repressive leaders [who] often collaborate to subvert free societies and corrupt multilateral organizations”.

Trump's anti-corruption agenda is aimed at fighting “authoritarian states” and allowing U.S companies to “compete fairly in transparent business climates”. In other words, Donald Trump advocates anti-corruption to influence the global playing field, protect U.S. interests and contribute to political freedom and fair economic competition.

These two perspectives on corruption highlight two sides of what corruption can be.

On the one hand, corruption refers to the loss of integrity of a political system because of inappropriate economic incentives.

On the other hand, corruption refers to the loss of integrity of an economic system because of inappropriate political influence.

The question of whether economic or political power should drive global governance frames both Xi Jinping's and Donald Trump's perspectives on corruption.

Between the extremes

It is risky for globalised companies to make business decisions – such as which non-market strategies or sales practices to employ abroad – through one of these perspectives alone. We need both to cover the full spectrum of corruption.

Some theoretical input can help define the different forms of corruption and anti-corruption.

A stance towards corruption that stresses politics at the expense of economics, as in Xi's discourse, is relational. In a relation, two identified parties cooperate to benefit from their joint activity. Most importantly, these parties share a common identity and exist together as a collective. It is this collective that they intend to protect by promoting the integrity of the relation.

A stance emphasising economics at the expense of politics, like in Trump's National Security Strategy, is transactional. In a transaction, two anonymous parties compete to benefit from an exchange. The object of the transaction makes the exchange beneficial for each party. These individual benefits drive the exchange and need to be protected by the integrity of the transaction.

Both of these stances have an absolute definition of integrity that is both culturally grounded and philosophically sound. Each has its own values, and its own value.

However, social interactions are a mixture of relations and transactions, and should be treated as such. Transactions or relations, economics or politics, competition or cooperation represent extremes that should never pretend to capture the full reality alone.

Integrity is not about purity. It is about the drawing of a line in the grey zone, a dynamic process that engages the actors, their references and their context.

The limits of “zero tolerance”

Because corruption is a grey zone, the inconvenient truth is that corrupt behaviours are not entirely evil. Similarly, those that are not corrupted may not be paragons of integrity either. Unfortunately, “zero tolerance” discourses about corruption do not give credit to this complexity.

This is not to excuse the petty corruption or all the forms of relations or transactions that are so perverted that they should rightly be called crimes and necessitate punishment.

It is to acknowledge the need for an acute analysis of the good and evil of social interactions, and that such an analysis will lead to necessarily contradictory judgments due to the complexity at hand.

Accepting the grey zone doesn't mean denying that some acts are darker than others. It is because you accept it that you can aim towards light with full conscience.

So for corporate leaders, effectively combating corruption is, first and foremost, about a critical attitude to one's own perspective on corruption. Do not hold the idea of corruption at arm's length, as though it were a problem too sordid to soil your hands with. Question your notions of what integrity looks like; consider the possibility that, in the complexity of business relationships, integrity sometimes shakes hands with corruption.

The first step might be creating the space in your organisation for uncomfortable conversations and questions. Instead of trying to ensure your company isn't corrupt from your usual perspective, assume – as a thought experiment – that it is corrupt, according to an alternative mindset. Then thoroughly examine your business practices with that shadow perspective in mind. Outside of your comfort zone, you may discover surprising truths about your practices and unleash a new motivation to improve. And you will certainly be better prepared in the event of an accusation.

Marc Le Menestrel is Visiting Professor for Corporate Governance and Sustainability at INSEAD.

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Can we prevent Policy Capture? Reflections about Public Interest in Business Decision-Making

Marc Le Menestrel — 2017-04-04T10:42:38Z

On March 30-31, I was invited to the OECD Global Anti-Corruption & Integrity Forum in Paris. I had prepared the following short piece to reflect on the theme of our panel: Policy Capture. Thanks to the wonderful colleagues at the panel and the moderator, the conversation took an unexpected turn, promoting intellectual honesty and emotional maturity. I was thrilled to feel the audience, during and after the panel, engaged in tackling these difficult subjects in a smart way, from the heart and inspired.

To benefit public interest while pursuing business interest is one of the greatest challenges of business decision-makers. For business actors, aligning the private and the public, the personal and the professional, the ethical and the profitable represent an ideal that all want to attain. For policy makers, sustaining such alignments and providing the conditions of their manifestation lie as at the source of their vocation. We as humans are all capable of thinking of ourselves and beyond ourselves, and our happiness is closely related with our capability to act both in our name and in the name of others.

And it is interesting to think that our ethical vulnerabilities, the mark of our experience around failing to combine our individual and collective motivations in an ideal way, are actually one of our core characteristics. Although everything lies in everything as a whole, we know that most of the time we are entrenched in one or the other of our motivations and sacrifice the other.

As human decision-makers, we must learn to live at the frontier of ourselves, the place where a line is drawn in the gray zone. Whenever
Our ability to think, to communicate and to act at the frontier of business and public interest may in fact be one of the most important skills to face our human future. In some circumstances, business interests indeed collide with policy making aimed at public interest. To some extent, these situations question the very idea of democracy and market economy promoted by the OECD.

Consider the following examples extracted from my recent research and assignments:

Whenever the demand for fossil fuels grow, their price tends to remain high, leading to sustainable profits for extracting companies. So from this point of view, public policies aimed at promoting demand for fossil fuels are of the industry interest. On the other hand, they are not in the interest of reducing the consumption of fossil fuels.

The Chief Scientist of a technology company receives early warning signals about the hazardous character of an advanced solution. He is having dinner with a former senior executives now working in the corresponding government agency. How could the regulatory dynamics be evoked?

As a policy to reduce the incidence of some particular health issue is publicly discussed, a pharmaceutical company that sells drugs treating affected patients ponders on its lobbying strategy: should this policy be delayed?

As a candidate for national elections advocates peace and partnership with a traditional enemy, the chairman of a defence contractor is reflecting on whether they should stop to finance the party of the candidate: is peace genuinely desirable to all?

These examples are typical of business ethical dilemmas where a business actor faces a decision that either favours his/her/its expected interest or the perceived general interest. Should one strictly apply the idea that the responsibility of business is to maximize profits, a decision against public interest would be prescribed. Business actors thus have the temptation to enter into “political activities” that influence policy makers against public interest (See our discussion with Julian Rode about Why Business fails to listen to Early Warning Signals about technological hazards).

In my experience of the classroom, it is undeniable that business actors are tempted to engage in actions that capture public interest. And of course they sometimes do it. It is also interesting to note that they don't like it and are capable of perceiving the ethical issues that lie behind.

Lobbying, revolving doors, political party financing, and more structurally market commoditization of violence or of drugs or confidentiality of technological innovation are certainly not only good, they also have a dark side. The difficulty to speak about these dilemmas openly is a mere proof of the emotional difficulty that we face in admitting our guilt, our shame or our fear in the ultimate consequences of such practices.

In my experience, it is close to be a systematic opinion among business executives that the current dynamics is unsustainable. There is an obvious truth in the consideration that incentives can orient business behaviours against public interest. As a result, another temptation appears, and in particular among policy makers, which is to condemn these behaviours and their actors as “corrupted”. Corruption becomes the “evil” that ruins the world and we should fight against corruption as a priority. We constitute two categories: good and bad actors and we divide ourselves once again, “us” in the good category, “them” in the bad.

If, as advocated in the OECD introduction to the issue of policy capture, citizens reject the current system that does not serve them, politicians must be corrupted for the system to sustain. There would be therefore no genuine fight against corruption without questioning the system. Moreover, not questioning the system would be a signal that no genuine effort against corruption is truly implemented. We would be once again in a game of words and the anti-corruption discourse takes the risk of a cynical and hypocritical intention.

To which extent OECD questions the system in which it plays a role? And if we take OECD core values as a concrete translation of what “system” means, the question therefore is:

Does OECD question, for instance, the search of economic growth as a political priority? Representative democracy as a political system? Or the extension of market capitalism?

These values are in fact at the core of an ideology that is not perfect and should not be advocated as such. Opening a constructive communicational space to discuss the frontier of these ideas is a must for tackling the issue of policy capture in a credible way.

Market capitalism has ensured the institutionalisation of an economic licence to operate for companies. However, democratic structures are attaining their limits at managing their political licence to operate. One may find the reasons for this in the transnational nature of the economic and financial power of business actors, a power that outmatches the national sovereignty of western democracies. Also, the aggregation of specific business interest creates suboptimal collective outcomes that threaten the welfare of the citizens as well as the ability of human societies to live in their natural environment.

If the distinction between business interest and public interest is not new, the current global situation calls for a new way of drawing the line in these grey zones. As a professor of Decision Making, teaching to business decisions makers and from time to time to policy-makers, I have been advocating and developing tools and methods to tackle business ethical dilemmas like to ones evoked above. It is with precaution that I share three skills that emerge from this experience:

Principle 1: Shadow and Light

Each decision-maker can train his/her/its ability to see the shadows casted by his/her/its own interest and hidden by his own moral justifications. One should be able to understand why one's own interest is in itself problematic and does not only include desirable features. There is a need for a systematic analysis of the ethical dimension of business actions. And it is interesting to note that such an analysis requires suspending our judgement so as not to analyze only what supports it, which should be seen as a prejudice. The courage to face one's own shadows helps to draw the line with less violence, towards others and also towards oneself. It also reduces bad faith argumentations where supposedly win-win approaches are mainly the result of impression management and cover up more important issues.

Principle 2: Dilemmas and Win-Win

Each decision-maker can develop his agility in navigating to see both sides of the frontier separating different interests. Of course, one should be able to understand the interest from one's point of view and from the others' point of view. It is then possible to formulate more precisely the dilemmas and the conflicts of interests, which are somehow always present. It is indeed interesting to note that not all win-win are genuine. As it is always possible to do better from the moral point of view, there is always somewhere a line to be drawn. Whether this is done in full conscience and in the respect of the sacrifices that it entails is a major skill to work out. And when, making the difficult choice of what is good for all, we end up discovering good surprises that are also in our private interest, thse win-win are a most formidable reward.

Principle 3: Collective Dream

Decision-makers benefit from being invited to formulate an ideal solution. The power of dreams allows us to think beyond specific objectives. We should not limit our vision of the future and our conversations to what we think we can do. In fact, we need to create the conditions for emerging solutions to surprise us for the better and this is mostly happening in appropriate collective communicational settings.

Today, and especially in developed countries, it is my impression that the context favours business interest more than public interest in critical issues. This is detrimental to the harmonious development of societies. I thus concur with the intention to preserve public interest from business decision making. In line with the principle above, I am however reluctant to promote any confrontational way. The situation requires us to move to the next level and bring these dilemmas as the main subject of discussion. In this spirit, I suggest three directions for considerations:

Business actors, be them companies, associations, lobbyists, individuals, should be invited to take positions in front of these dilemmas. As these positions affect the public interest, they should be public. As they affect their business interest, they should be included in their reporting. This should promote proactive business behaviours and create advantages for those who consider public actors their allies. It should be respectful of the immense difficulty for some actors to take a position.

Policies as normative and prescriptive solutions may prevent our ability to invent new ways to combine business decisions and policy-making by trapping us in advocacy. We should learn to express without violence or judgement the main dilemmas that business decision-makers face at the frontier of business and public interest. Formulating and releasing to the public space such dilemmas in an objective manner, for example industry by industry will increase our capabilities to face the challenge our societies face.

Business and policy-makers should gather in forums to build ideal solutions to the tensions inherent to the combination of national democracy and transnational market capitalism in the age of globalization. Beyond the market, there is a need for spaces where digital capabilities allow participative approaches to complement political representation. That would also help to harness the growing demand of citizens for a harmonious development, beyond profit maximization of companies and national economic growth.

Gaïa @ Rocklands: A Dream Project

Marc Le Menestrel — 2016-10-18T16:56:15Z

My first visit to Rocklands in South Africa in 2014 was a calling.
From the rock art of our ancestors the San people, I felt African for the first time.
Guest to some beautiful wine farm in Stellenbosch, I felt white. Forgiven by the blessing of Madiba, I felt in need of redemption.
And it is among the boulders of Rocklands that I knew how deeply I was a climber.
I dreamed of discovering my self and its shadows in this eternal landscape and in this society of social transformation.

To lose yourself in the Rocklands landscape is to find a path within Gaïa

Serendipity offered the opportunity to push forward a partnership between INSEAD in Fontainebleau and the University of Stellenbosch. This led to the African Directors Program and its leading-edge intention to train directors in a vision of business at the service of ethics, responsibility and sustainability. It was also the occasion for me to try a new relation to money: I would dedicate my fees to some social project in the country.

The San our First People

The San, our First People

From there, my intention would help me to meet people. I entered into conversations about what could be done. Climbing grows at a rate of at least 20% each year in Rocklands, bringing tourists of a special type. Climbers stay for a much longer time than flowers' lovers, cherish the wilderness like Bushmen and like to bond with local people. Even for the farms where crops remain the main source of revenues, climbing disrupts the social dynamics.

Alas, willing to “do something”, most of my ideas and the ones generated with these discussions were inappropriate. They were an opportunity to take conscience of my prejudices. I needed to clean my mind to let the dream take its own shape. I needed to heal my soul to let the dream have a life on its own. I needed to be ready not to do anything so as to perceive a form of energy independent of my self.

While visiting the Sustainability Institute in Stellenbosch with my co-director Arnold Smit and my friend Desiré Gird, I thought of my soul brother Txema Gomez and his idea to build boulders for outdoor climbing. We then pursued this in Barcelona and Txema, seduced by the idea, proposed to build Gaïa for Rocklands. He had built the first Gaïa has a self-present for his 50th anniversary and it had a very special meaning to him (see his song below).

Txema Gomez, climber, poet, composer, Gaia builder... Here in Rocklands (photo James Frost)

I came for 2 months mi-July 2016 and things then began to flow. My local friends Charité, Becky and James all pointed to JP and Tracy who I had met the year before. That night, we spoke a lot about Indaba and the spirit of the Bantu people, the power of the landscape and the tragedy of the San people. That week, the climbing school they were animating received so much gifts that JP and Tracy decided to hand over to Elizabeth Fontain, the local primary school. All sign pointing in the same direction, they said we should build Gaïa there.

The Small World (Gaia Boulder)

Since I couldn't fix the world

I built a new one

For me and for dreamers

Some say I am a fool

And I agree with them

It is my own protection

Homage from my heart

It cannot contain my tears

Witnessing so much pain

Turn, turn my small world

The climber becomes stronger

In the end it is just a game

Beware climbers

At the location of New York

There is a tricky move

Hold on and pull hard

Keep breathing

You will make a virtuous jump

It is the magic of this boulder

When each revolution

Is at the service of joy.

Txema Gomez

The day Txema arrived from Europe, the school was running its annual Climbers' party and Annatjie Domus, its headmistress, was already announcing the welcoming of Gaïa at the school! Unio Joubert, a climber, had joined the school a few weeks before and would become a most inspiring and supporting fellow. Thanks to Charité's husband Edu and her mother Effie, Dr Strauss accepted to lend us a workshop close to the school. Thys and Marc from De Pakhuis were eager to help lending us the necessary tols. I found help in the local suppliers to order the fibreglass, the resin and the rest of the material.

Painting Gaïa (photo Scott Noy)

The building of Gaïa itself took less than 3 weeks. From the start, James Frost joined the team and became Txema's first acolyte. Lisa, Clara, Scott and Kaddi, Jim and Elmar were helping in a thousand ways and especially to draw a beautiful map of the earth on the ball. The children would come to visit from time to time until we brought the ball to the school. We had no holds and found a great help from Citirocksthrough its founder Robert Breyer and Metoliuswho agreed to contribute as a sponsor. Gecko Grips also agreed to make a special price for us and I contacted Mike Behr who was willing to help by giving holds. Everyone wanted to help the success of Gaïa.

Gaïa Spirit

The end of the construction was the beginning of the work of Gaïa itself. It is as if Gaïa was a spirit guiding the whole project, finding its way among the people and taking form in the material world. We wrote the two phrases Txema and I had selected: “Each turn heals – It is a game” on the South pole.

The Gaia Ball

Gaia (Mother Earth) Ball is the brainchild of Catalonian climber and master builder Txema Gomez. The project was funded and spearheaded by Marc Le Menestrel a French climber and sustainable business expert. The message from the ball “healing each turn” and “it's a game” is an open invitation for movement by climbing on the ball. The speed of the rotation is controlled by a rope-brake system that can also be fixed to create a static climbing device.
This project will allow learners to climb on only the second of its kind rotating climbing globe and we believe develop both cognitive and physiological life skills. By moving on the Gaia ball problem solving will enable learners to learn how to regulate and control their bodies and minds. Self-regulation is thus taught and the hope is that our learners will in the future be able to use this amazing tool independently and without adult supervision.
This project is part of a larger drive by organizations such as the Rocklands Rangers to develop and promote climbing within the local community of the Agter Pakhuis area. The future growth of climbing we feel can only help healing in our school and community.-Thank you to all the hands that helped to build and erect this new fun learning solution.

Unio Joubert
A link to Unio Joubert's account of Gaïa on CLIMB ZA

With Gaïa, I have learned to lead a dream project with the spirits, in the flow and at the service of some energy for social transformation. I felt the magic of life and I felt the healing very much, and in particular for the white man in me. Healing was happening to others I guess, even if it is always very difficult to judge from outside. And sometimes healing takes time and goes through phases. What was obvious was the joy of the kids climbing Gaïa after school or during their Physical Education class. I hope the images and videos pay tribute to this.

Thanks for helping Gaïa

Txema – James - Gim Huay - Lisa - Clara - Scott and Kaddi - Jim - Elmar - Desiré - Becky and James - Lizzie and Connie - JP and Tracy - Charité and Edu - Dr Strauss and Effie - Thys and Marc - Unio and Annatjie – Arnold - Lauren – Mike – Robert - Brooke – Kurt - Jaco

Violence and fear in Paris: a way forward

Marc Le Menestrel — 2015-11-16T18:43:43Z

To feel violence against ourselves is one of the deepest and irresistible emotions of human existence. And to join others in resisting this violence shall be acknowledged as a fundamental process to nurture and celebrate our social identity as human beings. To be safe is certainly one of the most important conditions of living our life in peace. And to be safe together will always remain one of the most important endeavors of humanity.

We are rightly fearful of violence and it is interesting to realize how fears may sometimes be a dangerous advisor of human action. Although most animals react to fears as if they were controlled by them, we human beings have the formidable ability to think about our fears, to recognize them, to let them go through us, and to develop our sense of action while they past, inspired by who we can be beyond our fears.

And we as human beings know that we are the ones to be afraid of.

At this epoch of our civilization, we are now becoming fully aware that the biggest threat to us is ourselves. And we know that reacting to violence by separating us from others, whoever they are, is perpetuating violence. We also know that this is known, and that our animal part is predictable, and that our reaction to violence and fears can be used and abused to create more violence.

How can we put our most sincere and powerful emotions at the genuine service of our freedom and of peace?

It is interesting to note that one of our core strength lies in taking conscience that we are the ones generating violence against ourselves. Instead of carefully designing what it means to be “I”, “we”, “you” or “them”, attempting to draw a line between “us” the victims of violence and “them” the perpetrators, we shall take full conscience of the part in us who is using and abusing us to exercise its destructive power.

How do we ourselves generate violence? What are the things that we want from others and that lead us to violence? Who are the ones to whom we are violent? Why and when do we profit from violence? What are the social and institutional mechanisms that act as incentives to violence? Where is the violence that we are afraid to speak of?

From within ourselves to our family, our company, our boards, our country, our society or our whole humanity, there are an infinite number of “we” who can answer these questions in a constructive, peaceful and loving manner. There are an infinite number of ways to have these “we” take conscience, discuss and act collectively in a peaceful manner.

When we will be able to take full responsibility for the violence that we inflict upon us, we will have the genuine power to live together safely in peace.

And because this requires us to be very smart, together, let us start as soon as possible.

Each time I come to South Africa, I search for some courage and inspiration to ask important questions. After the violent and fearful events in Paris last week-end, this is my introduction to the third module of the course African Directors Program that I am glad to co-direct with Arnold Smit. It is a partnerhip between INSEAD Global Governance Initiative, the University of Stellenbosch and Old Mutual Investment Group aimed at empowering African Directors towards a more responsible, ethical and sustainaible business.

The Ethics Challenge: Finding the courage

Marc Le Menestrel — 2015-03-25T02:18:00Z

What sort of courage does ethics require? The search for intellectual honesty faces many emotional barriers that prevent us from seing the truth: we are not as ethical as we like to think.

This easy piece published in a semi-academic journal shares my teaching about ethics, in particular to Directors during classes in Governance. I was glad to benefit from the edits of Ludo van der Heyden and the Editor.

The question that I wish to address here is going to the heart of ethics. The subject has been much debated over the last decades, yet a sceptic could rightfully argue that all the talk has delivered insufficient results in terms of change in business behaviour.

One of the main reasons for which ethics has not delivered may be that most of the effort has been directed at pointing to the lack of ethics in others. These others include employees, managers, CEOs and
senior executives, boards, shareholders,regulators, governments and other stakeholders. Having designed various strategies for “these others” to behave more ethically, we end up lamenting that, alas, our strategies fail miserably. We come back to a state of powerlessness, evoking human nature as the ultimate
culprit.

One of the main reasons for which ethics has not delivered may be that most of the effort has been directed at pointing to the lack of ethics in others. These others include employees, managers, CEOs and senior executives, boards, shareholders, regulators, governments and other stakeholders. Having designed various strategies for “these others” to behave more ethically, we end up lamenting that, alas, our strategies fail miserably. We come back to a state of powerlessness, evoking human nature as the ultimate culprit.

Ethical training should be seen as an investment that invites this courage, and sheds a new light on the – previously unsuspected – risks that we actually face. This training is unavoidable and quite different than any “compliance” training. Such investment may then lead to a wonderful “windfall”: it frees the mind, the body and soul, and prepares the individual, and his or her organisation, for unsuspected future benefits.

The hard climb to building ethical conscience

Participants in seminars I facilitate are regularly overcome with emotions when sharing personal experiences of corruption, intimidation or coercion. Often, strong ethical judgments cloud their mind and stress their heart. Many claim to be relieved to find a space where they can openly discuss the direct or indirect subversion of the democratic sphere, using powerful influential practices or lobbying organizations. Indeed, how many boards and executive committees honestly face up to the contribution business is making to the current destruction of our natural ecosystem – in nature or in our society?

Seeing the full spectrum of ethical and unethical behaviours requires an emotional effort that must not be underestimated. In a very human need of self-preservation, we typically avert or abort thinking about unethical topics precisely because of the deeply unsettling emotions they evoke. This occurs both consciously and unconsciously. As a result of these psychological processes, our thinking is constrained in a tiny corridor bounded by frightening shadows. In an attempt to fight our discomfort, we sometimes desperately focus on the positive aspects of ourselves or on the light at the end of the tunnel, becoming entrenched in a perspective that is blind to the biggest risks we actually face.

The courage that we need shall be found both in the mind and in the heart. The mind must learn to let go of the sometimes obsessive need of a positive self-image and a desperate pursuit of our goals. The heart must learn to love others, as well as ourselves, even in the shadows.

The Restraining Boundaries of Self-Rationalisation

Let us consider corruption: one of the most daunting challenges we face today. From Washington to Paris or Shanghai, I have been engaging with young and senior executives in various industries about corruption for more than 15 years. The quasi totality of the participants I taught would describe themselves as ethical managers, working for ethical organizations. Of course, they all say they would not be corrupted, or corrupt themselves. Yet, my learning process was to reveal – through role plays in ambiguous and difficult situations involving both time, competitive and hierarchical pressures – that, in one way or another, a large majority of them would indeed end up corrupting. And when this is pointed out, in the immense majority of cases, and in particular when working in groups, participants would spend most of their effort, not seeking alternatives, but rationalizing why they cut corners, and why they had no choice but to do so.

I have identified three steps in which participants typically engage when challenged to explain their choices.

Firstly, they try to deny that they are actually corrupting.

Secondly, they justify why they have done it.

Thirdly, they externalize their responsibility to others, and blame them for their being put in such a situation.

These rationalization mechanisms prevent them from being individually, and collectively, more astute in the face of corruption. In some of the cases I teach, there is actually no good reason to corrupt, and people do it because they can't think differently. Most of the time with corruption, we just do it because we don't try hard enough not to do it.

A genuine effort to minimize corruption, in and by organizations, is leveraged by first identifying the way people think, talk and act to perpetuate corruption. This, in fact, is not helped by hastily pointing fingers and apportioning blame to various “rogue elements” or “bad apples”. Changing attitudes to corruption firstly requires understanding how it comes about. From there, one can discover that the drivers of corruption lie in an emotional inability to think wide enough.

Furthermore, in my experience, understanding our own unethical behaviour is a stronger driver for ethical change than preaching and reinforcing ethical behaviour. Compliance efforts help, of course, but they sometimes become a mere attempt to protect top management and feed their self-perception of righteousness: it becomes a self-deceptive practice. Worse, when compliance nurtures a belief that it guarantees ethical behaviour, it actually becomes a hindrance.

The false comfort of ethical blindness

As indicated earlier, we – us humans – avoid discomfort, physical or emotional. When avoiding a direct awareness and confrontation of the potentially unethical aspects of our business interests, we typically switch to a reactive mode. We still deliberate, but our cognition is trapped in various forms of denial, rationalization and externalization of our locus of control – in other words, apportioning responsibility to elements beyond our control – and feeling safe again. By constructing these individual and collective protections at the psychological and emotional levels, we also isolate ourselves from the source of future problems. We become like ostriches with our heads in the sand, seeking refuge from what seems too large a challenge. We are in this case preparing ourselves for bad surprises; we are actually sowing the seeds of real nightmares.

Firstly, and paradoxically, ethics requires suspending judgment. As a teacher, I spend a tremendous effort in my preparation working on my own prejudices towards the people and companies I address. A typical set-up for failure is when I appear to be judging them, projecting my own prejudiced shadows onto the participants or their organizations with the illusion that it serves some good. In reality, it only produces a reaction that reinforces the vicious circles in which we are all trapped: blaming the messenger of bad news to escape our shadows.

To the contrary, a solid and efficient way to proceed is to be non-judgmental, so that participants feel that they occupy a safe, intellectually honest and credible space for courageous and smart conversations to take place.

The Duality of Ethics and the “grey zone”

We prefer to think and talk about our ethics in a positive light. We easily provide arguments to explain how ethical we are. Most companies have success stories about how they contribute to environmental sustainability, advance social justice and promote human values.

However, for all of us who are neither saints nor devils, our ethics typically fall in a grey zone. It lies somewhere on a continuum between being “completely unethical” and being “fully ethical”. There is some good in most of our actions, as well as some bad. If most of our actions are therefore both ethical and unethical at the same time, it is profoundly different to look at the ethical aspects, as opposed to look at the unethical aspects. In my experience, companies whose behaviours raise the most daunting ethical issues, have developed the strongest blinding bias towards their own ethics. It is normal and profoundly human to move away from the disagreeable, to want not to see it, and rather prefer to dull ourselves in good conscience.

But there is more: we also are biased against others. In a typical business setting, we are biased in favour of the ethical side of our own actions, while focusing on the unethical side of others' actions, especially if they are those of our competitors. In general, our ability to think about both sides of the ethical judgment is significantly influenced by our emotions, our interests, our mental habits and self-image, our cultural context, our work environment, and, finally, our power to act. An aspect of ethical training is thus to learn to see both the good, and the bad, of any situation or action. For instance, consider the following questions:

Is it ethical to close a profitable plant?

Is it ethical to compromise on the safety of a product?

Is it ethical to influence a government?

It is likely that you will naturally answer yes or no to these questions. Yet, there are substantial and compelling arguments to answer both yes and no. Thus, observe your own bias and observe your own (in)ability to overcome it. Sometimes, it needs others to show us the other side of our own thought, and then it becomes obvious. Training this ability to explore our own ethical perspective requires discomfort and effort.

Considering that an action has both an ethical and an unethical side does not preclude the comparison between actions, i.e. judging that an action is more ethical than another. On the continuum, some actions lie closer to “fully ethical” or “completely unethical” than others. It is not because we must reject an absolute and categorical synthetic judgment about the ethics of a particular situation that all becomes relative.

Interestingly, this duality is useful to decode discourses, and to perceive the implicit preferences and objectives that lie behind them. In a series of work about the way the oil industry was influencing the science and politics of climate change, it became very clear to my colleagues and I, that the ethical aspects of actions that were profitable to the industry were emphasized, while unethical aspects highlighted.

Drawing a line in the grey zone

For our own actions, analysing both sides of the ethics equation is the only way for us to consciously choose our ethical opinion.

With effort and training we can develop our ability to look consciously at both the ethical and unethical aspects of any action. As we have seen, this is emotionally difficult. It is also cognitively difficult, because the mind does not like the ambiguity of grey zones, and even less the frontiers of the grey zone, preferring to seek the simplicity of black and white assertions. Often over-estimated for its ability to control emotions and decisions, the mind prefers to categorize each action as either ethical or unethical. Accepting that both are true is a challenge for our logical thinking and it is particularly easy to dismiss it as pure relativism: everything then goes.

The truth is that separating grey situations into two categories, in an attempt to draw a frontier between what is unacceptable and what is acceptable in a particular situation, is essentially subjective. But it is not because each one of us may draw our ethical lines at a different point of the grey divide that the extremes cannot be objectively defined. As far as both black and white exist in themselves, the good and the bad may be clearly defined concepts. It is when a particular instance of an action, situation or person is totally reduced to one of them that we create a problem. As Shakespeare reminds us, the good and the bad are not a property of things, but of a particular perspective we take on them.

One of the goals of ethical training is to clarify what is objective (agreed upon by all) and what is subjective (specific to each one) in ethical judgments. For the objective, it is impressive how we can get absolute consensus on the negative and positive aspects of particular behaviours in a collective setting. If trust is present, all arguments for the good or for the bad can be made explicit, may be agreed upon and accepted. The plurality of experiences helps the uncovering of these multiple arguments. What remains subjective is whether, overall, these arguments should deem a particular action “ethical” or “unethical”. In reality, do we really need such a categorical opinion? And what does it mean? What does it mean to say that a particular grey is black or is white? Not a lot indeed. What we need is to consciously draw a line, to freely choose a frontier by saying something like “this is too bad for me to do it”.

For each one of us to consciously choose where we want to draw the line, we better be able to see both sides of the line. Having such a dual and systematic analysis increases ethical awareness at the individual and collective level and helps elaborate and improve conscious, free and powerful ethical judgment. It is a difficult process that requires us to separate the ethical analysis from the behaviour itself and to work outside of our comfort zone. Taking the pain to analyze systematically the good and the bad in our actions, doing so in contexts where a diversity of perspectives enrich the exercise, suspending our categorical judgments over people and actions, are the intellectual and emotional efforts we have to pay in order to generate alternatives that we can freely choose, instead of merely living in denial and providing excuses.

Uncovering Ethical Risks

The concept of Ethical Risk refers to unexpected negative consequences stemming from a lack of ethics of our actions. Because we tend to be unaware of the unethical aspects of the actions that we choose, especially when these actions are in our self-interest, we cannot anticipate the negative consequences emanating from them. Indeed, it is likely that the stakeholders concerned will respond in an adversarial manner by seeking to impose negative consequences on us. These can be legal and reputation costs in particular, but also breach of trust and revocation of license to operate. At the individual level, it is sometimes the whole meaning of professional life that becomes questioned, which then becomes a source of profound suffering. Because we tend to deny the unethical aspects of our actions, these negative consequences are unexpected and constitute bad surprises: these are ethical risks.

As I said, when confronted with the unethical side of our actions, we tend to react negatively, emphasizing the ethical aspects of our actions and denying their unethical aspects. For instance, because we have implemented a compliance program, we find the exposure of our unethical aspects unfair, and we trap ourselves in a reactive attitude. These attitudes further reduce the self-awareness of ethical risks and can progressively lead us to an increased propensity towards unethical action. This is the “slippery slope”.

Such reactive attitudes deal with ethical risks only superficially, because denial and justification are merely designed to appease our minds and are only effective for our own conscience. They also lead to increased secrecy and confidentiality surrounding unethical aspects of decisions taken, and consequences learnt. As a result, the whole organization becomes trapped in a culture of self-censorship and deception and eventually, we begin to believe in our own propaganda.

Who? Me?

For others, denial and justification tend to nurture the adversarial attitude of stakeholders that are alerted or harmed by our unethical actions. Offended by our lack of understanding, frustrated by our lack of attention for issues impacting them, disabused by what they perceive as a lack of good faith, they push us towards an ethical crisis. We then face escalated costs in order to mitigate unexpected negative consequences, which can be a good opportunity for PR companies, but not for us. In a series of crises that I have investigated with colleagues, this nightmarish slippery slope leading to boycotts, dismissals, violent events or even societal crisis, can be fatal. A key learning from it is that the cost of anticipating ethical risks would have been pocket money compared with the cost they actually bear on us when they crystalise.

A Paradigm of Ethical Rationality

In reaction to our unethical behaviours, we end up pointing to external influences, as if we had no other choice. In this manner, we reduce our own power to identify a profitable alternative course of action. We reduce our freedom to choose, and deny ourselves a choice. Indeed, without proper ethical analysis, a typical justification of an unethical action is that an alternative course of action would have been too costly.

Inclusive awareness of ethical and unethical aspects triggers a natural search for more ethical solutions.

Awareness of potential ethical costs increases the relative attractiveness of alternative, more ethical actions.

A rational analysis of the benefits of a more ethical alternative can avoid an exaggeration of its costs and benefits.

The re-framing of the situation, an adjustment of the terms of a new paradigm by which we measure success often allows the identification of new opportunities otherwise hidden to us.

Eventually, with some ethical effort, an alternative and more ethical action may be implemented and without much additional cost, even considered as a strategic investment. I have witnessed wonderful experiences of individuals, teams and organizations rejecting corrupt practices to discover a simpler process to promote their products and ensure the smoothness of their processes.

I recall in particular an executive who stood up in front of his boss to refuse indulging in a practice that was decidedly “too much”. As a result of his disobedience, the boss of his boss, a senior executive of the company, summoned him to his office where he explained that he refused to act against his own values. That was to be the long awaited call that the senior executive was unconsciously waiting for, and the beginning of a strategy with the executive committee to modify certain practices. The company eventually became a leader within its sector group to fight against corruption, and that senior executive later took executive positions worldwide. It was impressive how he was the only one to be able to raise these subjects in meetings, beyond emotion or guilt, opened views to both sides and intelligently, and powerfully pushed the frontier towards the better.

For him, like for others, avoidance of ethical risks opened the path to unexpectedly positive consequences. It transformed the individual, the team and the company by recovering their true identity, their meaningful purpose and unleashed again the pleasure of working and doing good business.

Ethical Training Reloaded

Proper training about ethics and ethical risks allows the identification, mitigation and transformation of ethical risks, at once improving organizational efficiency and developing organizational identity.

In my experience, ethical training shall always start at the individual level. However, it is particularly interesting to work with executive teams, so as to both share our ethical analysis and confront our different perspectives. Rather than looking for systematic alignment about where to draw the line, we first look for consensus on the extreme and establish a common understanding of the various shades of grey. We can then rely on the diversity of personalities and characters present to enrich the team's capabilities to face ethical situations. Again, rather than judging, it is first important to understand the full dynamics that has led to some ethical or unethical decisions, independently of whether such decisions have led to success or failure. Further, at the level of the company itself, dedicated programs whereby a significant proportion of top executives are trained, are especially useful for companies intent to forge a culture or develop new attitudes towards emerging or transforming markets.

Regarding identification, ethical training allows us to identify systematically the various unethical aspects of our actions, thus reducing the awareness bias, the tendency to stick with intuition and the “obvious” solution, and identifying ethical risks before they lead to bad surprises. At the individual, team or organizational levels, identification requires a safe space, a trusting environment and non-judgmental facilitation. This can be eased by a past crisis that has liberated a motivation to “do something about it”. Sometimes, different modalities and formalities are required so as to protect the company and so that individuals feel free to express themselves without fear of embarrassment or retribution.

Concerning mitigation, ethical training allows us to describe our behaviour more objectively and to anticipate the possible unravelling of ethical crisis. Simulations, case studies, sharing of personal and organizational issues are good supports for these stories to be told and for conversation to take place. The learning space shall allow participants to experience both their ethical and unethical behaviours so as to understand their attitudes at each side of the frontier. In terms of stakeholders, management are trained to recognize the legitimate part of stakeholders' reactions, communicate with more sincerity and engage with them, thereby preserving trust and alliances. Rather than behaving reactively, they learn to empathize and act proactively towards the mitigation of the unethical aspects of their actions.

With regards to transformation, ethical training enables us to spend at least as much time looking for opportunities. This intends to un-bias our tendency to justify the actions that we expect to maximize our interest, while being unaware of the unethical risks they bear. Decisions not to engage in more ethical actions become more salient, and the training allows participants to develop their power of discrimination.

It is this change at the individual level that makes the organization less vulnerable and more resistant to ethical crisis. Moreover, decisions to engage in more ethical actions do not follow a blind faith in favour of ethics. In this manner, ethical training develops resilience and fortitude: it turns ethical risks into opportunities by dedicating cognitive and organizational resources to creating good surprises.

It is a constant surprise to me to realize how much we are blind to our ethical shadows. Still, the individual and organizational courage to face the risks that these shadows entail quickly brings us to a change of ethical conscience and a natural transformation of our behaviour. There is no better driver of ethical behaviour than conscienciousness of our unethical behaviours.

The author wishes to express his gratitude to Ludo Van Der Heyden and Anthony Smith-Meyer for their editorial support in writing this article.

Marc Le Menestrel is Professor at the Department of Economics and Business of University Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) and Visiting Professor of Ethics at the Social Innovation Center of INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France). He is a specialist of the role of ethical values in business decision-making and he has been teaching and coaching executives across a wide range of critical topics. Among his preferred ethics assignments, he is noted for his teaching about business influence on the science and politics of climate change, and teaching ethics to tobacco companies, banking, the nuclear energy industry amongst many others.

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