Milgram And The Moral Fiber Of Leadership

Four year ago (7 November 2007), I wrote a blog called The Milgram Experiment And Enterprise Architecture, which discussed lessons from this experiment in terms of the awesome responsibility that we all have, but especially people in leadership positions, to do the "right thing."

Today, I sat with my mouth agape seeing the Milgram Experiments repeated 50 years later in a study for television, conducted by the Discovery Channel, where they asked "How Evil Are We?"

I watched one participant after another administer what they believed where painful shocks to a another person with a heart condition screaming and begging for the experiment to stop.

Of 11 people, only one women stepped up, stood up, and refused to participate, saying that she could not harm another human being.

All the rest, continued to administer what they thought were painful shocks to an unwilling screaming participant having heart pain, simply by being prodded by a man in a lab coat at the back of the room saying "the experiment requires you to continue" and "it's absolutely essential you continue."

To the viewers horror, the participants continue to to push the lever to shock the other person at an even higher voltage!

When they ask the people afterwards who administered the shock, who would've been responsible if the person receiving the shock had a heart attack and died? one lady immediately turns around and points to the other man in the lab coat.

Like in the evil Nazi death camps, "authority remains a decisive force" and people will do horrible acts saying they were "just following orders."

In the Discovery program, when they add a second person to the experiment who stops the shocking and refuses to go on, only then does the other person refuse as well.

So aside from the lesson that we must always safeguard our own moral compass and do the right thing even in the face of others prodding us to do things that are immoral, unethical, or illegal, we can also learn that by speaking up when we see something wrong, we can indeed influence others to do what's right as well, and in essence "lead by example".

My hope and prayer is that all of us can overcome negative impacts of nature and nurture to see with clarity when something is not right and have the courage to stand up and say and do something about it.

Like the sole participant who refused to administer the shocks and said that she couldn't go home at night and look herself in the mirror if she did these bad things, we too can live our lives so that when we go home to our maker, we can look at our lives with our consciences clear and at peace, and perhaps even having made a real and lasting difference in this world.

Milgram And The Moral Fiber Of Leadership

Jonah and Enterprise Architecture

There was an interesting editorial in the Wall Street Journal, 19 September 2007 about the Book of Jonah (that we read on Yom Kippur). Jonah was commanded by G-d to exhort the people of the city of Ninveh to repent or face G-d’s wrath. But Jonah flees and we all know what happens with him and the whale.

Jonah was concerned that he was in a catch 22. On one hand, if he warns the people of Ninveh and they repented and nothing happened (i.e. they were spared), then they would “assail Jonah for forcing them to make needless sacrifies.” On the other hand, if Ninveh did not repent and was destroyed, the Jonah would be a failed Prophet. (Yes, I know Jonah should’ve had faith that everything would be okay.)

Jonah’s dilema is repeated throughout history. During crisis, leaders frequently encounter this catch 22—no win dilema.

• “Winston Churchhill, for example, prophetically warned of the Nazi threat in he 1930’s, but if he had convinced his countrymen to strike Germany pre-emptively, woul dhe have been hailed for preventing WWII or condemned for initiating an unnecessary conflict?”
• Similarly, “Harry Truman predicted that Japan would never surrender and that a quarter of a million GIs would be killed…and so he obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki only to be vilified by many historians.”
• This type of denounciation, for prevening an unknown, is what President Bush is experiencing for invading Iraq after 9/11 to stave off another terrorist attack in the United States.

What’s the leadership lesson here?

“This is the tragedy of leadership…policy makers must decide between costly actions and inaction…they will be reproved for the actions they take to forestall a catastrophe, but may receive no credit for averting cataclysm that never occur.”

In User-centric EA, like in all planning endeavors, we face a similar crisis of leadership. EA develops the enterprise’s target and transition plan, yet whatever actions (or inactions) that the target state and plan take, the architects are wide open for criticism.

• If their planning in any way helps avert a future corporate crisis, no one will recognize them for some unknown that did not occur.
• And if the plans in any way misses the mark (and no plan is perfect), then the architects are villified for the “errors of their ways”.
• Finally, even with the best laid plans, who can definitely make the causal relationship between the plan and results.

So, architects, like Jonah, are in tough spot—hopefully, we don’t get swallowed by the whale of nay-sayers and critics. Of course, its always easier to criticize than to be constructive.

Jonah and Enterprise Architecture