When Is It Right To Drop The Ball?

A story is told in the golfing circles from several years back. A group of four CEOs decided to go for a round of golf at a club some 40 kilometres out of the capital city. All four headed respectable companies.

After the game, as is the tradition, they freshened up, ate and sat for a round of drinks. Time caught on with them after an evening marked by good laughs and hearty discussions amidst many friends. So they had to head back to the city.

A little miscoordination led one of the friends into thinking that the rest had left him and he drove out in hot pursuit. All this while, the other three friends were chatting by their respective cars parked close by as they awaited for Mr. X. It was thought that he was using the washrooms before journeying on in the convoy.

It took one other golfer who was headed out to quip that Mr. X drove out like he had just been flagged off in the Paris-Dakar rally, for he zoomed off like the legendary Shekhar Mehta often did.

And so the other three quickly drove off hoping to catch up with Mr. X. And no sooner had they left the club's precincts than they discovered a stationary vehicle in the middle of the road. It was Mr. X's car.

What they found, confused them even more. Mr. X's speeding had caused him to knock a donkey caught in the headlights of the low sedan. In a flash, the animal had broken in through the windscreen on the passenger side and occupied both front and back seats. And with its last kicks, the donkey tossed and turned as it emptied its bowels in a manner that pelted every part of the car's interior with a rancid dung spray.

The donkey's actions involuntarily overwhelmed Mr. X's reflexes and triggered a smelly shootout as panic mode set in. He emptied his bowels too, spectacularly. The first friend on the scene swore weeks later that the fetid atmosphere that greeted him must have been what finally killed the poor animal that he believed was otherwise determined to live on. The scene wasn't a pleasant place to be.

His quick thinking friends pulled out the animal and urged Mr. X to drive off quickly as they followed on before any villagers came out to investigate the commotion. They made it without any further incident.

One of the friends had wanted to right the mishap by compensating the owner. But the rest felt exposed to the dangers that lurked in the dark. Any people who came out at that time of the night would vandalise their cars and swindle them of their possessions.

The right-thinking guy had tried hard once they got back to the city to convince the rest to face the donkey's owner in the morning, but it never went down well because anyone could lay claim on the animal besides, the demands on them would be too high. And so they moved on with their lives. The real losers were, the donkey itself for it died, Mr. X who had to fix his car and the unknown owner of the donkey who had to contend with lost opportunities as donkey carriage was lucrative around that village. The feeling of guilt overcame Mr. X but only for a little while.

It turned out that the owner had relieved himself of the liability in the old donkey by abandoning it to die in any way possible, for it was no longer useful. And the guilt in Mr. X melted away. We shall return to count the number of balls dropped in this story.

We encounter those moments when we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. For instance, when working for an owner chairman of a company, and he wants you as Head of Finance to avail part of the top line proceeds to him continually. And even worse for you is the fact that this organisation is part of an industry that is regulated. If you disobey the chairman, you risk losing your job and if you comply, you risk sanctions from your professional body and with that your career is jeopardised. You pick signals that intuitively indicate to you that it's just a matter of time before the regulator moves in.

So which ball do you drop? Your job or your career? Let us pack that for now.

You are a religious leader with executive authority and enjoy the trust of your followers. Many of your congregants bring their problems to you. There is this beautiful woman. She is married but has a problem at home. Her husband's boss is a close friend of yours. Instead of helping out, you influence the husband's sacking so that he is now toothless as you aggressively pursue the troubled wife.

The unsuspecting husband approaches you quietly and pleaded with you to get his friend to reconsider handing him back his job given that what he was accused of wasn't true. Recently, the woman has proved harder to come by because this man has made peace at home. The troubled woman has approached you again, but this time for you to talk to her husband's employer to hand back the job to the frustrated man. There is a subtle threat from her that she will confess the affair before the congregation if you fail to secure her husband's job.

There is no lesser consequence for you the religious leader to manage. Exposure ends your lucrative job. Going back to confess to your friend that you lied about the woman's husband means that you must come clean on your intentions. The company owner tithes huge amounts of money and is an influential church member who won't take the confession lightly. What do you do? Let us also pack this for now.

You work for a None Governmental Organisation - NGO that is positively changing the lives of its targetted populations. The donors are satisfied with the results and the money is flowing. You have plans to build a palatial home for yourself now that you have gotten away with buying a big car. Your sources are obviously from the donor money. Recently, your biggest donor has insisted on a lifestyle audit on you. The questioning is uncomfortable and intrusive.

Unlike in the past, this donor now shares emails widely with your juniors and board. You have been eating alone and if you share some of the proceeds with key staff, the need for the lifestyle audit will fade away and your position at the helm will continue without misgivings about your leadership. So do you extend the gravy train to your hungry team or do you cut your losses and call it a day? The other two donors are happy to let you set up another NGO but you risk falling victim of procedural objections that may be filed with the regulator by the current organisation. What do you do?

Before we unpack the balls dropped, let me add one more on behalf of a friend whose pain I feel. This guy was a prolific contributor to the mainstream newspapers until they stopped taking his pieces. He went behind the scenes to uncover the reasons why the editor had declined his work. His findings were just as disappointing as they were shocking. A 'holy' friend of the concerned editor threw a spanner in the works simply because he disagreed with the writer in question and for totally different reasons from the contents of the articles published or submitted.

Even sadder was the fact that Mr. Holy grail was at the time one of the known importers of the sugar consignment that the government had declared unfit for human consumption because of its toxic mercury levels. So the editor turned his eyes the other way and deprived the keen public of some very good reads. If you were the editor in chief and was armed with this information, how would you handle the concerned editor considering that he or she is one of your best having let go of others because of the lean times?

There are moments when we want to do the right thing but the timing causes us to move on with unholy alternatives. We want to act right but it puts our jobs or lives on the line.

So to overcome this kind of situations, many terminologies have come to life. We have AFEL and AFAL - Action First Explanations Later and Action First Approval Later. The former is applied when you are the final authority on the matter at hand. AFEL has no room for a higher person's involvement. The donkey's owner exercised AFEL because as it turned out, he abandoned his faithful beast of burden of many years to suffer an unknown terminal fate. This is the same thing that happens to many people who have given all their useful lives to employers who end up paying them their last salary and releasing them unceremoniously. So AFEL can be misused.

AFAL requires the involvement of a senior person after the fact. In most cases, this is applicable in matrix based reporting structures. It can be abused as well.

AFEL and AFAL are of no use at all if one is already compromised. That is the first ball dropped and when kicked away by others it bites you hard.

So our four golfing CEOs dropped some balls. How they act outside the office gives us a clue about their work ethic. It is questionable because they did not take time to even own up a week down the road. So that was the first ball down. That they never got organised enough to leave as planned in a convoy, was the second ball dropped. In fact, this one contributed to the accident. The fine whisky consumed over a relatively short space of time was the proximate cause of the confusion and not sensing how much was enough, was the third ball dropped. If the donkey meant nothing at all - and the resultant loss never merited compensation, do you think this guys would care for CSR? That is a bad result from guys running respectable companies. So in this case, they dropped the wrong balls. The club captain ought to put them on a performance improvement plan.

The Head of Finance at the regulated company is about to drop a ball. If he accepts to sort the chairman, then he becomes guilty of aiding theft. His chairman is unrelenting and has asked for cash. So he is between a rock and a hard place but walking away will make him suffer in the short term but he will maintain his respect in the long run. Soon after this, the guy walked out, the regulator dived in and demanded answers to some very hard questions. The guy who walked away is now happily employed in a better place. No ball dropped no career-limiting moves, no guilt.

The religious leader is no better. His first ball was dropped when he coveted his congregant's wife. He kept on misusing his trusted position. Lying to the chairman to achieve a softer route to the woman was a huge ball dropped. When things unexpectedly turned around at home, the leader was left with egg on his face. That was another ball for he should have been beyond reproach. Finally with no options left for him but to confess his devious ways to a respected member, would surely be the biggest ball ever dropped from the earth, so it seemed. But surprisingly, his confession yielded a favourable response from the senior member. He acknowledged and appreciated the difficulty in confessing such a horrible thing and he chose to forgive the minister. He reinstated the troubled husband. This chairman exercised wisdom to save many ball droppers. The woman too had dropped a ball.

The NGO man dropped his first ball mentally. The thought of deceit counts as a dropped ball. That he misused donor funds meant for poor people to buy a car was the second ball dropped. The thought of building a palatial home with looted funds was the third ball dropped. Thinking of bribing his juniors was the fourth ball down and the thought of running away with the other two donors to set up a new organization was his fifth dropped ball. What a loser this guy is. Some are quietly celebrating this guy as their hero. Resigning on account of tangible evidence is the best thing for this guy. He can negotiate a package and fade away but he feels invincible and wants to fight on.

The final question was to the editor in chief. The editor under scrutiny dropped the first ball due to misplaced friendship. The media house lost big time. The second ball was dropped when he covered up the sugar story perhaps because something sweet was handed to him in a brown envelop.

So armed with this information, the editor in chief must AFAL the editor out of the organisation.

Now, when is it right to drop the hardball? When your principles are breached, assuming that you are forthright, it's time to call it quits. You will live on to tell the story.