What Are My Core Obligations?
63
idea of democracy: the idea that we all count, and we all
count the same.
Neither of these two deep obligations can be specified pre-
cisely or completely. There is no bulletproof philosophical
argument that mandates our belief in them. But neither fact
gives managers permission to ignore these duties or replace
them with something else, like the economics of their orga-
nizations. In fact, because these two basic human duties are
open-ended, managers have to work harder and think more
carefully about what they require in particular situations.
The Tysabri situation shows the importance of making
this effort. Mullen’s decision, as we have seen, would deter-
mine which of his fellow human beings got medicine they
really needed and when they would get it. He was deciding
who suffers and who might live or die. This gave Mullen a
clear, overriding duty to focus intently on patient health. This
duty trumped any obligations to Biogen Idec’s shareholders
or to any other stakeholder group. The patients on Tysabri
also had a right to be treated with dignity and respect. This
meant Mullen and Biogen Idec had a duty to tell them the
truth, as best he and his company could discern it, about the
benefits and risks of Tysabri.
Attack the Obstacles
It is easy to say, “Rely on your moral imagination.” In prac-
tice, however, this may not happen spontaneously and, when
you are under real pressure, it may not happen at all. Hence,
process really matters—just as it does when you are assessing
the net, net consequences. To awaken your moral imagina-
tion, you have to take two steps. The first is recognizing the
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Managing in the Gray
64
obstacles to doing this. The second is working actively, with
others and on your own, to grasp what your moral imagina-
tion is telling you.
What are the obstacles and how serious are they? The
answer comes from a surprising individual: the great clas-
sical economist Adam Smith. Although he is best known
for articulating certain fundamental economic principles,
like the “invisible hand” of the market, Smith was actually
a humanist thinker. His most famous book is the economics
treatise, The Wealth of Nations, but the truest statement of
Smith’s personal philosophy was a study of human psychol-
ogy called The Theory of Moral Sentiments.
27
In one chapter, Smith discusses how people typically react
to news about far-off catastrophes. What is striking is how
precisely his account, written more than two hundred years
ago, describes how we react today, when a massive human
tragedy occurs somewhere in the world. Smith imagines an
earthquake that kills everyone in China. Then he sketches
the immediate reaction of someone in Europe. This person,
“would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sor-
row for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would
make many melancholy deliberations upon the precarious-
ness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man,
which could thus be annihilated in a moment.”
28
This reaction, Smith tells us, lasts for several minutes, but
what does our empathic European do next? Smith writes,
“When all this fine philosophy was over, when all these
humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would
pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his
diversion, with the same ease and tranquility, as if no such
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What Are My Core Obligations?
65
accident had happened.”
29
What Adam Smith, an astute
observer of the human condition, shows us is all too famil-
iar: the moral imagination welling up in sympathy with the
Chinese people and then quickly subsiding.
What makes our moral imaginations fragile or fleeting?
One factor, for managers, is simply busyness. Managers work,
in effect, on an endless conveyor belt that brings them prob-
lem after problem. Some are big, some small, many are messy
and complex, and most have to be handled expeditiously—
so you can get to the next problem or issue. Organizational
routines are another obstacle: often, we don’t really think
and instead just do whatever is familiar, reinforced, and
rewarded. In Kathy Thompson’s situation, the standard
operating procedure was sending her file to HR.
Another obstacle, a surprising one, is success. Years ago, an
executive looked back on his career in New York City. When
he started out, his pay was low and he took the bus to work.
Later, he moved to the suburbs and drove. At the pinnacle
of his career, he rode to work in a limousine and took an
executive elevator to a corner office atop a skyscraper. Every
promotion, he later realized, separated him further from
the life experience of many other people. Each step up made
him a more powerful and successful man and also more of a
bubble child.
Unfortunately, the barriers to our moral imagination run
even deeper. They include, not just busyness, routines, and
anesthetizing success, but human nature itself. We evolved
as tribal creatures. We draw lines between “us and them,”
between insiders and outsiders, often on the flimsiest grounds.
And we instinctively take care of our own. As a result, our
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Managing in the Gray
66
moral imaginations work with blinders on. E. O. Wilson, one
of the most influential biologists of recent decades, has writ-
ten, “Our bloody nature, it can now be argued in the context
of modern biology, is ingrained because group- versus-group
was a principal driving force that made us what we are.”
30
This tendency skews our moral imaginations, and it may be
why Adam Smith’s imaginary European quickly turned his
attention from the Chinese calamity.
Ask What Is Hateful
So how do you deal with all these obstacles, if you are fac-
ing a hard gray area decision and don’t want to bypass your
basic human obligations? The challenge is to see yourself as
“the other”—as one of the outsiders or victims, and not as
the insider, the decision maker, the dominant party. And the
harder challenge is to grasp and feel the experience of “the
other” in a way that vividly highlights your core obligations
as a human being.
A practical way to do this is by spending a few moments try-
ing to answer a very old question. It was articulated by Hillel
the Elder, the ancient Hebrew philosopher and theologian.
He spoke with a man who was willing to convert to Judaism,
but only on one condition: that Hillel could explain the entire
Torah to him, during the time that Hillel could stand on one
foot. Hillel met the challenge easily. He simply said, “That
which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. That is
the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study it.”
31
The striking word here is “hateful.” Hillel is asking us
to pay attention to what we would really care about, deeply
and urgently, if we were in another person’s situation. In
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What Are My Core Obligations?
67
practice, this means finding ways to ask yourself and others
what you would be thinking and feeling if you were among
the people hit hardest by the decision you might make. Try
to imagine how you would react if your parents or children
or some other loved ones were in this vulnerable position?
What if you were the victim of MS or PML? What would
you be feeling and thinking? What would you urgently
want? What if one of your children or your parents or your
partner had MS? Or might get PML? What basic duties do
you think Jim Mullen and his company would have to you
or to your loved ones?
The familiar version of Hillel’s guidance is the Golden
Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
32
In the West, most people view this precept as a teaching of
Christian religion, which relegates it to occasional sermons
in certain houses of worship. But that view misses the full
force of the question Hillel wants us to ask. The Golden Rule
isn’t simply a precept of Christianity. Versions of it appear in
almost every major religion. Some philosophers have argued
that the Golden Rule is part of the foundation of important
moral theories.
33
And it is easy to hear it echoed in everyday,
practical moral guidance—like the Native American recom-
mendation to “Walk a mile in the other person’s shoes.”
Dismissing the Golden Rule as Sunday sermonizing, rather
than seeing it as an almost universal humanist insight, is a
serious mistake. The moral imagination is basically a secular
version of it. And Hillel’s version—which asks what we would
find hateful—has a sharp edge. This question has endured for
two millennia because it prods our dormant moral imagina-
tions. It pushes us to think imaginatively and sympathetically
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