Col Slade- Do the deal, Charlie. Take it! Go to Harvard
Charlie- I can't do that
Col. Slade- Why Not?
Charlie- Because I have a conscience, you know. Its some things you just can't do
Col. Slade- Conscience, Charlie? When were you born, son? Around the time of the Round Table? Hah. Haven't you heard? Conscience is dead
Charlie- No, I haven't heard
Col. Slade- Well, then, take the fucking wax outta your ears! Grow up! It's fuck your buddy. Cheat on your wife. Call your mother on Mother's Day. Charlie, it's all shit. You're gonna have a tough time in this world
So goes the exchange between Charlie, a prep school student at Baird School and Col. Frank Slate, a retired and blind Colonel in the United States Army. It is a scene from the movie Scent of a woman which won Al-Pacino an Oscar in the leading role and went on to win many Golden Globe awards as well.
For some background, Charlie has been promised a seat at Harvard by the Principal, if he squeals the names of the students who vandalized the Principal's new Jaguar. Col. Slade, who has seen much in life, exhorts him to go ahead and make the deal but Charlie is not comfortable with the idea of "selling out"? The movie sets you thinking but we will come back to it.
Many years back, in the early eighties, my family was traveling to the Himalayan Shrine of Badrinath. Travel conditions in the hills were tough- there was no luxury accommodation available then, food along the way was very basic and since we couldn't afford a private taxi, the trip was made on a U.P. Roadways bus. Tired and famished after the whole day of bus journey on narrow potholed roads pockmarked with recent landslides, we finally reached the town of Joshimath. It was bitterly cold and getting dark, so finding accommodation was first priority. There were no cell phones or even land line phones in those days, and a guesthouse, the only one at Joshimath, we had planned to stay in, had no system of reserving accommodation. It followed a first come first serve system. On enquiring, my father was told he must look elsewhere as all rooms were taken. My father pleaded with the manager, letting him know that he was traveling with little children but the manager was in no mood to reconsider. After considerable time went by, My father was about to give up when he happen to mention that he has traveled all the way from Pantnagar University on this pilgrimage. The Manager was in conversation with another party and only half listening to my father but on hearing this, he signaled my father to wait. Further conversation ensued during which the manager learnt that my father was a professor and taught at the university. Lo and Behold, there was a sea-change in his attitude- he still held that all his rooms were taken, but now he was willing to accommodate us by vacating the one that he occasionally used himself. Slightly baffled by this sudden change of heart, my father profusely thanked the manager and we went on to stay in the room. This incident was much discussed and narrated later on and it was concluded that the good reputation and influence that Pantnagar University enjoyed led the manager to reconsider his decision and go the extra mile to help us. Nor was this an isolated incident- I was to repeatedly see people, even hardened policemen, trained to sniff out goons and mischief makers, melt with high regard or even slightly bow at just the mention of the name of the institution, such was its' reputation. Not just in the hills, but also in big cities like Delhi. This is even more remarkable considering there was no TV or internet or social media in those days and all that one knew was through word of mouth.
In his book The Bonsai Manager, R. Gopala krishnan describes an infamous case of misappropriation of funds at Tata Finance and how the company, when it discovered wrongdoing, immediately decided to make it public and handled it with utmost urgency and transparency with the end goal of making sure that Tata's name as a company was not sullied. The company risked losing its business and its customers by doing so and had the option of not disclosing anything at all but it decided its credibility was at stake.
Swiss Airlines, built on the platform of quality, once discovered a problem with its aircraft engines and decided to ground the entire fleet, until such time that the problem was discovered and fixed, at a huge blow to its finances.
15 years back, in an MBA class room, a professor asked us who our hero was in the corporate world, a role-model, someone who we looked upto. Most all hands went up, amongst them majority of the girls, for Rebecca Mark (the business media had christened her "Mark the shark" for her aggressive deal-snatching capabilities). Young minds were enamored, there was awe and even some measure of reverence. Her aggression was clearly a virtue many wanted to emulate and since access to boardrooms were still some distance away, copious amounts of this quality was at display during classroom participation. There is a front page news story picture of Rebecca Mark etched in my mind meeting Shiv Sena's chief Bal Thackeray to discuss the Enron plant in Maharashtra. The Enron scandal hadn't happened yet and the list of her fans in business schools was particularly long. Enron collapsed later due to a number of questionable and illegal financial practices, and Arthur Andersen, their auditors, were subsequently convicted of obstruction of justice for its part in the scandal. The reputation damage to Arthur Andersen was immediate and catastrophic, and its clients fled in droves. It made no difference that the conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2005 — by then, it had lost all its customers. Although never formally dissolved as a partnership, there's little chance that Arthur Anderson will ever again be a viable business.
In the world of business this is formally recognized as Reputation Risk- damage to the value of a company's brand name cause by negative public opinion. It can happen for a number of reasons (mostly fraud and financial wrong doing) and can have a debilitating effect on shareholder value. Conversely, in accounting the concept of good business practices, good reputation, is also duly recognized and attributed value as Goodwill. These intangible concepts are ingrained in a world that, above all, usually only accords value to hard numbers.
Yet individuals, it appears, sometimes have difficulty clearly understanding what is at stake. Some confuse it with accumulating money or power. Others believe that their fame has made them surpass the usual boundaries of convention that apply to other people. But fame alone does not determine name, leave along good name. Fame is fleeting. Your fame is dependent on other peoples' choices. Your name depends on your own. Fame is temporary; it is, for most part, a mirage. Your name lasts a lifetime, infact it goes beyond a generation. The list of people who learnt this lesson the hard way is long- Jack Welch, whose fall from grace was quick and steep or more recently General Petraeus, a highly decorated officer of the US army, who became fodder for lewd jokes after his extra-marital affairs came to light. People who fell from grace perhaps never thought this could happen to them. They thought they were beyond the rule of law. Rajat Gupta of Mckinsey was looked upon as a realm of what was possible to achieve, a rags to riches story he went on to receive some of the highest accolades in the business world, but now history will remember him as an infamous crook who tried to accumulate illegal riches. To his credit, at least he seems to know that he has lost his reputation by admitting as much publicly.
Rajesh Khanna, had just about died when articles about his misconduct and his personal vendetta against his co-stars began to appear in the press but Balraj Sahani is still remembered as a gentleman actor, two generations after. Azharuddin once hailed as a cricketer of unparalleled talent, was tainted forever with match fixing charges. Isn't it a shame that a man who debuted with 3 centuries in a row, whose mere turn of a wrist could send a bowl to the boundary, would be remembered as someone who brought disrepute to the Gentleman's game? If there have been people who, in one stroke tarnished their reputations, there are also those who went to great lengths to safeguard their reputations, however intangible an asset it may be. Amitabh Bachchan fought hard to extricate his name from the Bofors scandal and repeatedly said to the media that it was important to him that his name was cleared. Kapil Dev, when accused of match fixing cried like a child on national television.
And yet, the message is lost on the young men and women of today. Lured by the riches of corporate life, dreams of flying in a corporate jet, owning an entire island or amassing unaccountable money, they are willing to gamble anything. The haphazard growth of the media has resulted in a body blow to its ethics -citizens of the fourth estate leave much to be desired but even they can't escape the fact that their most precious commodity is the trust that their readers put in their word. Can Barkha Dutt of NDTV claim the same status of unadulterated respect anymore after the Radia tapes came to light? Probably not. You can write a 1000 letters of protest or refute the charges of misconduct but public trust is frail. The only thing that you cannot redeem in a lifetime, once lost, is your name. Not definitely in an age where news spreads faster than fire. Of all the possessions of man, there is nothing as fragile as one's name. It is not without reason that self esteem and reputation appear nearly at the top of the pyramid in Maslow's theory.
This brings us back to Charlie, who, beyond the maturity of his years, decides his principles are far more important than buying his way into Harvard. There are parallels to this in the corporate life- Ask yourself if you ever sold out your colleagues to make your way to the top? Did you build a business on the misery of your employees and then, did not remember to reward them? Our day to day life throws innumerably difficult questions at us- these are moments of truth, moments that test our integrity, moments that are a decisive test of our character. Whatever your principles may be, you play this game once and none other but your own conscience is the referee. Neither is this game a short sprint. It is a marathon that lasts 40 years of your working life. You waiver once and you may never recover.
Every morning I take the 20 minutes drive towards the Airport where my office is. The highway is full of billboards that are selling anything from liquor to cars to property- not generally a source you would expect to receive much useful information, leave alone find any wisdom but then, one day, unexpectedly, I noticed this written in bold fonts: Win, but not at any cost and 5 minutes later, a second one with an even better message: Stake everything but your name.
Here's a third one to consider: Ask yourself What is in a name? And if you allow your conscience, it may be heard faintly telling you: Well, my friend just about everything.
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