In the early years of my management journey I remember my boss at the time telling me that in order to be successful in my career I had to become comfortable with the grey. What he meant was that every day I would be faced with situations that didn’t have any specific playbook or best practice. I had to become comfortable with solving problems in situations that were truly ambiguous.
This ambiguity and lack of clarity makes work a bit more interesting. Especially when one experiences situations that they nor anyone else has never witnessed before. But what I have noticed recently is what I call “grey creep”, where situations that should be black and white have been allowed to become grey areas. Specifically in the area of values, morals or integrity, navigating the grey can sometimes start to look like the world really doesn’t stand for anything anymore. Let me illustrate this with an example. If a company is faced with the choice of putting the lives of employees at risk, for the sake of the public in general what is the correct decision? Does the CEO stand up and say that under no circumstances are they willing to risks the lives of their employees? Or do they force the employees to risk their lives in favour of the public good? Where a company is struggling financially, is it fair for the company to refuse to pay it’s suppliers under the guise that it is saving critical working capital in order to pay it’s staff? Especially if one considers that these suppliers also have staff and suppliers to pay.
Decisions that should be black and white and guided by some moral, cultural or value based code should be easy to make. If the values of the company are to value employees above all else then that should make some of these decisions very black and white. Another example could be if a company uses a specific ingredient in its products that was not illegal but potentially harmful. Should the company exploit the loophole that what they are doing is actually not illegal or should the company immediately remove the ingredient for the sake of the public? The black and white view says do the right thing. They “grey creep” view says it’s open for debate because it is technically not illegal.
This brings me to my next point about the role of the law and how that can exacerbate rather than reduce grey areas. South Africa’s Apartheid laws were legal for over 50 years. Discrimination based on skin colour was legal. How many companies implemented these practices under the guise of it being within the law? How many companies broke the law in order to live out their values of fairness and justice?
Therefore, in closing I just want to say that we will be bombarded with a proliferation of grey situations as our careers progress. Being grey or ambiguous is not a bad thing at all. The question we need to ask ourselves, however, is what exactly are we black and white about? Which areas of decision making, values and core motivations are not negotiable grey areas? What exactly do we stand for? Are we comfortable with the grey, but at the same time, conscious of where that grey ends and the black and white begins.
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