STFU #05 — The Right vs Right Dilemma — Daily Decisions for Your Startup
Imagine you are driving a trolley — suddenly, the brakes fail and you cannot stop the trolley anymore. A few meters ahead, though, you find 5 workers working on the tracks. You cant honk, you can’t stop — you can only ram them and probably, kill them. But then you suddenly notice there is one more track and one child is standing there. You have the option to steer the trolley into that track, ram the child but save the 5 people, or continue going straight, save the child but kill the 5 people. What would you do?
Or picture this — you are a doctor and in the ICU, you have 5 patients who might die unless you replace one of their organs — a kidney, liver, lungs, pancreas, and heart, respectively. And there are no donors available anywhere. Suddenly, you recall that in the next room outside the ICU, there is a healthy man who has come for a regular checkup and is taking a nap — he has a set of beautifully healthy organs. What do you do? Will you….?
While most of us might not be confronted with such levels of dilemma, each of us has been stuck in situations when our values collide, when we know either of the sides can be correct, rather — are correct. But we still have to be on one side. What and how do you decide?
‘Trolley Car Problem’ is one of the classical moral dilemmas being taught at Harvard University*, but is also called as “Right-vs-right” dilemma.
We all have been taught in our childhood about right vs wrong — it’s fairly simple to choose — follow the right, discard the wrong. Most of the stories we narrate to our children are right vs wrong or good vs bad. We believe we are preparing them for the real world.
What we don’t realize is that most of their difficult decisions in life would be between the right and the right.
When the teacher catches your best friend copying from you, and asks you, “Is he copying from you?” — is when you are confronted with your first ‘moral dilemma’ — Be honest or be loyal? Be a trustworthy student or a loyal friend?
Our parents probably left us to learn from movies like ‘Dark Knight’ or ‘Godfather’, or books like Harry Potter, for us to figure out ‘how to decide’ in right vs right! It was only when we read such things that we saw the ‘right’ side of Joker, Voldemort, or, in some cases, Ravana!
Right vs Right for being Mr. Right?
At True Elements, we have had our share of moral dilemmas — and it has never been easy to take one side — if both sides are right, how do you decide? That’s when we arrived at principles that helped us not only take decisions but also be consistent with them. More so, we ‘consistently evolved’ our principles (even though it might sound like an oxymoron!)
When you are running an organization, you build your principles. But even after that, you have to take decisions between right and right almost every day — short-term vs long-term calls, asking someone to go, not hiring someone even though they need the job badly, delaying vendor payments due to your cash flows, hounding a colleague on deadlines even if they are struggling in their personal lives — you have to choose one right over another.
How do you resolve this?
While there are many theories or points of view on this, 2 schools of thought helped
3 Principles: Decide the principles to make the best choice when we are faced with a right vs right dilemma:
- Ends-based: Select the option that generates the best for the most people.
- Rule-based: Choose as if you’re creating a universal standard.
- Care-based: Choose as if you were the one most affected by your decision.
The other one is by Jonah Berger, in his latest book, Magic Words, who talks about ‘ should’ vs ‘could’ decisions.
Usually, when we are faced with such dilemmas, we ask ourselves what we “should” be doing. But while shoulds are common, thinking in shoulds can often get us stuck. What we need is a framework to think of more options, and not restrict ourselves to thinking about limited ‘should’ options.
If, instead, we could ask what we “could” do, it helps us in thinking of more options.
Divergent thinking, as they call it, drives more creative options, and helps you think out of the box and without boundaries.
So the three ‘should’s of end-based, rule-based, or care-based principles, along with a varied set of ‘could’s can help you think more widely (and wisely!).
Having said that, whether you should use these principles, or you could use your principles, just remember that whatever you choose — post all the guilt, you would still be on the right side!
What ‘could’ the doctor in ICU do? One of the students quipped (in the Harvard class), “We could wait for one of the 5 patients to die, and then use his 4 organs to save the other 4!’
And if you are wondering if you ‘should’ start up, ask yourself what you ‘could’ start on now!
Stfu!
*part of the Justice Series by Harvard’s Michael Sandel, Joker by Pradeep Ranjan
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
