The ethics of pressure tactics

The boss came and shouted to the coop of hens “Tomorrow all of you need to lay four eggs. I’ll come in the morning and check. Whoever doesn’t is going to be sent to the farmers house and cooked for lunch”. The next day the boss came and checked. He saw that all had laid four eggs except one single fellow who lay crouched in the corner with just one egg. “How dare you”, the boss hollered. This “hen” squeaked, “Actually I am a cock. Because of target pressure I just managed one egg. I am sorry I am unable to do more.

Many of us have read or heard this story and laughed. But a cock laying an egg because of pressure is a deviation of the cock’s nature. It’s a deviation of nature’s nature.  I often wonder how many times we  go against our nature, against our principles, against our ethics, against our belief system, against all that we stand for, when faced with extreme pressure. The fear of sleeping on an empty stomach, of being thrown out on the street overtakes our entire being and our morality succumbs to pressure.

Let me narrate another story, this one a real incident with a bit of my wishful thinking thrown in.

Once upon a time, a mighty FMCG company set very steep targets for the sales persons of a particular region. Every day the sales guys would draw and re-draw strategies to achieve their number. Every one was on their toes. People made a lot of personal sacrifices, put in as many hours they could humanly manage.  In spite of all the slogging, the strategizing, the tactics, the target seemed unachievable. A call from the head office threatening job cuts further deepened the paranoia. Towards the end, the sales guys hit upon a plan. They would invoice whatever remained of the target to a few close and trusted distributors. They would launch a discount scheme which would fund the rent of some temporary warehouse where they would stock the goods. They would collect cheques from these distributors.  But the distributors need not honour the cheques. The plan was executed, the target was met and there was a lot of celebration. But a series of bounced cheques set the internal audit department on the trail of this event of spurious sales and everything was revealed. A few people lost their jobs.

But did the organization really achieve anything except reporting a number for a particular quarter end? Rather it lost a lot. It lost its trust among valued customers who now thought that the organization can stoop to anything to just achieve target numbers. It lost some good people, who have been bringing in good business to the organization. It lost money in correcting this entire bad deal.

We have witnessed how the mighty have fallen because they fudged their books -maybe to meet some unrealistic target. Too much of pressure does more harm than good. It may lead to a temporary sense of success, some people receiving their bonus, but it is detrimental to the organization and the society. I feel that organizations exerting so much of pressure to achieve the target numbers be it at the top line or the bottom line is slowly and subtly eroding the overall moral sense and well-being of society. Instead of applying pressure, which leads good ethically sound people to resort to such dire means like making counterfeit invoices or window-dressing the books of accounts, organizations need to set reasonable targets and strategise long-term to achieve the target numbers.

If good people need to keep doing not so good things to meet targets and ensure food and shelter, the moral fabric of the nation would wear away and we will degenerate into a country of rogues.