Taking an Oath
While I'd been part of the corporate bureaucracy for many years — in healthcare, justice departments, aviation, shipping, mental health, academia, international aid, and an onion factory I worked at when I first left school — it was working for one particular organisation that allowed me to see the entire absurdity of those that ran organisations. In this case, it was a not for profit. In this case, it was not my first rodeo. And here I was, back knee deep in the corporate swamp.
Over the years, I found that organisations typically failed in just one or two areas. This one managed to fail right across the board. Including the board members. Except of course creating the façade of a good culture, including diversity, equity, and inclusion. Because apparently if you convey it on the website, it's true. To make matters more interesting, the organisation provided services for people with disabilities. So that means they care. Apparently.
While I'd spent my career across different sectors, I was always connected with healthcare, where there were practice guidelines such as a code of conduct, and the well-known Hippocratic oath, with clear expectations when it came to professional and ethical behaviour and conduct. The Hippocratic oath itself is some twenty-five centuries old, attributed to Hippocrates, sworn in its original form on the names of Apollo, Asclepius, and a handful of other healing gods. Its substance includes pledges like never giving a deadly drug even if asked, never performing care beyond one's expertise, and never violating a patient's confidence or dignity.
The line most doctors quote it for — "first, do no harm" — doesn't actually appear in the original at all. It comes from a different Hippocratic text, and the oath itself says something closer to this: doctors must have two objects in view with regard to disease, to do good, or to do no harm. Centuries later, someone dressed that up in Latin, primum non nocere, and the tidier version stuck, quoted confidently by doctors who'd be surprised to learn Hippocrates never wrote it that way at all. Even so, it has outlived empires, and it still carries weight. If you didn't meet those standards, the general public have the option to report you to a registration body. Nurses and paramedics answer to that same board. Even the volunteer running the Bunnings sausage sizzle needs a food safety certificate to serve you a snag, which is more oversight than most executives will encounter in an entire career.
Even my time in aviation showed that if something went wrong, there was an independent body that would investigate if deemed necessary. Business, organisations, board members, CEOs and the like however, are governed by something like religion. Overseen by a nebulous construct, something vague and ill defined. There was certainly no 1800 number you could call, nor a governing body you could submit a complaint to. Come to think of it, like the merchant shipping industry and Las Vegas. What happens at sea, stays at sea. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. And shipping does have its own laws, folk laws. Break them, and the angry sea gods will come knocking on your hull. Remember — no bananas on board.
I suspect if board members, CEOs, directors, and middle-tier demigods of dysfunction had to swear an oath before taking their seat, they'd ensure there was room to move. I suspect it would read something along the lines of this:
The Bureaucratic Oath
First, primum non nocere — do no harm. Unless of course it's to achieve profit, personal recognition, a big fat bonus, a bigger office with a window, or a designated car park closer than the handicapped spot. Secondly, non mea culpa — it's not my fault. Should the organisation be found negligent or associated with any wrongdoing, blame the banana.
I solemnly swear to prioritise personal advancement over staff satisfaction, more meetings as opposed to action, and management jargon over clarity: transparency, inclusion, equity, accountability, alignment, strategic direction, EBIT, culture and teamwork — a vocabulary I shall wield fluently to create a façade of competence and confidence. I vow to reward mediocrity, avoid responsibility, and deflect with strategic ambiguity. I vow to ignore problems that do not affect me personally, and I will become defensive should I receive constructive feedback. So help me corporate governance.
I will never deliver bad news without first assembling an HR taskforce to deflect responsibility. If a decision can be avoided, avoid it I shall. I'll remind myself to mention the term 'safe workplace' often, and adopt a set of Organisational Values that I'll claim come from 'staff input', and display them for all to see, to create the illusion of safety and integrity that applies to everyone except me. If someone challenges me, I shall make their role redundant. If a lengthy report containing smoke and mirrors can be produced, with all the management buzzwords, I shall produce it, regardless of the fact that no one reads or understands it. I shall cover my arse in emails, then copy in five unnecessary people and call it transparency. I shall ensure all communication is lengthy, passive, and utterly devoid of meaning.
Should a staff member feel uncared for at work, I shall refer them for counselling sessions through the Employee Assistance Program, affectionately known as EAP, to ensure they understand they are the problem. In the event an employee is unable to work due to illness or injury because of an unsafe workplace that I cultivated, I shall subject them to a fate worse than death: worker's compensation. From there, I will first deny the harm. Then attempt to shift blame. Then, while they are down, gaslight the employee by engaging an independent expert — an expert of our choosing — leaving the worker questioning reality, and feeling like they've been put out with the garbage.
Above all, I will protect the organisation's image, no matter how rotten its core. And God forbid, if a sorry is needed, I shall repeatedly utter the Latin term non mea culpa, while hiding behind my HR and legal team.
Should our business activities extend out into the community, forests, or third world countries, I acknowledge I have even more corporate social responsibility.
I shall ensure chocolate, clothing, diamonds, pharmaceuticals, and fashion are sourced from wherever the labour is cheap and desperate for work, and most importantly, no union in sight.
Should I get caught using children to harvest cocoa in West Africa, I shall express deep concern in a press release, commission an audit no one will read nor gain access to, while continuing to purchase from the same supplier under a different name.
Should our clothing be manufactured in a dodgy building no engineer would sign off on, a statement about 'shared social responsibility' will suffice — by which I mean everyone's responsible except me. Should our products have financed a war I'd rather not discuss, our marketing team will ensure our advertising states 'vegan friendly.' Should my supply chain be traced back to a smouldering patch of the Amazon, I shall sponsor a documentary about the importance of protecting it and promote it on our website and social media.
Enshrined into our yearly strategic plan, it shall outline: plant a tree for every forest we clear, sponsor a small school in an unknown village in Africa for every mine we dig, and place three solar panels on the roof of head office, somewhere clearly visible, to show we care about koalas. And of course, to be actioned by the marketing manager, fortunately also without a moral compass, and hoping for a pay rise.
As for vitamins and drugs, I shall price them at whatever the market, and the desperation, will bear. Should the medicine be one people cannot live without, I will look forward to my yearly bonus. Should a cheaper version exist elsewhere, I shall initiate a media release claiming it's counterfeit, unsafe, or 'not yet approved', and send my lawyers in to make sure it stays that way.
I shall test my lipstick, mascara, and my anti-ageing cream on animals who will never wear any of it, and promote the products as 'cruelty-free', based on the fact that the animals have never put in a written complaint.
I shall accept government funding for whatever project sounds most virtuous on a grant application, and shall rely on the government's inefficiency and incompetence so that no one ever asks what the money was actually spent on.
I shall commission a Corporate Social Responsibility report each year — glossy and image-rich, featuring at least one child, one tree, and one solar panel, none of which I have personally seen, except the one on head office's roof — printed, ironically, on paper from a forest I did not plant a tree for. Ethics, I rely on, to be hard to define. I shall dump, exploit, or extract freely, so long as the fine, should it ever arrive, costs less than the profit already banked.
Should a river run a colour not found in nature downstream of my factory, I shall commission a study to determine whether the colour was always there. I shall retain an 'independent' environmental consultant — independent, of course, providing no one realises we paid them. The consultant, usually bearded, in a shirt that's seen better decades, driving, ironically, a diesel ute, operating in what can only be described as a quiet cartel with my legal team — a partnership sealed not in blood, but in billable hours. Should the community persist, my legal team, wearing expensive suits, will intimidate and overwhelm those who got sick from drinking the water downstream, using the slightly edited, redacted, biased environmental report that clearly proves non mea culpa.
Where waste is found too toxic for the ground or water, I shall investigate the feasibility of dumping it on the moon. Failing that, the deep sea. Failing that, a country whose government takes bribes in the form of the savings we've made from using cheap labour — placed out of mind, out of sight. Failing that, call the independent environmental consultant again, who I have on speed dial. No doubt still wearing the same shirt.
And should any of the above ever threaten to become a headline, I shall keep on retainer a communications team who function like the fixer in every crime film — arriving fast, speaking little, executing a media release that reads like a cross between a politician and a cryptic astrologer, and leaving the scene spotless before anyone notices.
Above all else, I always return to the question that brought me here in the first place: how does this benefit my status, my next promotion, my fancy house that I don't spend much time in, or my bank account.
So help me, shareholders and board members.
Alternatively, there is the more simple oath, the Narcissocratic Oath: "If I look good, we did good."
An extract from A Tale Told by an Idiot, a tragicomical memoir in progress.
Written by: Jeremy Limpens