It’s always difficult to watch someone fail, and it’s doubly difficult when the failure unfolds in public.
And triply difficult? When the failure reflects an ethical shortcoming. The worst case, though, is when the person failing happens to be the leader of your company or organization.
Take, for example, the recent and widely published fall from graceOpens a new window of MIT’s Media Lab director Joichi Ito, who has headed up the innovation and research hub since 2011. Ito announced his resignation from the lab and withdrew from a number of other positions, including the MacArthur Foundation, the board of the New York Times Company and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, after it became public that he accepted money from alleged rapist Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein committed suicide while in police custody in early August.
Ito’s had already publicly apologized for accepting Epstein as a donor in mid-August, but a reportOpens a new window in the New Yorker magazine showed the extent to which Ito tried to cover up the donations. In the wake of his resignation, MIT announced that it would undertake an extensive investigation conducted by an outside law firm.
Is there anything that can be learned from Ito’s fall, other than bad behaviour sometimes gets punished.
Although I often write about the importance of corporate and organizational transparency, it’s worth reiterating here that a greater degree of transparency and truthfulness could have avoided much of the drama. It seems like a banal observation, and in this case, especially with the help of hindsight, it is.
But applying the lesson to every aspect of corporate organization, include installing measures for peer-to-peer accountability, too often falls by the wayside.
In the wake of a leadership failing, however, the priority is keeping the rest of the organization productive. A few things to keep in mind:
Send a clear message
Be clear about how serious the failure is, and take the opportunity to reiterate company values. If possible, and where appropriate, outline specifically how the behavior deviated from standards of conduct. Don’t sugarcoat the problem, state things in simple, clear language. Acknowledging how behavior doesn’t conform to the company is the best way to send a message about expectations.
Don’t engage in a witch-hunt
You want to make sure that there is a process of accountability, but the last thing you want to do at a vulnerable time for the company is make people feel afraid or insecure about their positions and futures.
One of the most important things you can do is have effective messaging, and the priority is get an accountability plan established as soon as possible. Then tell everyone exactly what they can expect, and timeframes for when things will happen.
It’s useful as well to be clear about what people can do if they have something to add to the investigation. Most importantly, let the investigators do their job, and don’t start suspecting people.
Treat everyone with the respect you would have if you knew they had nothing to do with the failure. Because until investigators find otherwise, they haven’t.
Build a narrative
People will want to know why and how something happened. If a leader failed, does that mean the rest of their insights should also be discarded?
By knowing the details of the circumstances, an understanding can develop on how to rebuild after a leader’s departure and how much of their contribution should be preserved.
When the time is right, after external investigations and other reckoning has been concluded, revisit the departed leader’s narrative and explain to the organization how something happened and what of the former leader’s insights are worth keeping.
Knowing what to preserve and what to discard will reinforce the overall vision for the company and provide a catalyzing force for advancing past the failure.