DISCOVERING DOPING OR FRAUD and MAKING IT A POSITIVE FOR YOUR ORGANISATION
When doping or fraud is discovered in an organisation, the traditional managerial approach often involved trying to resolve the issues without any "damaging publicity". Such an approach was generally accepted to "protect" the image of senior management and the organisation.
Of course, many people within the sport or firm and associated stakeholders knew about the fraud anyway. Therefore when management took a "soft option" most of the sport or employees and stakeholders in the know, knew management and the organisation were still perceived to be tarnished. In addition, on many occasions the news got out anyway. In these situations, nobody was a winner and management and the organisation involved, were always the loser.
From another perspective, people in the sport or the business's employees soon came to realise, if management was only interested in the protection of reputations, the crime could be done with some impunity and a "deal" could always be done to minimise any penalty.
In the modern world, escaping the ramifications of doping and fraud is much harder, especially as there is almost no way of keeping the crime a secret.
So What Has Changed?
Firstly, there is now where to hide anymore and secrets are too easily exposed. If you haven't worked out why yet, then I suspect you are still pretty naive about how and why secrets are exposed.
Alternatively, the perpetrator maybe greedy, disenfranchised with their organisation, believes they are owed something extra, the goal is more important than behaving within the rules, or they just don't care about the ramifications of being caught.
Secondly, people today are not so forgiving of doping or fraudulent behaviour.
Thirdly, in today's world, there is nothing some people enjoy more than smearing a person's reputation, especially if that person is a high achiever. So any bad news is good news for this type of person who loves to bring down others. Unfortunately, this sort of campaign against high achievers is almost a sport these days to people who love nothing better than "a good news story on the downfall of a high achiever.
All you have to do is to look at what has and is happening and being reported in the press lately. There are a number of people in both the sporting and business worlds who will never regain their reputation, even if found innocent subsequently of any perceived crime.
So What to Do?
It is my belief the old accounting law comes to the fore in these situations. "For every credit, there must be a debit."
If we transpose this accounting law in to our management lives, the positive management team will understand "..for every bad bit of bad news, we can create positive news!"
Therefore if management in the sporting and business worlds can view "bad news" as an opportunity to spread "good news" then these organisations can achieve a positive outcome for their organisations.
In the unfortunate case where doping or fraudulent activity is discovered within your organisation, management can only win plaudits for exposing it for all to see. Furthermore, most "soft options" involving deals, may save a bit of time or money in the short-term, but cost many more dollars, as well as reputations in the long-term.
It is worth looking at those sports and business organisations which defend their good name with dollars, procedures and openness. Over the long-term, these organisations have made more money doing better business by advertising any breaches of doping or fraud than trying to hide this behaviour.
To "manage" the doping or fraud event only to protect the reputation of senior management or "the good name of the organisation" only achieves a loss-loss outcome for the organisation.
May you be paid today rather than tomorrow
Kim Radok
