Foresight: A Leader’s Ethical Responsibility
Editor's Note: As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has come under scathing criticism for the litany of errors and omissions that led to the current crisis. In a classic article, 
"Leading Ethically Through Foresight," Pegasus cofounder and 2010 conference keynote speaker Daniel H. Kim talks about leaders' ethical responsibility to understand the underlying structures within their domain well enough to predict future consequences of current actions. We offer Daniel's timely and provocative article with the hope that his insights might help prevent disasters down the line.
By Daniel H. Kim
Rereading Robert Greenleaf's renowned 1970 essay "The Servant As Leader" is always an exercise in humility for me. His writings are a constant reminder of the high standards leaders must set for themselves if they are to be worthy of people's full commitment. Of all the things that Greenleaf wrote, I have found the following passage to be the most striking and most challenging to live up to:
"The failure (or refusal) of a leader to foresee may be viewed as an ethical failure; because a serious ethical compromise today (when the usual judgement on ethical inadequacy is made) is sometimes the result of a failure to make the effort at an earlier date to foresee today's events and take the right actions when there was freedom for initiative to act. The action which society labels 'unethical' in the present moment is often really one of no choice. By this standard, a lot of guilty people are walking around with an air of innocence that they would not have if society were able always to pin a label 'unethical' on the failure to foresee and the conscious failure to act constructively when there was freedom to act."
I have never heard anybody talk about leadership responsibilities in that way. Others may admonish us for not having exercised better foresight or for incorrectly anticipating the future. They may call it a failure of planning or an error in judgment. But to call such a lapse an ethical failure is such a strong stance that it compelled me to take a deeper look at the issue so that I could come to better understand why Greenleaf used such provocative terminology.
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This article originally appeared in The Systems Thinker, Vol. 13 N. 7 (September 2002). Click here to receive a free current issue of The Systems Thinker.
Daniel H. Kim is co-founder of Pegasus Communications, founding publisher of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and a consultant, facilitator, teacher, and public speaker committed to helping problem-solving organizations transform into learning organizations.
photo of Brown Pelican by Alan D. Wilson This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.