BENDING IT LIKE BECKHAM

Have you heard the term "bend it like Beckham?" It refers to a move of soccer icon David Beckham  wherein he squared his body at a 90 degree angle with the ball, which created an intense amount of spin l and caused the ball to curve an astounding amount.  

And although not a smooth segue, consider this curvature and bending when associated with rules. People say "I didn't break the rules, I just bent them a bit," or "there is nothing in the rules that says I can't do this." It seems that the spirit of rules has been lost in rationalization and debate.

Now please understand, I know that things aren't black and white, and there are probably a lot more than "fifty shades of grey" when it comes to rules. If a rule doesn't make sense, I am usually the first one to challenge it, because let's face it, some rules are just downright stupid!

I began to reflect on our amorphous rule culture the other day, as I was reading another report of the Senate scandal happening now in Canada. When defending the inappropriate spending habits, almost all of the Senators have said something to the effect that what they did wasn't explicitly against the rules. It didn't say, according to them, in any of the fine print "thou shalt not." So they figured it was OK.

I am not going to get into my opinions about this debacle, but it does bring up the difference between rules and ethics. Rules are guidelines. Even the biggest rules of all time, the Ten Commandments, will have exceptions. "Thou Shalt not Kill" seems pretty clear, but when you are in imminent threat of being murdered by someone else, you can kill them in an act of self-defence. So you see, guidelines.

But ethics are sacrosanct, at least from my perspective. Ethical behaviour is a built in compass. It guides you, even when a rule doesn't explicitly say that something shouldn't be done, or worse, when a rule goes against every moral code. We have heard variations of rule following from the likes of Adolf Eichmann "I was only following orders," to variations of this theme with employees of Enron, Lehman Brothers etc. where the vast majority stayed quiet in the face of rampant ethical breaches, by the leaders of these companies. The leaders are the "rule setters", and inevitably the "rule role-models." Yet, in the postscripts of many of these scandals, employees would lament that they knew (ethically) it was wrong, but what could they do?

I have stood up against ethical breaches, and sometimes paid the price for it. And I have also broken rules that didn't make sense, but these rules never impinged on ethics. Ever.

So as I watch those in corporations and in government put tremendous spin on that they really couldn't "break a rule" when it wasn't specifically stated, I ask them to consider the ethical spirit of the rule.

Bending "rules" like Beckham may be OK sometimes. But the ethics implied in the rule, should be a straight kick into the goal.