Today I received a letter from a collection agency informing me that they had assumed a debt from my timeshare resort for an overdue maintenance fee. A hefty collection fee was now due as well.
This past summer I moved across the continent from Massachusetts to California. I had done my best to assure that monthly and annual service providers had my new address, but I was not surprised that I had overlooked the fee for the timeshare, payable every other year. I was surprised, however, not to have received any notice prior to the letter from the collection agency. I called the timeshare office, and the accountant to whom I was referred insisted that a total of five earlier notices had been sent to me before the collection agency was utilized, responding to my plea for leniency by saying that it was my responsibility to have made certain that they had my new address. I was bewildered as I hung up. With just such a circumstance in mind I had arranged for all of my first class mail to be forwarded by a reliable associate. Then, suddenly, I understood. The mailed notices from the resort were not first class mailings - they were post cards. No one would think to forward postcards with images of beach sands and hotels which must have appeared to be advertisements. Then I realized that the time share resort must have known this - I could not have been the first - yet they never sent a single (more expensive) first class notice letter that could have a chance of being received. The institution took no responsibility beyond what it perceived to be its immediate best interests.
The resort demonstrated a lack of leadership with its own most important constituents, its owners.
This year, the United States Congress has acted in a similar way to my time share resort. The divisions that have stalled or disfigured the passage of legislature critical to the health and welfare of the American people did not arise from the interests of the people, but from lobbies, the corporate world, and pressures of partisanship. In short, from self interest. And the global collection agency is on its way.
When considering leadership skills, the capability to resolve ethical dilemmas in a constructive, ends-based manner is essential, particularly for anyone who accepts responsibility for a constituency. That is, the leader must be capable of processing decisions to the benefit of the greatest number. The consequences of such decision making determine its moral rightness. There is a tendency among public officials to rationalize their processing in terms of rule-based thinking, that is, selecting and utilizing a rule that can be applied anywhere. The consequences do not matter in that case - it is the rule itself, and its underlying precept, that is paramount. Where right vs. right decision making is concerned, many leaders satisfy themselves with having arrived at this juncture and are then unable or not courageous enough to rise beyond that point and to assume this next dimension of ethical decision making, ends-based thinking. When too few leaders manifest this capability, the affairs of an entire nation must be subjugated to the short-comings of individuals.
