Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right

What should you do if a single parent on your staff is falling behind in his or her work?

How do you lead the launch of a product you know will be extremely controversial?

This is a book about work choices and life choices, and the critical points--or defining moments--at which the two become one. It examines the right-versus-right conflicts that every business manager faces and presents an unorthodox yet practical way for managers to think about and resolve them.

When making hard professional decisions, managers often use personal values as a touchstone. According to Badaracco, however, resolving such dilemmas is not as simple as the inspirational do the right thing school of ethics would have you believe. Defining Moments reveals an alternative approach that helps managers tackle the more complex and troubling question of what to do when doing the right thing requires doing something else wrong, or leaving another right thing undone.

Drawing on philosophy, literature, and three stories that reveal the increasing complexity today's managers face as their careers advance, Defining Moments provides tangible examples, actionable steps, and a flexible framework that managers at all levels can use to make the choices that will shape not only their careers, but their characters.

Compelling, readable, and absent of ethical jargon, Defining Moments gets to the core of what makes being a manager so difficult, as it explores what it means--and whether it's even possible--to be a successful manager and a thoughtful, responsible human being.

This book was a good resource by providing me different points of views concerning the question, and by pointing out that it's not a simple matter of making a choice (for instance, one lead by intuition and emotions, as is recommended sometimes). The cases presented point to several kinds of dilemmas: the personal ones (choosing between what's right for you and for the organisation), the managerial ones (choosing between the organisation and the people that ore working for it) and the social ones (choosing between the organisation and the larger social system it's a part of). The book also points out different sources we have for basing our decisions on.

The problem remains that values and principles often point into different directions. Ethical choice techniques such as the "sleep-test", the "golden rule" and other sources of inspiration do not solve this.

Learning from that, it becomes clear why one should not expect to find the answers to your ethical problems in this book. Finding "the" answer is "impossible". In a "defining moment", you will have to examine which values you are committed to, these values will be put to test (will you go for their implications) and they will shape your future. I believe (with the author) that there are no easy answers to the *real* issues we are faced with. That's why this book shows in what way you have to search for your answer. Reading this book will at least allow you to ask the right questions and to look at various aspects in order to make a personal choice.

If I would have read this book earlier, my own book would certainly have included a reference to it.

What will I tell my customer? Well, writing the "code" won't be enough, in stead we should focus on teaching people how to make an ethical choice.

Patrick E.C. Merlevede, M.Sc is the main author of "7 Steps to Emotional Intelligence"


Excellent Book on Ethics (for everyone)   May 8, 2001
Damon Timm (United States)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

While this book may seem catered towards business management issues (and the examples given in the text are), the ideas, values and approaches presented within the text are universal. I, myself, am not a "business person" or "manager" and found this book extremely enlightening and helpful, and can apply the values and examples to my own life and work.

The basic premise of the book revolves around (what Badaracco calls) the "defining moments" of an individual's life; these are instances in which a person is faced with a decision that has no clear "right vs. wrong" answer (which he calls a "right vs. right" question), yet the decision the individual makes will define who the person is in times that follow. He uses three different examples of real-life quandaries that managers have faced in the past (as well as their conclusions). Badaracco does not tell his audience how they should act in a given situation, but instead, gives the audience the introspective tools needed to make better decisions that support who they are as an individual.

Again, terrific book and well worth anyone's time who is interested in the ethical decision making process.


"Defining Moments" A management mirror   October 10, 1997
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to sit in a management development class with Aristotle, Machiavelli and Nietsche all firing questions at you? I had a blast reading through the challenging case studies in this book. The author takes you "crop dusting" through personal right/right decisions that make you realize all of the aspects of your personal value system matched up against your oganizational mission. He then cruises up to about 30,000 feet with an employee/manager problem that exemplifies the scope and impact of your decisions as a manager. Just when you thought it was OK to have a beer in first class, he puts on the afterburners for a climb up to 100,000 feet with a perplexing global impact decision that faced a drug company and it's chief executive officer. As a front line operations manager with about 6 years of management experience - I have even greater respect for my peers and my organization and the decisions we make. However, I have even greater respect for the intelligent CEO's who are torn by unbelieveable decisions and come through smelling like a rose. This book is a mirror that reflects your responsibility as a manager and a tool in helping you balance the scales between managing people and profits. You will sleep much easier with your business decisions after considering the questions that our forementioned friends will fire at you.


Surprisingly important book for new managers.   February 13, 2008
Kris Tuttle (Boston, MA, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I read this a few years after I had been in senior management and wished deeply that I had discovered it earlier. One of the great challenges facing new managers is decision making where the choices all involve some positive and negative aspects. There are also many organization pressures that force individuals to consider suboptimal paths to "be a team player."

It's a slippery slope and one that is hard to navigate without a great deal of thought and a clarity of personal professional purpose.

This is a small book that easily engages the reader in a fascinating path to understanding these core management issues.

Management, especially senior management, starts to look like politics and turns into a soup of interests and circumstances that make the "right" decision hard to discern and possibly even harder to live with.

Given the impact to size ratio and high quality of the writing I'd make this book a must-read in the category.