The Dilemma of Tough Choices

As AIG gets caught in the media blender, once again they are faced with choices that are no win situations. Do they ignore contracts and then face the legal battle of not paying contracted bonuses or do they fulfill contractual obligations and get hammered by a governing body that is looking for an example to hang from the yardarm for all to witness?

As a leader of business organizations you are going to be faced with choice dilemmas that appear to have no winning option. When faced with such options make a selection and defend your choice. The heat will be on and the rush to judgment will be swift and most likely misinformed. But making tough choices comes with the territory.

Do I think AIG should pay those bonuses? The contracts should be honored otherwise they are imitating the home owners who are not honoring their mortgage contracts by not paying and fulfilling their obligations. Should such non-performance based contracts even exist? Absolutely not! And this is the advantage of such economic corrections we are living through. Such times force organization to review behaviors that have gone astray in boom times and make corrections for better business practices.

In some cases, business with egregiously bad business practices pay by going under. Some get a second chance to correct their mistakes. Enron wasn't so lucky, let's hope AIG recognizes their errors and rebounds.

I know this country appears to be out for blood and a pound of flesh from bailout corporate executives. We as the American public have a choice dilemma of our own. Do we castigate these leaders and tear them up every chance we get, or do we assist them in correcting the course as fast as possible so we all can benefit from a renewed economy? We gain nothing in economic recovery with executive bashing even though we may feel better doing so. We need to make the choice where we all benefit from renewed economic strength.

Ask yourself: Does it make sense to abuse those who we want to lead us out of the recession? Will they deliver their best efforts this way? It's time this country get solutions-focused and let go of the blame-focus, so we can move ahead. It is often said the reason people who are miserable, are in fact miserable because they are more comfortable in that state of mind. The longer we are miserable the less likely we are driven to get beyond it. Leaders set the tone for finding solutions and now is the time to look ahead instead of looking how we got here.