I would quietly & politely leave, possibly after a candid, thoughtful conversation with the founder in question. Or, I would be quiet and put up with it.
Five years ago, at 20 years old, I was offered an amazing opportunity -- running leadership conferences across Canada, and leading teams of youth around the world to promote business/development. I'd been running projects with the organization for a couple of years and absolutely loved it.
Then, I discovered that the founder was committing fraud with taxpayer money -- criminal mismanagement. Had anyone gone to the media, it would have been a juicy scandal involving taxpayer money (but that would only have hurt the youth involved). He was hurting himself, his family, and at times even putting people in danger.
After consulting mentors I trusted (an ethics law professor, retired business person and retired diplomat)and a five hour conversation with the President, I turned down his bribes and caused a minor but localized fuss in a genuine attempt to improve the situation. It was unsuccessful.
Even though I was right, and even though my mentors and friends verified this and helped me form my actions, I would have been much better off by keeping my mouth shut, politely declining their job offer, and simply shifting my focus to creating my own future.
This would have avoided the stress of going through hell in a fruitless attempt to make things better, that most people would never understand and would leave me disconnected to a group of people I loved being apart of (aside for just the couple of people who were causing all this nonsense) -- I was disconnected from them because I couldn't explain why I was taking action without endangering the good that the org. was also doing for a lot of young people. ie. I didn't want to harm the org. by actually having the media get wind of it.
So next time I will button my lip, acknowledge the world exactly as it is, and stay focused on what I want my own life to be instead of getting hung up on others..
From the way you explain it, you seem like a nice guy, giving nice guy advice. It's a bit ironic, however, that you were supposed to be running leadership conferences - shouldn't a "good leader" rally people against perceived injustice? Surely, it would be hard to argue that criminal mismanagement is just. Could there have been some way you could have "created your own future" without letting criminal actions stand?
I don't think "good leadership" is about fighting a battle you can't win. Energy is best spent on battles that you have a good shot at, in areas you're good at. Not setting yourself up to fail.
In this case, I didn't know I couldn't win, so I fought a losing battle and no good came of it.
On-the-ground I created an ambitious assessment program called "Assess the Past, Inspire the Future" which for the first time, connected participants from the past & present of the future and had them submit evaluations of their experiences... and "from-above", I was ultimately asked to give a report to the cabinet minister in charge of this thing. You can't go higher up than him without reaching the prime minister, and I could hardly have asked for better results and response for my survey. I believe I had the personal support every single active participant above the age of 20 (the younger ones were mainly oblivious), though none of them knew as much as I did about how deep the problems actually went. And my mentors would have supported me to run the damn thing if we'd have been able to get some change in the air.
Unfortunately, hearing the truth didn't help the organization -- they reacted by selecting young, naive people to participate in their programs, shying away from people who were old or mature enough to realize what was going on. Neither did it have the intended impact on those with the power to change things -- no politician, including the cabinet minister, would touch this with a 10 foot pole, because it would be way too risky. Much easier to let it continue as-is, and deny knowledge if anything nasty ever bubbled to the surface in the future.
In the end, the people who had the real power to make things right failed to act, so the only choices I had were to leak the story to the press, which likely would have destroyed the program in an instant, or walk away quietly. And since I believed (and still do) that our country is better off with the program than without, even when taking into account its imperfections, I took my cue and left the scene.
The whole ordeal took way more out of me than I expected. I don't even like the way I sound when describing it here, because it comes across as so negative and pessimistic! There are way better things I should be spending my time thinking about and acting on -- now, just as then.
To accept other people, that I can't change them, that I am always going to wake up and find new forms of nastiness. Then, to move on and think about better things. That's what I believe in these days.
My mistakes were misjudging my chances of making a difference, and misjudging the value of my own time. Life is short -- pick your battles accordingly. Those people are going to be the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. I can either try to fight that reality or I can find something productive to do.
Thanks for the thorough explanation. That does put quite a different light on it, indeed. My apologies for jumping to conclusions in my first response.
Personally, I probably wouldn't have had the balls to raise as much dust as you did, but ideally, why didn't you warn the leaders of the organization that unless the issues were resolved internally, you'd be providing evidence of misconduct to the media at such-and-such a date, giving them time to prepare whatever PR kung-fu organizations do during scandals?
To me it just seems really immoral to walk away when taxpayer money is involved...
I see your point, but it could be seen as equally immoral (if not more so) for me to cause the destruction that would have resulted. Especially since it would have hurt other people more than it hurt the perpetrators.
Threatening them with a media leak was one option. But it didn't seem to be a very good one, not to me or any of my mentors. The only way for an actual net-positive result here was for the management to be swiftly but quietly replaced by those with the power to do so. We went as far as we could to push for that.
Five years ago, at 20 years old, I was offered an amazing opportunity -- running leadership conferences across Canada, and leading teams of youth around the world to promote business/development. I'd been running projects with the organization for a couple of years and absolutely loved it.
Then, I discovered that the founder was committing fraud with taxpayer money -- criminal mismanagement. Had anyone gone to the media, it would have been a juicy scandal involving taxpayer money (but that would only have hurt the youth involved). He was hurting himself, his family, and at times even putting people in danger.
After consulting mentors I trusted (an ethics law professor, retired business person and retired diplomat)and a five hour conversation with the President, I turned down his bribes and caused a minor but localized fuss in a genuine attempt to improve the situation. It was unsuccessful.
Even though I was right, and even though my mentors and friends verified this and helped me form my actions, I would have been much better off by keeping my mouth shut, politely declining their job offer, and simply shifting my focus to creating my own future.
This would have avoided the stress of going through hell in a fruitless attempt to make things better, that most people would never understand and would leave me disconnected to a group of people I loved being apart of (aside for just the couple of people who were causing all this nonsense) -- I was disconnected from them because I couldn't explain why I was taking action without endangering the good that the org. was also doing for a lot of young people. ie. I didn't want to harm the org. by actually having the media get wind of it.
So next time I will button my lip, acknowledge the world exactly as it is, and stay focused on what I want my own life to be instead of getting hung up on others..