The Right Thing – ElPropósito4 min de lectura

Choices that put us on the best path

What is the right thing? How do we know? How do we recognize it? How, and why, should we act on it? How can a group of people tell whether what they agreed on is the best they could do? These questions come up whenever I see the need for answers that are hard to explain, especially the moral ones that so often come down to a binary choice (good or bad, right or wrong, yes or no). Doing the right thing is about reason and conscience, about holding to a few anchors that never move (values) and, above all, about the long term (a purpose). History offers few examples of anyone who did wrong and is remembered for doing right. Those who dared to do the right thing, on the other hand, are still with us centuries later.

To fly a plane, you first need basic training grounded in experience and in everything we now know about flying safely. The same goes for people and organizations that want to get things right. Companies with a strategic plan, for example, tend to outperform most of those without one. Those that commit to that plan with discipline raise their odds of long-term success much further. And those that execute with discipline, fully aware that some things will happen and others won’t, improve their odds even more over time. What is an organization doing when it executes its plan? The right thing. So how can we be sure the plan itself is right?

Let’s dig a little deeper. Do the plan’s goals come from a purpose? If they don’t, the right thing simply isn’t being done. For a purpose to be the right one, it has to cover several angles, especially how reaching certain goals will benefit everyone who reaches them, and whether the decisions we make today will keep us around tomorrow. That brings us to a basic split: is what we’re working on today clearly within our control, or is it left to chance? The real issue with chance is less that it exists and more how much room we give it. If most decisions across an organization are made at random, that’s an enormous waste of resources, above all of time.

How do we reduce chance? With a plan. The trouble is that plans are often seen as bureaucratic or uncreative. Still, a plan at least lets us chart a course and lay out the steps from one point to the next. So the big question is how to build it, how to shape those decisions so we know they’re right. One conclusion I’ve reached for now is that someone else’s plan, however carefully adapted, will rarely deliver the same results somewhere else. That leads me to freedom and away from central planning. No single body can plan everything. There can, however, be as many planners as there are people on this planet, each one consciously planning their own destiny and future. Much of doing the right thing comes down to our human ability to use reason to tell good from bad.

The Stoics would say that doing the right thing means living in accordance with nature, that is, with virtue, and they name four cardinal virtues: justice, temperance, wisdom and courage. It’s one of the schools of philosophy I admire most for how practical it is, especially because it sets us on the path to discovering our purpose and then aligning everything we want to achieve with it. A clear purpose will never harm others, never force anyone to act against their will and, above all, never destroy. It will always build.

Warm regards and all the best,

Rodrigo Baccaro

P.S. I dedicate this post to everyone I know who strives (or tries, like me) to do the right thing with courage, wisdom, temperance and justice. A deeply heartfelt thank you to everyone who has made so much Stoic wisdom freely available in the service of others. I hope I can do justice to the little I know about it.

• This week’s VELA:
• What I was watching: How Stoicism changed my life. A podcast another of my best friends shared with me, great material to savor and revisit at least once a month, every year
  – What I was listening to: ChatGPT, from Jordan Peterson’s podcast. Worth hearing from start to finish
  – What I was reading: Argentinos. A great book I inherited from an Argentine man, may God rest him, who was a good father, husband and friend. He was the father of one of my best friends and someone I learned a lot from. Thank you for this wonderful gift, which I keep coming back to so I can keep learning about a great country I admire so much, and about the great Argentines life has let me meet and call friends, a bond built on trust
  – What I was learning: Italian. I’m back to my Italian lessons on Duolingo, and I’m really excited about it

Author: Rodrigo Baccaro

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