Short Stories 2024

Imagine

Imagine that you find you are good at your job, while you are still young and idealistic. That you are good at persuading people. Good at winning people over to your – and your company's – point of view and ethos. That you're good at closing a deal. It's a heady rush.

Imagine that you manage to do good by being good at your job, forging a new and better world where business and the public interest intersect.

Imagine that you are head-hunted for your excellent skills in closing a deal. You move up the ladder, from one company to another, one sector to another, now in one position of influence, now in another. But always you bear in mind that fiery ethos of doing good, adapting it to each new position you find yourself in.

Imagine finding that you have real power, real influence – not just within your particular organisation but in its relations with other firms, other organisations, other spheres of influence. Imagine meeting chief executives, financiers, politicians, people who can really make a difference. Imagine the power of having their ear. Advocating for good in that world.

Imagine finding yourself in a position of power in an organisation which has an important profile, an important role in society, a real and long-standing influence. Imagine the good you could help to bring about.

Imagine that it becomes clear that you cannot alone be responsible for the good in the world that your organisation can do – but you still believe. It relies on others playing their part too, but you are no longer in touch – if you ever were – with the groundwork of the organisation. Perhaps you came in as a newcomer, with the right ethos, but not the real ethos of that particular organisation.

Imagine that you are invited on a business trip, when many important things are discussed, but that also the hospitality is lavish. Imagine one particular night when various possible collaborations are discussed. Imagine remembering that trip in the following months, when important decisions have to be made.

Was it the trip? Was it that particular night? That meal? That one cocktail too many, in charming company?

Imagine finding, many years later, that you were the person with the final say at the time. When the deal made as a result of the seeds sown back on that trip went wrong, when impatience and misunderstandings, and a lack of communication at the deal-making phase combined to cause a catastrophic failure of trust in your organisation when everything finally unravelled. When all the good you'd spent your life trying to do was undone in one inevitable but slowly-unfolding stroke of Fate. How unfair that others had sullied your relentless drive to make sure good could be done in the modern world.

Imagine you have to account for that before the inevitable public enquiry. How will you plead? On balance, not guilty?

Imagine you have to account for yourself before the inevitable, ultimate, private enquiry.

How will you plead?