2: Ethical Leadership at the Speed of VUCA

Imagine that you are out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon, and as you approach a set of railway lines you are shocked to see that a train carriage is hurtling down the tracks, seemingly out of control. It is then that you notice that, as fate would have it, you find yourself standing at a railway line switch that controls the points on the line to direct the train either to the left or the right. As you look at the fork to the left, you see five people tied to those tracks, and when you look at the tracks to the right, you notice that there is one man tied to that railway line. Do you direct the train to the right and save five lives or to the left and save one? You have less than 10 seconds to make this life and death call. This now-famous moral conundrum is known as “trolleyology”¹ and has undergone many permutations since its debut in 1967. Trolleyology is even more pertinent in the high-speed arena of 21st century global business which often leaves a business leader asking herself or himself: “How do I lead in an ethical manner in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world?”