An analogy for an analogy

What is the similarity between Dick Fuld, Pablo Escobar and Osama Bin Laden? Actually, none. But if we think a little more there is a common thread across the stories of these 3 men. Apart from the fact that we all know them as criminals, they are glaring examples of what I like to call Crossfire Casualties. I googled this term to check if I can lay claim to it and so far it looks like a reasonable choice to claim rights to the coinage!

Nice(r) guys finish(ed) first

Crossfire Casualties are the first ones to take the bullet in a murky, competitive and generally insidious environment. They are the guys who held the placards before the firing started, and become the face of the insidious environment. But in fact, the other players in the environment are FAR more vicious and dangerous BUT are mostly either ignored and gradually forgotten because we’re busy celebrating first and then life catches up. The guy with the placard, who was most likely the loudest, brashest and most self-confident is the first one to go but is not the end of the problem.

Treasure and crap, both are found by digging

Let me be a little more specific here. At the end of season 2 of Narcos, Pablo Escobar is killed and the Cali Cartel ensures that all his wealth is taken away from his wife. The viewer is also made to understand that AFTER Escobar’s death, there was more cocaine flowing into the U.S. than when Escobar was flourishing. And incidentally 80% of all the cocaine that went into the U.S. was controlled by the Medellin Cartel run by Escobar. So there, the guy who took the bullet was evil but that was really not the end of the problem. The Cali cartel, which operated in a much more calculated and shrewd manner took over the reins after which the problem has compounded over the last 20 years spreading beyond the U.S. The end of the season also shows that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is cognizant of this issue but I don’t know if the media played it’s part in ensuring continued coverage and deep analysis of the deeper issue.

Greed, Lies and pin stripes

The world of cocaine smuggling has parallels (at least in the sense of it’s criminal nature) in Wall Street too. At the risk of a detour it is worth mentioning that the financial crisis of 2008 brought with it many explanations of what happened and all of them tried to simplify it for the man on the street like me. What was a common baffling revelation in each one of these pieces was that it was all a result of a very basic problem – greed. Not intelligent use of data, not slow and calculated manufacturing of information and also NOT the use of political power it seems. It was all just lies and a slew of pin-stripes who gave the impression that they knew what they were doing. That easy!

In the financial crisis of 2008, the political establishment got involved to save the big guys but they couldn’t save all of them obviously. In his book ‘Too big to fail’, Andrew Ross Sorkin has put the chronology in great detail. And again the fall of Lehman Brothers was just because one guy was unfortunate enough to get the bullet before the bouquet. The TARP was agreed upon and dispatched a few days after Lehman Brothers went down which meant that the other big boys who were hand in glove in the large scale financial massacre went scot free. Large parts of the book are dedicated to describing the growing up years, parents, education and professional lives of the bankers. In some sense it creates some sympathy for some of the characters who went down and also creates disgust for others. Disgust, because the problem still exists in a way more compounded manner.

‘Killing is my business, and business is good’

Cut to the end of that thread uniting our 3 characters - Osama Bin Laden. He was killed in May 2011. Now whether he was really killed, or whether he even existed are theories and discussions for another thread but the point is that his death did not bring in the end of organized terrorism. I say organized terrorism because I am excluding deaths from mass shootings, gangwars and other forms of terrorism that take many lives too but are not orchestrated by organisations. Osama Bin Laden was the loudest advocate and practitioner of terrorism but it surely did not go away with him. ISIS his risen, Al-Qaeda has become more decentralized, sheer number of attacks has increased and there are more smaller terror groups today than there were before 2011. I did some of the data crunching from here: https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/contact/

I won’t quote sources here but a google search will have enough and more material on this topic.

The cases of Pablo Escobar and Osama Bin Laden are a miniscule proportion of the many that exist. There, the point is that there are no right guys and chasing them down is a relentless journey. Often times we confuse the symptom and the cause. What is in fact a small victory (an incremental) is made out to be a great conquest (moonshot). For world issues, the role of mainstream media is so critical in being analytical and persuasive in chasing down governments to not wear these as badge of honors and not slow down on the real job. Understand and acknowledge it’s incremental nature and just keep going at the wrong guys.

In the case of financial crimes, it’s a little different because the wrong guys need to be brought to justice so that the right guys can work in peace.

Incremental raised to infinity equals a moonshot

I chose to post this here too because I believe our organisations face similar issues – we are blindsided to the power of incrementalism, in favour of the moonshot. In no way am I saying that we should not be favoring moonshot thinking, however the fact is that many incremental changes together make up a moonshot and there may never be one sweeping change that will come every quarter. Those usually come only once in a generation! So if we wear the mainstream investigative media hat in our companies, we must continue to question why a victory is a big victory? Acknowledge but celebrate small victories and communicate the role of incremental in adding up to a moonshot!