Originally published in the Unashamedly Ethical newsletter, October 2024 (and again in November 2024).
“I strive to commit to do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but to look out for the interests of others.”
Let me say at the outset: this commitment is not a case against ambition.
South Africa needs ambitious people. We need entrepreneurs who want to grow, professionals who want to excel and young people who refuse to settle for less than their potential.
The question this commitment asks is not whether we are ambitious. It is who pays for our ambition.
The quiet casualties
Selfish ambition rarely announces itself. It tends to look like ordinary competitiveness.
It looks like taking credit for a team’s work. Withholding information so that we remain indispensable. Saying nothing while a colleague is blamed for a mistake that was partly ours. Positioning ourselves for promotion by quietly undermining someone else.
At a larger scale, it looks like contracts awarded to the connected rather than the capable, and decisions made for personal gain while the cost lands on people who were never in the room.
In each case, someone succeeds and someone else absorbs the cost. The success is real. So are the casualties.
The problem with conceit
The commitment pairs selfish ambition with conceit, and the pairing is deliberate.
Conceit is the belief that we are the exception. That the rules apply to others. That our talent, position or hard work entitles us to a little more than everyone else.
In the disciplinary matters I have dealt with over the years, the misconduct was seldom driven by desperate need. Far more often, it grew out of a quiet sense of entitlement: “I work harder than anyone here. I deserve this.”
That thought is one of the most dangerous sentences in any organisation. It turns wrongdoing into a reward we have given ourselves.
Looking out for others
The second half of the commitment is the answer to the first. It asks us to look out for the interests of others.
This does not mean neglecting our own interests. It means refusing to pursue them blindly. Before we act, we ask: Who else is affected by this? Is my gain someone else’s loss? Would I be comfortable if the people affected could see exactly how this decision was made?
Those questions do not slow good ambition down. They make it trustworthy.
Leaders who look out for others build teams that follow them willingly. Businesses that consider all their stakeholders build reputations that outlast any single deal. People whose success has lifted others tend to find that others want them to succeed.
Success worth having
We live in a society that often measures success only by what someone has achieved. This commitment asks us to measure it differently: by how it was achieved, and by who was carried, rather than crushed, along the way.
That is ambition without casualties. And it is the only kind worth having.
If you want your success to be measured that way, make this commitment your own at unashamedlyethical.com/commitment.
Yours in ethics,
Ilene Power