Opinion: Don’t fire Gutierrez because he blew whistle on corruption; smart people will look dumb

By Dr. Ron McNinch

Almost thirty five years ago, my first real job after the military and college was working for a wealthy executive as his personal assistant. My boss had an assortment of companies in several locations, but his favorite business was a yacht club with about thirty boats. He also had a scuba diving training center and a jet ski rental attached to the property. He had about fifty employees working at the yacht club and this took up most of my time.

A key duty that I had involved carrying around his cell phone. It weighed forty pounds including the spare batteries and it was the size of a backpack. Day and night, I was just a minute away from him in case anyone called. In the two years I had this job, he made calls on the phone all the time. But the only person who called him was his wife. That lady hated me. Every time she would call, my boss would wave his arms indicating that he didn’t want to talk to her. I would tell her that he was in a meeting, and without missing a beat, she would start yelling at me. She constantly threatened to fire me. She would say, “I know he is standing right there, give him the phone!” I would patiently explain that when he came back I would have him call her right away. He would always tell me not to worry and that my job was to screen his calls. Even though my main job was carrying the phone, I actually learned a lot about how businesses really worked.

In the last few months, there have been rumors about killing the messenger. Luckily, Guam has a whistleblower law and people who seek to have our public laws followed are protected. But having to use the process is a bit of a pain and it is not good policy to fire people who simply want our laws enforced.

In 1995, Mortimer Feinberg and John Tarrant authored a book entitled, “Why Smart People Do Dumb Things.” According to this great book, managers make major errors because of hubris, arrogance, narcissism, and an unconscious need to fail. With hubris, people become full of themselves. They act arrogant because they think the rules don’t apply to them. For narcissism, they obsess over their image. In the unconscious need to fail, managers become their own worst enemies and set up the failures that lead to their demise.

If you are in a public agency and you want to openly fire an employee who wants the agency to follow the law, you should check your behavior. All public employees have a duty to follow the law and this concept is at the core of public ethics. Sometimes when business folks interface with public agencies, they miss this point. I see private sector appointees fail all the time on Guam, some fail miserably. And they don’t really seem to understand why. Guam doesn’t have a yacht club like my boss had, but we do have a visitors bureau.

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Ron McNinch, Ph.D. is a University of Guam professor, member of the Guam Education Board, and local expert in political science, human resources policy, and government ethics.