Mark Towhey: Courage Under Fire

His conduct, and the efforts it seems to have inspired in other staffers, stands as the lone bright light in this seamy story.

It doesn't matter who's boss - in times of crisis (and politics is often perpetual crisis, though rarely to the massive, self-inflicted degree we've seen with Rob Ford) people will look to the person who remains focused, professional, gives good direction and never loses sight of team morale.  Whatever their title or position, that person becomes the de facto leader.

By every account I've read (and, notably, none from Towhey himself), Ford's former Chief of Staff was that kind of leader.

I don't know the guy - I imagine we would disagree on all kinds of policy matters.  Based on what's come to light so far, though, he is someone I respect and would have confidence in to competently lead a team towards completion of mission.

That's more than I would say for many.

Loyalty Vs. Omerta - Definitions for #Topoli (UPDATED)

"He's a good guy," Ford said.  "I don't throw my friends under the bus."

"You can't teach loyalty." 

Oh, your Worship... let's do some term clarification here.  

Throwing Under the Bus is when you make someone the patsy - make them take the fall for something done by someone higher up in the industry or for implementing their instructions (See Sona, Michael for a potential example).  The implication is that you are offering up someone else in an abdication of your own responsibility.

Not ratting on your friends would be a better term to use here.  It relies on the concept of Omerta, or an anti-authoritarian code of silence - first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club kind of thing.  The implication is that you know your friends are engaging in misdeeds, but you're not going to talk about them - even if the law states that you need to.  This code of silence is generally a mutually-reinforcing thing; you don't snitch on me, I won't snitch on you and we'll both get away with breaking the rules.  See The Godfather for what a code of silence "between friends" looks like.

Or better yet, watch GoodFellas, because that's more often than not how cones of silence dribble out into convictions.  See The Prisoner's Dilemma for further reading.

Both throwing under the bus and not ratting on your friends are demonstrations of putting selfish interest and the avoidance of accountability before the public good - something the Chief Magistrate, as Public Servant #1, should really be focused on.

Loyalty, however, isn't about protecting friends or enabling bad behaviour - it's about serving the mission set forward by the leader, fulfilling the mission-related tasks as assigned by the leader and adding value - partially by providing critical assessments to the leader of when they're going astray.

Doug Ford's use of the term loyalty in reference to David Price is another indicator of how the Fords seem to feel loyalty actually has the same meaning as omerta, which it does not.  This creates problems for the Fords; despite Doug's saying that he doesn't know Lisi and Ford's insistence that he was shocked, shocked to hear Lisi had been charged with drug-related offences, the overarching narrative would suggest otherwise.

Good investigators, which the folk on this case apparently are, will have no trouble connecting the dots and building a map of behaviour between the parties; if Lisi knows Price and they were both involved in the hunt for a non-existent video that has been connected to a murder, the police will be able to shade in the dark spots and build a legally condemning picture of how this ring operated.  That's before you get to the interrogation part of the equation; you might be surprised the sorts of effective techniques for teasing out truth there are these days.

The Fords haven't promoted loyalty to themselves nor demonstrated loyalty to their circle; instead, they've let down their friends and betrayed the city.  If Rob Ford was truly loyal to Sandro Lisi, he would have encouraged him to get help and develop legal means of success.  The best social program is a job, after all - one presumes by this Ford means a legal one.  For his part, if Lisi was truly loyal to Rob Ford, he would have either not engaged with him or kept his own nose clean to avoid potential negative consequences for his friend.

The same, let it be noted, is true for everyone on City Council and within the Mayor's Office who had any knowledge of these problems and chose not to act.

There has been an exemplary model for what real loyalty looks like in this story - one that will hopefully get due recognition with time.  That role model is Mark Towhey.

Towhey, a soldier by training, always put the mission first; he believed in what Rob Ford stood for and believed in what they could accomplish at City Hall.  Everything he did was viewed through that lens.  Ford's former Chief of Staff didn't tell tales out of school, but at the same time he did not shy away from his responsibility to provide critical advice to the Mayor or to cooperate with the police when that became his duty.  

Ironically, Ford rewarded this exemplary loyalty by throwing Towhey under the bus.  I guess he didn't consider Towhey a friend.  The rest of the staff who opted to follow Towhey out the door?  That tells you a bit about who had earned respect in that office, doesn't it?

Despite everything Towhey has been through - despite the fact that it grows more likely that history will vindicate him, daily - he is still holding the line.  Long after Ford is gone, I imagine Towhey will still be supporting the vision he believes in.

Now, that's loyalty.

UPDATE: But there is one issue that falls through the cracks in the Canadian press's editorial room: racism.  Specifically when it comes to Black Canadians, the rule of Omerta reigns.

Policing and Politics: Putting Mission Before Tribe

“There’s a basic human instinct that says the ‘other’ is a threat. When we talk about the cops, or anybody else like that, we’re not suggesting they’re doing it out of malice. They are no more evil, no more malicious and no less human, “ Eng says.

We humans are a tribal species - it's hard-wired into our genetic code.  There's value in knowing what is prey and what is predator in the same way it's useful to have the ability to identify friend from enemy.

Think about that for a second; we identify with others based on a series of often arbitrary markers (type of clothes we wear, music we listen to, profession we practice, sport we play, faith we practice, Political Party we align with).

We externalize people the same way; we can look down upon whole groups of people who dress a certain way, who listen to a certain music or have a different ethnicity.  

I have all kinds of fun conversations with self-identified tribal people (lawyers, politicians, political operatives, law enforcement officers) who will rail with impunity against perceived others and act in a manner they would vilify their perceived opponents for.  One of my recent favourites involved a long-standing Liberal who referred to Conservatives as "all fucking assholes" with no morality, suggesting they need to be shown no quarter.  Of course, I regularly hear the same thing from the other side of the spectrum.  Stephen Harper clearly thinks that way.

Policing is a highly tribal field, partially from necessity; when you're in the line of fire, you need to know who is on your side and who isn't.  The distinct uniforms, vehicles and jargon used (to say nothing of the training) reinforces the notion that you are somewhat above the majority and definitively set against a specific subset - criminals.  Criminals don't wear redcoats, don't all speak the same language, so you have to identify them quickly in some form or fashion.  

It just so happens that crime emerges most commonly from those who are marginalized.  It's a fact of history that, in countries like Canada, there are far more marginalized "visibility minority" communities than "white" ones.  The cognitive association game comes in to play - cops are more likely to assume black men are bad guys in the same way Liberals or Conservatives are more likely to view each other as villains rather than human beings with lineage and motivations.

Asked about Price’s hiring last month, Doug Ford told a Globe and Mail reporter: “You can’t teach loyalty.”

The reverse is equally true; when you feel threatened by The Other it's a natural instinct to surround yourself with the familiar - people who look, think and speak the way you do.  This is why it's so common to find neighbourhoods that skew heavily towards one ethnic group or another.  It's also why, in fields like policing or politics, loyalty is valued above actual skill.  

The Fords have focused on the concept of Ford Nation - a tribe with a loosely defined belief system that you're either "in" and understand or you're "out" and you're a threat.  Mark Towhey was part of this system, until such time as he began to challenge the behvaiour of the Chief - at that point, he'd disengaged himself from the Tribe and was rebranded as The Other.  Of course, what Towhey was trying to do was his job - not as part of the Mayor's Court but as his Chief of Staff and as a public servant.  Price, however, puts the tribe first - even though his behaviour is questionable, the Fords will trust him as one of their own.

Politics is the essence of tribalism; Parties will fight against The Other and engage in ethically questionable practices to fend off the barbarians at the gate.  Since they are In and everyone else is Out, there's a certain sense of entitlement that comes with the status.  We have lots of examples of how this plays out gracing the headlines these days.

The problem is, we don't accept the concept of tribalism in polite circles any more - it makes us sound too uncivilized.  If you point out that a Tribe - say, a Political Party - doesn't practice what it preaches, it will react in a tribal way by ostracizing or attacking the source of the complaint.  The reaction then gets justified or ignored - they aren't being tribal, it's the other person who is out of line.  Omerta and circled wagons are the norm, rather than introspection and growth. 

Which brings us back to Mark Towhey.  Towhey, a military man, understood the concept of "the mission comes first."  That meant the Ford mandate moreso than even the Fords themselves.  Instead of being a courtier enabler, Towhey appears to have tried to help his boss realign so that their mission wasn't compromised.  For this loyalty to mission, he got fired.  It's tribally-motivated actions like this that will prove Ford's undoing in the end, as is always the case in politics.

What's the solution to this paradoxical dilemma, where competitive fields promote tribal identification, which emboldens bad behaviour, which perpetuates the division?

"The error that I think the force made was focusing the policy towards the rank-and-file officers.  I really think that race relations policy should be geared to top management.  As such, those policies would be articulated by management and it percolates down through the system."

In Other words, leaders need to start leading by example.

We simply have to stop enabling and protecting the folk at the top from their own failings - it's those failings that define the culture which perpetuates the cycle.  Of course, that means mixing up the people at the top of an organization (a police force, a Political Party) to be more reflective of those they will engage with in the field.  It also means teaching the people at the top that it's not about them, nor is it about the tribe - the mission must always come first.

It's as true in politics as it is in policing.