Were you ever told to “do the right thing”?

From a young age, I have had a fascination to explore how things really worked. At times this has gotten me into trouble because I have pushed things too far or asked one too many questions.

So, what does it mean to do the right thing?! While the answer to this question is rather subjective and will likely come down to the context in which it is being asked. It usually has some relation to integrity. Next time you’re asked to do the right thing check in with your integrity.

The difference between whether we “could” or “should” do something is a dilemma that many people working in technology face when they make a decision. We also face this choice in relatively simply decisions, like when I decided to have an ice cream earlier today. I knew that I could easily have an ice cream from the café, but should I really because it’s not the weekend and it’s breaking my rule of only having sweat things at the weekend…

This week I had a conversation with an experienced thinker who was generous to give me some of his time and share a few perspectives on the Metaverse, which has now become popularised thanks to the big tech platforms who are now building for a shared virtual space. It crazy how lots of happenings in life really do come down to timing and the mixing of other contextual factors.

The conversation was wide ranging and it got me thinking about how we form our own opinions from the theory we consumer and digest. I realised that I had perhaps become super immersed in one point of view and because I had not had my thinking challenged, I had started to buy-in to the hypothesis that was being explained by a particular narrative. Recognising this highlighted the importance of being willing to consider the views of others when informing our decisions and to remember to check our own thinking.

My thinking lead me to consider the concept of ethics in a world with no right answers.

Where to start?!

A few years back I read a piece titled “The cross roads of should and must” which was written by Elle Luna.

“Over the past year I’ve chosen Must again and again. And it was petrifying. And at times it was dark. But I would never, ever, trade this past year for anything. This essay is my three biggest takeaways from the experience. It’s for anyone who is thinking of making the jump from Should to Must. Anyone looking to follow the energy deep within their chest but aren’t quite sure how.”

HERE’s the link to her piece on Medium and the talk below will also give you an insight into some of her thinking.

In the context that I am choosing to elaborate on this thinking – Elle’s should is my could and her “must” is my should. A little conflicting for the mind, but stay with me while I explain.

We’re living in the age of the access and decentralisation. I have grown up in a world of mobile phones, access to the internet, and a j-curve growth in digitalisation. Commoditisation is also wide spread and many of the things in our immediate surrounds have been commodified to remove friction. Just think about how easy it is to walk over to the light switch and turn on the light, our charge your phone.

What does this all mean and why do we need to be cognisant of it?

Our fascination with removing the friction from processes means that we have made the “could” even easier than before meaning that we don’t necessarily ask the question of “should” I really be doing this enough.

Take the example of OpenAI Codex. It’s a tool that was released this week that allows you to turn natural language into code. I love technology and so innovations like this get me excited and my mind starts to run with the opportunities that could now be possible. Imagine being able to talk to Codex and get it to write code, the demo is remarkable. I do wonder though how it will get around the translation issue from ideas into code, in the teams I have worked in a strong product owner who can speak both languages is the secret key.

Should we really be building programs to write code from natural language? There will be varying views on this and I don’t want to polarise my view, but rather use it as an example to show how our fascination with removing friction from processes has created an environment where we are hyper focused on the “could”. I am all for innovation, building new things and pushing boundaries but we should always do things integrity.

“It’s not what an artist does that counts, but what he is” Pablo Picasso

Could makes things better than they are today, while should creates foundations for others to build on.