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Craft promise
resolve everyday ethical problems. And crafting promise is
often the best way to do this.
To understand promise means to quiet leaders, it is
helpful to look carefully at a situation in which a responsible,
thoughtful individual faced what seemed, at first, to be an either-or
test of her basic principles. The individual was Shirley Silverman, a
public health official in a large city. The problem she faced involved
a rapidly growing number of pregnant women addicted to drugs
and the addicted infants they were bringing into the world. The
acute, either-or question she had to resolve was whether to address
the problem with more vigorous law enforcement or through bet-
ter counseling and medical services.
Silverman’s story is valuable in two ways. First, she relied on
many of the guidelines described in earlier chapters, and her efforts
show their usefulness as problem-solving tools. Second, through
hard work and imagination, Silverman found a way to avoid split-
ting the difference and instead recast the problem in a way that sat-
isfied all of peting responsibilities.
The New Year’s Baby
In 1995, just after midnight on New Year’s Eve, the first baby of the
year was delivered in a large city hospital in Florida. The little girl
weighed only four pounds and had inherited her mother’s addic-
tion to cocaine. The local press could not leave the story alone, nor
could the mayor, who was Silverman’s boss. He set up a meeting
with her, asked her how her holidays had been, ignored her answer,
and then said abruptly that they had to discuss a new project.
Silverman was dismayed by what she heard. The mayor proposed
doing what several munities had already done: He wanted
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LEADING QUIETLY
to take a “get tough” approach and start arresting women who used
drugs during pregnancy. He also wanted to