Would you hire this person?

They’ve been a star. Your stakeholders, well a lot of them anyway, were absolutely captivated by this person’s performance. Dazzling, creative, a virtuous in his role. Magnetic personality. Followers gravitate to this person. Singled-handedly it seems, well ever since their arrival, sales and buzz about your brand have soared. Clutch. Clutch. Clutch player. Drove your organization to new heights against formerly formidable competition.

Sure, they had a few quirks. Like all high-spirited, super-talented, competitors with talent seemingly too big for any organization...they had their awkward moments. Maybe it was bad choices or their advisors giving bad advice. They flipped off the crowd of employees from a competitor who’d also gathered at an industry event. They hated to prepare for presentations. It stifled their creativity and besides no one else carried their organization like they did. There was that scene at airport security security...something with a water-bottle and stuff in the water-bottle. They were on vacation. But their name, your company, were linked in the news. PR took over, squelched it. Never got the full story.

Then news came out that even your PR department couldn’t spin. The star denied it. Again and again. Promised never to do it. Promised it really wasn’t that bad.

It was. Worse even than you thought. You wished you didn’t get the whole story. Or as much as you read, anyway.

The star crashed. Prison term. Lost their license to resume working in your industry without special consideration.

Now, they’re out. They lead a new life. A renewed commitment to all that is good and wholesome. Humbled. They were humbled by the whole affair. They’re available. They’ve chosen advisors you respect explicitly without condition.

Your organization needs a sales driver, a leader, one who can literally do flips in the air during a presentation, ignite the stakeholders one more time, get you some wins.

Would you hire them?

Sure. I’m talking about Michael Vick.

But the question pertains to values, yours, your organizations, trust, the right to fail publicly and boy did he fail publicly. Failure’s a part of life. I regularly tout its role in bringing people to success.

Wold you embrace this series of failures on your path to success? Does a person’s legacy of bad decisions make them incapable of good ones?

Yawn. High school rhetoric.

But let’s say that Michael Vick for your industry knocked on your door. And you needed a quick start momentum changer. And you knew his accomplishments and his fall from grace. Would you hire him?