John Grisham is known for engaging legal thrillers. And if you have a pulse and work in a business or ever walked through an airport, you have likely run into a Patrick Lencioni business parable.

Something in the news caught my eye and brought these two authors' work together in real-life, 2020 color.

I will share the details momentarily, but first, a little background.

Maybe around the time that you get need reading glasses, you realize that life is too short to read long business books. Too many business books are rehashed ideas, timeless-techniques-with-new-names, or platitudes by authors who want to be authors more than they want to share wisdom.

Rarely do I feel that way with Patrick Lencioni's work.

Lencioni's most recent title, The Motive, is a great listen. At 2x speed on the Audible app, it was a bit over an hour and expertly outlines the difference between a Rewards driven leader versus a Responsibility driven leader.

A Rewards-driven leader is someone who feels entitled to their position and tends to pick and choose which parts of the business they want to engage in and is somewhat hands off with respect to other aspects of the business. They "deserve to be here" and don't necessarily do the dirty-work of being the leader, day in and day out.

A Responsibility-driven leader is someone who does the hard work of denying perhaps what they might "like" to work on and instead continually BOTH leads and manages their team. By developing the people and repeatedly reinforcing the values and direction of the organization, they win, together.

Or that is what I picked up in my drive-by listen.

Next confession, I have a lot to learn on this topic of Rewards/Responsibility, but that is not the tale of this story. We each just need to get better, everyday, right?

So, where does Mr. Grisham come in?

Well, in all things suspenseful, enter everyone's favorite topic: Cyber Security, the new home of intrigue and excitement. Sometimes.

Let's take a data breach and make it more dramatic.

A recent news headline has the makings of a Grisham story-gone-bad, where a potentially Rewards-driven leader buried the body (data breach), hoping no one would notice, rather than taking the more challenging route of disclosure and the pain involved with navigating a modern day data breach.

Now for some more details about just what happened

TL;DR version

UBER had a breach.

The CISO (and then-CEO) covered it up, calling a hush-money payment a somewhat-extra-ordinary Bug Bounty payment.

UBER CEO leaves (separate Grisham Tale, no doubt).

New UBER CEO fires CISO.

Former CISO in hot water, years later, this time legally.

For a more useful and thoughtful analysis, consider jumping over to my favorite source for Cyber Security news and analysis -- Ed Amoroso's TAG-Cyber.com. Just today they posted a piece on the UBER data breach. As I read through it, I was reminded that cyber security is hard and that having a role as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) job is like life hundreds of years ago, it is often short and painful.

Now, I want to be careful to give the benefit of the doubt to all parties involved, but it does look pretty sketchy for the UBER execs involved, many of whom are no longer with The Firm, apparently. Pun intended, by the way.