The world is certainly changing and not necessarily for the better. Not just banks, those constant whipping boys and deservedly so, but tech and the general population.
Google has increasingly found itself in the regulatory crosshairs as privacy advocates decry how it handles users’ personal information as it looks to maintain its dominance in search, which still makes up the bulk of its revenue.
Right up there on the privacy evil yardstick is Facebook, not in the US, where privacy is a joke, but in Germany where it’s law. Facebook claims that it is outside Germany’s jurisdiction, because only marketing is done in its German offices, while engineering is done in Ireland. Not everyone agrees.
In March, in response to the dispute, the European Union’s top advisory panel on privacy, the Article 29 Working Party, released an opinion that the collection of biometric data without the explicit consent of users was illegal.
For 20 years Craigslist has been held up as an example of doing good by doing well, but don’t kid yourself. It’s just another hypocritical bully that cons its users into thinking it’s one of the good guys.
This isn’t the first time Craigslist has claimed such violations. The Internet is littered with digital carcasses that once built on top of the listings site. Their pixelated tombstones are inscribed with one-liners that Craigslist killed access without any notice, or they were sent a cease-and-desist letter by Perkins Coie, a top corporate law firm that frequently represents Craigslist.
And now a word from the more personal side.
Cheating and using performance-enhancing drugs is nothing new in sports, but the blatant hypocrisy of Melky Cabrera took it to new heights. After he was named MVP in the All-Star game he said, “I think the one person that has the most influence on me is the Lord. He is the one that embraced me in terms of playing better.” I wonder if the Lord told him to embrace testosterone—he was suspended for 50 games—but he apologized, which these days makes it all OK.
What is your reaction to a coach who talked more than trash to one of his own players and excused his actions by saying sexual harassment was acceptable because it is part of the sport’s culture?
Over six days of competition, though, her team’s coach, Aris Bakhtanians, interrogated her on camera about her bra size, said “take off your shirt” and focused the team’s webcam on her chest, feet and legs. He leaned in over her shoulder and smelled her.
Of course, there is the easy accessibility of Twitter where people can revile their past employer or, from the comfort of their armchair, sit in judgment of those whose feats are so far beyond them 140 characters at a time.
He is a cryptographer, blogger and iconoclast in the world of computer security, and his latest subject of inquiry is trust: how it is cultivated, destroyed and tweaked in the digital age.
You may have noticed that the June Leadership Development Carnival was missing from the first Monday this month. It happened because this month’s host published it the second Monday instead of the first Sunday as usual. The delay, however, had absolutely no impact on the extraordinary quality of information shared on it. Enjoy!
Those of you concerned with strategy, either because you set it or are just interested in how it works, will find McKinsey’s approach to crowdsourcing strategy an intriguing idea. (Free registration required.)
…“making the vision meaningful to employees at a personal level” and “soliciting employee involvement in setting the company’s direction.” If that’s right, it suggests that making more employees part of the strategy process should be a powerful means of aligning them more closely with the company’s overall direction.
Finally, cyberbullying is rarely a laughing matter even leading to suicide. But sometimes even bad stuff can be fought through a combination or creativity and laughter.
The comedian Isabel Fay and fellow artists just posted a YouTube video featuring a song that ridicules online bullies who have targeted them. (…)“Love ya,” Ms. Fay says. “Keep on trollin’!”
So very true. I once worked at a company where one of the Vice Presidents took obviously sadistic pleasure in torturing people below him in the company hierarchy.
He even said to me once in private, with a smirk on his face, “I love scaring the hell out of people. Watch how I can make them shake when I threaten their ability to support their family. It feels good to have this much power.”
Adult bullying—particularly in the workplace, where people are often terrified of losing their source of income—is a serious problem and society has to stop ignoring it. You may be “the boss” but that does not give you the right to brutalize and abuse the people who work for you. –Father and Husband, Seattle
This comment is from an NYT op-ed piece on about bullying and Lady Gaga’s official unveiling of her Born This Way Foundation at Harvard.
Sadly, the comment isn’t outlandish or even a recent phenomenon.
A memory dating back to the late Seventies is of a VP whose favorite pastime was forcing the managers under him to run layoffs a few days before Christmas; he really got off on that.
Last year Stanford prof Bob Sutton published Good Boss, Bad Boss about how power makes us focus more on our own needs and wants and less on others, also to act like the rules apply to others and not to us.
Based on new research Sutton has added more material on what he terms “power poisoning” to the recently released paperback version.
“Alas, recent developments suggest that staying in tune with the people you oversee is even more difficult than this book suggests. And the other disturbing effects of wielding power over others are even worse than I thought.”
Worse than Sutton thought? That, indeed, is a scary statement and one that should get your attention.
Bad Bosses are the source of bad cultures; there is absolutely no way to separate them.
Bad cultures are the source of bad results; there is absolutely no way to separate them.
This makes it simple for you to know if you have a case of power poisoning, as well as how severe it is.
Look at the results of your organization, whether team, department, division or company.
Just yours, not in combination with the rest of the company or in light of the economy or any other of the dozens of rationalizations available.
If you can actually do that you are at least half way to being able to counter the poison and reading Good Boss, Bad Boss will actually be worth your time.
As most of my readers know, I’m not into social media; I am on LinkedIn and my company’s new product Option Sanity is on Facebook and Twitter, but other than the blog posts, I can’t say that any of them are particularly active.
I also freely admit that I don’t really understand how to use them for business (I have no interest in building my ‘personal brand’).
The negative side, especially the bullying, personal attacks, hate and amazing level of active stupidity, that I read about dismays and disgusts me. Beyond the negative much of what I heard was just totally inane; granted, I’m not a celebrity watcher and wouldn’t care what God had for breakfast, assuming h/she bothered posting the information.
Then came the so-called Arab Spring and suddenly social media showed a decidedly positive side.
And so his friends set up a website, amitguptaneedsyou.com, to encourage donor drives, during which the tissue type of potential donors is collected with a cheek swab. The site links to the National Marrow Donor Program website. It provides instructions on hosting a bone marrow dive and provides PDF fliers to promote the events. Yes, there is a Facebook page. Twitter blew up with news of the drives and Gupta’s health. And, of course, there’s a Twitter hashtag (#IswabbedforAmit).
When word of Gupta’s need for a match started circulating, unique visits to the marrow donor program website increased from about 16,000 on a typical day to 40,000. “That’s 21/2 times,” says Dr. Jeffrey Chell, the donor program’s CEO. “That’s impressive.”
I found many other stories of social media’s impact, and lives saved, as a result.
It’s good to know that social media, especially the 5000 pound gorillas Twitter and Facebook, can facilitate more real good than just keeping families in touch.
Have you heard of Alexandra Robbins? She’s the author of “The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School.”
I’m not asking because you’re a parent, but because you’re a manager—or one of the adult geeks (of which there are millions).
I haven’t read it, but reading the NYT review made me realize how little some things change.
Robbins writes about teens and the angst of being a geek and the serious pain that these teens face every day she says, “Bullying and exclusion are rampant.”
I’m not a researcher and certainly don’t claim any special credentials, but anyone who believes the popularity and fitting-in thing ends with high school or even college graduation is either deaf, dumb and blind, from an alternate reality or an entirely different planet.
Bullying in the work world is not only a corporate hot topic, but also fast becoming a business. (I wrote about that here and corrected misunderstandings of that post here.)
Adults still want to sit with the cool kids at lunch (Google, Facebook), hang with the jocks (Intel, litigation lawyers) or be accepted by the soshes (definition #2) (investment bankers, hedge fund managers).
What changes is the protective layers adults learn to build and the depth at which they bury their pain. The older they are the stronger their armor, the deeper the pain, the less they expect it to change and the more they disengage.
And the more they disengage, the more critical it becomes for managers at every level to
make damn sure they are not part of the problem; and then
make damn sure they become part of the solution in their little corner of the world.
That solution is found in the local culture, i.e., the culture you create within your own organization.
Just as adults strengthen their protective armor, bullies learn to mask their activities.
There are three things you can do, whether it is to pre-empt or stop these acts.
Start by publicly stating that you have zero tolerance for bullying and similar actions.
Create a safe path for the people in your group (whether small team or entire department) to share bullying when it happens, whether they are the target or a spectator.
Investigate before accusing, but follow-up is mandatory as are consequences—no matter who is involved.
And if you find yourself having to spend some of your precious resources, especially time, to accomplish this keep in mind that what goes on below you has a direct impact on your compensation.
For all the talk about bullying, one dirty little secret is just starting to see the light of day.
Bullies are split 60/40 (men/women), but while men are equal opportunity bullies—they stomp on anyone— women are more likely to bully other women “more than 70 percent of the time.”
That doesn’t surprise me, all my life I’ve always gotten more mentoring and support from men than I have from women.
I’ve seen too many women crushed because whatever was done to them was done by another woman, so there was a major betrayal factor added to whatever else was involved.
I never bought into the whole sisterhood thing. It just never made any sense to me to that 50% of the population could be trusted because we all had the same plumbing and the other 50% were enemies because theirs was different.
No more sense than assuming that other external differences, such as race, religion or sexual orientation, guarantee a trustworthy ally.
Bullies pick on those they see as weaker and less likely to fight back, so while I was never bullied I was targeted for more sabotage because I was perceived as a threat—or maybe sabotage qualifies as bullying.
Thinking back, most of the people termed bullies and chauvinists were weak, petty and insecure, so I pretty much ignored them.
I’ve always tended to look beyond surface appearance, probably in the hope that my attitude would be reciprocated.
This is the third in a series discussing whether Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers still holds in light of today’s modern workforce.
The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
Are you controllable? Will you give your best performance, offer 110% effort or bring your passion to work for someone who doesn’t inspire you or whom you don’t trust? Will you trust a leader who accepts the actions of a micro-manager/bully/control-freak and keeps that person in a role of authority?
The manager accepts reality; the leader investigates it.
In my experience, backed up by my reading, very few breathing people, whether leaders, managers or followers, submissively accept reality as it is without trying, in ways both small and large, to change whatever part they believe needs changing. This seems especially true in the workplace.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
The world is certainly changing and not necessarily for the better. Not just banks, those constant whipping boys and deservedly so, but tech and the general population.
This comment is from an NYT op-ed piece on about bullying and Lady Gaga’s official unveiling of her 
As most of my readers know, I’m not into social media; I am on LinkedIn and my company’s new product Option Sanity is on Facebook and Twitter, but other than the blog posts, I can’t say that any of them are particularly active.
Have you heard of Alexandra Robbins? She’s the author of “The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School.”
I never bought into the whole sisterhood thing. It just never made any sense to me to that 50% of the population could be trusted because we all had the same plumbing and the other 50% were enemies because theirs was different.
This is the third in a series discussing whether Warren Bennis’ 13 differences between leaders and managers still holds in light of today’s modern workforce.
