I will be blogging on my reaction to your post sometime tonight.

Anyone remember the Jarvis/Dell fun back in 2005(6?)
Jarvis made remarks on BuzzMachine.com about a “lemon” he purchased from Dell and as a result created years of criticism on what was an otherwise nearly spotless Dell record. It snowballed into something that demanded Dell’s attention after a dozen or so posts by Jarvis to his readers.

What followed was the birth of several initiatives by Dell soon after that gave a ‘real voice’ and quick and easy way for them to address reputation management online. I won’t drive through the entire case study but what’s relevant is that if a company were prepared for communities that are already at large – reputation management would be much easier.
Needless to say… Dell is truly engaged today as a result – they learned their lesson the hard way.

Honest and transparent posts, like that of Chris, become more about dialogue than finger pointing when responded to in kind and companies are better prepared.

Kudos to Chris for his message and delivery – I’m hoping more take note of the transactions that took place and how something like this can be better handled or prepared for from a business and reputation standpoint.

(btw, great blog Katie – long time lurker.)

RecruiterGuy
aka: Chris
http://www.RecruiterGuy.net

Terminations are tricky, and there are security concerns: safety of co-workers, property theft, vandalism, protecting IP and customer accounts, etc. There are also cultural concerns, as those that remain look at how the termination was handled and make a judgement about the organization and the value it places on employees. And ugly firings and poisoned organizational culture make attracting good talent in good times that much harder. Let’s just put it this way, I will never go to work for some organizations based on what I know about their culture, regardless of the compensation I have been offered.

Many people have their identity closely tied to their work. When someone asks, “Tell me about yourself,” do you begin with your job title and company? Many do, especially in some cultures. Organizations should consider that some people have made personal sacrifices to advance the company agenda and accomplish the mission, and a termination invalidates those efforts and even who someone is as a person. How do you tell a parent that missed numerous kids’ baseball games to complete a work project that the lost time with family was all for naught? This is why the way in which a departure is handled and the validation of that individual is critical. The pain associated with a termination cannot always be avoided, but it can certainly be mitigated and ultimately transformed.

In some industries there is a finite pool of talent, and hiring someone is like taking out a talent lease. How an organization treats and eventually returns that individual to the market may have a direct bearing on the organization’s ability to lease in the future. There is a word-of-mouth credit market for organizations seeking to lease talent, and an organization’s talent credit score can be a primary factor in an individual’s decision to join.

Yes, you can believe things and not say them. And I do have some discernment and there are times I avoid saying a lot of things in certain places.

However, there is a lot to be said for saying what you believe. Let’s pull this back to workplace opinions. If there’s a project, I can either be a Yes-Man, and say what I think my boss wants to hear, or I can give my honest opinions and constructive criticisms in the hopes of improving the end product. Companies who allow openness in this regard end up with better products and are more likely to succeed in the marketplace.

If your opinion then happens to be about some other department or corporate policies, maybe about how HR handles the training process, or how the support department handles calls, the company can benefit just as much to openness.

So in that context, I don’t think self-censorship helps anyone. Though certainly the methods of communication are important (note I said Constructive criticism).

Now let’s look at talking politics in the blogosphere. Most of the people active on the internet have a job or are in a relationship with someone who has a job. If we culturally discourage everyone with a job from posting their political opinions, content on the internet suddenly becomes quite apolitical. Public discourse becomes limited to the media, people who work in politics, and people without jobs. We return to 1995.

At this point, the few people with jobs who remain openly political online seem more extreme. Their politics become easy to marginalize, and those guys won’t be able to work.

This becomes a sort of cultural free-speech suppression that bothers me a lot. Historically, speech has been suppressed this way (and still is in a lot of ways — there are a lot of culturally taboo subjects), and I don’t like what the world when it’s like that. Public discourse is too important to maintain political, cultural, and societal health. (I haven’t even broached the subject of whistle blowing, which is also extremely important.)

Yes, I have more control over what I say than I do about what other people think. But at what point should my fear of what you think start to control what I say and do? Additionally, people tend to believe not necessarily what they say, but what they do. (Cognitive Dissonance theory, huge subject.) At what point does my fear of what you think eventually control what I believe? At what point does that lead us back to a homogeneous society where “normal” was the strongest cultural value?

I haven’t even touched the topic of lifestyle choices, where repression of that becomes a repression of self. Why should it be ok for a straight man to talk about his wife or girlfriend in casual office comments (“I went out on a date last night, it went well,” or “My wife made these cookies”) but NOT for a gay man to be as free (“My boyfriend made these cookies.”) In this case, if the gay man self-censors for fear of offending, the gay man actually has less freedom of speech in an office context than a straight man. Now extend that to the internet, and tell me he shouldn’t be free on his Facebook, Twitter, or blog to talk about things that are important in his daily life, that you’re allowed to safely express, but he isn’t for fear of offending someone and not getting a job someday.

I’d personally rather work towards a more open society and workplace culture, so if you’re gay or straight, liberal or conservative (or libertarian or socialist), if you have mild or strong complaints about your job, if you have valuable constructive input about your project or someone else’s department, all of these things are acceptable.

Historically, society becomes MORE accepting of diverse opinions and lifestyles the more people talk openly about it. I don’t see why this will be any different in a Web 2.0 context.

To me, diversity isn’t about making everyone feel warm and fuzzy about themselves — it’s about being open minded enough that you don’t miss value in a person or an opinion, just because it’s different from your own.