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The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters. – Gloria Steinem
My favorite subject, ethics, has been the center of many news stories lately. I ran across this post from Gerrard McLean recently that started me down a path:
I find myself wondering how many times we are forced into a situation to do something for a client who is immoral, amoral, unethical or a combination of all because they have an “expectation” that is not in line with their reality. And because they are the lifeblood of our organization, we bow to the pressure to do it “just this one time” or until we no longer have to. But like Madoff, that one time turns into a lifetime of “just this one time.”
No one wakes up in the morning and decides to defraud investors and charities of billions of dollars. Lots of small decisions lead to that outcome. The first compromise makes each subsequent compromise a little easier. As compromises are made, our individual skills as rationalizers grows. We reconcile our clearly unethical behavior with our intentions. The crutch of the weak, “the end justifies the means” invariably is used. Ethical conduct is best practiced in the small decisions each of us make every day.
Bernard Madoff defends his early decision to enter in to a Ponzi scheme by stating that “I felt compelled to satisfy my clients’ expectations, at any cost”. How noble. That is not a defense. It may be an explanation, an articulation of his rationale, but it is not a defense. It is the equivalent of saying “I’m guilty. Here are the irrational thoughts that were racing through my head at the time that I committed the original sin”. Everyone involved in the recently debunked mortgage derivative industry committed a similar sin. “Your honor, I knew the products we were packaging were not adequately capitalized, but I felt compelled to get my clients in homes which they rightfully could not have afforded by any means at my disposal” Harsh? Yep – but I’ll follow it up by saying that you and I both make similar kinds of decisions every day.
Religion is not part of the discussion here – but we all fail. We all make decisions that compromise our principles to achieve an outcome. All of us – every day. The really interesting nugget is finding that quality which permits an individual to cross that line that turns a white lie in to a black one. At what point did Bernard Madoff cross that line? I don’t know. What I do know is that the more times I allow my principles to be compromised, the more frequently I risk becoming the subject of a Jon Stewart self-righteous rant (I like Jon Stewart – but he is approaching the point where he risks becoming what he paroadies).
Laurence Lessig of Creative Common fame recently shifted his focus to corrupt systems. How timely. Unfortunately, I think he is tilting at windmills. Fixing the issue of large institutions which produce irrational and unethical outcomes requires us to fix the pieces and parts of those institutions. It requires that each of us taking personal responsibility for our own behavior. While I have nothing but respect for Lessig, if Jesus, Mohammad, Confucius and others couldn’t affect a large scale change in our behaviors – I don’t know how he can.
So what’s the moral of the story? Treat every decision you make like it mattered. The next time someone asks you to compromise, consider the consequences. Compromise to accomplish positive outcomes – but don’t compromise your principles.
While inevitable, it is sad to see newspapers disappear. The entire industry is in disarray and until someone somewhere finds a profitable economic model – the mood will be somber. I work in a similar industry. We have seen a decade of decline and have struggled to shift in to growing markets. It is hard, and I know that the day will come when my company closes or is bought out. The hard, cold reality is that no business can survive if it is not profitable. Reporters will not volunteer their time (for long). Printers will not donate paper and ink. The barriers to entry in to the news industry have dropped so low that anyone can enter and publish online. But while publishing costs have dropped precipitously, revenue has as well.
The staff of the paper did a great job publishing this video:
I have relatives who subscribe to the axiom that you can never be too skinny or too wealthy. Conversations drift towards these subjects like leaves to the ground. It is inevitable and annoying. This year’s Christmas dinner was an exercise in self-restraint capped with my wife pleading out loud that we talk about something other then money.
Jason Zweig has written What a Bear Market Might Teach Us which I found both humorous and uplifting. If I thought my relatives would recognize the message I would send it to them – but I suspect the point would be lost.
A story entitled Satellite Radio Still Reaches for the Payday published on December 26th, 2008 describes the challenges facing Sirius XM. There are several interesting insights shared in the article. If you’ve read some of my other material here, you know this is a subject I care about.
Before the merger, I did not pay that much attention to Sirius. I enjoyed the service XM provided and wasn’t really concerned with the business decisions being made by its competitor. Not that it would have mattered – but I should have paid more attention. Some of the significant numbers:
In 2005, Sirius secured the exclusive services of Howard Stern for 500 million dollars.
It costs between 250 and 300 million dollars to put a satellite in space.
The company earned 613 million dollars in the third quarter of 2008
The company has 1 billion dollars in debt due in 2009
That’s alot of large numbers. But to balance the equation, the stock price of the company currently sits at 16 cents per share. InfoWorld believes satellite radio will not survive the recession. Add on that the combined company has let go approximately 25% of the company’s associates and you are left with few options. The company’s chief assets appear to be its satellites and Howard Stern (based on the value they placed on his contract).
I like the service – but it looks like some banks are going to hold some more useless paper here pretty soon.
Don't panic about cloud based application failures
“Gmail isn’t working – OMG. Call out the National Guard”
The recent discussion around the failure of some notable cloud based web services has reminded me of a comparable discussion in the transportation industry. The number of fatalities associated with automobiles greatly exceeds those associated with air travel. Why is that people assume otherwise? Because when a plane crashes to the ground the loss of life is sudden and dramatic. When an individual dies in an auto accident we are conditioned to view it as less significant.
What’s the point?Gmail failed last week.Amazon S3 failed the week before.Twitter fails weekly (or so it seems).These are large public outages which drive a lot of media coverage.On the other hand, the daily (or more likely hourly) outages individuals encounter with their own tool set receive little or no media coverage. There is no way to measure them.There is no way to report on the collective impact on productivitity associated with thousands of individual mail servers being crushed under the weight of spam.
Large scale service delivery firms that focus on service excellence will eventually drive down these failures. You and I will continue to build things that break. Oh well.
My favorite service disappeared today. XM and Sirius have merged creating Sirius XM. The Justice Department has indicated that the merger would not harm competition, er the consumer. We effectively no longer have competition so we’ll have to cross our fingers on this statement. Engadget has the full announcement.
I am concerned. My cable provider provides an almost weekly lesson in how the lack of competition creates a poor service provider. This statement on Washington Business Journal is supposed to help me feel better. It accomplishes the exact opposite:
Subscribers will also now have the option to pick from different packages of channels, known as a la carte programming.
My belief is that in a year’s time I will have the privilige of spending more to get less. A la carte pricing = nickel and diming.
Update:
I ran across a few more quotes I’d like to add to my bonfire of disgruntlement…
He said the review showed that, because XM and Sirius equipment was not compatible, subscribers rarely shifted from one system to the other in their homes or cars; a switch could be expensive and time-consuming.
“Historically, once you choose one or the other of the audio services, you’re not going to switch,” he said. “A price switch is not going to cause you to jump to the other services.”
That rationale could be used to support a merger of any two competing yet dissimilar technologies. Do you suppose we’ll be asked to accept a merger of DSL and cable providers any time soon. It’s about the same exercise switching a satellite receiver and a modem. Right?
E-mail is top of mind for many people now. The New York Times and other mainstream media sites have jumped on the bandwagon bemoaning the flood of e-mails burying us all.
“It is a poor craftsman who blames his tool” – or so it’s been said. With so many of us abusing the same tool you’d think we would have figured it out by now. But it’s not just tool abuse that is burying us. We need some new disciplines– and at least one new tool.
Disciplines
The cure to our collective problem starts with each of us. Just because we can send an e-mail doesn’t mean we should. Spam not withstanding, we each are inflecting a small wound on each other when we send an e-mail that does not accomplish a purpose. Be purposeful in what you say. Be purposeful in what you send. Are you informing/influencing, entertaining or collaborating?
Informing/Influencing: Who needs to know? If everyone needs to know then e-mail is not the right answer. Post it on a web site, or a bathroom wall. Whatever works. How do you know who needs to know? That’s a post in itself, but until then give some critical thought to each person you copy on each e-mail.
Entertaining: Please don’t. The world is full of people sending humorous and inspirational messages. You can not improve the world order one bit by forwarding the latest collection of jokes. Believe me – someone already beat you to the punch.
Collaborating: This is our greatest opportunity for improvement. There is a genuine need in this space – but we have not decided to use the right tool. In my role, work is measured in issues, risks and action items. None of these units of work are best accomplished through e-mail. A group collaborating on an issue should have a central discussion – open to all stakeholders – of the decision criteria. Risks likewise should have consequences, likelihood and other characteristics described in one place. Finally, action items are done, being worked, or not really in action. Communicate status – done or not done – and any associated issues and risks. Do it in one place.
GTD advocates (and I’m one) describe a discipline for (mostly) reacting to what the world throws at you. We need just a little more scaffolding around what we should do when communicating with others. If enough of the GTD’ers take up the cause, the volume of non-UBE (ham) will be reduced.
Tool
We have the tools in front of us. Any of the threaded discussion boards meet the need. The biggest problem with these kinds of tools is they are either too public – or too unstructured. Imagine a hybrid tool which documents community understanding once – in a central place. All we need is some enterprising individual to take a basic discussion board and add some ‘smarts’ so that leaders (anyone who has an issue, task or risk) can pin an item to the board and others can link items and add depth. Now add a nicer user interface and I think you’ll have a winning enterprise application.
I have arrived a little late on the open source scene so I tend to take things for granted. The expression “free as in beer” has always struck me as odd.
Based on tests I’ve taken, I am a libertarian politically. The Open Source movement is really a Socialist movement based on the comments shared in this video. It’s interesting that something this liberal could have such far reaching implications on the world economy. I mean really, where would we all be without Linux, Wordpress, and all of the other GNU licensed packages in the world?
Those of you who are English speaking will have trouble at times, but this background video on Linux produced in Sweden provides a really interesting background on the Linux movement.
No time for the book? Google has made video of a session David Allen conducted with their staff. Listen to David Allen himself describe the Getting Things Done system.
As a technology professional and all around geek I try to stay current with the news at the intersection of technology, culture and business. I also have a hard time taking things too seriously. As a result I will add my spin on the news – for your entertainment alone.
Enjoy!!
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