Character is how a company behaves when no one is blogging about it

Should a person lose the right to free speech because they are an employee of a company? How many of the wrongs in the world would have gone on forever if people were not allowed to write about them and open the world’s eyes. Another article recently from Internetweek.com discusses just how and why blogging about work is risky business. In one section the comment is made that “While some people may argue that blogging is part of our right to free speech, experts say that constitutional right doesn't protect a person from the repercussions of speaking out.” Well just what good is any right if those that disagree can take punitive actions against you? I and others have strong opinions about Cobb County wasting tax money on iBooks, should we lose our homes and be forced out of the county because of this? For those that say the government is different I would say that your employer has much more sway over your well being, and that of your family than just about any government agency.

So why then should employers be allowed to discipline employees for engaging in one of our constitutional rights?

There was a time when employees were beaten and even killed by company enforcers for speaking out publicly about cruel working conditions. Early last century there were no child labor laws and employees were used as cannon fodder for the business men of the time to become richer with no regard for anything close to human rights we take for granted today.

Employee rights in this century must start to revolve around the connected world we live in today. Opinions should not be grounds for punishment from any entity, even employers, in this day and age. Companies are fond of telling an employee how there is no cradle to grave employment today and the company does not owe the employee anything. Under these circumstances companies should no longer expect employees to be loyal and keep their opinions to themselves. As has happened in the past the laws are more than a decade behind reality.

Off-shoring, off-peopling, its all the same for business

There is a new name for automation, Off-Peopling. I actually think it is more reflective of reality and what do you ask is that reality. Simple, people being paid money to work is BAD for business. Replacing employees with cheaper employees or automation is good for business. The ultimate goal of every business is to pay $0 to produce a product that they are paid $Max for. This is how a business gets to maximum profit for shareholders which is what a business tells you they are in business to do. I suspect if this was the actual goal then a whole bunch of executives would be taking less pay and compensation to help those share holders. Any benefit shareholders get is a side effect to making executives rich. And how do they get rich, well we are right back to where we started reducing costs to $0 while maintaining the maximum prices that consumers will pay.

Wait a minute, consumers, aren't those the folks that work for companies, earn money, and buy things. Oops, Houston, we have a problem. Of course this problem is slowly happening, so slow that we still pay attention to metrics that do not reflect the problem at all. Everyone crows about how many jobs get created or are lost. What we need to think about is what is the average compensation of the jobs created versus the jobs lost (lost to where does not matter). This will show us the trend that consumers face and results in the trend businesses will see in the future. As the average family income goes down or flattens then there will be less and less income spent on all those consumer goods that companies make. Of course this is not true for those executives/boardmembers we talked about. Remember they must continue to get ever richer in order to be motivated enough to do a good job for the shareholders.


This graph courtesy of leftbusinessobserver.com

Businesses will not win the shell game of swapping people around for cheaper people or technology alone. Clearly the use of technology to improve productivity has always been done and I can understand that businesses continue to do this. At the same time businesses need to start to concern themselves more with how to make better use of people and help get more people employed at better wages. Most of the products purchased in the world are purchased by the middle class and poor folks. We need a healthy middle class and we need to eliminate poverty. Eliminating poverty by reducing the middle class does not help and increasing poverty to maintain the middle class also does not help. Trading the middle-class in one part of the world to help another part of the world also does no good in the long run.

Businesses must be profitable and executives must be effectively compensated while at the same time helping to grow those nice consumers that buy all their products.

43 things you want to do

43 Things is a cool site that helps you set and track things you want to do or accomplish. Certain friends of mine could really benefit from this site since they seem to have a hard time focusing on anything for long. 43 things is plenty for just about anyone and who says we can't progress on lots of goals at once :)

Another take on the elitist journalist and blogging from Halley

Halley has experienced another event where elitist journalists worry about losing their power. I posted earlier about the courts not treating bloggers the same as journalists and it seems this would make journalists very happy based on Halley's interesting interaction on the subject.

Best home made carmels in the world

The Sisters at Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey make the best home made carmels in the land. Check out their website and give their candy a try. You won't be disappointed. Hmmm, just blogging about it has my mouth watering, time for me to place another order.

Who really gets the blame the CEO or the Board?

There are many examples of companies being more interested in Wall Street than in main street in this country. Here is one persons perspective on Carly Fiorina that exemplifies this recent attitude in America. But who is really to blame for these short sighted policies. Don't most CEO's implement strategies that the board determines. Even if they do it in partnership it seems to me that boards of directors have become the hidden elitist overly greedy profit mongers of today. The likes of which had not been seen since Henry Ford, and John D. Rockefeller. These truly greedy individuals were willing to sacrifice everything including the lives of hundreds of human beings to become wealthier and more powerful. The good of the customer, the country and the employee did not enter into their thinking and at best any good they did was accidental. And before anyone says "What about the philanthropy of the Rockefeller Foundation" let me set you straight. That foundation along with many others, was eventually setup as a public relations initiative because people of the United States came to hate these individuals and how they succeeded on the pain and misery of others.

It is not greed by itself that is bad, we need greed to grow and prosper and few of us want to do worse financially in the future than today. What is bad is unbridled greed that is achieve at too great a price for customers, employees and ultimately stock holders. Can anyone say Enron, or WorldCom, or Martha Steward...

I suspect that real grief awaits the boards of many companies if these companies do not regain a balanced perspective on business in America and stop paying lip service to customer and employee satisfaction.

If your company is in a bad way then consider firing the board, not the CEO.

I believe bloggers are journalists in every sense of the word

The courts in California do not seem inclined to treat regular citizens that publish news and information in blogs as well as they treat journalists. I find this extremely disappointing since publishing by individuals is how journalism really got its start. Publishing has been around for thousands of years and for most of that time it has involved regular folks as much as it has involved governments or businesses or "news" organizations. Consider how Benjamin Franklin got started:

Benjamin wanted to write for the paper too, but he knew that James would never let him. After all, Benjamin was just a lowly apprentice. So Ben began writing letters at night and signing them with the name of a fictional widow, Silence Dogood. Dogood was filled with advice and very critical of the world around her, particularly concerning the issue of how women were treated. Ben would sneak the letters under the print shop door at night so no one knew who was writing the pieces. They were a smash hit, and everyone wanted to know who was the real "Silence Dogood."

Seems to me that Ben has several traits in common with bloggers of today. He was an individual who wanted to make his thoughts, opinions, and research public without fear of retribution. This describes most bloggers as well so it really confuses me why California courts might think the constitution and the law only protects "journalists".

Parents Television Council - today's fascists?

I was listening to the Bob & Tom show this morning on 96-Rock and they had a piece on censorship of television and radio. Specifically they talked about the overly zealous work by the FCC since the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction and the work of the Parents Television Council. Bob and Tom believe that the current efforts at censorship involves control of content that is fascist like and will ultimately lead to one group of people controlling what we as a society are allowed to see, read, and listen to. They sighted a case where a Buffalo TV station pulled their reading service for the blind because one 89 year old women complained about a single word from a novel read during the overnight hours.

The media says everyone has the ability to turn their TV off and control what their children see, read, and hear. I give you the fact that this is technically true what I don't believe is that enough parents actually care enough to attempt to manage this. And here is where I struggle because while I can setup the V-chip and I do monitor what my children watch, what I cannot do is go 2 houses down and do the same. That child down the block is watching MTV sexually explicit content, watching Sex-in-the-City on TBS, and then playing with my children and showing them all the cool things they have learned. And please don't tell me that what adults and children watch does not affect or influence them. Everything we see, feel, and experience influences us and not all of it for the better.

There has to be a middle ground we can get to that is reasonable in nature for both sides of this. Anything goes no-censorship is no better than the overly zealous efforts today that caused a single blind 89-year old women to impact every blind listener in Buffalo. We can't legislate morality and if we try to we do become Nazi Fascists, at the same time we do need to look for reasonable measures to help parents. I am not sure where the answer is but the direction we are headed in at the moment is not the answer as far as I am concerned.

Seth Godin wants better service, good luck

Seth in his post titled "Unusual?" wants American Express to provide better service, but will he pay for it? You see for all companies that deliver service after the sale it comes down to money, plain and simple. How can the cost of service be kept at an absolute minimum while keeping the customers minimally happy. Yes I said minimally happy. All the talk you hear about companies wanting loyal customers is not true on the service after the sale piece. American Express wants you to be loyal to their product not loyal to their company because of the great service they offer for your credit card. In Seth's case American Express feels that getting back to folks in a few days helps to keep down costs since slower email days will balance out busier email days. But of course you get those pesky customers complaining about how long it takes. You placate some of them by "setting the customers expectation". Right again, they are not interested in meeting the customers expectation for service after the sale they want to set your expectation.

To his credit Seth believes there must be a better way. And there is, it is called offshore outsourcing. You see companies can get 4+ people in India for the cost of 1 person in the states to do this kind of work. But what is even better is to get only 2 in India and allow extended response times whenever 2 is not enough. Trust me some VP somewhere has gotten a major bonus and job promotion because they cut the cost of help desk support in half for the company.

And all of this is driven by the desire to cut costs because consumers want everything at a lower cost. In fact the entire reason for companies replacing American workers where ever possible with cheaper foreign labor is to keep the costs down for American consumers. Of course the fact that the average household income is going down because replacement jobs don't pay as much is not their concern.

I laughed so hard I pissed myself!

I was recently introduced to a very funny serios of cartoons on the web. Now these cartoons are NOT politically correct and probably should be viewed from the privacy of your own home with no children around. The toons star Foamy the Squirrel and they are very creative.

These cartoons are for mature audiences only. Click here and go see for yourself. And don't say I did not warn you, this is strictly for those that are NOT easily offended by ANYTHING.

Should sentencing be easier for first time offenders?

Amazing that after only a few months in prison Martha Stewart believes that we should take it easy on nonviolent first time offenders.

To quote the article:

"The celebrity homemaker also showed a softer side, writing about the plight of some of the 1,100 other inmates. "Many of them have been here for years - devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family," she said, urging people to press for reforms in the sentencing guidelines for nonviolent first-time offenders."

Hmmm, the CEO of Enron sure was a non-violent first time offender. I wonder how many people want to be sure that he gets love and care and family while he rots in jail for destroying peoples lives.

And what about the leaders at WorldCom, we surely want them to have love and affection all around. I know lets all line up to give them kisses and bake them an apple pie.

Hogwash, I say be overly harsh the first time and I suspect we drastically reduce the odds of a second time. Some non-violent crimes come close to being as damaging to people and society as murder.

I say we toss Martha back in for another 5 months and she can give the other ladies some care and affection. Or perhaps we send all of them along with Martha to take care of at her home for 5 months. Surely that would be enough loving care for these poor poor inmates and a real boost to the prison budget.

Barbara Joslyn a most extraordinary person!

Barbara Joslyn is an actress in England that is a friend of mine from years back. Babs and I worked together on a knowledge management project for our company. A few years ago she decided to give up the corporate life and pursue a career in acting. I wish I had her kind of guts to just give up everything and start in a new direction. She is a wonderful person and a great actress. Some day I know she will make it big because she has a great personality and great capabilities. At her web site you can hear some of her voice work and read her diary about the acting gigs she has been involved in. She reminds me of Grace Kelley and Audrey Hepburn. While I did not know these actors personally I do think Barbara has both their looks and their positive approach to life. Someday I know I will be watching the Emmy’s or the Oscar’s and will see Barbara Joslyn picking up an award.