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Can you align business with ethics?

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Is business anti-ethical by nature? I’m reading an article today about how it’s in no one’s business interest to help protect consumers whose cell phones get stolen. Cell phone companies make more money when a customer’s phone is stolen, since the customer has to buy a new one. Furthermore, this logic applies to all cell phone companies, so even though it’s technically possible to permanently identify and deactivate a stolen cell phone, no player in the industry has the incentive to implement the technology.

Given that the technology certainly exists to disable a stolen phone, and customers spend hundreds of dollars on a phone, is it ethical for the cell phone providers not to help stop this, when (a) they could, and (b) they are the only people in the system who can?

This is a case where business interests and consumer interests clearly diverge. It’s a rather extreme version of Frito-Lay designing Doritos to give a rapidly-vanishing burst of flavor that psychologically hooks eaters into eating another chip. They know it’s unhealthy for people to stuff themselves on refined carbs, but they create a product designed to encourage exactly that. The cell phone companies, by not implementing theft protection, are encouraging cell phones to become the high-cost, high-tech equivalent of Doritos.

(How’s that for a tortured metaphor?)

I’m of mixed minds on this one. On one hand, I don’t know that it’s fair to force the phone companies to implement theft-protection on their phones, even thought it would stop an entire category of crime. But at the same time, no one else can do it, and I don’t know that I like the precedent of saying that business interests trump the societal interests of eliminating an entire category of theft and black market trading. (At the end of the day, I believe that we allow business to operate to benefit society, not the other way around.)

What do you think? Should phone companies add anti-theft technologies to their phones? Why? Is it morally/ethically appropriate on the part of the government/consumers to require companies to act? Is it morally/ethically appropriate on the part of the companies not to act?

Discuss.

Don’t be a victim in or out of the workplace.

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I have said many times in my podcast and out of it that if you can take some measure of internal ownership for bad things that happen in your life—even ownership of very small parts of the situation—it can lead to a feeling of deep control and responsibility in your life. It sounds counter-intuitive, but if you can say, “I chose to live in that flood zone, and I can choose to rebuild there or somewhere else,” you’ll actually feel less of a victim of your flooded home.

Try it!

  1. Think of a situation where you felt victimized: Today, the checkout clerk was moving in slow motion, ruining my life.

  2. Find (a) one thing you did that you could have not done, (b) one thing you didn’t do that you could have, (c) one interpretation you had that might have been wrong>

  3. Now describe the situation to yourself in terms of those answers: Today, the checkout clerk was moving slowly, which I (c) interpreted as incompetence (rather than, say, physical disability or a slow computer). I could have (a) decided not to buy the product just then, or (b) left the store without buying anything, or offered to help with the register.

Whether or not your behavior changes in the future, re-telling your narrative in terms of your contribution to the situation will often leave you feeling much more centered and in control.

The downside of personal branding

Personal branding is all the rage, but it has its hidden downsides as well. As I prepare to give my Living an Extraordinary Life presentation for Harvard Business School’s alumni webinar series, I am realizing that personal branding can become an impediment as well as a benefit. Many of my mid-career friends have discovered that today’s expertise can be tomorrow’s problem. Here’s how.

read more…

How do you balance compassion and business?

Where is the balance between compassion and business?

I recently hired a freelancer to do a project on a fixed-price contract. The payment schedule was fixed to certain milestones, but our contract specifically said the contract was fixed-price and not time-and-materials.

It turns out he underbid the contract. He is now taking a loss on the project (or at least claims he is) and wants to pay more. I have made every payment on schedule, and even accelerated a payment when he had a cash flow problem.

The compassionate Stever wants to pay him enough so he makes a decent profit on the job, since he is doing a good job.

Yet, business Stever objects. We had an agreement that was based on my believing the project would cost a certain amount. It doesn’t seem fair that I step up to cover his inability to price well.

He is doing good work. The contract is not yet done (and I don’t want him to stop in the middle), and I’ve paid him about 90% of the originally agreed-upon amount in accordance with the milestones.

I would love to hear from freelancers and hirers alike … How do you handle a situation like this? I feel conflicted between heart and head.

Is content re-use necessary?

Help me understand. The Associated Press won a court battle recently, in which the court ruled that an aggregation service had violated “fair use” under copyright law by reprinting AP content without sharing profits.

My reaction is mixed. Only … no, it isn’t. As a content creator myself, I understand the level of thought, care, time, and effort it takes to produce quality content. The idea that someone can take the content I’ve worked very hard on, and reprint it for free makes no sense to me.

Yet people are crying that this will have a “chilling” effect on online innovation. Help me understand. What is this “chilling” effect? I don’t at all understand how online innovation and “you get to use my hard work for free” are related, other than by the desire of entrepreneurs to use my hard work for free. There’s a word for that in my book, and the word isn’t innovation.

Right now, I’m finding myself writing much, much less, precisely because I no longer find the economics justify the time spent. I have about 30 draft articles outlined, but why would I write them if they’ll just be excerpted and used to drive revenue to someone else’s site?

What am I missing?

Activation Required software poses a serious risk to your business

Click here to download this article in PDF format.

Think twice before buying “activation required” software.

Microsoft has certainly endorsed a dangerous trend: software that requires activation to install and run it. More and more, it’s not enough that you purchase software and install it with a serial number they give you; you must also be connected to the internet or call their telephone activation center to activate the software when you run it.

The reason is simple: the software publishers don’t trust you. They think you’re a thief, and want to monitor every installation of the software closely. It makes sense from their point of view, at least, if one assumes that customers are basically immoral, unethical criminals out to steal anything they can. But as customers, the activation trend is more than just unfriendly; it’s outright dangerous.

The first of these activation schemes was Adobe Corporation’s “Type on Call.” They would sell you a cd full of fonts, and you would call Adobe to “unlock” fonts you had purchased.

Over time, I purchased over $2,000 worth of fonts from Adobe. My corporate identity was built on those fonts, some of which cost upwards of $500 for all the different weights and styles.

Then a couple of years ago, I bought a new computer. I went to install my Type-on-Call fonts and discovered that the activation servers had been shut down. Adobe had decided to discontinue the service, and suddenly I was no longer able to access fonts I’d paid dearly for. No one at Adobe was able to help, until bombarding the upper management with letters led one marketing manager sent me a cd-rom of the fonts.

Here’s the danger: in the interests of their fraud protection, you are integrating the business fortunes and decisions of the software vendor into your infrastructure. If they go out of business, get acquired, or just decide to stop supporting their service, the next time you need to install their software, you can’t do it. If that software is critical to your business, you’re just plain out of luck.

And even if they’re still in business, it’s still a business burden for you. You won’t always have a net connection when setting up a new machine. Sometimes—for security reasons or otherwise—you might want to install with your new machine disconnected from the network. Whatever the case, you’ll now have to jump through activation hoops. Recently, Act 2005 required me to call an activation number, only to get a recorded message that all operators were at home preparing for a severe weather alert. So now, my business gets stalled by severe weather 3,000 miles away. Great.

Windows already takes way too long to reinstall, thanks to its convoluted design. If you have to make activation phone calls and convince a $3.95/hour temp that you own the software you’ve already bought and paid for, you’re spending more of your time and money just to satisfy their paranoia.

And speaking of paranoia, they don’t trust you yet they expect you to trust them. They want you to let their activation program connect freely to the net. For all you know, their activation process also sends your financial data along with your activation code. Trust should be two-way, don’t you think?

Of course, no company would ever use this as a technique for forcing you to upgrade. Microsoft, for example, would never abuse their activation system by dropping activation of old products, forcing you to upgrade the next time you buy a new computer. But if a Microsoft doobie reads this article, watch out, they just may change their mind.

“But,” you say, “I don’t mind upgrading.” Fine. But what if the new version conflicts with something you currently run? Current versions of my contact manager program don’t work smoothly an older calendar utility I use. I’d rather not upgrade the contact manager because the calendar integration is too important.

And though vendors don’t like to face it, software dies out. Some of the best software I’ve ever used (and continue to use) has been discontinued over time. If it had required activation, I’d be out of luck, forced to use inferior software. Some great software has started requiring activation, so I’m sticking with the last version I could install at will:

  • Windows 2000. XP requires activation.
  • PGP 8. pgp 9.0 requires activation. Funny that a company supposedly devoted to their customers’ integrity has a policy that could jeopardize a customer’s entire business!
  • Quicken and Quickbooks require activaton.
  • Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. MX 2004 requires activation.
  • AdSubtract Pro 2.55. AdSubtract Pro 3 requires activation.
  • Act! 6.0. Act 2005 is a definite improvement, but requires activation.
  • Most Adobe products now require activation.

It’s a sorry world when vendors so callously disregard the business integrity of their customer, but as a customer, be wise and pressure vendors to sell us software that works the way our businesses require.

Do you just think you have integrity?

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Do you have integrity? Or do you just think you have it? I have been pondering what integrity is, the last few days.

I have a friend, “Ashley,” who has done some stuff that many people would consider to be well into the gray area of ethical behavior. He admits he did it and explains why.

I have another friend, “Chris,” who has done stuff that hurts many more people than Ashley. What Chris does is legal, however hurtful it may be, and Chris can bend your ear for hours about how what he does really is for the good of everyone, and anyway, “everyone does it.”

Both Chris and Ashley are charming, fun people to hang out with.

I find, much to my surprise, that I’m far more inclined to want to spend time with Ashley. I know where I stand with Ashley. I know where the gray areas are, and where I’m likely to get burned. With Chris, the most well-meaning intentions may someday end up burning me, and it will be “nothing personal, just business.”

To me, integrity has more to do with acting congruently with how you represent yourself than it does with acting in a moral/ethical/”good” way.

Agree? Disagree? Why? By my definition, do you have integrity?

Is texting in meetings rude?

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Do you think it’s rude to text/email during a meeting?

Some say it’s multitasking. An article I read celebrated “the skill of following along in person while simultaneously [doing other stuff]” Alas, that skill simply doesn’t exist. Our brains are not wired to multitask, and splitting attention vastly decreases the quality of thought we bring to the individual activities.

Furthermore, even though you may not consider it rude, it can have very real negative effects for you. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely discusses this in his book The Upside of Irrationality. When someone took a quick cell phone call in the midst of an interaction, the person they were interacting with was quick to retaliate by not returning a cash overpayment. (He then showed that an explicit apology offset that effect. So perhaps texting then apologizing is fine behavior.)

If the text or email is relevant to the task at hand, perhaps we can adopt the same policy we did in elementary school: let the team leader see the notes being passed back and forth. Next time someone texts in a meeting, they have to show everyone the text sent and the response. Then the group can decide whether it’s worthwhile

Sources:

Engaged employees perform best.

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Gallup Organization has been looking at employee engagement for many years. They’ve famously found that only a small percentage of our workforce is actively engaged at their jobs. Often, company discussions about people policies center around employee well-being as an underlying principle driving HR policies. Wellbeing refers to perqs like vacation time, flextime, and so on.

I just read this Gallup research summary that asks: Should a company put effort into employee wellbeing policies, or into employment engagement policies? It turns out to be easy to answer: the greatest driver of wellbeing is employee engagement, not perqs. The research shows that engaged employees perform far better than non-engaged employees, even if those non-engaged employees are given a lot of workplace perqs (e.g. more vacation time, etc.).

Also interesting, though not mentioned in the conclusion, is that flextime is also tremendously important. Having engaged employees and giving them flextime gives the greatest boost to wellbeing.

I know when I’m engaged, my whole life seems better. Next time you’re wondering how to improve workplace morale, instead ask how you can help improve engagement. That answer might change your entire culture.

Internet: mass manipulation tool?

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I’m downloading Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday, about media manipulation on the internet, at the recommendation of a professional journalist friend.

As I read a few of Ryan’s blog articles and PR interviews from the book, I’m struck by how much his experience matches mine. Though I’ve not tried the kind of conscious manipulation he describes, I’ve seen it all over the place and noticed the same lack of basic fact checking in various stories I’ve been involved in.

My most striking example of this was several years ago when a Fortune 500 company revealed to me how easy it is for them to engage in mass manipulation now that the blogosphere lets them leak stories from different sources and have it all build to appear to be a preponderance of independent evidence.

Another Ryan, the amazing and awesome Ryan Allis (founder of iContact, uber-optimist, and serial entrepreneur) and I spoke about this over dinner a few weeks ago. His view is that the internet has evolved to the point where the truth will come out, despite attempts at manipulation. Especially with the rise of social media, manipulation doesn’t stand a chance because the truth will get out via informal networks.

What do you think?