Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Did Donald Trump Go Too Far?

There are bloggers who have talked about their bosses. There are bloggers who have been fired for talking about their bosses. But, Donald Trump may be the first CEO to use his blog to share with the world his reasons for firing an employee.

In a post called Carolyn on the Trump Blog, Trump shares the details that led to his decision to tell Carolyn Kepcher"You're Fired!".

The fact is, I like Carolyn very much but she loved her fame and she loved her celebrity on "The Apprentice" and it was affecting her work. She wasn't doing her job like she used to or was capable of doing. So I felt that after 11 years together it was time for a rest.

I told Carolyn in the nicest way possible, "Go out and enjoy your family. Get a new job."

There are some things that deserve to be confidential. Reasons for dismissal, as long as their are no legal violations, deserve silence -not blogging.Most CEOs have more respect for themselves and for their employees and the potential of a defamation of character lawsuit. I have a feeling The Donald could care less.

But what if The Donald is actually starting a trend---The revenge of the CEO. Or as my friend Nancy White calls it " The Firing Blog". Imagine if this trend continues and Firing Blogs  take their rightful place along  with the mommy bloggers, the food bloggers, and the political bloggers.

Firing Blogs are for  all those business executives who have had to sit back in silence as their employees,and former employees gleefully blog their brains out telling stories out of school about the horror of their leadership style.

So far, most agree its unethical and a fireable offense to publicly blog about  your boss or  your place of employment.  So,if that's the case,  could Firing Blogs take off ,or is this just a one-blogger with  The   Donald being able to do it because after all, he's The Donald?

What do Tom Cruise,Mel Gibson and Forbes magazine have in common?

They said a bad, bad, thing. Mel apologized. Tom got the boot.Forbes pulled its article. You can read my entire post at blogher.

Will Cingular dooce the author of "Just me, twiddling my thumbs until the apocalypse"?

Like many bloggers before him, Jared Watts writes about his job-- a job he disdains. Unlike many he probably won't be dooced for his rantings.

Work is tumultuous at best. Our manager made us all come in yesterday morning at 8am for a staff meeting…now let’s keep in mind that our staff consists of a whopping four people…definitely something that necessitates some grand spectacle. At the meeting, he basically said y’all suck, and here’s how, and then he talked to us for about an hour about how this job should be the number one priority in our lives. Every moment at work should be spent actively working, even if we have to make up jobs to do (I’m sorry, but this store is a total graveyard, and we have nothing but downtime). Sorry, I’m not going to invent jobs just to pass the time that I’m already passing just fine thank you.

As Yuki Noguchi writes in the  Washington Post  article, " Kids Say The Darndest Things", Jared Watts is blogging about his job at a Cingular retail outlet. Jared's dad is Wayne Watts --the senior vice president and associate general counsel of AT&T Corp., Cingular's parent company.

Jared makes a clear distinction between writing about the company and making personal attacks against his dad who he says, "supports him a 100 percent and is responsible for getting him the job he lovingly disses in his blog. For his part, the dad relied on a company spokesperson to express his views. As the article says,

His father, speaking through an AT&T spokesman, said: "I care very much for my son. And like many fathers and sons, we have differences of opinion on many subjects."

  Jared says what he wants to whomever he wants. His dad opts for the company spokesperson. Talk about a generation gap-- the line shouts volumes.

So does Jared's blog -- which ,while particularly brutal, could, if the company chose to listen, provide them with a real sense of what its like to work in the company.

Now the Post didn't provide a direct link to Jared's blog-- just directions how to get there. Not sure if that is some kind of  editorial policy of not providing links ( I am after all reading the article online and a link would have been appropriate and user friendly) Nevertheless, I was eager to surf for Jared.

While AT&T Cingular might view his rants as the thoughts of a"spoiled 21 year old", I am reading it as the kind of honest interpretation of a job that companies need to hear.

Companies need to understand what their policies sound like to a non-invested employee who is just there for their paycheck,not their career.

While few companies would permit an employee to blog so honestly about their job ( and who knows how much longer young Jared will be hanging around) they do have another choice....the internal corporate blog.

Karen E. Klein's Smart Answers column in BusinessWeek Online  shares that companies can start using internal blogs instead of email and workflow management tools. The article includes interviews with two of my Blogging buddies  and Blogher Editors: Jeneane Sessum and Toby Bloomberg.

An employee blog will serve more as a "...centralized talking space for company news and views, customer wins, etc.," Sessum explains. "Blogs put the nexus of control, at least from a communication standpoint, in the hands of employees, thereby empowering them. At the same time, because internal blogs remain within the firewall, they are a good venue for honest communication and collaboration in a relatively safe environment for businesses that are just getting used to the idea of blogging and may view it as sort of renegade."

Bloomberg adds a word of caution: "Although it's not a top-down strategy, unless management and the company culture support this type of informal communication it is set to fail before the first word is posted. It's critical that the company provide training and encouragement, especially in the beginning stages."

The article also includes some quotes from Theresa Valdez Klein of Blog Business Summit -- which is hosting a conference this October focusing on how internal blogs can help businesses.  Information about the conference, which will be held in Seattle, is available at her site blogbusinesssummit.com.

 

A Picture is Worth A Thousand iPods

Thousands of engineers are at the Moscone Center in San Francisco attending Apple Computer's  Worldwide Developer Conference. They were greeted with this sign. This is not the first time Apple has attempted Silence of the Blogs. Last May, a California Appeals Court...

"smacked down Apple's legal assault on bloggers and their sources, finding that the company's efforts to subpoena e-mail received by the publishers of Apple Insider and PowerPage.org runs contrary to federal law, California's reporter's shield law, and the state Constitution."

In traditional journalism it's called being on "deep background"--a very accepted policy where journalists agree that the information they are about to learn is not publishable. In his blog,Steve Rubel takes a swipe at this policy saying,

This raises an interesting question. Is information that is presented at a public forum bloggable? I am not a lawyer and I don't play one on TV, but this seems somewhat draconian to me.

To which the commenters  not only took him to task for not disclosing that his employer,Edelman,has Microsoft as a client but reminded him this is an invitation only conference. It is curious that someone of Rubel's experience  didn't know that the conference is not a public event. A point that was shared in the comment section.

WWDC is a private event for developers which sign NDAs to be developers and NDAs to attend. They're given advance looks at technology in person and in lectures that they will later receive on DVDs and online. So it's not a public event in any real sense. There are a few public press events tied to WWDC because they found it was a better forum than Macworld Boston in attracting press, and it's a forum they control. This is one of Apple's rare regular events in which they slip the kimono in the interests of providing enough information for their partners to get their job done.

But it is Blogher's Susan Getgood who sums up the situation with this rather pithy comment--

Does this seem like a little bit of a PR stunt at all?

Image Credit: Flickr member and blogger John Gruber

A Million Girls Would Kill For This Job

This is a story about bad bosses, books,blogs, movies and the influence they have on mass media. The book is The Devil Wears Prada. Until last weekend I had vaguely been aware of the book. Yes, I knew it was about a ridiculous boss but I just hadn't bothered to read it.(And, if I had not decided to wash my duvet cover on Sunday morning I would have finished the last 150 pages of the  book before going to the movie.)

Let me just ask, "Do you know what happens to a paperbook that goes through the washer with a Duvet cover?" While I'm at it, "Do you know how to get the pulp off the duvet cover after it's gone through the dryer?"  Your responses will be  greatly appreciated. The experience has given me a whole new appreciation for pulp fiction.


I picked up the book on Saturday afternoon after I noticed a media storm of attention on the topic of bad bosses. First, there was the contest on MSNBC.You can vote on Bad TV Bosses From Hell .There are 10 bosses to choose from ranging from speakerphone "Charlie" on Charlie's Angel, to Danny DiVito in Taxi,and C. Montgomery Burns on the Simpsons.

This contest is tied to a report scheduled for July 7th:Real Life Bosses You Have to See to Believe. For those who want to share their real life stories, MSNBC is inviting readers to share a bad boss story. They do have this disclaimer,"remember your emails may be published."  They then ask people for their names, city and state and email address.

I would be very surprised if many people share their current stories. There's something about giving your real name when asked to write about your boss that puts the fear of being dooced in  people.

If it had just been MSNBC I might not have read the book, but then, as I was driving around Saturday morning,I heard an invitation from NPR to go to their website and share bad boss stories. They are putting a slightly different twist on the story. They want to hear from people who have been bad bosses as well as from people who've had bad bosses.

The Bad Boss. Ever had one? Ever been one? Sometimes Hollywood inspires us. The new film The Devil Wears Prada is about an assisant to a powerful and difficult fashion editor, and it got us thinking. We want to hear about the bosses you've worked for -- and if you've ever been a bad boss yourself.

Not to be left behind, the AFL-CIO has just launched MyBadBoss    Contest which promises readers they can win a free vacation by telling their stories. The first winner is called Wounded Healer. Confirming my theory, Wounded Healer is sharing a story in the past-tense.

He paints by the number," was the excuse I was given when I wanted to okay a psychiatric hospital stay for a patient who was out of state. My patient was a veteran suffering from trauma triggered by watching news coverage of the war in Iraq. He had been taken to emergency and when they called for authorization, my boss said they cost too much. I tried to get the hopsital to bring the price down. So, they discharged my patient after making him put $5000 on his credit card. I tried to get the money back for him and get my boss to okay paying the hospital. It went back and forth for too long. The patient committed suicide. He shot himself in the head. I couldn't quit crying when I heard and took the rest of the day off. I used my personal time to do it. My boss complained to my supervisor . He said, "I don't know why she had to take the day off. People commit suicide everyday." I no longer work there. I'm in therapy now.

So far, over one thousand people have written their stories. The website is featuring an article by Barbara Ehrenreich, journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,who says  the problem isn't bosses by bossism.

Much as I'd like to see all these miscreants brought to justice--in something like the "thought reform" camps of the Chinese Cultural Revolution--I tend to think the emphasis on bad bosses is a little misguided.  The problem isn't particular bosses, but what I call "Bossism"--the hierarchical system that governs all known bureaucracies, both public and private.  Giving one person huge power over others is like giving a 3-year-old a hose: Not everyone will get soaked, but the chances of coming out dry are slender.

The Devil Wears Prada had a very successful weekend at the box office. Since I am not an entertainment writer I will refrain my sharing my review only to say I'm aligned with the Claudi Puig's review in USA Today.

I will watch Dateline Friday with lots of interest and I will look forward to listening to the report on NPR. The issue of bad bosses is important. I've had them. I've been one.

I once thought that simply sharing the stories of awful bosses  would help change attitudes and behaviors. I believed that if people had an opportunity to tell their real stories that corporate cultures would change. I'm not so confident. How many bad stories do we have to hear before we say-- you can't do that? As bloggers will attest, writing about bad bosses is risky business.Heather B. Armstrong, who coined the phrase Dooce shares---

I started this website in February 2001. A year later I was fired from my job for this website because I had written stories that included people in my workplace. My advice to you is BE YE NOT SO STUPID. Never write about work on the internet unless your boss knows and sanctions the fact that YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT WORK ON THE INTERNET. If you are the boss, however, please don’t be a bitch and talk with your hands. And when you order Prada online, please don’t talk about it out loud, you rotten whore.

Then there was Ellen Simonetti, the Delta Airlines Flight Attendent who was fired for some photos she shared--she is now writing a book.  And, there was Opinionistas who quit after she landed a book deal--just days before she would have been dooced for her tell all tales of life as a lawyer in a New York law firm.

And now there is J.Y.N's Pagan Girl In Corporate America. As far as I can tell she still has her job...but if the past predicts the future, it's only for the time being.

Elana is a Contributing Editor for Business & Careers at  Blogher-  And, at one time she too had a job that "a million girls would kill for this job."

Get With It already. You sound like an old fogy

   

     It's one thing to say you don't listen to hip hop music. Or that you are bewildered with the fascination of tattoos and body piercings.

It's an entirely different issue when you don't see the 2000 pound gorilla in the middle of the room. The gorilla is the impact of social networking media on corporate America. It seems that executives just don't get it.

Recently Industry Week ran an article called "Unconvinced: Corporate Blogging."

Just 5% of executives said they were convinced "to a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a communications medium, while the percentage dropped to 3% of executives who were convinced "to a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a brand-building technique. As a sales or lead-generation tool, the percentage dropped to less than one. The survey on corporate blogging was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of New York-based public relations firm Makovsky + Co.

While the executives certainly have a right to their opinion. History is not on their side. Corporate culture is changing and online social networking is the technological equivalent to a corporate cultural tsunami. that is going to force organizations to reexamine how they interact with employees, customers and shareholders.

Matthew over at  Blogging4Business has a warning for these executives.

But perhaps the most interesting stat is the one that shows just how out of touch many top execs may be when it comes to new forms of business communication.

Less than one-third (30%) reported having a thorough understanding of the term “Internet blog.” (A blog or weblog combines text, links and images to form a personal journal full of news and opinion.)

If two thirds of the recipients don’t even understand what a blog is, then a, they can’t really understand what its potential impact might be, and b, blog evangelists obviously doing a particularly good job illustrating to companies why an open form of online conversation can help their business.

Turns out Ostriches don't really bury their heads in the sand....

If threatened while sitting on the nest, which is simply a cavity scooped in the earth, the hen presses her long neck flat along the ground, blending with the background. Ostriches, contrary to popular belief, do not bury their heads in the sand.

Looks like that leaves corporate executives as the ones who are burying their heads in the sand hoping beyond hope that these new fangled ways of sharing information will just go away.

Image credit:  Flickr member bingbing

It's Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature

This is cross-posted at Blogher

When I started posting this morning my intent was to feature the blog of  Alisha Vincent. Vincent is a newbie to Blogher. If you go to the Business & Career blogroll you'll find her as a new member.  Two hours later I'm feeling a bit conflicted.

My conflict began when I started searching for some photos of Alisha's artwork. See, Alisha's blog is about the business side of being an artist.

I was genuinely excited to share her blog. It has great advice.

You can work in an office or tell yourself that parenting is your true path in life but if creativity is something you've been hit over the head with, there is no greater or lesser priority. It's simply something you have to do. So make time for it.
...Don't avoid what's in front of you. Take what was thrust into your hand and do something with it. Make art with meaning. Make art with intention and purpose. Be creative and don't look back. And, above all, stop asking why or what you're supposed to do with this passion... and just do it, already!

And Practical Tips

So, you want to be a successful, self-supporting artist or craftsperson? And, you know a million and one things you need to work on, learn, or develop to get you to that goal?

What you need now is to SET YOUR GOALS IN STONE by BUILDING IN CONSEQUENCES.

Your graceful walk towards the goal will turn into a gallop (or in my case, a procrastination frenzy) when you take time NOW to...

... mark your calendar with the date you expect to accomplish a task;

... plan a studio open house, release party, unveiling, or opening night;

... print postcards or invitations for your open house or new work unveiling;

... invite your peers, people from your network, and those you admire to attend your event;

... post your event date and some rough details of what you hope to accomplish on your own blog.

Imagine having a party at your home or studio to announce your business name, reveal your logo, unveil your latest work, or have a group critique session.

Would it really be so difficult to just put a simple consequence on the horizon that pushes?

Procrastinate tomorrow.
Mark your calendar today.

But  when I went surfing to find a sample of Alisha's art to include in this post, I discovered something else out about her that made me let go of the fact that I had spent several hours reading her blog.

When you read Alisha's blog you get the distinct impression she is a working artist.

But, artists… we don’t always see it. We wrap our heart into things. We tell ourselves the minutiae IS important and that even if people don’t notice it – it’s the intent that matters. For a maintenance man, going through unrecognized motions is draining and absurd. For an artist, going through the motions with inconsequential details is still draining and absurd… we just tell ourselves it’s not because it helps justify our wasted energy or it demonstrates how dedicated we truly are.

Her About me section on her blog says a lot...

fine art, contemporary craft, creative careers, arts administration, business education, obtainable goals, realistic expectations, art education, networking, success

But its what she doesn't say that has my undies in a bundle.

Alisha is the Public Affairs Director of the The Rosen Group.

The Rosen Group, an arts marketing, publishing and advocacy agency located in Baltimore, Maryland, was founded in 1981 by Wendy Rosen. The Rosen Group was created to function similar to a trade association for American crafts. "What craftspeople needed," Rosen says, "was support from the kind of infrastructure other industries have developed — trade shows, publications, and associations – but adjusted to the needs and values of crafts artists."

Now does that negate the quality of the information in her blog? No. The blog  does answer the  key question she poses

Where do ART, CRAFT, and ENTREPRENEURSHIP merge? Is it possible to make artwork, sell it, and not drive yourself into premature insanity? Is an artful life more fullfilling?

The conflict is that she never tells you she is an employee of  an organization that serves as a trade organization for craft arts. This is her job.

The first time I heard the expression "High Art" was in the 1970s.I was living in the Fan District of Richmond Virginia. My neighbors were art students and art professors. They were all struggling artists.

"High Art"  was part of their never ending conversation because my artist neighbors  were continually struggling  between the desire to create "high art" and their very real desire to earn a living.

Every profession has it's own  "high art'-- To me, High Art in blogging means transparency, disclosure and ethical behavior. It means taking the high road.

I just hope that the Rosen Group will see the benefit of "High Art" and start acknowledging that Alisha's Blog is a business strategy.

What were they thinking? Advertisers Gone Wild

Advertisers will tell you the point of advertising is to generate awareness, support a brand image, and motivate a target audience to take some action ( often to spend money on the product or service being advertised)

Over at WonderBranding, Michele Miller is wondering about Tampax's latest spot, dubbed the" Tampax Dance".It's an ad to get "pad" users to convert to the joys of tampons.

Click here to view

Since I'm not in the 'target market' I sought the advice of someone who is: my 17- year old daughter. As I showed her the spot, I watched her facial expression--it's best described as her WTF or  Elvis look...you know where you do the one-sided nostril scrunch.

Here are my research findings based on a sample size of one.  "I get it. If you wear  Tampax  you can be do whatever you want and you won't have leaks. Notice," said Berit, "That when she did the cartwheel they focused on  her butt."

"Would the ad make you want to use Tampax?" I asked.

"No," she said."I don't like them."

For me the problem with the spot is not the creative -- it's the entire message that if you wear a "pad' your period is not private and if you wear a tampon it is. Having worn both over a very long period of my life, let me say that ifyou want your period to be private ( no leaks) unless you are on the pill and enjoy mercifully light periods,  there are many a day when you will want to double dip-- pad plus tampon.

No mention of advertising today could go without mention of the very serious and troubling lawsuit that the

good folks at  WarrenKremer Paino Advertising have filed   against blogger Lance Dutson for copyright infringement, defamation, and trade libel/injurious falsehood.

Dutson is a Maine resident and blogger who was less than impressed with the work and dollars that Maine's Office of Tourism was spending with the New York ad agency. He found an embarrassing, and depending on your perspective, amusing "mistake" . It seems that on their 'rough drafts' of an ad for the state they used a dummy phone number . And, of course, the number they used  was for a sex phone service. Now, these dummy ads were on the state's web site for anyone to see.

For his part, Dutson is getting a lot of support from folks who see this as a First Amendment Issue.  While this case is fascinating, it also has long -term ramifications for business and bloggers. As they advised  at PR Speak,

Whatever side of the coin you're on when it comes to the effect blogs have on business, this much is true: they're a force and they're not going away.  If you don't believe me, just do a Google search on Warren Kremer Paino Advertising LLC. What pops up in the first result set?  Something positive?  Nope.  A couple more days of this and blog posts will be the only Google results for the firm. 

This is a tired theme in PR blogs, but..."note to business": you have to start working with blogs and bloggers (or at least paying attention to them), even if you don't "get" the technology or don't subscribe to the notion that blogs represent a tectonic shift in mass communications.  Spend the time to learn about blogging, or run the risk of suffering the kind of negative attention this particular advertising agency is working through today.        

Publicity specialists will tell you there is no such thing as bad publicity. The Chinese would say: Be careful for what you want...you may just get it.

Tags: blogs, advertising, tampax, branding, law, first amendment

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