This is a guest post by Leila Machiavelli, who specialises in making sure organisations don’t evolve and that flexible working doesn’t work so that everyone has to be in the office at set hours, regardless of whether they can do their job from somewhere else or not.
About a month ago, one of my subordinates came to me with an idea, let’s call him Paul, to protect his reputation. Paul has only recently joined our company. He’s very enthusiastic (bless him!) and seems to do a good job. He also does other things apart from working, like running runs an online magazine. (Don’t ask me what the magazine is about, as I’ve never read it, why should I.)
At the end of our last project, which went very well I may add, Paul knocked on my door.
“Come in,” I said. (I have an open-door policy.)
After struggling a bit with the door handle (you don’t want to make it too easy for people to disturb you), Paul came in.
He asked me some stuff – how I was, general nice conversation. I replied and asked questions back ( you would be proud of me). Then he said, “I would love to feature our last project, the launch of XXXX in my magazine. (The product was called something else, but I need to protect our brand, you see…)
“Oh you have an online magazine,” I said. “How nice.” Paul told me the name of his magazine and what he covered in it, but I was trying to maintain an open body language to encourage high quality communication, so I missed what he said.
“To write an even more interesting piece, I was wondering if I could have some extra information from you, and maybe talk to some of the outside agencies that we collaborated with? I think we worked so well together and the launch went so well, that I really want to share it with other people. It shows the great work we can do and it will give people an insight into how a company like ours works. I think it would be a popular piece.”
Paul had made me very nervous. What did he mean with “share”? What was he thinking of writing? Who would see it? Would he give away any of our secrets? He obviously didn’t have a clue about the nature of our very competitive industry and what it meant to be in the public eye.
“Well, yes, that is a good idea,” I said, smiling, as I don’t like to discourage employees who have the guts to come and talk to me in my office. “Could you put all that in writing and then I’ll give it some thought. I might have to run it via PR and Marketing too.”
Paul looked at me, surprised. Obviously he didn’t think I would be so enthusiastic.
“Yes,” I continued. “If you can show me an outline of the article, more or less what you would say, and then we can continue talking.”
Now, you would think that this was a small request on Paul’s part, a little thing that wouldn’t require any further thinking or planning. But I, with all my years of experience in a multinational, know that this is not the case. This could turn out into a PR disaster. If we didn’t check the content, we’d be exposing ourselves to being scrutinized by the public eye. And Paul clearly didn’t know what information could and couldn’t be shared outside our glass walls.
I couldn’t sleep that night. Well, it took me five minutes to doze off, but that’s five minutes longer than normal, so I knew something was wrong.
The following day, I came into the office and went straight to Paul’s desk. I asked Daphne, who sits next to Paul, to stand up so that I could use her chair – you see, I wanted to remove all kinds of signals that I was in charge, and standing over Paul would signal that I had more power. I wanted this to be a conversation peer-peer. (I once read that this is quite effective in keeping people engaged at work.)
“Paul, I’ve been thinking, I really don’t have the time to help you with your piece.”
“Oh, that’s ok, it was a long shot, I know you’re busy.”
“And you see, Paul, because I am so busy, I’m not going to be able to read through your article before you publish it.”
Paul was speechless. He probably wasn’t used to this warm manner of exerting authority.
“So can you make sure you don’t mention XXXX or feature anyone involved in the project?”
I’m not sure that Paul understood the nature of our work and how easy it is for the competition to find out our secrets. That’s why, in these cases, it’s important to take a blanket approach to these kind of requests. We need to know that our way of working is portrayed in a way that reflects our organisation’s values (transparency and balance, and putting the customer first, of course). And I just didn’t think that Paul would be able to do this.
What happened to Paul? Nothing, of course. He continued coming into work every day. He never mentioned his online magazine again, of course. I think, deep down, he understood why we had to be so careful with how we presented ourselves to the outside world – I never heard him share anything about his work or our company, ever again.
Please, don’t be like Leila.
But if you must, have a look at this other post, where she outlines How to Destroy Trust in Your Virtual Team.
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