policy Archives | Ian M Rountree

If you are a knowledge worker – whether a marketer, a programmer, a blogger, any other form of writer, a critic, a human resources professional, support personnel for a company, or even a cook – you have one purpose inextricably tied to all your public activities, on and off the web.

You are here to be awesome on your clients behalf.

Your better understanding of social media, traditional media, and the communicative web will help you be awesome. It’s really not that hard; You Cannot Suck. How you achieve this is where it gets complex – but it’s not complicated out of intention, it’s usually complicated because of lack of savvy and situational awareness.

Doing better work, in any position, requires that we recognize just how in-public our lives are, and get used to living that way – or making adjustments in our behavior to allow only what should be public to be public.

Awesomeness includes, but is not limited to:

Making positive comments on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and other social areas about your employer, your clients, and yourself.
Adding perspective where it can be helpful, through status updates, blog posts, and links to other helpful perspectives.
Helping people by providing information
Helping people by passing along useful tools
Making connections between people in your network, and others who can help
Not always being the most important person in the room
Allowing others to do what they do best
Recognizing awesomeness when you find it

… And just all around being a good, helpful person.

Awesomeness expressly forbids, for everyone:

Grumpiness
Stoicism
Self-deprecation
Self-abasement
Anger
Fear
Expressed angst
Passive aggression

… and all other forms of public nastiness you wouldn’t want to see on a first date (or a fiftieth).

If you are a knowledge worker tasked with communicating, you must acknowledge that;

… living in public is not for everyone.
… your best work can still be misinterpreted.
… your employers deserve your best at all times.
… your employers need to provide you with clarity of purpose and message.
… only you can set your own limits (awesomeness requires that they are not beyond your grasp).
… you must set goals which are achievable by your own level of awesomeness (which will, and should, grow over time).
… you should avoid promises on behalf of others without prior confirmation or consultation.

If you are an employer of knowledge workers, be aware:

Not everyone is capable of living in public.
Those not willing or capable of living in public will do better work when they are allowed their privacy.
Media savvy workers do better work – providing training is a good idea.
It’s bad form to make promises on behalf of others without prior confirmation or consultation.
People will make mistakes. To deal with mistakes, first educate, then punish, then eliminate – in that order.
Not all mistakes you perceive will be received as such by the public, or even the clients on behalf of whom your employees are being awesome.
Not all successes you perceive will be received as such by the public, or even by the clients on behalf of whom your employees are being awesome.

Social Media is constantly evolving.

As such, by the time this policy is published, it’ll already be outdated. So, a challenge. Write your own personal social media awesomeness policy. Keep it people-focused. Think about the human costs of your holistic publicity. Let your people – whether clients, employees, or employers – shine with awesomeness in the way that’s best for them to do so.

What would you add?

(Obligatory note; this is not a lawyer-approved document. It’s intended to make you think. Did it achieve its goal?)

When all reasonable expectation is removed from a prospect, behaving as if the expectation still existed is madness.

There’s a fundamental difference between privacy and lack of disclosure I think people need to get their heads around. Privacy intimates that the things you don’t want found, don’t get found. Or, if someone intentionally finds them out, that you have some form of recourse appropriate to their improper disclosure. Perfect example of this: Tiger Woods. It’s unfortunate that he felt he could send text messages to his mistresses over the years, because he was placing proof of his actions in their hands, and in the hands of his cellular service providers. That’s not breach of privacy, that’s disclosure. On the flip side, go ahead and try to figure out whether I like jam or peanut butter on my toast. If I don’t tell you, you won’t; that’s not privacy, that’s lack of disclosure.

If we neglect to send drunken college photos of ourselves to Facebook, are we protecting our privacy? Yes. But what about uploading the photos and then jacking up the privacy so high that your friends can barely find the pictures? Are you protecting your privacy then?

No. You’re being an idiot.

Not following me? Let me paint this another way. Let’s say you’re a big fan of downloading content. You BitTorrent every new movie as it comes out, every album, everything. You get so prolific with this, so involved in the community that you sign up for accounts with Demonoid and everyone else you can think of and go from being a participant to being a provider. You’re smart – you colocate on a server slice using proxies, never use your own name in context with your filesharing. But still, you do this, and you get sued into oblivion by the RIAA or somesuch. Did anonymity help you protect your privacy? Not a chance. Anonymity is useless online. Your actions as a net become visible by their nature as protected. It’s like a permanent Streisand Effect; you’re asking for exposure. Are you protecting your privacy by being anonymous? Maybe for a while, but the tools available mean this tactic is only as effective as your actions are ignorable. As soon as you breach the invisible line of big-fish-ness, you’re screwed.

And if you’re on the exposing side? Are you doing the courageous thing by outing those who have been stupid enough to lay themselves partially bare out of ignorance? Well, not likely. If it’s your job, there’s no courage involved here. If not, you’re just a bully. Granted, some people deserve it (read as, people who don’t even try to click the privacy boxes). But don’t confuse cutting insight with courage. Sharing your opinion is so possible it’s nearly mandatory at this point, so get the legs out from under your high horse and make sure what you’re doing is of real utility to people before you worry about how brave you are.

So why network at all, you ask? Because you get to meet new people. You expand your influence and business potential. You make more money, know more about everything, and expose yourself to varied input, thus becoming a bigger person than you could otherwise. We’re not yet in a space where shyness is punished, but it’s coming, trust me.

At the end of the day, you can’t rely on privacy policies, because those can chance without notice. You also can’t rely on your cloak and dagger anonymity, because tools exist that demolish this with rigid celerity. Instead, if you don’t want it repeated, don’t say it in the first place.