Sexual Harassment by SMS Text

Yet another case study of stupid, thoughtless, unwanted and offensive behaviour by a male boss toward a female subordinate. And this time the rocket scientist boss conducted his harassment by 100% traceable text messages!

Brief discussion on Newstalk 106 here:

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Article on the specific case here.

Legal discrimination?

Sometimes Justice takes a peek

I had a very interesting communication from a client in the financial services sector recently. He was being headhunted by a bank and when it came to filling in the online application form, he encountered some ... interesting ... areas of questioning.

At the top of the form, it stated that due to requirements from the country's Financial Services Regulator, the bank were required to ascertain a potential employee's reputation, integrity and veracity [which last, I would have said, is a subset of the second, but then I'm a nit-picker]. To this end, all applicants are required to fill in a very lengthy form including:

• Are you a member of a professional body covered by the Regulator?

• Have you ever been rapped on the knuckles by said regulator?

• Have you ever been more than rapped on the knuckles (expelled, suspended, been to court, fined, or similarly disciplined by said regulator?

• Been arrested or found guilty of theft, fraud embezzlement ... and a bunch of other words meaning the same thing?

• Gone bankrupt?

• Been disqualified as a Director?

Okay, so far so good. All of that seems to be very much under the purview of the Regulator and makes sense in that light. Then they got into a bunch of personal, I-am-who-I-say-I-am details:

• Date of birth
• Nationality
• Marital status (including 'Other' and 'Please give details')
• Date of marriage
• Spouse's name and date of birth
• Children's names and dates of birth

Hmmm - Now I understand that details vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but I'm not allowed ask any of those questions of candidates during an interview. Once they are hired, sure - they have to fill in those sorts of details for insurance and medical & dental benefit purposes; but prior to welcoming them on board? Those questions could very readily be construed as discriminatory ...

Then the form got ... interesting ... and under a section labelled "Equal Opportunity" there were the following mandatory sections:

• Gender
• Ethnic grouping (including 'Other' and 'Please give details')
• Age range
• Sexual orientation - with a looong dropdown menu, including 'Other' and 'Please give details'
• Beliefs - with a very long dropdown menu, including 'Other' and 'Please give details' [I remember being somewhat irritated by that question when I filled in my college registration all those years ago. I really couldn't see how this was any of their business, so I entered "Lapsed Druid"]
  

Bizarrely, there was a box on the form for candidates to copy and paste in their Curriculum Vitae and the box had the very specific instruction that all age and chronological details were to be removed from the CV. There was even a check box to confirm that the applicant had done this. So, I take it that this is to reassure the applicant that interviewers within the company will only see the sterlised CV and not all the other highly sensitive personal data ...

I have applied to the Regulatory Authority in that country to see just how many of these questions are actually required to be answered by applicants at this first stage of the selection process and how many this bank decided to include off their own bat. I'm asking because I am familiar with the Equality legislation of that country and many of these questions run directly contrary to it.

I could understand if an individual was applying to work in the Intelligence Services as a spy. Deep knowledge of their belief system, sexual orientation and other predilections would be very important. Likewise if the individual had a compromising financial past that could be used to blackmail him/her while in the service of the government. But this is a private sector bank - and I'm fairly confident that those questions are illegal.

Any similar experiences or thoughts you'd like to share on this one?

News? Ha!

Alisa Miller with a superb four minutes on what is wrong with the news we see, hear and read every day.

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Great use of simple comparative graphics and statistics. A real treat.

Related posts:
News?
No news is the norm

HP EDS Merger

So HP and EDS may be merging.

Well whoo ... pee ... doo ....

Bear with me as I dislocate my own jaw so gargantuan is my yawn in response to this piece of 'news.' What are they going to call it? For my money, I think they should drop all the previous initials but one and call the new company BS.

When are we going to learn? Modern mergers on this scale accomplish nothing. No. Thing. Well that's not strictly true. As far as their proponents are concerned, mega-mergers do accomplish two very important things:

Misdirection
A whole lot of misdirection. The kind of misdirection that would put David Copperfield to shame. You want to move the Statue of Liberty? No problem, just get two publicly listed companies to start talking about a merger and the whole world will gawp endlessly at their posturing and devour every word their spin doctors release.

The corporations concerned can engage in a whole lot of busy work in advance of the merger, then oodles of "bedding down" and "integration" in the aftermath. Meanwhile the analyst community and the financial pundits can write acres of column inches on the topic. Then, when nothing much is happening once the merger is completed and they can't talk about bedding down any more, the corporation can start talking about how they are now in a "new paradigm" so comparing what went before with what's happening now isn't really valid and ... ooh! Look over there! An attractive acquisition target with a disruptive technology!

"This isn't the shareholder value you're looking for"

An opportunity to intone
The problem is, Henry Ford and Peter Drucker did all the really good quotes. Ages ago. And the current crop of CEOs so desperately want to be remembered in a similar light and a merger means you get to intone big, swirling, passionate phrases with a straight face. Oh Lord, the hyperbole around these things! Remember this beaut?

"This is not just about big business. This is not just about money … This is about making a better world for people."

Thus spake Gerald Levin in January 2000, as Time-Warner and AOL came together with all the elegance of fornicating manatees. Tom Peters spotted this quote from Time four years later:

"Blockbuster mergers tend to be duds for stockholders of the acquiring company. In 7 of 9 mergers valued at more than $50 billion, the acquirer’s share price was down an average of 46% from pre-merger levels …" [Emphasis mine. Oh! And in the case of Time-Warner/AOL, shareholders had taken a bath on almost 80% of their value since Mr Levin et al tried to make the world a better place. 80%? That's quite a bath!]

Oops!

Thag the M&A specialist
Long-time, long-suffering, readers of mine will know that I love to bring situations back to the caves for a reality check. Imagine what would have happened to Mr Levin had he proposed merging with the the tribe from the cave next door to streamline and optimise their hunting efforts. I'm sure he would have made a compelling case. No doubt primitive PowerPoint would have been employed in the form of cave painting. And no doubt, his tribe would have gone along with it. With what net result? 80% less wildebeest killed by the combined efforts of the two tribes hunters? I know what would have happened to Mr Levin in a 'primitive' cave society if he produced that outcome - and deservedly so.

So what's the big idea here? Cui bono? Consumers? Shareholders? Employees? The wider community? A better world? Or maybe it's just a handful of senior executives, making busy work for themselves for a couple of years because they've run out of ideas. Forgive me if I'm missing a major benefit to humankind here, but I just see this as puerile, chest-thumping, imitative, noise. It matters about as much as a two year-old banging a saucepan with a spoon. And it should be given about that much attention.

In the meantime, where's the Statue of Liberty [and my pension fund] gone?

Meaningful work

Interesting chat with Noreen Fitzpatrick of the Work Life Balance Network on the Orla Barry show on Newstalk 106 arising from a article by Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times - does your work have meaning for you?

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Lucy's very thought-provoking article is here.

Stuff that makes me happy 3

Bad writing. Really bad writing.

It makes my skin crawl, but somehow, it makes me happy.

When I was reading the Da Vinci Code on holidays a few years ago, I was positively glowing with delight at the sublime awfulness of Brown's dialogue and the clumsiness of his exposition. [I loved Michael York's Basil Exposition character in the Austin Powers movies] I recently heard a radio review of the film PS I Love You in which the reviewer, who had obviously hated the book, gleefully informed her audience that the movie's woeful dialogue and pitiful characterisation demonstrated just how baaad a writer Ms Ahern is. I also loved Harrison Ford's remark to George Lucas regarding his stinky dialogue: "Just 'cos you can write it George, doesn't mean I can say it!"

As a child, I didn't realise that the typing beagle up on the kennel was not the originator of the wonderful, "It was a dark and stormy night ..." line. My favourite one from the Peanuts strip was:

It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up ...

Which, when compared to the Bulwer-Lytton's original:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

doesn't seem half bad. At least Snoopy's version has a bit of action! The University of San Jose sponsors a Bulwer-Lytton contest each year. Some entries that caught my eye:

• With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description.

• Just beyond the Narrows the river widens.

• Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store.

• As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber he would never hear the end of it.

• The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!'
  

For the strong of stomach, there's plenty more where that came from here.

Bonus point for anyone who can tell me the origin one of my all-time heroic pieces of purple prose:

"[The peach satin robe] ...slid to the tile floor with a sensuous whisper and Dare shuddered to see her thus naked before her."

Dealing with rejection

Not that anyone seems to bother sending out rejection letters these days ...

But if you do get one, you could consider trying Mr Moran's approach to handling it.

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From the vaults - Flipcharts

I posted some thoughts on using Flipcharts on this blog back in November 2006 - partially as an excuse to share with you some superb material from a young man called Demetri Martin. I linked, as we all so often do, to a piece on YouTube, but got a helpful comment a few months later from Mohit telling me that the vid I had been using was gone. So I did what any Little Red Hen would do and posted the material up on YouTube myself. I didn't include any keywords on it, nor even Mr Martin's name; as I was only posting it to illustrate how cleverly and strongly the much-maligned Flipchart could be utilised with just a bit of thought and creativity.

In nine months, it's had 1.2 million hits, 3,600 ratings, and over a thousand people have commented on it. You never can tell what is going to attract people's attention, can you?

Flipcharts - Some More Thoughts

• Make sure the Flipchart is placed under a strong light for maximum visibility.

• Use markers thick enough for visibility at the back of the room you are in. Carry your own, in several thicknesses.

• Fill the page! Your overriding concern should be impact, not the rainforests. Don't quarter up the page unless you are showing a matrix. Draw it big on four separate pages and spread them out on the walls. For once in your life, behave as though you hate trees ...

• Bring Blu-Tak or similar, so you can festoon the walls with the key ideas that come out of the discussion.
  

• Use colour and establish your protocols in this regard early in your talk - red for good, blue for bad, green for take note, and so forth ... Tie this in with the colour protocol you use in your PowerPoints and/or handouts.

• From an audience perspective, flipcharts = spontaneity, particularly if your moving over to the flipchart means getting a break from PowerPoint. Capitalise upon that feeling of spontaneity in the way in which you use that large pad of paper.
  

• Make it interactive, get your audience to shout out ideas, finish your sentences or fill in the blanks. Bring an audience member up to do a drawing or fill in a chart. Draw an outline of someone's head and shoulders and let that outline represent senior management, or your most important customer, or a target ...
  

• Pictures or words? Capture ideas and suggestions from the audience with words. Espouse ONE BIG IDEA that you need them to take away in words. Otherwise, use imagery - simple charts, matrices, crude drawings and analogies. If you are not a confident doodler [like me] see below.
  

• Use prepared materials [pre-prepared?] on the flipchart. Bring a pad of your own with you, or sketch in your thoughts in light pencil in advance of the session. That way, you are not worried about content, or spacing and layout issues and you can focus on the audience and their energy.

• Borrow liberally. If you have seen a good way of presenting an idea using this medium, borrow it, adapt it, use it. Sure, over a million people have seen this clip of Demetri on YouTube, but that leaves 5,999,000,000 on planet Earth who haven't, so try the glass of beer trick, or the I-don't-believe-it face.

• Body language, body language, body language. If you are writing on a flipchart, it can tend to put your back to your audience quite a bit. Hence minimal words. Hence simple visual ideas that you can pop up there in a matter of seconds. Hence pencil-sketched-in prepared materials.
  

• Try this - if you are right-handed and stand to the left of the flipchart, you will have to turn your back on your audience as you right. If you stand on the right of the flipchart, you can still draw/write on the pad, but you keep your body facing the audience as you do so:
  

Photo credit: Tilwe

My original post, with a bonus clip of more usage of the Large Pad by the excellent Mr. Martin, is here.

Public speaking interview

The Prime Minister of Ireland conducted a swansong visit to the United States this week and was granted the honour of addressing a joint session of Congress. I was asked to come on Ireland's national broadcaster to talk about public speaking in advance of Mr Ahern's address.

Fortunately, this wasn't a political show - rather we ended up talking about what a bugbear public speaking is for many people and some preliminary thoughts on why, and what to do about it.

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Secretary abuse

"And get me the manuscript of the as-yet unpublished Harry Potter book for the twins"

We've seen it on Ugly Betty. We've seen it in The Devil Wears Prada. More venerable readers may remember seeing it in 9 to 5 in the days when Dolly Parton still looked [vaguely] human. I am, of course, referring to secretary abuse.

Picking up the dry cleaning and buying the Christmas presents? That's nothing! Try selecting an anniversary gift for the Boss' notoriously picky wife. Peeling an apple (!) because the boss doesn't like the taste of apple skins. Organising a Sweet Sixteen birthday party? Hmmmm:

• On the one hand, this is pointless, thoughtless behaviour on the part of the boss.
  

• On the other hand, the courts frown upon this kind of thing - particularly if it can be painted as demeaning (and it frequently is) or outside of the 'normal' duties and responsibilities of the person's role.

• On the other hand [my oh-so useful alien third hand] this behaviour is also pathetic. It evinces a kind of learned helplessness on the part of the boss when it comes to minor, real-world, activities and where it broaches, as it so often does, into the boss' family matters, it bespeaks a level of distance and disinterestedness that does not bode well.

A healthy bashing back and forth on this topic with the ever-cheerful Mr. Williams on Q102 resulted in a cascade of email and texts. We appear to have hit a nerve. More on this topic to come.

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Stunning presentation - Engineers & Cats

So sorry no bloggy - crazed week. By way of apology, and with a big hat tip to Evelyn and the hairy scary boys in the studio, may I humbly present:

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

Why can't all presentations be this good? Despite the dry, even dead-pan, delivery, the presenters convey lots of potentially valuable information in a very short timeframe, make it easily comprehensible, highly retainable and there's little chance of the audience tuning out in the course of the presentation.

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Plus I never knew how to measure a cat's aspect ratio before. How useful [and cool] is that!?

The only thing worse than being talked about ...

A singular honour and pleasure today to receive an email from G.L. Hoffman of What Would Dad Say? fame. Enclosed was a shiny new charter member Dig Your Job badge.

Now, as regular readers may have gathered, I have always tried to live up to Mel Brooks' immortal "We doan need no steenkeeng badges!" philosophy of life, but this is not one to ignore.

Thank you Mr. H..