Shut Up- You’re Helping the Customer!

The fact that Bob ignored a direct order to stop engaging in public dialog tells me more about him than it does about the company. I have clients in sectors where public discussion on certain topics engaged in by anyone under the corporate banner presents significant legal and regulatory liabilities, which Fortune 500s try to carefully manage. Bobs actions fit the profile of an ambitious junior employee diving in over his head to be “helpful”. Without knowing what the product was, or what kind of dialog Bob was engaging in, it’s premature to slam the company as a social media dinosaur. That’s not to say many F500 aren’t dinosaurs, but taking the one-sided point-of-view of someone who admitted he couldn’t follow an order doesn’t seem reasonable.

Gee, reminds me of working for the Roman Catholic church!

Maybe Bob should apply to be President-elect Obama’s Chief Technology Officer? Or at least part of the staff?

While Bob seemed to have some good ideas, the fact that he continued with these actions after being directly told not to would put him, in my non-lawyer opinion, of soon having a pink incentive to “explore new opportunities”. If you are going to work “the j-o-b” and take the paycheck you are ethically, if not legally, obligated to follow the company’s rules, no matter how ridiculous. If you cannot, or will not, then be honest and go somewhere else. This is one of the main reasons that I never went into the military and spent most of my career so far working for myself and my clients. Clients I understand (usually-I have “fired” a few that got too difficult) but managers-not so much. At least when I made a deal with a client there was no doubt, at least on my side, that everything was honest and above-board.

Wow – what a fascinating case-study, real-time. This is exactly why I started the blog (linked to my nom de plume above). I too am struggling with some of these issues.

http://oxidation.wordpress.com

While I have not yet been “ordered” to stop blogging (at another, unnamed, site), I have faced some hurtful, threatening feedback.

A couple of posts above sparked some thoughts in my head:

@Cynthia Closkey is absolutely right (as were others making the same point). Employees have a duty to respond to authority, whether they like it or not. If the educational process fails, the employee needs to find other outlets for their vision and creativity. That may be an off-duty hobby or another employer/career field.

@Katybeth spoke great words of wisdom from the lessons learned as a mystery shopper. “The company didn’t want to hear anything negative, even if it cost them money and customers.”

In my few short years on this planet, 50, I’ve learned a few things. And though I know this lesson intellectually, my idealism and morality, not to mention my pathological need to do the right thing, won’t let me stop pointing out that the emperor is naked!

This is going to give me some pause as I seek to survive the last 15+ years of my working years, and still find financial security for my family.

I hope that “Bob,” obviously reading this conversation, will stop disobeying his superior’s direction. You can’t fight “the law.” The law always wins – or you get shot in the crossfire.

On the other hand, Bob, you are right to pursue this. But let it go until you can find an employer who values your strengths.

Recently a physician friend of mine wanted to start a new kind of medical clinic. One that didn’t just prescribe medications and rush people out the door. He wanted to incorporate holistic practices that would deal with the social, emotional, and spiritual, as well as the medical/physical needs.

I recommended that he start a social network that would allow people to interact online, as well as offline, in his office. After hours of phone conversations, he rejected the prototype I created on Ning, and put up a site that included a moderated forum.

For lack of options, I pulled out of the project. I choose my new projects carefully, and it was obvious we weren’t in alignment.

Bob is clearly not in alignment with his superiors. Given that we can’t change others, only ourselves, there are two options:

1) submit to authority
2) find other employment

You can tell by the comments to this article who has worked for large companies and who has not. Large companies will eventually get on board with SM, but in the meantime, employees need to work within their organization’s structure. We have no idea how qualified Bob was to be interacting with customers or how well he represented the company.

If Bob wants to have a job that provides this type of contact with customers, he should go find one. However, I do not assume that he is a hero for pursuing the course of action described in this post. He works within an organization and he needs to respect the direction that he is given by his boss or face the consequences.

Large organizations would be well served to address these issues by giving clear responsibility to individual(s) they trust to create, manage and maintain an SM strategy. They’ll get there in their own large, lumbering way. It reminds me of Internet Strategies not that long ago.

Hey Chris — Back in the day, a lot of companies had strict limits about who interacted with customers and who didn’t –and this predates social media. Remember, bulletin boards and listservs are nothing new. It was sad then and it is sad now but these companies have made these decisions for better or worse (mostly worse but in some cases there is a good reason.) You can try to change the policy or you can change your employer. Meanwhile, from a marketing/communications POV, I stand by my advice from the New Marketing Summit — communicators, let go. Empower your team and your partners to take your messages to the market. Give them the resources they need to do that in a consistent and effective manner and everyone wins.

Hey Chris — Back in the day, a lot of companies had strict limits about who interacted with customers and who didn’t –and this predates social media. Remember, bulletin boards and listservs are nothing new. It was sad then and it is sad now but these companies have made these decisions for better or worse (mostly worse but in some cases there is a good reason.) You can try to change the policy or you can change your employer. Meanwhile, from a marketing/communications POV, I stand by my advice from the New Marketing Summit — communicators, let go. Empower your team and your partners to take your messages to the market. Give them the resources they need to do that in a consistent and effective manner and everyone wins.

As Tim Walker commented above, Bob should share this blog post with his social media tribe of customers.

Let the tribe decide what to do with their leader. My guess is the tribe will shift wherever Bob shifts.

Poor Bob; to be so enthusiastic about your company and product, to be savvy with social media and know in your heart that what you’re doing is ultimately of benefit to your employer, but then to not have that employer’s backing is unfortunate. However, I don’t think any employee should, on their own, make their employer’s communication strategies for them and act on them without knowing the ramifications. Should companies be adopting and using social media…that isn’t even a question anymore. But until they do, employees shouldn’t make executive decisions that aren’t theirs to make. There really are legal consequences…information put online stays online. I hope Bob, who showed awesome initiative, finds a company that rewards such initiative. I hope Bob will communicate his ideas with his employer before acting on them independently. Or, Bob should start his own business.

I really am loving this conversation…

I didn’t really weigh in on it intelligently so much as emotionally.

One of the things I’m noticing is that there are those who understand the concept of the Groundswell and those who have yet to be exposed to it.

Yes, the company can fire Bob over this – what they don’t understand is that they can’t stop their customers from continuing to discuss their company on the internet. Getting rid of someone who is trying to improve the company’s response to customers will send a message to those people that this company is not listening to them nor does it have a plan to engage them in dialog.

Sadly, there’s still a pervasive “well this is the way things have always been done” attitude that is very strong at larger corporations. The ones that are ‘getting’ that business as usual is no longer an option will thrive. The ones that keep thinking that just saying “don’t do that” will stop the online conversation about them won’t.

Bob probably shouldn’t have disobeyed a “direct order” but that’s also the point he should’ve started looking for a company that would benefit from his desire to help… after all, the company he works for clearly doesn’t get how much letting him go will contribute to a negative ripple in the groundswell.

Ah well.

Unfortunate many companies take this type of stand against new media and actually talking with consumers. I wonder if Bob took more of an educational standpoint and sat down with both managers and talked to them and explained the medium and how it could benefit the company and the new campaign, would they have reacted differently.

I want to comment on some of the criticism of Bob here..

One of the biggest challenges business face in our modern age is how you manage change.. An answer to this is to empower your employes.. Management, as we inherit it, is to often based on ideas that.. it’s all about this kind of command and control of making x happen by applying why force.. like its all this big mechanical system.. this system of managing things.. means that the folks doing the command and control have multiple layers between them an the market place.. between them and whatever it is that are the external market forces that they are operating in.. which is a big problem if you’re dealing with a situation that’s changing fast..

So you need to empower your employees to take initiative. Now we don’t know that much of the larger context of Bob’s plight in the company.. but it doesn’t sound like they treated Bob terribly well. Did they bother to talk to him about what he thought he was doing, why he thought he was bringing value to the company? Or did they just shut him down without even even bothering to be open to what where he was coming from?

Yeah.. I think the right course of action for Bob would be to have tried to educate people in the company about what he was up to.. No question about that..

I also think.. there’s certainly best ways of doing social media.. and some of the criticisms of Bob is.. sorta not understanding that part of the equation. I mean there are often issues to be cognizant of.. as far as what you can talk about.. and blah blah blah, that has to do with the particulars of your company.. but that doesn’t mean there’s no roll for this kind of communications…

My feeling about the future of business.. social media needs to be incorporated into businesses DNA.. There are huge changes that need to be made if you want to stay competitive..

If we look at Bob from the stand point of… someone not doing what “he was supposed to be doing,” I think that’s a kind of command and control centric view point.. I think.. well.. what are your values? It’s not a black and white world.. its not one value at the expense of all else.. I think ultimately you have a kind of hierarchy of values… We don’t really have enough to go on to evaluate how Bob relates to these values…

Values… and there hierarchies is a complex subject though… I think there’s a way we can look at one person and say “bad person” and another as “good person” but I think this often obscures certain things.. like isn’t Bob, in a certain sense, an expression of certain systemic forces that are forcing change at Bob’s company? And perhaps the people making Bob’s life difficult is the same sorta thing.. If you view it from this point of view.. I think Bob is a hero in so far as he is a force working for the companies survival..

I mean basically

I would not want Bob as an employee. As an employee, you don’t have the right to obey only those orders that you feel make sense. If someone higher up the food chain tells you to do something, you do it or you quit. Willful disobedience demands a serious response.

I’m all for companies engaging customers online. But not all companies agree — and that’s their prerogative.

Off and on over the past 10 years I’ve had a fair amount of experience with company reps engaging social media (large, active forums). Sometimes it was on their own time, but more often than not it was approved by corporate. Though I agree in theory that the interaction could be positive, if I were pressed I’d have to say that the usual outcome, from the company’s perspective, ended either blandly neutral, branded as FUD, or blisteringly negative. In the cases where the interaction remained on a positive note, the positive aspects seemed to be attributed to, and remained with, the individual rep and wasn’t automatically transferred to the company.

What the social media proponents fail to point out when they say that companies should engage their customers is that some of these customers are incredibly sharp individuals. Some may even be competitors. To think that entering a forum related to your company or its products/services is going to even remotely resemble a friendly marketing session is sheer folly.

@rcjordan You bring up and interesting point. “some of these customers are incredibly sharp individuals. Some may even be competitors.” On the internet, nobody really, really knows you are a dog. (well except me.. I AM a dog)

@Chip neither would I, unless it was Bob’s job to engage the customer… “going rogue” didn’t work for Sarah either :-)

@Ari Quit reading Seth Godin without really reading Seth Godin. Bob has no “tribe” He has customers of a high-end product that his company paid a lot of money to get. They will stick with the brand, not Bob. Really.

@paisley as few as four years ago, my firm’s insurance premiums were incredibly high because we did “Internet work” and “took credit cards over the Internet.” On in the last few when folks understood the real risk of us developing web-based software did rates come down dramatically. It’s a real concern for larger companies who are a bigger target.

Bob really needs to risk his own skin and not his employer’s. If he feels that strongly about social networking, strike out on his own or get another job where that is what he does. Otherwise, follow the Golden Rule– he who has the gold makes the rules. For better or worse.

I think Bob should polish up his resume. His days at this company are numbered.

If he does nothing he’ll likely end up getting fired or frustrated and quit. And having changed jobs a number of times myself I’ve seen that it is much easier to get a job when you have a job.

Besides Bob should look for a company that is more inline with his passion and beliefs. He’ll be happier there and more productive. Everyone wins if he moves on.

As an employee, he should have followed the manager’s instructions, whether or not he disagreed with them. The best path would have been to show the manager why what he was doing was a positive thing.

Is there more to this story, perchance? I would like to hear the company’s side of things, not just Bob’s. There are always two if not three sides to every story. Anyway…

When you work for a company you agree to abide by their policies, whatever they are. That’s the contract. Don’t like it, resign, end your contract and work somewhere you can do what you like.

If he was told by his manager not to engage then he should have ceased. For many companies, especially large corporations (particularly heavily regulated or publicly traded) there are clear guidelines as to what is and isn’t permitted and usually legal, financial compliance and reputational risks.

Everything has to be vetted by corporate communications – and usually there is reason. If they end up having to defend themselves in court it really shouldn’t be because of what an employee inadvertently said when bypassing proper communication channels.

When Bob ignored a direct instruction from his Boss no less – whom I might add will probably be held with some responsibility for their employee actions – and chose to represent his company against his bosses wishes – he should have been prepared for the consequences.

I am all for encouraging Social Media in enterprises,but reaming companies out simply because they “don’t get it” or don’t jump on board and let their employees do any old thing or “don’t see things our way” doesn’t present our Social Media approach in the best possible light.

To win companies over you need to allay their fears and limitations (however silly and irrational we may perceive them to be) particularly now and understand the risks they face and try to mitigate them, if possible. And it may not be possible right now. It may be possible later when all parties discuss what’s at stake. Some companies are testing the waters and dedicate staff to doing so, others may not for a long while. Bob could probably be dismissed (depending on what his contract says… but even if he is not, he has lost trust and integrity which, not good if he wants to stay or be employed elsewhere.

@Ari – I think it is irresponsible to suggest that Bob take matters in his own hands. Perhaps I missed something; is he a partner or owner that might grant him that right? If not, he’d be it a load of legal hot water to go directly to the company customers.

Just because Bob shares a philosophy with which most here would agree doesn’t give him the right to handle it any way he wishes. His heart (and head) is in the right spot; his job is at the wrong company.

As someone who owns my own company, yet also has almost 15 years background in corporate as well, I’d like to offer “both sides”, if I may?

1. Scenario One. Bob is connecting with customers and enhancing the perception of his employers (me) at the same time. This (as a boss) should be encouraged. I f I have someone that “gets” social media willing to engage my clients and build brand loyalty, let me be the first to say “Keep doing what you’re doing!”

2. Scenario Two. Bob is connecting with customers and enhancing the perception of his employers (me) at the same time. This (as a boss) should be encouraged.

Where’s the problem?

The lesson from this should be that every company, regardless of whether it has a formal social media marketing campaign or not, needs to have clear guidelines on employees communicating via blogs and social networks etc.

I’d suggest somewhere like the BBC guidelines to be a good start.

This is just one example from a company which doubtless has 100 other employees chatting happily on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc.

As I recently said in answer to the question ‘Should a brand use social media?’, it’s a pointless question, because your employees and customers already are.

Bob didn’t do anything wrong!

Except believe in and care for the company he worked for so much that he wanted to put his skills to work for the company.

Bob’s boss and the tattle tail who was trying to score brownie points should read Seth Godins “Tribes” Seth speaks about this sort of mentality specifically.

If I were Bob I’d tell the Boss and the HR what to do, where to go, and then go home and blog it.