information policy – Searching Out Loud

The Botched Democracy Offensive in Philly

Biden’s case for democracy was too grouchy, partisan, tone deaf to Trump, and an underestimation of his own strengths.

“Know thy enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles,
you will never be defeated.

When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself,
your chances of winning or losing are equal.

If ignorant, both of your enemy and of yourself,
you are sure to be defeated in every battle.”

– Sun Tsu, The Art of War

Last week at Independence Hall I wasn’t expecting eloquence. I was hoping for a spirited defense of democracy from the Commander-in-Chief. But the speech lacked inspiration along with an effective understanding of his adversary.

It was especially painful to hear the focus-group tested applause lines against his opponent’s gift for authentic speech. The sense that his predecessor is incapable of reading a room through a teleprompter because his gut can process in real time. It’s uncanny how the former President can access the darkest recesses of our animal spirits with the slightest sneer of accusation.

The simple act of calling out Donald Trump puts President Biden at an immediate deficit. That’s how fast Trump can deflect a punch and tank the voice of reason.

Flashback to September 29, 2020 and the debate stage in Cleveland. 1.2 million ballots have been cast. Biden is scribbling some zingers outside the margins while Trump flaps his predatorial wings and pounces on the dead air of Biden’s hesitations. His facts are inventions and his opinions never stay in one place long enough to be his. But it’s all personal. From the constant interruptions to the name-calling, who could doubt the sincerity of his own self-regard? What could be more convincing than that?

Nothing changes after the shouting ends. There is no advantage in scorecarding the lies or slow-rolling the swamp hypocrisies. That fans more oxygen for feeding his bull-charging aggression. It certainly doesn’t come from wresting the national stage away with investigations and court rooms. His own insatiable preening for fame remains to be paraded at a time of his choosing.

All the more solemnity here for the moment two years later when Biden goes on the offense. It falls flat. His rejection of “MAGA Republicans” sounds canned, shrill, and yes, divisive. He comes out swinging with the Labor Day bravado of a machine boss. He manages a left hook at the inviting target. It lands nowhere and connects to no one.

Why?

The Speech That Missed Its Mark

First there was the defense of democratic ideals. Biden’s delivery was devoid of the semantic honesty of democratic-republic ideals. It may not be true majority-wins democracy. But it the actual audience Biden was trying to reach with his affirmation. It is the system worth defending.

The grandeur of a national address was undercut by the melting pot of deplorables Biden was inclined to frame: Our fellow American opposition. There were no bargains being struck, bargains being weighed, or channels cleared opened. Was this yet another “let’s-just-be-reasonable” overture from the political center/left? Was democracy-or-bust a white flag shot full of holes?

There was no middle ground when Obamacare passed the Senate in 2010 without a single GOP vote. There was no prior expectation of a public healthcare system, so “reasonable” was never on the table. And how did that work out for us? How did his opponents respond to Obama’s assertion that universal healthcare is the right thing to do? Did they propose a truce? Aahhh … nope. They called in the calvary.

A dozen red states rejected Medicaid expansion as if those federal funds were minted in Act Blue donations, and not Treasury greenbacks. In fact, the free and fair elections of 2010 and 2014 suggest otherwise. Democratic voters sat on their hands while the Tea Party seethed, the dark money flowed, and the Federalist Society played the long game.

Remember the midterm shellacking that elevated Mitch McConnell to Senate Majority leader? Biden’s memory is challenged in this way: McConnell’s obstruction strategy was the procedural expression of a status quo-rejecting red wave that made little distinction between its radical fringes and mainstream figures.

All this was but preamble. Elevator music. It was the trailer before the theatrical release of the main feature. Cue Trump’s step onto Golden Escalator for a rough and tumble ride into an America hellscape of black crime, brown illegals, freeloading Western allies, and unguarded borders. The other GOP candidates were soon swallowed, stage makeup and all, by the imposing pulpit-shaped mouth of America’s leading personal brand influencer.

Many Americans may harbor strong feelings about Biden’s Presidency – while remaining somewhat indifferent to the many himself. Trump, on the other hand, has developed a personal relationship with every voter. So strong, that many may have been non-voters in the Bush and Obama years. No one turns voters out quite like Trump.

No one’s making the case that there’s no point in voting since they’re all the same. The point may be obvious but it’s rarely acknowledged: Having a personal relationship with Donald Trump is not based on reverence or contempt of the former President. It just is.

– God’s wrecking ball?

-Dumpster fire in a suit?

Either way, two aspects of the Trump Presidency stand out:

Superpower: His ability to crowd reporters, arguments, and adversaries off the political stage is unprecedented. No neutral referee will dim the limelight on Trump’s facial highlights. Who invited them anyway? The cameras are his escorted guests. They gawk up this explosive spectacle. First his grievances. Now close-up on his rapid-fire condemnations, soaring above a thick, convulsing cloud of gaslighting. The monster truck of all debating strategies.

Achilles heel: His unfitness for the Presidency is only more true today than when the Electoral College rolled the dice in his favor six years ago. He had a full term to grow into the stature of the office and he diminished it. He went from being unqualified and ticked off, to clueless and livid, and ultimately, to a disengaged, chaotic, and ineffectual leader. He was by all accounts from competent members of his own branch, a colossal administrative failure.

The Speech Biden Should Have Made

Why Biden decided to call out Trump with no acknowledgement of his foe’s considerable strengths and weaknesses is unpardonable.

He could have played the greatest sucker punch known to the waging of all winning campaigns – the charm offensive. Once showing himself to be the more respectful, calmer, and reasonable of the two geriatric adults, Biden could play to his own strength, landing a blow where Trump is least equipped to counter-punch. Why? Because there is no defense for his record at the helm of a centralized government as its unitary executive. Unless… your goal is to do irreparable harm to that institution.

Here’s what Biden could have said:

Donald Trump is a reality TV star that used his run for office in 2016 to elevate his brand. His skillful use of broadcast and social media led to his unexpected win over Hillary Clinton. It was a victory that Mr. Trump himself did not see coming. During his time in office he continued to dominate headlines, talk rings around his opponents, and ran his White House much like his own business operations.
To this day he never quits. His tenacity is awesome. He remains a tireless fighter. For his own interests. Priority number one for our elected leaders are to enact policies and programs that help our fellow citizens. Priority number one for this guy isn’t pay forward. It’s payback. It’s retribution. It’s about settling scores with any elected official on either side who places the act of effective governing above personal loyalty to him.
81 million Americans expressed this through the power of the ballot. They understood that he was not interested in their healthcare, their safety, their roads, and their future. Policies and programs bored him to tears. Serving all Americans was off the table. A reality TV superbrand and influencer did what all showmen do. He put on a show. And I think we can all agree. It was a remarkable performance.
To this day, many of our citizens find Mr. Trump a dazzling performer. There are numerous platforms capable of hosting Mr. Trump and reinforcing the strong connection with his many followers. That arrangement, my fellow Americans, has nothing to do with running a country. And we would be well-advised for Mr. Trump to express his influence as a star entertainer, not in the conduct of an office he was never prepared for, or even interested in assuming.
Joseph R. Biden,
46th President of the United States

Could a more gifted orator still disarm Trump with some softer rhetoric? Railing public support against future fascist-like leaders may enlist arguments that can bypass pride-constrained men like Trump completely. Who knows? With some poise, and some pauses to anchor us, we could arrive at the obvious but unstated defense Biden was mounting:

I’m that guy. I’m that competent, boring head of a bureaucracy who can deliver us back to the cadences of stability. Not because the future is docile and predictable. Not because I even know what to say but because I know how to listen. I have the capacity to change minds, including my own. And the conflicts we face are not to be conquered but brokered by someone who understands when the government steps in and when it stands down.
This Political Moment

A more subtle defense of democracy could connect with some of those MAGA Republicans who reject Biden’s terms and choices, but share the same collective concern. The wrong track we’re on is a collision course. The winners have no use for losers. That’s the sound of one side vanquishing the other. We we needed to hear was a call for a renewed patriotism. It is not a campaign pledge.

They say that to know yourself and your enemy is the surest way to victory. But how many of us have the perspective-taking to do that work? How many of us have a studied and reflective understanding of what our opponents are trying to achieve? It’s hard to pull off. Especially when we’re always tuning into our own wants, needs, and the anxieties of having our buttons pushed.

Who has the mental capacity to hold opposable thoughts, let alone opposition desires that reflect their actual ambitions? It might be even harder than it looks. It’s only a 50/50 chance if we know ourselves and not our opponents. We’ve been living in 50/50 land for the balance of the 21st Century with claims on a leadership that feels as distant as any form of national unity.

These are not passing considerations. They’re defining and they are binding.

Polite Media Part III– The Reemergence of Corporate Social Networks

A Three Part Series on Reimagining Social Media as a Force for Employee Engagement and Organizational Cohesion

The Reckoning

The closing section addresses the transition of the corporate workplace from a security to a social model. Will the discretionary controls of a need-to-know policy be replaced by a more transparent one? Open access is required in the sharing and distribution of enterprise social networks. Do business and pleasure need further introductions? Can they shake hands on open networks within their own enterprises?

6. Left to Our Own Devices, Literally

There are many wrinkles in the emerging social formulas. It’s true that some of that lies in the gray zone between first-hand experience and the conformist pressures of affiliation. Some of it is flat-out trolling. All of it is distracting from the work priorities that support the operational and business success of the enterprise host.

What happens when the engagement becomes so pervasive, so ongoing, that it removes the employer as the cornerstone of employee experience? That doesn’t mean people confuse posting on the network with their real jobs. It means they expect the crowd sourcing to produce the resolutions they seek whenever novelties are introduced into their problem-solving.

Will they complain about the answers they’re getting only to condemn the system that offers them? That’s not as farfetched as it sounds. How many of our new hires are sold through the onboarding screen a set of expectations for how to handle all the social tools, information sources, and data resources they’ve been provided? In most enterprises, that’s not an HR-brokered conversation.

In a prepandemic world we were told to show-up. Whether our appearances added value or sparked discussion was not the trigger here. The focus was reserved for our absences not escaping the notice of supervisors. The doghouse as limelight. In a social-mediated workplace we now have the news menus of staff meetings with the option of using this same medium to engage with our peers.

Implicit in this dialog is the intimacy and trust required for active listening and inclusive participation. We’re seeing these trust factors play out in groups that can’t be easily defined as communities of interest or practice. They are both. They’re professional in their approach to problem-solving and information sourcing. They also pride themselves in personable contributions of their welcoming and approachable members.

Ultimately there is a golden rule of social media that doesn’t just bear repeating. It embodies any communication or failure to communicate across a screen conferred by mutual acceptance of network membership. If you are personally offended or upset by a post to your feed, respond to the flawed process, the underlying conditions … the issue at-hand. NOT to the character of the person sending it.

7. Permission Statements

Nothing tests the boundaries of a distributed workforce more transparently than enterprise social networking, a.k.a. Corporate Facebook. Turns out the protection of an employer-based firewall is not just a safe zone for selfies but a sanctuary for discourse. Turns out that working for the same outfit remotely transcends the traditional barriers posed by office politics, territorial skirmishes, and most importantly, network security — that Achilles heel of all organizational networks.

Permissions management is the key chain of network security. It is the access controls behind every server, application, and file folder, (land and cloud). However, in their zeal to protect, the network security folks took their eyes off one basic consideration. It’s one thing to tackle internet-launched security threats. It’s another thing to keep them so guarded that they’re not put to actual use.

For instance, in the case of enterprise networking, it turns out that the opportunity for personal branding exceeds the risk of identity theft. Oh wait. That’s not on me. That’s our firewall which handles malicious attacks. How is it then that a sometime knowledge worker has evolved into a full-time knowledge in-mate? Today’s intranet contains a virtual prison yard of electronic directories, lists, and libraries in perpetual lock-down. These are the underlying conditions that contribute to large-scale organizational IT stumbles such as…

- Knowledge Gaps: Not knowing what we know,
- Information Silos: Losing track of who would know,
- And back by popular demand,
- Flustered Users: Wondering of it’s just me (or did a decade of IT changes land on my screen before arrival of the next Covid variant)?

8. Promises Kept

Outside of work, our consumer selves were never given the chance to opt-out of one-way social networks that surveil every step in our digital lives. The culprit turns out to be network security protocols; specifically, the notion that the employee relationship to corporate information exists on a need-to-know basis. If it’s not essential to the job, it’s not available to the user.

This policy runs counter to most of employees in pursuit of most information. We’ll call this the like-to-find-out policy. Those are the conditions knowledge workers find themselves. This is true in making informed decisions and on finding authoritative answers. It’s evident in the service of our most soaring aspirations and most routine of tasks.

We’ve all heard the familiar denunciations:

- Hide: That’s hoarding!
- Go seek: That’s one crap load of search results!
- Still seeking: That person’s no longer here to let me in!

This time lost chasing access-resistant corporate assets pales in relation to the larger loss of trust that happens when you don’t see what I see. How can you and I be on the same page when clearly we’re not accessing the same app, function, image, or file on our screens.

There simply is no justification for need-to-know access in a post-pandemic world espousing transparency, equity, and the full participation of co-located, remote, and hybrid teams. Enterprise social networking platforms like Yammer, Slack, and Zimbra channel news feeds on an intended want-to-find-out basis. When governed and managed effectively, they enable self-organizing groups to collaborate across the familiar silos of departments, lines of business, and regions.

More importantly, their openness and vibrancy parade an undeniable affirmation that this is a welcoming workplace. Not with its basis in one big unified corporate family but an unforced reflection of a workplace containing the voices of its workers, managers, and executives. This is a new chapter with an established roadmap: A return to the pre-firewall promise of social media.

Corporate enterprises are served well to put as much thought into building their communities as they spend dollars on buttressing their fortresses. It’s that kind of thinking which will retain and attract the best talent in the post pandemic culture to come.

Polite Media Part II– The Reemergence of Corporate Social Networks

A Three Part Series on Reimagining Social Media as a Force for Employee Engagement and Organizational Cohesion

PART II: Employee Engagement Finds its Voice

Part two of our three part series on workplace-based social media addresses the use cases and tangible benefits of its adoption. Key to that success are the underlying trust factors. It’s this sense of belonging that enable participants to contribute in both their work roles and as members within these communities. Employee retention tops all success factors.

A Three Part Series on the Reimaging of Social Media as a Force for Employee Engagement and Organizational Cohesion — A camera on the meeting screen is now a seat at the table. (c) yektafurniture-com

3. Scaling the Firewalls

Before the pandemic, the choice was simply toe the line or leave. There was no shared social history that lived outside the data fortress of the corporate firewall. Anyone attempting to step outside it was greeted with the same studied ferocity as those greeting the hacker-invaders attempting to break-in. This false equivalency criminalized the notion that a corporation be held externally accountable for its own internal actions.

There still is no safe public harbor for the trading of these untold white collar war stories. A half-century of employment laws and workforce reductions are not to reverse course in deference to the opening of our local chapter of corporate Facebook. In fact, management’s legal stranglehold on corporate labor is one of the galvanizing forces for instilling civility and cooperation in ways completely alien and largely absent from advertiser-driven social media.

In fact enterprise social networking is a valuable opportunity to reimagine the social media conversation. Shedding the conflict-seeking grandstanding of the agitator is both good for bonding and the bottom-line. Realizing the limitations of social media for resolving disputes is another part of that rethinking. Locking horns on screen is another reason to close potentially explosive and incendiary posts so that cooler heads intervene, arriving at an “offline” resolution.

Finally, the toxic mingling of obsessive behavior and competitive bargaining is another regrettable piece of recent social media experience. Its removal is supported by the need for greater cross-enterprise cooperation. No vanity-induced campaigns for the most winks or fewest unsubscribes.

Promoting a healthy participation rate includes generous helpings of member counts and feed interactions specific to the full potential of each group. No need to pit them against one another or in side-by-side comparisons. Remember, social metrics that support cooperation are not those sports league betting formulas used to measure external success.

4. Where Is the Conversation Headed?

What happens when the voice of the employee gets a seat at the table?

Whether limited to encryption keys or scripted for applause lines in town halls, all of these stories are siloed at the discretion of top management and their container-keepers. What you say here stays here. What you see here never happened if it didn’t go down as planned. What you hear later is a stilted reconstruction of rationales used to justify the impact of events no one saw coming.

So why rock the boat now? Who was ever naive enough to suggest that corporate playbooks are open secrets? That their appetites for growth and the conflicts of interest posed by this solitary purpose should be scrutinized and confronted? We call for investigations and expect our public institutions to weigh transparency against a fair return on shareholder capital. Why not the workers who generate those same results behind the muffled seclusion of the firewall?

So, who is our expert witness here? Who can speak to both power and the need for open discussion? If you want extra helpings of candor and credibility, don’t ask a current employee about the employer you’re considering. Ask a former employee. Someone with no skin in a game they once played to win under the same rules you’ll soon be learning.

They’re under no obligation to side-step the problem personalities, undue hardships, or plain dumb stuff that passes for standard protocol when: (1) the blame gets assigned, while (2) the underlying problems go unaddressed when your firsthand witness decides to jump ship.

Maybe in a pre-jaundiced view of social media, there would be a pooling of internal webs. This is a rally cry for collective action to scale the firewalls not high enough to hold us in.

Here are three such expressions of this initiative:

a) War Stories:

Develop success cases told around a communal fire through open discourse and courageous debate.

b) Knowledge Metrics:

Use enterprise social networking analytics to quantify the involvement of network communities in opportunity gains and cost containment, i.e. employee self service.

c) Process Guidance:

Provide support to energized and often less-seasoned colleagues who wish to leverage guidelines and sequential learning in the practicing and mastery of new skills.

5. We’re Waiting for the Desks to Settle

The long sidelined promise of social media is when it’s conducted within the decorum of what used to pass as polite society: Keep your politics, religion, and money separate from your daily discourse with others. From a First Amendment perspective, we’re treading into ulcer-inducing territory. It’s a form of personal discretion best left to AI-guided robots.

The argument goes like this.

In an age where visceral anger meets instant gratification, the noise of the mind has replaced the din of the public square. Therefore we humans are too authentic to suck it in a reserve of uncomplaining stoicism. In fact, emotional repression has never fallen out of favor inside the corporate realm. What’s more, a shared belief in a reliable pay check inspires the self-regulation missing from the toxic undersides of Facebook and Twitter. This politeness factor breeds big trust under a big tent, consisting of tens of thousands of employees. All with access to their colleagues’ posts, likes, and follows.

Perhaps the ultimate business value of a trusting social network is that the benefit of the doubt is extended to people we’re meeting on social media for the first time. These are no longer complete strangers. They’re former teammates of a current colleague. They’re newly hired to plug a hole we’re tired of fixing. They overheard that we’re onto something and it sounds a lot like the missing piece in their pursuit of what comes after the problem we’re resolving:

Degree of separation meets self-organizing teams.

This was always the promise of a network effects. Now it’s landing squarely in the post-pandemic wheelhouse of the distributed workforce. It’s a workforce that could just as easily move to some other enterprise should they not feel included in this one.

Next week: The Reckoning