If you’re not in the tech world, you probably have never heard of the Silicon Valley blog called TechCrunch. This is a widely-read and frequently-updated blog on happenings throughout the tech world. It is among the handful of top news sources for the tech world.
Bear with me as I set up a scenario. The details are important.
About a month ago, the site’s founder, Michael Arrington, wrote “An Apology To Our Readers” in which he said:
I received a phone call from someone I trust who told me that one of our interns had asked for compensation in exchange for a blog post. Specifically, this intern had allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup
After an investigation we determined that the allegation was true. In fact, on at least one other occasion this intern was almost certainly given a computer in exchange for a post.
The intern in question has admitted to some of the allegations, and has denied others. We suspended this person while we were sorting through exactly what happened. When it became clear yesterday that there was no question that this person had requested, and in one case taken, compensation for a post, the intern was terminated.
Arrington went on to delete all posts that had been written by the intern. Since the intern was underage, his name was originally withheld.
Daniel Brusilovsky by Flickr user magerleague
Later, though, the intern came clean in both a blog post and an interview with the startup-focused blog Mixergy. His name is Daniel Brusilovsky and he’s a 17 year old senior.
There is supposedly a company I was meeting with who offered me a MacBook Air in exchange for a post. That got escalated to TechCrunch and TechCruch wrote a post about it and terminated my employment with them.
Brusilovsky is in the news again, one month after the incident came to light, because another character has stepped forward — a business owner who says he was the one shaken down for a story.
Sam Odio, who is CEO of a tech startup called Divvyshot (and who is as far out of the Valley as you can imagine — in Charlottesville, VA [UPDATE -- that's 'cause he's at school at UVA, according to his web contact details]), has written in his own blog that, “Daniel Brusilovsky recently asked the founder of a startup for a Macbook Air and offered coverage in exchange. That founder was me, the CEO of Divvyshot. I came forward to Mike at TechCrunch.”
For a long time, Odio had remained silent. According to him, he was initially shaken down evidently sometime in December 2009:
Daniel came to me about Air while writing this article. He wrote the article in “real time” while interviewing me. It was in this context that he told me a friend of mine (a guy I went to college with) bought him an iMac in exchange for an article. Daniel told me that the “cover story” for the iMac was that he had received it as a gift for his birthday. I don’t know exactly what their agreement was as I wasn’t there.
Sam Odio, from his blog
When Daniel told me about the iMac, he mentioned that he needed a new laptop and that he would cover Divvyshot’s upcoming announcements in exchange for a new Macbook Air. I was stunned and responded with something like “Haha, we’ll talk about it later.” I hoped the issue would be dropped after that interview but over the coming weeks Daniel continued to bring up the Air.
My reaction was always “we can do this, but not right now.” That was a mistake – I should’ve just said no. Instead it took me over a week of struggling with the issue before coming forward to Mike at TechCrunch.
Some time after coming forward to Arrington (but while he had still not told anyone else), Odio came upon what he saw as a sympathetic piece by prominent tech journalist Jason Calacanis. The piece criticized Brusilovsky’s less than full-throated apology. Odio sent a note to Calacanis saying that he was the one who’d been shaken down.
Calacanis forwarded the email to acerbic commentator Loren Feldman who took the opportunity to exert pressure to get more of the story by Tweeting: “Divvyshot. You have 24 hrs.”
And so Odio wrote his piece on Monday, laying out his role.
I am sharing the details of this story because it is a potentially very, very fruitful study about ethical decision-making. There are right-wrong as well as right-right questions all over the place:
Brusilovsky: The way he tells it, he and Odio were sort of joking over IM and the language could have been construed as a shake down. (He’s also said Odio was the one who initiated the exchange.) If the “joking around” story is true, at what point do you put a stop to such conversation and inform your superiors?
Odio: His start up could be made or broken (or so he thought) by a story in techCrucnh. How do you have the courage to say “no” when it is necessary (instead of a week later)?
Arrington: Confronted with the evidence, but faced with denial, how do you respond? Do you divulge who is involved? How about the companies involved?
Calacanis: You are a high-profile person who gets an email out of the blue. What obligation do you have over whether you divulge it or not? And to whom?
Feldman: You care deeply about transparency. Where do you draw the line over who you “out?” Or is that even a relevant question?
My own take is that Brusilovsky was in the wrong, and I find his explanation of the story hard to swallow. But he is also a young person. While he should know better, he may not have developed his moral compass fully yet — so, while his punishment seems right, the court of public opinion might do well to give him a second chance. Don’t hate on him too hard, in other words.
But, in the chain after the initial shakedown, the questions become much more murky and interesting. Each player had a right-versus-right dilemma (as my friend Rush Kidder would say). You can make a case that they did the wrong thing or that they did the right thing.
This is worth studying as a public leader. Often, it is the wrongdoing of others that places us in our own ethical dilemmas.
Last night I gave a talk on ethics and leadership and I based a large section of it on a reading of Akio Toyoda’s Wall Street Journal op-ed piece apologizing for his company’s shortcomings and outlining plans to correct them. Published Tuesday, it is a good example of some of the concerns that face a public leader in trying to craft and lead an organization that not only talks ethics but also acts on its ethics.
'Working on machinery' by Flickr user NIOSH
Set aside, just for the moment, any anger you may feel that an op-ed statement is perhaps too little, too late. There are definitely ways in which some may say his statement falls short, as does the fact that he had to almost be shamed into attending congressional hearings on Toyota’s problems. Instead, let’s take his statement at face value, because, by doing so, we can draw lessons from it.
The story of how Toyota responds (is responding) to its catastrophic problems illustrates the three levels on which leadership must work if an organization is to act ethically. I have written about this before — I call it Heart, Head, and Hands. What I mean by that is intention, policy, and execution.
Intention: What is my mission and purpose? To what extent is the achievement of my goals more important than how I go about it? (Heart)
Policy: Are there systems, structures, and practices in place, and are they sufficient? Do they connect logically with my mission? Can they reasonably be expected to result in the fulfillment of my mission? (Head)
Execution: Am I carrying out my plans, in the way I intend? Am I following my own rules? (Hands)
So many organizations focus on the first two, and ignore the third — but that’s where things go wrong. All too often, when a problem comes to light, the organizational response is to create new policies and procedures. But many, many times the problem is that someone did not follow rules. Often, there’s one slip that gets tolerated, and then magnified over time. A leader needs to keep their eye firmly on all three levels.
Toyoda’s op-ed is remarkable because he admits that it is at the level of execution that things broke down, and he sees execution as the critical component in correcting the problems.
Sure, he points out that Toyota’s heart is in the right place, as he refers to the “Toyota Way.” And in multiple passages, he outlines specific plans about how he will be correcting the safety problems that are coming to light. That is, he’s got his head in order.
But he also talks about the hands. He admits that it wasn’t a matter of having wrong policies — but that Toyota did not execute its own plans properly. “I recognize that we must do better — much better — in responding to safety issues,” he writes. Elsewhere, he admits, “we didn’t listen as carefully as we should — or respond as quickly as we must” to problems. And, “we focused too narrowly on technical issues.”
I pledge that Toyota will set a new standard for transparency and speed of response on safety issues. We also will strive to lead on advanced safety and environmental technologies. And I will continue to personally visit our sales and manufacturing workplaces to reaffirm the Toyota commitment to excellent quality.
Here, too, is a good lesson — a lesson about execution. It takes three things from a leader to really push execution: Commitment to focus on execution over time; Accountability and a willingness to be held responsible for outcomes; and Courage to act on decision. Toyoda’s statements suggest he is thinking about all three factors.
I am not a Toyota owner, but I know many who see the current problems as a blip in an otherwise stellar record. Akio Toyoda’s statements suggest that this can truly be the case — so long as the execution really is there.
Specifically, he said: “My advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it, take it to the Toyota dealer because they believe they have the fix for it.”
The result was widespread pandemonium and criticism across the Internet. In a hyper-connected age, the episode raises some good points.
(Note that I am not talking about the new issue regarding the Prius braking system; this particular episode revolved around the accelerator issues for other vehicles.)
Certainly, it’s reasonable advice to tell someone to quit driving their car, too, but did the head of transportation for the nation have to say that? Toyota has a valid argument that this unfairly kicks them while they are already down. Why not, they might respond, just tell folks to go to the dealer, and omit the whole get-it-off-the-road part? In fact, they responded Toyota responded with a straightforward “they are too safe.”
And, LaHood quickly retracted his statement and said it was an “obvious misstatement.” But I think he may be overreacting to his initial overreaction. LaHood faced an honest dilemma: what to say? There is no perfect answer. My colleague Rush Kidder would point out that he faced a right-vs.right ethical dilemma.
On the one hand, LaHood needs to take a measured stance, not provoke pandemonium, and weigh his words carefully. But, on the other hand, as the chief transportation safety officer of the country, LaHood has an equally strong obligation to place safety first and if that means a company is upset then so be it.
The fact that one clause in one sentence bounced around the Internet so quickly adds intensity to the fundamental dilemma that any leader faces when faced with the need to advise citizens on what to do in difficult times.
The Dilemma Of Evaluation
On a smaller scale, yet no less intense sometimes, foundation and nonprofit leaders face similar dilemmas. We live and work in a world where evaluation and impact measurements are the rage. Grant seekers are under pressure to show potential funders that their programs actually do what is hoped and that they have a decent bang for the buck.
Funders, at the same time, are under pressure from their boards and from economic forces to ensure that they are spending their money wisely.
What this means is that the independent sector has become evaluation-happy. And, this places philanthropic leaders at a crossroads. They are learning a great deal about what works — and what does not work. The question is: What to do with negative reports?
On the one hand, it’s important to share information about effectiveness so that people don’t waste their time and money. And, certainly in the case of absolute failures that’s a no-brainer. But most evaluations are more nuanced and it is not entirely clear if an initiative absolutely failed or whether it just didn’t work as well as it could have.
Given that, and on the other hand, what right does a foundation leader have to spread around such ambiguous information, when such evaluations might dissuade other funders from donating and so hurt the organization in question? So there is a strong moral argument behind not sharing evaluation information. But this leaves possibly ineffective initiatives potentially running indefinitely. Because new funders need to start at square one with their own studies.
Resistance to evaluation is as natural an urge as any — who wants to examine their own possible failures? But there is also the broader question about what use is made of evaluation data. There is no simple answer to this, and I am not about to offer one here.
I will suggest that one thing that is needed is for individual leaders to be more willing to face their own fears. It is not a calamity if a charitable effort is not very effective.
Once, some time ago, I was asked to perform a self-evaluation on a fairly large initiative. The results of the study would, in part, determine if our grant would be renewed. It turned out that the evidence suggested our hard work was tilting against too strong a headwind. It’s effectiveness was questionable, especially on the expansive level we were considering.
My report was met with consternation from my organization as well as from our funder. It threw a monkey wrench into things. We recalibrated and ended up doing something different (and arguably more effective, though that too had ambiguous results). Not the end of the world. But — in the moment — all of us involved had a great deal of fear. Our reputations, our livelihoods, our organizations were at stake.
Still, expressing honesty takes a culture that supports it. While easily said, this can be a hard thing in practice.
Remember films such as Robin Hood or others that depict tax collectors for the landed gentry repeatedly riding into small villages demanding more money? In such films, often the final manifestation of unabashed moral corruption on the part of the landed oligarchy was the torching of dozens of little homes as flocks of extras flee, wailing into the night.
A while back, in mid-September 2008, many in the media observed the slow collapse of the financial networks in terms of “shoe-dropping.” “When will the other shoe drop?” At that point, being overly reactionary to the circumstances rising up around our ankles seemed to be ill-conceived. Now, with so many institutions in the midst of being propped up, set to receive another round of money, the tax payer still does not know, really, what happened to the first round. Other folks who have traditionally received government funds, like non-profits, can testify that government money usually comes with reporting so complicated that it requires a staff just to manage and track the data the receipt of funds requires.
"Alchemy - The Promised Cotton Candy" by Flickr user sflovestory
In this story, the American taxpayer is asked to observe a kind of moral largesse, a selfless humility these past few months. The taxpayer says nothing as his or her hard-earned money is handed out like giant pink puffs of cotton candy to an industry with a 24/7 sweet tooth. Most Americans want to do what is best, to work together, and want to help this new administration, under the direction of President Barack Obama, succeed. The taxpayer has by and large managed this feat even while trying to dog-paddle in the thrashing seas of bad news about the stormy economy. Is this picture changing, though? The high-drama tea bagging by conservatives aside, will centrist and democratic taxpayers continue this stiff-upper lipped silence? Or, are Americans, beginning to find their voice about morality, ethics, and the world of finance? Continue reading The Morality-Free Zone: Wall Street and the New American Dilemma
I used the occasion to make a broader point about being anonymous (which I have a bias against in most cases). But the underlying story — the battle between publius and Whelan — got a lot of blogosphere attention. By the end of the night, Whelan had apologized for disclosing publius’ identity:
I realize that, unfortunately, it is impossible for me to undo my ill-considered disclosure of his identity. For that reason, I recognize that Publius may understandably regard my apology as inadequate.
I also got a note from the author of the amusingly-named Bloggasm, who got in touch with both Whelan and publius, (on the phone no less, how groovily old-skool) and filed a useful report here.
Because I enjoy publicizing the activities of my band, The West End, here’s our most popular YouTube video, in which we perform Husker Du’s “Sorry Somehow.” I thought it apt for the moment.
There’s a controversy right now over an exchange between two notable bloggers, each from opposite sides of the liberal/conservative divide.
An author at the “moderate” liberal Obsidian Wings blog who writes under the pseudonym “publius” has long criticized conservative Ed Whelan, who writes at the National Review’s Bench Memos and is the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Whelan recently learned through what he terms a “reliable” source the true identity of publius. He asked for confirmation and received a brief email: I am not commenting on my identity. For a variety of private, family, and professional reasons, I write under a pseudonym (like many blogers). If I wanted to publicly disclose my name, I would do so. Thank you.”
It turns out that publius is a pre-tenure law professor at a Texas school. After being exposed, he wrote an article confirming his identity. He had attempted to remain anonymous, he writes, out of concern that blogging might damage him professionally, might upset some conservative people in his family, and might make conservative students who take his classes uncomfortable.
Now the controversy rages: Did Whelan do something wrong in exposing publius?
Most people agree that people who have compelling reasons to remain anonymous ought to have their identities protected. I happen to believe that publius’ reasons are not compelling. It is uncomfortable, but not dangerous that he is now exposed.
I’m not naming him here because I have no reason to do so. But the exchange illustrates an interesting point in digital public life.
I have long been opposed to anonymous blogging, and commenting on other blogs. At the local blog I run called Rockville Central, I’ve tried on occasion to disallow anonymous commenting, but the stream dried up whenever I did that. (In large part, I believe that is because people found it difficult to register.) Our current policy is to make a simple request of commenters: Think about whether you really need to be anonymous to make this comment and, if not, use your real name.
While I am not revealing publius’ name here, I don’t think Whelan did anything wring in revealing the identity of his critic. I likewise don’t think publius did anything wrong in writing under a pseudonym — but I wish he had not.
To write under a pseudonym simply because it is more comfortable diminishes the public value of anonymity, which is to protect those voices that need protection and need to be heard.
The Internet’s provisions of anonymity bring with them formidable powers to blow whistles and fight large powers from small platforms. But being anonymous can also untether writers from accountability — which is a key element in a healthy public square.
A town meeting can be a difficult place, as we argue and disagree. But because I can see your face, and you mine, we keep our remarks within the bounds of civility. Anonymous comments and blog postings remove this built-in control.
As many of my readers know, I write “issue guides” — discussions of difficult public issues designed to elicit small group dialogue. In my work on such guides, sometimes I develop fragments that are useful but just don’t fit into the ultimate publication.
I came across an old passage I wrote that outlines our nation’s difficult relationship with people who are “different.” For reasons of space, it is not going to make it into a publication I am now working on, so I thought I would share it. It’s a good reminder of where we’ve been — and how far we have to go.
An Uncomfortable History
America does not have a good record when it comes to the treatment of ethnic and cultural difference. Slavery of African Americans is perhaps the first thing that comes to mind in reviewing this history. It began as early as 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia, when Africans arrived at the first English settlement in the New World. At that time there was no law yet allowing for the ownership of people as slaves, so they were instead indentured servants. In 1808, importation of slaves was officially banned, but it continued unabated — the slave population in the United States rose to 4 million slaves in the 1860 U.S. Census. Slavery ended officially with the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865.
Slavery, of course, is not the only marker along the path of our nation’s poor treatment of different cultures and ethnicities.
Almost from the outset of the colonization of America, killing of the Native American Indians began. An early example is the genocidal Pequot War of 1637. Hostilities lasted in various forms throughout the westward expansion and lasted until at least 1890 when the western frontier was closed. Thousands of people were killed and whole tribes were forced to relocate as America grew. Many argue that, though the wholesale violence may have ended in 1890, the taking of Native American land and water rights, which continued for years, was just as damaging.
The Mexican-American War ended in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which held that Spanish and Mexican land grants were legitimate. But the immigration of anglo settlers brought about, according to historian Richard Vogel, “widespread oppression that sparked mass exile and repatriation. . . . Besieged refugees abandoned their farms and ranches.”
Later in the nineteenth century, Chinese immigrant labor built one of the key drivers of the settlement of the Western United States – the railroad system – but this influx of Chinese people was ended when the Chinese Exclusion Act placed a moratorium on immigration by any ethnic Chinese in 1882. This act was in force until its repeal in 1943 – at which time an annual quota of 105 was put in place. This quota was not lifted until 1965.
Anti-Semitism – hatred of Jews – has also been a part of our nation’s history. In 1915, it was the lynching by prominent area citizens of Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia that led to the creation of today’s Anti-Defamation League, an organization that combats anti-Semitism.
And, during World War Two, Japanese Americans on the west coast were forced to relocate in 1942. Those who did not make their own way out — approximately 110,000 – were placed in a number of internment camps. Only in 1976 was the order establishing the camps – Executive Order 9066 – rescinded, though the camps themselves were terminated in 1946. This particular episode was viewed as so shameful that the United States made official reparations in 1988 to all who had been relocated or placed in camps.
All these share in common the taking of what may begin as a simple mistrust of difference – and, over time, turning it into a set of policies and attitudes that together work a grave injustice on one or another culture. Certainly, many newcomers to America or people who were otherwise seen as marginal had a difficult time of it. But, in some cases, this poor treatment became more than that and instead became racism.
The national story of race, then, continues. Many point with pride to the significant strides made in the Civil Rights era and to the praiseworthy expansion of opportunity over the last few decades to include more and more Americans. But others say that this issue of ethnicity and culture continues to be difficult for America — that the same trends that have played out over history are at work today.
Today, in the twenty-first century, decades after the Civil Rights Movement, against the backdrop of a citizenry that is on track to become one in which no ethnicity holds a majority, America remains a nation that has difficulty addressing racial and ethnic tensions.
The night of my 21st birthday, so many years ago, I was with friends in the Big City near my college. One of us had borrowed a car to get the group into town. Around 1:30 am, as we were about to go home, it conked out. The handful of us were standing around, wondering what to do, in a daze, while our responsible friend handled the tow and whatnot. It was taking a long time, it seemed to me in my addled state.
I knew what was wrong. “Listen,” I announced emphatically. “The problem is I want to be home, and I am not home. Get me home.” I am told they obliged in some fashion. Eventually, I woke up the next morning in my own bed, with some calls of apology to make.
Reading the wiretap transcripts from dead-duck Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, I recalled that episode. You can see that same ego run riot in his rants about how “f-ing valuable” his ability to appoint a new U.S. senator was and how he wanted more than just “appreciation” in return for it.
I guess lots of us have a little tiny bit of that lurking within us.
Reading over those transcripts, I also realized that over the decades I had been hearing various versions of the same thing from many organizations I have worked with. They were rarely as brazen as Blagojevich has been, but were clear nonetheless. There was the boss who informed me that a particular top-level staffer was the boss’s “personal slave.” There was the boss who walked away from millions of dollars in needed investment over a perceived slight.
No, they weren’t all corrupt and venal. Just . . . driven.
What’s going on here?
I think in order to rise to the top, you’ve got to have a very healthy sense of self worth. It’s a prerequisite; otherwise you’d be happy with some other rank. Most of us are able to tamp down some of the uglier manifestations of this trait.
But sometimes we get into situations where those restraints are short circuited. (Recall my 21st birthday evening, when all restraint had floated away.) I believe that, as one rises and gains power, at some point it’s easy to lose one of the built-in restraints that most of us go through our daily lives with: the disapproval of others.
At some point, the power that people have accumulated forces those around them to, mostly, just tell them what they want to hear and enable them in their pursuits. This can happen in small organizations, large corporations, with celebrities, and in political offices. It does not happen on purpose – I think it is built into how people interact with those who hold power over them.
Regardless, the outcome is sad: When you stop worrying what those close to you will say, it’s a short hop from there to believing that just because I want something, it must be right.
Something to think about, as we climb various ladders of rank.
[UPDATED to fix some grammatical problems and for clarity.]
My friend Christina told me about the One Dollar Diet Project. No, it is not really a diet program. It is a couple (Christopher Greenslate and Kerri Leonard) who decided to spend one month eating on one dollar a day each. About 15% of the world’s population, or 1 billion people, subsists on this amount.
I took a quick glance at the website and quickly became engrossed. I had thought I would find it a bit nutty, a little down-with-the-IMF-protest-y. But it was reasonable. And compelling.
Of course, most popular media didn’t quite know what to make of it when they were doing this. (The couple did their experiment in September.) Inside Edition, for instance, asked: “Is it healthy?” in part because one person lost 14 pounds during the effort.
That, of course, is not the point. People should not have to live on $1 per day — that’s the point.
But, faced with the knowledge of global poverty, what do we do about it? I do work with a foundation that started life as a straightforward research foundation. You know, test tubes and such. Early in the foundation’s existence, they set about to try to eradicate hunger in the world by looking at better ways to grow food. They eventually realized that creating food is actually not the main problem. Getting the food where people are hungry is th issue. Hunger, in other words, is a political problem. Now this foundation studies how democracy can be made to work better.
Some may ask what one couple eating on a dollar a day can do, and ask if it is perhaps a little condescending. But I would say that shedding light on problems like this is the only real way, long term, to remove them. Short term, direct aid is important and needed. But long term change is what is also needed, and this effort can be a catalyst for something like that.
The Josephson survey is always good for some alarmist fare, and rightly so. Perhaps the most striking — and persistent — finding is that most young people see themselves as ethical yet also, by large majorities, report engaging in unethical behavior like cheating.
Most articles that cover the Josephson report dutifully trot out educators who say that students are “stressed out” and “busy” and so they cut corners. Then there is a paragraph outlining all the new seminars on plagiarism at this or that school.
What’s always bugged me about this approach is that it gets two things wrong.
First, it excuses wrong behavior by implying that tough times somehow justify (or mitigate) cheating.
Second, it falls into the “not enough knowledge” trap: that is, it assumes that wrong behavior is arising out of a lack of knowledge, that kids just don’t know what plagiarism is and so if only they knew more about it they would stop.
And so, I would like to draw your attention to this article by “Smintheus” at Unbossed. Written by a professor, it is an excellent discussion of the landscape adults who actually oppose cheating (and who oppose enabling cheaters) face. It touches on a number of other points, too, so I recommend reading the whole thing.
It’s not so easy, it turns out, to fight the good fight. So many places in public life, we get messages to let things slide, don’t get involved, don’t upset the apple cart.
So what can we do about this, besides mouth platitudes?
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