Mark P. McDonaldThursday’s Wall Street Journal was all a twitter about changes at Goldman Sachs to reduce the use of profanity in emails and other forms of communication. The article points out that such rough language has become part of the rough and tumble world of competitive finance. And while certainly not the most professional, it was accepted. At least until now given the visibility such language played regarding Goldman’s reared SEC fine.
My point here is not to debate the merits or demerits of course language. I have been known to use such language myself, although I am not proud of it. The point here is the way Wall Street firms are looking to enforce the changes — with technology.
The article discusses how firms have installed software that pre-scan email messages and will not allow people to send out email with profanity or event acronyms base on profanity. The technology works and is largely silent except when you are working with people named Richard, discussing religious issues, supporting health charities or typing so fast that you for get to add the “o” in hello.
The point here is not that technology can monitor or in this case, pre-monitor your communications. Rather the observation that such pre-monitoring absolves managers from having to do their job. That is a sign of weak management.
Profanity in the workplace does reduce the professionalism, upsets customers and co-workers and generally reflects a disregard for the work environment. I am an offender and I am not proud of it, but the effects are real.
Profanity is a social phenomenon. People use it when communicating with others and therefore it is best met with a social based solution ranging from peer pressure to management dissuasions to excluding people from customer facing and strategically sensitive opportunities. I know that sounds harsh, and it sounds self righteous particularly from an offender, but creating technology to solve an essentially social problem is just weak.
Technology may prevent more of these messages getting out, but it’s no cure for the corrosive effects of unnecessary rough language in the workplace. I know you may think its the pot calling the kettle … But who better to understand the real impact, than a repeat offender.
If Wall Street and other execs think that they need to abdicate this basic responsibility of management and leadership to technology than it says more about the strength of their ability to manage than it does about the capabilities of technology.
What do you think?
And yes I will be the first to take my own advice and be held accountable for it.
Category: Leadership Signs of weak management Tags: Business Management, Leadership, Operational Leadership, Signs of weak management
3 responses so far ↓
1 Tweets that mention Wall Street’s approach to etiquette illustrates a sign weak management -- Topsy.com August 1, 2010 at 4:33 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark P. McDonald, Ed Garcez. Ed Garcez said: “@markpmcdonald: technology to enforce professional behavior is a sign of weak management – the wall street example at http://bit.ly/bkgapT” [...]
2 C Jones November 22, 2011 at 6:50 am
I’d agree that managers are there to ensure that the rules and regulations of the organisation are adhered to…but technology exists to aid them in certain jobs…in fact, technology is there to help us all.
Spell Checkers help us to draft professional documents – is it considered a sign of weakness that we use such a tool? No.
Software can monitor a company’s network, flagging any issues and even re-running jobs when they fail. Is this sign that the IT Support staff are incapable of doing this job? No. It’s a cost effective use of resources.
RFID in libraries allow self service. Is the use of this technology a sign of weakness? No. It speeds up the process and permits the staff to concentrate on other tasks.
Essentially technology can help to establish best practice and free staff (whether they are managers or not) to concentrate on other tasks. Once the decision to reduce profanity in the workplace was introduced the most cost effective means of monitoring the situation was employed: existing technology (i.e.: email).
I’d say this was good management rather than weak management.
3 Mark P. McDonald November 22, 2011 at 11:22 am
Dear C Jones
You missed the point of the post or at least what I was trying to get across — which is that when managers put technology as the mechanism to monitor and correct behavior they are abdicating their responsibility for building a professional culture.
This is not an issue of applying the rules, rather it is about building behaviors and demonstrating professionalism. I do not have to monitor my own behavior and manage myself when I assume that technology will keep me from doing something I should not. When that happens I become like a child who is overindulgent, lacks self awareness or the sensitivity that their behavior is in appropriate.
Using technology to manage transactions via automation, which is at the core of many of your examples is something different. I do not learn that stealing is wrong because a sensor beeps at me in the library. I learn that it is wrong by observing and modeling proper behavior.
In the case of the post, having a spell checker remover profanity even while it is openly used by authority figures does nothing to build professionalism, it just adds to the cynicism associated with professional behavior. Something that good management builds by demonstrating its importance via the way they behave and what they tolerate.
Thanks for your comments.
Mark
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