Levy Rivers's List: organizational goverance

• These are the type of questions that a strategic oriented reputation conversation should engage. In the following post, my aim is to spell out a framework for just such a conversation. In those posts my aim is describe some of the thinking that leaders and his/her stakeholder community should wrestle: which begins with the general conception of morality, the aim to reduce or eliminate evil through reciprocity.

• The first is a series of posts covering the relationship between corporate governance, ethics and social media. The sum of them will demonstrate the importance that social networking can have for whistle blowing, product development and other channels of communication in and about organizations.
  - Levy Rivers on 2008-03-03

• This hypothetical team in this case produces this product under the facilitated guidance of organizational consultant such as those of Phronêsis Inc. The product once produced would be used be vetted throughout top and key management within the organization to achieve the widest communication and adoption.

• This post is a preliminary look at the role of leadership in the context of social networking and then an analysis of some of conditions which I hope will give some guidance to others that have found themselves wondering about some of these same issues.

• This presentation outlines the basic concepts and processes that building a authentic leader's reputation would take under the strategic orientation that I define in Strategic Conversations

• In addition, I am in the process of writing on the subject of how authentic leaders should establish both a comfort in social media conversations personally (which might include blogging or might not, but surely includes joining or even forming social networks that they participate in fully) and a framework for them to adopt. Therefore, this opportunity regarding conversations is a perfect topic for me to posit some of my ideas for testing.

• It is the responsibility of leaders to bring about this shift in behavior by having both a vision of integrity for the organization and a strategic plan for ensuring such integrity. This vision must be articulated in a way that is relevant and actionable by employees. A vision that aims too high will not be taken seriously while one that is too pedestrian will not motivate employees.
• a wide base of knowledge and a life filled with challenge. Maturity expresses a commitment to courageously choose to define and protect ones social space in the presence of hostile forces while maintaining an adroit process of self-criticism and accountability for those choices. A wide base of knowledge infers more than a mere accumulation of data but rather an ongoing quest to be conversant with the many discourses and varied articulations they entail. Challenge-filled refers to a belief in a bursting forth of possibilities. This belief in open possibilities, limited by responsibility, explains the relationship between management and contextual leadership. Simply put, contextual leadership calls into question the very core of historical management rationale that emphasize rules, universality, and impartiality over contingent ways of reasoning that emphasize relationships, particularity, and partiality.

• An organization like a person has integrity, if its conduct derives consistently from a core of deeply held ideas expressed in the voice of its leadership and if as a consequence [to medicate a foreseen disturbance within the “force<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]-->”] a decision is made to act contrarily – it does so – only by intention.

• While an appropriate regard for, and disclosure of, the potential risks of providing our services is ethically mandated, these potential risks need to be evaluated within the context of the potential benefits to be derived from online interventions. A presentation of either the potential risks alone or the benefits alone is inherently biased and misleading.

• The sole purpose of my post was to discover who Barak Obama really is.
• First, Levy and I have lots of differences. Number two, Levy is an extremely intelligent and fair minded individual who can engage in a lively discussion without becoming aggressive or irrational. So, he and I have agreed to write what amounts to a guest post for one another once a week. He will begin the conversation next week. I will print his post in its entirety on this blog. I will then post a complete response which will appear here as well as on his blog later the same week. We will do this for as long as it is productive. If you have suggestions on topics for us to discuss, please email them to me at billyjacksblog2008@yahoo.com.

• To what familiar term is he ascribing a new meaning? Would it be the term, “racism?”
• hate-monger preacher by comparing Wright to his own grandmother along with Geraldine Ferraro. Here are some excerpts of what Obama said in this regard
• One of the tools of deceivers is deflection
• overly aggressive panhandler
• I only wish to God that the majority of black Americans would stand up for those words among their own people when someone like Bill Cosby rises up to say those very things to black teens and their families today
• If a white person brings up the shortcomings within the black community, that person is rejected as a racist. If a black person does it, he/she is rejected as “an Uncle Tom.” The only voices that are given a hearing among the black community today are those who speak of the evil white man as the cause for what ails black culture in America.
• White America’s responsibility is to recognize all the evils whites have perpetrated on blacks, and all of the disadvantages we have inflicted on them for over 200 years which still plagues them today. In contrast, Black America’s responsibility is to remember how oppressed they have been and work against the establishment of today’s world to be successful in spite of everything. Does that sound even remotely evenhanded to you? It sounds to me like Obama’s path to a more perfect union is for whites to accept the blame for all the evils of society (in both the white and black communities), and for the blacks to keep their chin up and bravely march on in this society where everything is stacked against them. Actually, when you dissect his words carefully, he is saying exactly the same thing his preacher says–he is just saying them with a smile on his face and with candy coating over the poisonous rhetoric.
• Come to think of it, that is exactly what his church teaches as it adopted the 12-point Black Value System which used to be on their website, but is mysteriously missing now.
• “rich white people” have perpetrated much evil on the black community in the past.
• Obama is not “becoming” but is rather “deceiving” for the purpose of advancing his own personal agend
• Obama’s criminal associations and business transactions. But suffice it to say, money has changed hands between him and convicted felons.
• Obama and known terrorists. There is at least a spiritual tie between Obama and “Screwy Louie” Farrakhan, but Obama denies that any such ties exist
• hat is not “becoming!” It is “pandering” and “lying!”
• I’ll leave you with this single opinion and comment: I’m extremely tired of the reverse discrimination taking place towards Caucasians in America today via the African American community. There is no place in society for ANY discrimination, and it needs to stop!
• I don’t have the time or energy for long online debates so I’ll let you get in a final word on this one, if you opt to. If/when you respond, I’d like to know though who you would vote for if complete honesty is going to be one of your main considerations when you step into the booth.

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• I can you are up in arms - good. The point is you are and have come from a position I think is unwarranted and can not be supported. I look at those terms and only see one instance that can come close to terms like racist. The first and only point is that racist is personal - about a racist person. Even when you he use the term :"white racism" is an open point. No one was called it as such. If you are not be defensive and what would you call it? If you were so worried about what I was going to write you could approached the situation from a different place. - Levy Rivers on 2008-03-31

• Clinton’s campaign strategy in Iowa was a traditional one: Target those voters who had voted in the past — the most reliable kind of voters there are — and then get them to the polls. And some Clinton aides were openly contemptuous of Obama’s attempt to “expand the universe” and bring in younger voters.

• Except in Iowa, in January of this year, they did vote. Younger voters represented 22 percent of the vote in the Iowa caucus— the highest youth turnout in any state so far — and Obama got 57 percent of them to Clinton’s 11 percent. The youth vote, in fact, turned out to be about 30 percent of Obama’s total vote.
• But to my way of thinking, Clinton’s loss in Iowa was a critical one, because she was no longer inevitable. She had let Obama into the game. She had let a candidate with money and a message get off to a running start. She had allowed him to become a credible candidate.
• As it turned out, Obama had both a strategy and the money to execute it. His campaign knew what the race really was about: the acquisition of pledged delegates.

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• classical republican virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and prudence, which are the political virtues that contribute to the ancient sense of contributing to the survival and flourishing of a polis,
• you 'can test their adequacy by imagining a person or a community that notably lacks one of them. A loveless life is terrible; a community without justice is, too.'
• Neither lead to the ethical world of citizenship.
• McCloskey adds that Nussbaum is right: you can't get virtue Y from a starting point consisting only of virtue X. Y has to be in from the start. You have to put the rabbits in the hat if you are going to pull them out.That is, in order to have a society that shows prudence, justice, love, faith, hope, courage, and temperance we need to arrange to have people who are . . . . prudent, just, loving, faithful, hopeful, courageous, and temperate "from the start."

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• “The next time you create an online profile, blog or post a comment on an e-forum, you better be careful. Online reputation matters and headhunters, employers can track all of it,” says Ratan.  

  The advice comes as internet users are getting ever more candid about their personal lives and opinions on social networking and blogging sites.

• A senior recruitment manager with a leading media company said, traditionally, verification checks are done by calling up previous employers. “But checking their online reputations is important,” she admitted, “because when he/she is working for your company, you’d want to make sure that the person is not breaching confidentiality clauses by sharing too much about the company.”  

  The digital footprint is therefore emerging as a double-edged sword. It isn’t just job-hunters who need to be careful, but the prospective employers, too. 

  On online forums, blogs and travelogues, internet users share experiences. This is why product review websites such as Mouthshut.com, which carry corporate blogs where consumers can directly interact with organisations, write product reviews. In candid posts, brand reputation can be marred easily.

• Chancellor Nancy Cantor said Syracuse's reputation will be boosted immensely - giving the university visibility.
  
  "You're out there talking to thousands of people about the wonderful things that are happening at SU," Cantor said. "People think campaigns are totally about money-raising. It certainly is about raising money, but they are also about solidifying ideas about the place and talking about the identity of the institution, and all of that spreads the word about the institution."
  
  Eric Spina, vice chancellor and provost, says the campaign will enhance SU's faculty and increase its notoriety. In terms of faculty and endowed chairs,

• The formation of the Open Reputation Management Systems Technical Committee is an important effort in a difficult area of interoperability. Even if the committee doesn't succeed, it may offer valuable lessons learned.
• The assertion that "reputation is everything" may very well be true when applied to a corporation's brand equity. "Reputation" is a very broad term that encompasses a wide variety of factors which all contribute to forming an analysis of the degree to which an institution or individual can be trusted. Enterprise Internet reputation management is emerging as a critical component of business risk management strategies due to several factors, including Internet anonymity, the rise of social media, and the persistence and easy availability of information via search engines and other mechanisms. Successful enterprises understand the threats and opportunities inherent in helping build trust with customers, prospects, business partners, investors and employees online.
• Online reputation scores are a relatively recent innovation. Numeric ratings are vulnerable to manipulation and are not suitable for every situation in which previously unfamiliar entities need to make a trust evaluation. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, such ratings are increasing and many of them will likely prove useful. Groups like the ORMS committee that plan to develop standards for reputational representation could be highly beneficial, as would be any effort at sharing, comparing and verifying such information

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• Pretend for a second that you're a CEO. Would you reveal your deepest, darkest secrets online? Would you confess that you're an indecisive weakling, that your colleagues are inept, that you're not really sure if you can meet payroll? Sounds crazy, right? After all, Coke doesn't tell Pepsi what's in the formula. Nobody sane strips down naked in front of their peers. But that's exactly what Glenn Kelman did. And he thinks it saved his business.
• Redfin was trying to turn the industry upside down by refunding people two-thirds of the commission that real estate agents normally charge.
• But agents hated it for destroying their fat margins, so they began blacklisting Redfin, refusing to sell houses to anyone who used the service. Kelman was struggling to close deals for his clients.
• Kelman set up a Redfin blog and began posting witty screeds about the nasty underbelly of the real estate business. He denounced traditional brokers, accusing them of screwing customers with clubby, closed-door practices
• But customers loved it
• "Instead of discouraging customers, being open about our problems radicalized them," Kelman says. "They rallied and started pulling for us."
• It is a strange and abrupt reversal of corporate values. Not long ago, the only public statements a company ever made were professionally written press releases and the rare, stage-managed speech by the CEO. Now firms spill information in torrents, posting internal memos and strategy goals, letting everyone from the top dog to shop-floor workers blog publicly about what their firm is doing right - and wrong. Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, dishes company dirt and apologizes to startups he's accidentally screwed. Venture capitalists now demand that CEOs be fluent in blogspeak.
• Companies used to assume that details about their internal workings were valuable precisely because they were secret
• Now, billion- dollar ideas come to CEOs who give them away; corporations that publicize their failings grow stronger. Power comes not from your Rolodex but from how many bloggers link to you - and everyone trembles before search engine rankings. Kelman rewired the system and thinks anyone else could, too. But are we really ready to do all our business in the buff?
• If you engage in corporate flimflam, people will find out. He ticks off example after example of corporations that have recently been humiliated after being caught trying to conceal stupid blunders.
• In a world where Eli Lilly's internal drug-development memos, Paris Hilton's phonecam images, Enron's emails, and even the governor of California's private conversations can be instantly forwarded across the planet, trying to hide something illicit - trying to hide anything, really - is an unwise gamble

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• Chief executive of Trampoline, Charles Armstrong, believes a generational shift is occurring in the way businesses achieve productivity gains, and in many ways he is right. From around the 60s through to the early 2000s, process automation was the main means by which firms achieved these ends, but once everything has been automated, where do you turn? Well, the answer according to Trampoline is to the collective or social intelligence of your staff. This is enterprise social networking – understanding how individuals and groups within the organisation interact and the expertise and knowledge they possess.
• It could be viewed as the slow creeping of social networking ideas into the enterprise, just as other primarily consumer-based technologies have crept quietly into business over the years.
• Trampoline's offerings at least are all based on the Sonar platform, which mines all the important information from users' data sources – emails, document stores, databases and so on – and runs some clever algorithms on them to deduce various things about the sender. The end result is that you can view in a neat graphical display the information flows, areas of expertise and social networks in the organisation, and then refine it by various criteria.
• As Armstrong argues, perhaps the advent of a recession will give firms the push they need to investigate new ways of boosting productivity, getting more out of their existing human resources and becoming more agile. Perhaps.

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