We should collaborate!
If we give everyone a chance to talk to everyone else, just think of our collective power! We’ll be able to share information, locate our hidden skills, cross-sell more effectively, and otherwise shoot the lights out! Let’s put together a tool that lets people talk to each other!
But what will they say?
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New people will join the network. The software hidden behind the tool will encourage everyone else to “welcome Fred to” the collaboration tool! A couple dozen idiots will type, “Welcome aboard, Fred!”
For a few weeks, the guy who’s actually busy will read, time and time again, “Welcome aboard, Fred!” And then he’ll turn off the collaboration tool — because don’t those idiots have any work to do?
Those who remain on the collaboration tool will continue to collaborate.
For example, the Compliance Department will send out a firm-wide note that says, “Our organization adheres to the highest standards of integrity. Under no circumstances do we pay bribes to government officials.”
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One of your colleagues will type back, collaboratively: “Right. Never pay bribes. How do we think I get through airport security in India every time I make a trip there? Paying small bribes is the only way to survive.”
Start the lights flashing and the sirens blazing! Do we have to report that possible illegality to the government monitor? How can we erase that from the system? Somebody call that guy and find out what he meant! Maybe he meant that he only paid bribes on his personal trips to India, and we don’t have a reportable offense!
Collaboration, my eye.
One person types on the collaboration tool that she had a great time at the firm-sponsored party last night. And a creeper starts typing that she looked very pretty, too, and that husband of hers is a no-good lout, and how would she like a real man for a change?
How’s that collaboration looking now?
By the way, who’s monitoring the collaboration tool? Because the company may well have just been put on notice that the creeper engages in sex harassment. That may result in more severe punishment in the next case involving the guy because the company let a recidivist get away with these things.
We naturally celebrate diversity in the workplace, including the right of all people to marry, as recognized by the Supreme Court in Obergefell. Except the post on the collaboration tool celebrating diversity prompts a barrage of gay-bashing messages, and comments that the Bible condemns homosexuality, and the rest. Have we created a more inclusive workforce? Or a less inclusive one? Or are we treading on people’s religious beliefs?
Another person thinks they were subject to age discrimination. But instead of reporting the possible discrimination through the ethics hotline, the person posts the complaint on the collaboration tool. Was someone supposed to see that complaint, log it into the system, and investigate it? Not unless you assigned someone to the task, and the folks who were creating the collaboration tool sure weren’t thinking about that.
So let’s collaborate!
Nothing can possibly go wrong!
Mark Herrmann is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel – Litigation and Employment at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].