TWO UNIVERSITIES AND A SHOCK JOCK
Yesterday’s tragic shooting at Virginia Tech as well as last week’s dismissal of criminal charges against the Duke University lacrosse players and the firing of radio shock jock Don Imus all contain valuable lessons for business leaders interested in building a culture of legal compliance.
A year ago the Duke lacrosse team made headlines when an exotic dancer hired to entertain the boys at an off-campus party made allegations of kidnapping and sexual assault. Several players were charged with the offense and in the days, weeks, and months that followed the charges placed a searing spotlight on the individuals involved with the case, the university, and the community.
The accused were suspended from school, what remained of the lacrosse season was cancelled, and then there was the “Group of 88.” They were the arts and sciences faculty members who applauded the students that demonstrated and distributed “wanted” posters of the team. And if that were not enough, the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson helped coordinate media coverage. The young players’ lives were suddenly lives interrupted.
It was a dark time for the presumption of innocence. I live in the town over from Duke and at the time you couldn’t go anywhere without overhearing passionate conversations about the lacrosse team case. Why? The teams’ hard partying reputation made people inclined to believe that the players could cross the line. It was a credibility issue.
LESSON: The presumption of innocence only applies to the court room and in a criminal case all it means is that the burden of proof is on the prosecution. It has no authority in the court of public opinion. It does not prevent people from jumping to conclusions and therein lies the hidden cost of a bad reputation. You could be put through a year or more of hell before you are exonerated. The cost is immeasurable.
So the next time someone asks you whether reputation matters, the answer is yes. When they ask what its worth, the answer is priceless.
Then we have the case of Don Imus, the bad boy radio personality who perpetually licked the envelope of bad taste. Indeed, he made a career of it. The shtick “worked” for 30 years. Huge sponsors were willing to advertise and celebrities lined up for interviews. Unfortunately, the barbs got sharper as time went by until he crossed an unspoken line by smearing the Rutgers women’s basketball team with a crude sexist and racist stereotype.
The public outrage was palpable. Imus’ usual mea culpa and public apologies rang hollow. Advertisers began pulling out and it didn’t take long before Imus was out of a job.
Unlike the Duke lacrosse case, Imus was not accused of breaking the law. The First Amendment right to free speech protected him. But when you test the limits of socially acceptable behavior and hide behind the First Amendment you must be prepared for the consequences of that behavior. Listeners, advertisers, and employers have a First Amendment right too and they said, “you’re fired.”
According to Tom Brokaw of NBC News, “The words that you hear used commonly on the street, or on the air, or on radio, or in rap lyrics, are words that in the worst days of segregation in this country, the worst segregated part of this country, you would not have heard on radio. Now you hear them commonly.”
Words that undeservedly degrade and debase are bad in any context. The danger of prolific trash talk is that we get numb to it, or worse yet, elevate it to the status of hip and cool. But gift wrapped trash talk is still trash talk. The words are hateful and destructive. It doesn’t matter whether they spew of from a radio or a platinum rap pedestal. Eventually there will be a backlash against the hate. Imus is a start. There may be more to come. The Reverends Sharpton and Jackson are in hot pursuit.
LESSON: “This is the way we’ve always done it” and “everybody else is doing it” thinking is dangerous if it perpetuates bad habits. Business leaders need to periodically evaluate their business practices to determine whether they are sabotaging the organization’s ability to cultivate a culture of corporate compliance. If it turns out that something is going on that puts your organization at undue risk you might want to examine the incentives that are driving the unwanted behavior. Remove the financial incentive and you’ll change the behavior.
The shooting spree at Virginia Tech yesterday that left 33 dead is in marked contrast to the Duke lacrosse case and the Imus debacle. Based on what we know so far, it’s the difference between a simmering crisis — one that you can anticipate and see coming — an accident. The lacrosse teams’ past actions gave them a Velcro reputation instead of a Teflon one. It allowed even false accusations to stick and encouraged a rush to judgment. Similarly, Imus’ indiscrete remarks, coupled with a 24 hour news cycled stoked with Internet blogs that allowed the resurrection of the 1998 interview on 60 Minutes, wherein Mike Wallace confirmed that one of Imus’ staff members was expressly hired to write racist jokes, was a tinderbox waiting to explode.
As the investigation continues into the Virginia Tech shootings we may learn that the campus administrators had some cryptic clue or warning about the troubled student. Some news, for example, surfaced today about an English paper with disturbing contents that led to an English Department intervention and a website posting by the shooter the day of the incident saying he was going to kill. Looking back it is easy to connect the dots and say the university should have anticipated a day of mass murder. Yet such clarity is not always evident when facts are unfolding before your eyes in real time.
LESSON: The leadership challenge business executives face is sorting out the problems from the background noise and then prioritizing those problems base on what can be reasonably controlled and what can’t. Developing foresight is not easy. But given the high cost of pure hindsight, foresight is an essential skill necessary to safeguard the assets of the organization and to protect shareholder interests.
After all, no one wants carnage on their doorstep or the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson to come knocking with a camera crew in tow.
Amen.