All Posts in Business Ethics

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

When it comes to government intervention in the antitrust action against Microsoft, lots of people say the marketplace should decide, even when there’s no longer a competitive marketplace and the whole point of the antitrust laws is to either preserve competition or compensate for its absence.

In the labor market, though, there’s widespread desire for government intervention to keep out “cheap foreign labor” – protectionism, in a word, to prevent competition.

Technical professionals are in short supply. Still, some Americans can’t find work, or at least can’t find it at their desired salary in their city of residence. Then they read about an influx of inexpensive foreign technical talent, especially from Asia and the Indian subcontinent. Adding two and three to get 23, they conclude that greedy American employers are hiring cheap foreign labor at their expense.

Like it or not, American technical talent, like all American labor, competes in a global labor market. When the government takes protectionist action we compete through our employers. When it doesn’t, we compete as individuals.

Take your pick, but when, for example, SAP wins a contract over Oracle in the ERP market, foreign jobs increase and American jobs decrease just as surely as when an American company hires a Pakistani programmer. One way or another, we all compete globally for our jobs.

Many American technical professionals have contributed to the developing mess through complacency, assuming job security from, for example, designing and programming batch Cobol systems. American employers certainly aren’t blameless in this fiasco either. You probably have employees like this batch Cobol programmer. When was the last time you provided career counseling or growth opportunities? Do your codger-programmers even know their jobs are at ever-increasing risk?

If you’re recruiting you probably have the right headcount (or close to it) but are undergoing some change that has led to a skills mismatch. That means employees who used to be competent aren’t anymore, and people get cranky under those circumstances. Since shooting your current employees is inhumane, frowned upon, and illegal in most states, here’s a more productive alternative:

1. Communicate the change you’re undertaking and why you’re undertaking it every chance you get. Your whole IT leadership team must preach the change, what it means, its implications and consequences, including the likelihood that not everyone will succeed in the new environment.

2. Hire a few key positions from the outside to lead by example. Hire the best people you can find. You want your employees to think, “None of my co-workers could do that.” As an alternative, bring in a consulting firm to work on projects in “blended teams” with your employees to help them learn the new skills. (Disclaimer – my company is in that business so I’m unavoidably biased in its favor.)

3. Retrain your retrainable employees. It’s cheaper than replacing them. Identify those least likely to succeed, tell them in no uncertain terms your concerns about them, give them every chance you can, and say good-bye to those who fail. You’re responsible for providing opportunity. They’re responsible for taking advantage of it.

4. Recruit replacements from wherever they live. Hire the best people you can find – the best, not the cheapest – and make no apology for doing so.

Great companies need great people. Hiring foreign labor because it’s cheap doesn’t get you great people.

But there are plenty of talented foreign technical professionals who are willing to work harder, and for less money, than their American counterparts. The resentment some American programmers express toward Indian, Pakistani, and Asian programmers is nothing more than simple bigotry.

It’s easy to preach competition when it’s Microsoft against Sun. When it comes to jobs, theory gets real personal, and that just doesn’t bring out the best in people.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

In one of Keith Laumer’s novels, interstellar diplomat Retief spoke with a local chieftain on a problem planet. During the conversation the chieftain ascribes part of his negotiating position to his “charming naivete”.

“Chief,” responded Retief, “you don’t have enough naivete to last until lunch.”

Judging from the e-mail I’ve received since giving Microsoft credit for winning the office suite wars, there’s enough naivete in our business to last all day. (See “Office suites: Do you have a choice?” June 1.)

My exact words were, “And Microsoft won this one in a fair fight, by betting on Windows when WordPerfect bet on OS/2 and Lotus bet on its lawyers.” It’s remarkable how few people disagreed.

That is, few readers said, “I disagree with your interpretation.” Instead they told me I was practicing a disgusting form of revisionist history, that I was entirely ignorant and lacked historical perspective, and that I was a sycophant who lacked any sense of ethics.

And I thought you already knew I was a journalist.

Since this is a column about succeeding in IS management, here’s a suggestion you can use on a daily basis: Give credit for honest disagreement. When you demonize everyone who disagrees with you, you sound like a member of Congress. Bad career move.

Microsoft has adopted the popular philosophy that business is war. In war, guile and deception have been recognized as legitimate tactics for thousands of years. Reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is as important for winning in competitive markets as Machiavelli is for surviving office politics. I recommend it.

Sure, Microsoft recommended developing for OS/2 to Lotus and WordPerfect back in the 1980s. Microsoft either deceived them or changed its mind after its OS/2 development partnership with IBM fell apart, but the 1980s, non-monopoly Microsoft wasn’t under oath and wasn’t required to tell the truth in either case.

Lotus and WordPerfect gave away their franchises through stupidity. CEOs don’t get their ridiculous salaries to accept a competitors’ public relations at face value, any more than a highly ranked military officer should be taken in by a noisy flank attack.

While Microsoft had a top-quality word processor and spreadsheet to sell with Windows 2.0, 1-2-3 for Windows was surpassed by both Excel and Quattro Pro. Lotus never even bothered to create a word processor – it eventually bought the nearly unknown Ami Pro to throw in a box with 1-2-3.

WordPerfect’s first Windows version came out far too late and its office suite even later, cobbled together out of spare parts since WordPerfect never bothered to create a decent spreadsheet.

Yes, Microsoft has its hidden APIs. Yes, they probably make a small difference in overall product quality. Since product quality has almost nothing to do with either mind share or market share, though, you’re left with an important question: So what?

Let’s take this personal. You’re in a leadership position, which means some of your peers may be ethically challenged. They’re your organizational rivals, too, and with organizational rivals promotions are a win/lose proposition, budget fights are a win/lose proposition, and staffing contests are a win/lose proposition too.

Imagine one of your rivals tries to mislead you, perhaps encouraging a foolhardy risk. Is trust your best course of action?

Not if you want your career to advance. Not if you want your department to get enough funding to succeed next year. Not if you want to hire enough staff to get the job done, either.

Never mind selfish considerations. Your staff counts on you to get them promotions, resources, and quality team members. You aren’t paid for your charming naivete, any more than were the dear, departed leaders of WordPerfect and Lotus.

Microsoft won in a fair fight, with fair defined by what’s allowed in the world of commerce. It won by being smarter than its competitors.

You have to adhere to your own sense of ethics. Your rivals don’t, though, and assuming they do doesn’t make you honorable. It makes you lose.

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