All Posts in Policies and Procedures

|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

Something is very wrong with the world.

Every so often I have to visit the post office. For the past several years, every single interaction with a postal employee has been pleasant, professional, service-oriented, and efficient.

When you can’t count on the USPS to give you something to gripe about, what can you count on?

Not the e-mail tax the USPS supposedly wants to impose. That’s one of those ridiculous Internet myths that refuses to die. If you haven’t heard the news yet, Nixon privatized the postal service — it isn’t part of the government, hasn’t been for nearly three decades, and has no taxing authority.

You can always count on me, though. I gave many of you something to gripe about with my recent column on religion in the workplace. Hundreds of you sent e-mails … all untaxed … divided almost exactly in half between those who thought I was way out of bounds and those who thanked me for my stance. Among the letters were a few points that call for a bit more coverage:

  • Several readers figured when I said you shouldn’t bring your beliefs into the workplace I meant you literally have to leave them at home. You can no more leave your beliefs behind than you can a beer belly or your left knee. What you can do is keep them in your head, to guide your decisions and help you cope with the inevitable frustrations of corporate life.
  • During social interactions with friends, which do happen at the office, respectful exchanges of views are just fine, too. It’s pretty easy, though, for an exchange of views (“Here’s how we look at an issue like this — how about you?”) to slip into dangerous territory. Presenting your beliefs is one thing. Attacking those of others is quite another.
  • Another distinction that doesn’t seem sufficiently well understood is the difference between beliefs and opinions. It’s a belief when you cite an authoritative text. It’s an opinion when you debate observable facts and dissectable logic. Debates of fact and logic are always acceptable. They’re rarely persuasive, but that’s a whole different subject.
  • Several readers missed a crucial point about the job applicant who said he was a Christian: He was interviewing for a management position. A qualified manager would know that religious affiliation, along with marital status, age, ethnicity, or any other completely irrelevant topic that could bias a hiring decision, has no place in a job interview. It was this lack of professionalism, and bad judgment which should have disqualified him, not his Christianity. And hiring the guy because of his religion was discriminatory toward all of the other applicants — a definite no-no.
  • Several Muslim readers corrected my use of “Islamic”. The religion is Islam; adherents are Muslims. “Islamic” means “pertaining to Islam.” My thanks to all who wrote.
  • Several readers told me of disparaging comments made toward fundamentalist Christians. That hasn’t been my experience … I’ve mostly experienced the reverse, or maybe I’m less attuned to this kind or remark. Regardless, it’s no more appropriate to disparage fundamentalist Christians than to be disparaged by them. This is how a society polarizes, and how Yugoslavia happens. Don’t feel any need to be the first on your block to exacerbate this trend.
  • And finally, if this wasn’t completely clear in the first column … I’m not presenting my personal system of beliefs, insisting that you accept my views over all others. While the details will vary, the law — not Bob Lewis — requires managers to protect workers from experience threatening and harassing work environments, and with few exceptions precludes discriminatory hiring.

If you aren’t clear on your obligations, what’s allowed and disallowed, what it means to embrace diversity in the workplace, and the difference between toleration of others and mutual respect … chances are your employees are equally confused or more so. That’s not good.

So as a stopgap, until you can schedule diversity training, here’s a simple rule that will keep you out of trouble: Never generalize about identifiable groups of people.

And why would you want to, anyway? Marketing professionals learned long ago that the most effective messages are personalized. You should too. Whether it’s an insult or a compliment, your message will always be more effective, and appropriate, when it’s personal.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

One of the odder habits of the native Minnesotan is becoming cold voluntarily. As evidence, I offer the St. Paul Winter Carnival.

Not wanting to deprive my children of a True Minnesota Experience, we trundled off to this remarkable event. The parking was free, but a mile away — this is a popular event! — so we trudged through the snow (against the wind and uphill, of course) and availed ourselves of the festivities: We admired snow sculpture (in warmer climes, you’d use sand, I imagine), traversed the “ice maze” (you haven’t lived until you’ve wandered through walls of ice blocks containing seaweed and an occasional dead perch), and most importantly, obtained mini-donuts, kettle corn and hot chocolate.

At the end, I asked the kids if they were cold. “It has to be absolute zero out there, Dad!” exclaimed Kimberly, the elder of the two. Never passing up an educational opportunity, I asked if she knew the temperature of absolute zero in Fahrenheit. “Sorry, I can’t convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit in my head.”

Okay, then what’s absolute zero in Celsius? “Stinkin’ cold!”

Kimberly isn’t the only one who appears to be unsure how to convert concepts to numbers. Following my article last year critiquing Gartner’s “The Cost of Migrating COBOL Developers to Java,” I received a polite note from one of the authors, J. Feiman, who, seeking to refine my understanding of his opinion, sent me another half-dozen Gartner reports on related topics as evidence of the completeness of their analysis.

I read every page, but found nothing to change my assessment. While Mr. Feiman assured me he’s in favor of retraining COBOL programmers, he provided nothing to refute any part of my critique, which pointed out that while every imaginable cost of retraining COBOL programmers had been quantified, of the cost of recruiting Java programmers only salary and benefits had been turned into numbers. Mr. Feiman didn’t respond to my invitation to call and discuss the matter. InfoWorld has made an open offer to print a Peer-to-Peer column, should Gartner choose to submit one; to date that offer is also still open but unaccepted.

In his final message Mr. Feiman expressed distress at my disinterest in his opinion. It’s a fine distinction — I’m more interested in what he’s published than what he thinks, because that’s what IS managers will use when making decisions.

Then there’s the letter I received from Vincent Maiello, Practice Manager for the Professional Services Division of Chubb Computer Services:

“Our experience has been more in line with your comments. Chubb Computer Services is a premier training and staffing organization and subsidiary of The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies. We have found that major organizations find re-skilling their employees to be more cost effective than hiring new employees, not only because of the cost of recruiting and ramp up time, but because of the (non-monetary) value of the employee’s knowledge.

This “human capital” approach has been very successful with some of our biggest clients. In fact, today we are running seven concurrent classes for one of the world’s largest life insurance companies re-skilling their mainframe folks to web developers. When we piloted the program earlier this year, the client’s response was great and the employee morale and retention has increased.”

Chubb Computer Services is in this business, so it may have an axe to grind. On the other hand, it’s also in the staffing business, so I imagine it wins either way.

(Caveat: I don’t have the ability to research and compare competing offerings vendors. That’s why I generally avoid any mention of products or services — doing so might appear to constitute endorsement. Mr. Maiello’s comments, based on first-hand experience, were sufficiently relevant to this discussion that I made an exception, although I have no idea whether Chubb’s re-skilling programs are better, worse, or equally effective than any others.)

If you’re thinking about re-skilling your COBOL workforce, here’s what you now know: Gartner thinks it’s a good idea, despite its analysis purporting to show that re-skilling is the more expensive choice. My unrefuted analysis of their analysis suggests their numbers aren’t worth the magnetic domains they’re stored in.

But that’s theory vs theory. The experience of a re-skilling practitioner — in this case demonstrating successful conversion of COBOL jockeys to OOP practitioners — outweighs any theoretical analysis.

Especially when it agrees with me.

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