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Info You Can Use: You Tweeted What About Me?!

August 29, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

So after my post a couple weeks ago about why it is bad in a legal sense to have a restrictive social media policy, I am sure some of you have been wondering under what circumstances you can actually discipline someone for what they post online.

Well thanks to a piece on Forbes website, we have an answer (and hat tip to Gene Takagi)

As I had mentioned in my earlier entry, you can’t forbid, and therefore punish, any attempt to organize employees in a discussion about employment conditions. Under labor law, this is termed “protected concerted activity.” If a person is speaking for a group of employees or attempting to organize a discussion among employees, it is protected.

However, there are some tricky nuances to this and a link on the Forbes article to a National Labor Relations Board report, “Report Concerning Social Media Cases,” delves into the matter and presents specific cases to explain why the employee was or was not protected by the law. As Kashmir Hill, the author of the Forbes article notes, it is actually pretty easy and interesting to read for a government document.

My read is that with the current state of social media it may be fairly difficult to fire someone for complaining about work conditions. Essentially, if other employees chime in either on or off line to agree that an employer is a jerk for making employees work under certain conditions, the speech is protected as representing a group complaint. If other employees just comment that they are sorry to hear a situation upset the poster, then the poster may not be speaking on behalf of other employees.

It is only when a comment passes a certain threshold where a person is wishing violence upon people or making statements which are maliciously false that protection of representing a group complaint may not apply. However, being called a power-hungry, martinet jackass does not meet the standard for maliciously false. Suggesting a restaurant buys rat dropping to make their ground beef go further probably would.

Complaints that are clearly representative of an individual’s opinion aren’t protected, especially if they do not invite or receive the agreement of other employees. The same with complaints about the job which are not terms and conditions of employment like saying your store gets the ugliest customers in town.

One interesting fact that came up in a number of the NLRB case studies is that you can not have a blanket policy prohibiting people from posting pictures of themselves in company uniform or in connection with the company logo. ”

“…Employer’s logos or photographs of the Employer’s stores would restrain an employee from engaging in protected activity. For example, an employee could not post pictures of employees carrying a picket sign depicting the Employer’s name, peacefully handbill in front of a store, or wear a t-shirt portraying the Employer’s logo in connection with a protest involving terms and conditions of employment.”

The NLRB documents didn’t say it outright, but presumably you could fire someone if they posted a picture of themselves drunk in uniform at a strip club or urinating on your corporate logo. Though I have no idea if a number of employees urinating would be considered a group cause or not.

Another part of the NRLB document I found useful was two case studies starting on page 19 that first discussed a company’s social media policy that they considered to be too broad. In the second case, they found the policy was lawful but the other prohibitions were too broad. Finally, there was a case where a company’s policy restricting employees’ contact with the media was deemed lawful.

I felt all three were very useful because they all contained rules that any of us might include in our policies. In the first two cases, it is good to know what types of language one should keep out of policies. The last case included restrictions on media contact out of a desire to have one voice speak for the organization. Again, a situation for which many organizations strive.

“…we determined that a policy that stated that “the company will respond to the news media in a timely and professional manner only through the designated spokespersons” could not be read as “a blanket prohibition” against all employee contact with the media. Additional language in the rule referring to “crisis situations” and ensuring “timely and professional” response to media inquiries further clarified that the rule was not meant to apply to Section 7 activities.

Similarly, we concluded here that the Employer’s media policy repeatedly stated that the purpose of the policy was to ensure that only one person spoke for the company. Although employees were instructed to answer all media/reporter questions in a particular way, the required responses did not convey the impression that employees could not speak out on their terms and conditions of employment.”

Info You Can Use, Legal Topics

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Info You Can Use: Tools To Chart Your Organizational Impact

August 24, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

A partnership of GuideStar USA, Independent Sector and BBB Wise Giving Alliance has created a free online tool, Charting Impact, which non-profits and foundations can use to assess themselves and help in “telling the story of your progress in an accessible, concise way. People want to help you make a difference – through donations, volunteering, and more – but often struggle to find a succinct, consistent resource that clarifies what nonprofits want to achieve and what they have already accomplished.”

The process has participants answer five questions about their organization to help gauge where they stand. Completing the report is meant to complement rather than replace program reviews and strategic planning. The final assessments appear on the site which is intended to be a central resource for those wishing to support a non-profit to obtain more information and assure themselves that the organization has a self-evaluative process in place.

One thing I found very interesting upon viewing some of the sample reports is that the process involves a CEO review, a Board review and a Stakeholder review and informs the reader if those groups have read and signed off on the report. Though the organization can manipulate the results by providing the contact information for stakeholders they know will never be critical of them, the anonymity afforded the reviewers provides an opportunity for the organization to receive some valuable feedback about themselves.

Charting Impact is still pretty new so there aren’t a lot of people who have completed the process. It will be interesting to see how prevalent its use as a resource will be. It already integrates some of the information on organizations GuideStar collects and fulfills a part of BBB Wise Giving Alliance’s charity certification process. If the process is viewed as credible, there is a potential that foundations and funders may require organizations to engage in it to receive a certain level of funding.

It would be unfortunate if Charting Impact became too much a gold standard that individuals wouldn’t make even small donations to organizations that hadn’t engaged in this introspection. I don’t necessarily see that happening any time soon. It would be nice amid all the stories we read about excessive salaries for non-profit executives and mismanagement and corruption to have a measure that provided the general public with confidence about organizational effectiveness.

Boards, Fundraising, Info You Can Use

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Stand By Your Non-Profit Until The Bitter End

August 23, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

Interesting piece on the Chronicle of Philanthropy about the responsibilities of non-profit boards to attend to the dissolution of their organizations.

Janet Kleinfelter, a deputy attorney general in Tennessee, talks about a case where a non-profit abandoned their organization after they realized it could no longer continue. They passed a resolution essentially saying the bank could do whatever it wanted to dispose of the assets and then resigned.

Kleinfelter writes that boards are required to give proper notice to state and federal regulators about the impending closure of their organization and submit the documentation in support of that action.

It is actually better for board members to stay involved with the organization than disassociate themselves. (My emphasis)

“Legally the board is required to dissolve the nonprofit, but when it fails to do so, that responsibility falls to the regulators and the courts.

This process will probably involve subpoenas to members of the former board, which may require board members to retain personal legal counsel at their own expense. What’s more, by resigning, board members may no longer have the benefit of directors’ and officer’ liability insurance. Former board members may even be personally liable for actions done in the name of the nonprofit while it is unmanaged.“

Boards, Leadership, Management Philosophy

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Not Necessarily 10,000 Hours

August 22, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

Since the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, the idea that you need 10,000 hours of practice to master a discipline/skill has started to become something of an article of faith. However, two posts on the Science of Sport blog argue that inborn talent and opportunity count for a lot more than practice and therefore, 10,000 hours is not necessary for mastery. For some people, even twice that will not result in mastery.

Now probably none of this is news to music instructors and others who are engaged to provide lessons to children who just don’t have the talent to master the subject matter despite the insistence of their parents. People who would never suggest that they could play on a college or professional football team if they only practiced long enough seem to believe that hard work is all that is needed for high achievement in the intellectual or artistic realms.

Most of the authors, Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas’, discussion of genetics can be found in the second post. In the first post they directly refute what they say are unwarranted claims in Gladwell’s book.

Unfortunately, Ericsson didn’t show us this data, so we can only speculate. But that didn’t stop Malcolm Gladwell from making this statement in his book “Outliers”:

“The striking thing about Ericsson’s study is that he and his colleagues couldn’t find any “naturals”, musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did.

Nor could they find any “grinds”, people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn’t have what it takes to break the top ranks.” – Outliers, pg 39

Again, I don’t know how he arrives at the above statements – Ericsson presented not a single measure to support these claims (and I happen to know that he didn’t interview him either). As we’ll see shortly, it is actually inconceivable that Gladwell’s statements are true – other study of skilled performance show massive variations, and the same will be true for violinists, of this I’m certain.

They then cite some studies measuring to what degree practicing factors into performance at a masterful level.

So, the average time taken is 11,053 hours. That’s pretty much in agreement with Ericsson’s violin players. So far so good. But look at that Standard Deviation – 5,538 hours, and it gives a co-efficient of variation of 50%. For those not into the statistics, what this basically shows is a “spread” of the values around the average. If the Standard Deviation is small, and the CV is low, then you have a tight cluster – all the individuals are close to the average. But when it’s 50%, then you know you have massive differences within that group.

And that’s what happens when you start looking at individuals – one player reaches master level on 3,000 hours, another takes almost 24,000 hours, and some are still practicing but not succeeding. That’s a 21,000 hour difference, which is two entire practice lifetimes according to the model of practice. It seems pretty clear that practice, while important, is not sufficient for some. And for others, it’s not even necessary.

They also looked at studies of elite athletes on the international stage and noted that they rarely needed 10,000 hours to attain that standing. The USA Olympic athletes in wrestling, football and field hockey pursued their sport 6,000, 4,000 and 5,000 hours, respectively. One Australian netball player only had 600 hours of playing before she made the national team. Michael Phelps had only 4 years or approximately 4,000 of practice when he placed 5th in the 2000 Olympics at age 15. Granted, it was another 4 years and a total of 8,000 hours before he dominated at the 2008 Olympics, but as the authors point out, to place 5th in the world after 4 years of serious practice attests to the value of inborn talent.

The authors agree that achieving elite status is attributable to a complex set of factors that include everything from good nutrition to suitably stable political and economic environment combined with opportunities for excellent instruction and guidance. While you can’t depend solely on genetics alone to produce a superstar, in their mind, inborn ability is the most important factor in reaching the highest level of achievement.

This seems to be an important argument to pay attention, partially in regard to the training of artists, but also in garnering an interest and respect for the arts. People hardly need even 1,000 hours of training to find a lot of enjoyment in experiencing and participating in artistic opportunities. But if you extend the implications of what the authors are saying a little, the idea that people will come to love the arts after being exposed or involved starts to become uncertain. There will be some people who will, as we all hope, get it and be inspired from the first exposure. Some people will simply never ever appreciate it and some will need a lot of repeated exposure before they start to.

You might think that this is all pretty self-evident already and didn’t need pointing out. However, if Ross and Dugas are correct, whether people come to appreciate the arts will depend on their innate capacity to do so combined with the opportunity to have quality experiences rather than just be a factor of straight exposures. This realization begins to complicate the approach to audience development in communities. But it also shows that the effort faces the same circumstances as any educational or training endeavor and can employ some of the same techniques.

Art(ist) Education, General Musings

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