The Good, The Bad, The Spin

I purposefully avoid discussing local matters for two reasons: 1. there’s ample material of which I often know too much, and 2. in light of number one, I try to maintain a decent amount of good juju with my colleagues. I admit I’m not always successful. Thus, this blog’s emphasis has rarely been about matters related to Nevada.

This one is too good to pass up, however. My friend and colleague, Ryan Jerz, is one of Reno’s best bloggers and is certainly one of the most read. He recently had the audacity, as he often does, to comment in the negative. This time, it was about a lawsuit being filed against the local university by a former disgruntled employee*. It seemed harmless enough at the time.

He underestimated the wrath of said disgruntled employee, however, who has since attempted all manner of trying to silence him, up to and including visits over coffee, threat of a lawsuit and, most recently, a cease and desist letter.

Jerz did the right thing, in my opinion. I said if it were me, I would post up everything. He did. And it’s a delicious read.

Transparency, as I’ve mentioned before, is a two-way street. Fortunately, most have seen through the wrath, now put in a more open context by Jerz’ coming out (as it were). Many are offering up donations to his legal defense fund. I donated to him the time of my virtual assistant, who is a paralegal. (Thank you, Kimberly.) (more…)

Bob Sutton’s The No Asshole Rule has gained a lot of traction lately no doubt for two main reasons: the stickiness of the title and the fact that most can probably relate to book’s subject—assholes in the workplace. Most attractive for readers is that Sutton bases his views on academic research, particularly from the fields of social psychology (Bob Cialdini), organizational psychology and primate studies by Robert Sapolsky. Sapolski, Sutton tells us, noticed how monkeys over generations became nicer after old-guard monkeys—assholes in question—were wiped out by eating diseased meat from a garbage dump. Their greed did them in, and the less aggressive—those who were denied choice morsals from the dump by their asshole kin—survived, ulitmately changing the monkey culture to shun asshole behavior. (Reminds me of our own asshole ancestors.) Worthy adjuncts to Sutton’s book are a couple of my favorites: Franz de Waal’s Chimpanzee Politics and Peacemaking Among Primates.

Implications for public relations are numerous in Sutton’s book, particularly for internal communications, understanding organizational culture and overall organizational success and functioning.