Well, of course I watched it!  I live in Colorado so who could resist - - even the non-football fans among us - -tuning in to last weekend’s game between the Broncos and the Steelers.  And yes, when we watched Tebow lob that 80 yard pass to Thomas we all did believe that he would be walking on water any day.

And yet…even in Denver, Tebow has his detractors.  He just seems too good to be true. The grouches complain, and of course, all that kneeling…must he?

A better question might be:  can he?  Is it okay to mix religion and work?  (And make no mistake about it, professional football is a workplace just like any other.)

Here’s where it gets a bit technical, so stay with me.  Most of the players are on contract, so theoretically, they would not be considered employees like most regular employees would be.  Still, most discrimination laws do apply to contractors.  There are still a couple hundred stadium and other Bronco employees who are not on contract and who have the same rights and responsibilities that any regular employee would in any workplace.  One of those rights is the right to be free from harassment based on race, national origin, ethnic  background, gender, religion and so on.  They also have a responsibility to not harass other employees.

On the other side of the issue, employers have to accommodate a certain amount of religious expression in the workplace.    Where are the lines?

Basically, employers have to accommodate expression such as wearing a headscarf or praying toward Mecca several times a day but do not have to accommodate proselytizing that might be considered harassment.  This would include visual forms of religious expression such as posters, large crosses or the like. Tebowing — meaning Tim’s propensity to drop down on one knee with his hand to his head before the start of every game — would, I believe, fall in the category of allowable religious expression, instead of any question of harassment.  If, however, he tried to convert people to his faith or judged them for being non-believers, his expression would be out of bounds and an employer would need to intervene and throw down a flag.

Where is that line in any given situation between religious expression and religious harassment?  While I hate to sound lawyerly, it depends.  Normally, that would be a factual question in every situation.  In your workplace — if you work in a typical office environment –  a small cross or Star of David in your cubicle would most likely be permissible.  Insisting on the erection of a large statue of Ganesh — the Hindu God known as the remover of obstacles and beloved by those seeking more financial abundance in their life — in the lobby would not.

For more information about this issue from both the employer and employee’s perspective, consult my more recent books:  We Need To Talk:  Tough Conversations with Your Employees or We Need To Talk: Touch Conversations with Your Boss.

And, as a practical matter, dropping to your knee along a public hallway might earn you a different reputation than you’d like, unless you also deliver the kind of miracles in your workplace that Tebow manages in his.

As I keep lamenting in this space, I’m amazed that we’re still dealing with the subject of sexual harassment.  I wrote my first book on the subject in 1993:  Sexual Harassment:  A Reference Handbook and I sometimes feel as if I’ve personally trained the whole country on the subject.  Evidently Cain, however, missed that memo.

What can we glean from his travails?  Three things:

1. Confidentiality. I’m amazed at how often this rule is violated by the participants in a sexual harassment investigation but the law and best practices require that the subject of an investigation, as well as the name of the alleged recipient of the harassment, should be kept as confidential as possible.  After four different women came forward accusing Cain of harassment while he worked with the National Restaurant Association, reporters dogged the organization trying to persuade them to reveal names and details but they, appropriately, did not.
2. Neutrality. Cain was the head of the association yet he was also the subject of the investigations conducted there.  While we don’t know how the organization handled that, I’ve seen many public figures violate this rule.  The employer’s obligation during an investigation is to be neutral, to conduct a full and fair investigation and come to a reasonable conclusion.  While we don’t know what Cain said back then when these allegations first arose, we know that his public comments during the campaign were anything but neutral.
3. Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire. Four different women accused Cain of harassment.  While there may be instances where a group gangs up to wrongly accuse someone after conducting dozens of investigations, I’ve never seen it happen.  I did an investigation for a prominent law firm, for example, where a woman associate with a poor performance record accused a well-known and respected partner of harassment.  No one believed her.  Yet after her allegations surfaced and the associate gossip mill went into overdrive– as well as the rumor that no one thought she was telling the truth– three other women associates with great track records came forward with similar claims.  They had everything to lose by coming forth yet they did.

So thank Herman Cain while you ponder these lessons when you’re faced with your next sexual harassment claim.

Mark Twain said: “There are lies, damn lies and statistics.” While that may or may not be true, Moneyball, the Brad Pitt movie about the use of statistics in baseball hit a home run at the box office last weekend. What can you learn from this movie about attracting and retaining the best? Plenty.

The movie is based on Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, a book by Michael Lewis about the Oakland A’s baseball team.

The book challenged the conventional wisdom at the time arguing that a subjective analysis of players skills, as well as statistics such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting average do not work. A new kind of statistics, called sabermetrics, developed by the A’s General Manager Billy Beane, used on-base percentages and slugging percentages instead. The A’s learned that these qualities were cheaper to obtain on the open market than more historically valued qualities such as speed and contact.

By using these strategies, the 2002 Athletics, with $41 million in salary, were competitive with better funded teams such as the Yankees, with $125 million payroll. The A’s found players undervalued by the market. Many other teams - initially skeptical - now use the system.

I was thinking about the movie when I heard Shannon Dugan, Vice President of People at Google, speak last week. One of the many innovative people practices Google uses to attract and retain the best is to measure everything in HR. All their people discussions at Google are based on data and analytics. One-third of their HR people are data and statistics experts.

It’ a classic management rule that what gets measured gets done, although sometimes, in my experience, because people don’t use the measures they receive, it’s more what gets measured gets measured, but I think it’s worth looking at the way you measure your own and your team’s performance. Are you using subjective factors or outdated statistics? Could looking at the realities of what statistics really mean help your batting average? Are you measuring the right things? Do you have people in your organization who really understand analysis?

Go see the movie to jump start your thinking process. Besides, the critics are raving and I guarantee you will feel better when you walk out than when you walked in!

]]> http://www.workplacesthatwork.com/blog/2011/09/29/moneyball-lies-damn-lies-and-statistics/feed/ http://www.workplacesthatwork.com/blog/2011/07/19/what-you-have-in-common-with-hugh-grant-prince-charles-and-gordon-brown/ http://www.workplacesthatwork.com/blog/2011/07/19/what-you-have-in-common-with-hugh-grant-prince-charles-and-gordon-brown/#comments Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:34:28 +0000 admin http://www.workplacesthatwork.com/blog/?p=1137 I know it’s hard to believe but you really do have the same problem as these famous faces. What might that be? Texting, talking and emailing when you shouldn’t be.

The scandal surrounding the voice mail hacking fiasco shut down Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. A private investigator hacked into members of Britain’s royal house-hold by duping phone operators into handing over their personal codes. Those PINS allowed him and journalist Clive Goodman to listen in on the royal family’s voice mails.

They also hacked into Hugh Grant’s and Gordon Brown’s, as well as the private medical records relating to Prime Minister Brown’s son. With phone records it’s called “pre-texting” and a common scheme where a hacker calls up the telephone company pretending to be you. An agent asks for personal information such as a mother’s maiden name or a pass code then surrenders the call logs or passwords if the information is convincing enough.
If you’re able to retrieve your password after you’ve forgotten it then so can someone else.

But the real problem at the heart of all this hullabaloo is the false sense of security that we have that our servers and airwaves are private. They are not. Email is just a postcard on the server floor, there for anyone to read. Texts and voice mail can be hacked (and it doesn’t take a CSI operative ) or subpoenaed. You should assume that your boss or a judge is reading all of this, especially if you’re using company servers, phones or computers.
Save all those private, privileged and just-can’t-wait messages for in person, safe conversations. With almost every investigation I’m involved in, there’s something stupid at the heart of it that someone texted or emailed. I am always amazed that otherwise intelligent people will pour their hearts or their sex lives into these very public mediums.

Don’t get caught with your pants down. Think before you text, voice or email something that you don’t want broadcasted in the local rag. It’s happened to Hugh Grant and Prince Charles. It can happen to you.

In Denver, Josh McDaniels, the temper tantrum throwing, 34 year old Broncos coach is out and John Fox, 55, former South Carolina coach who led the Panthers to a surprise Super Bowl match is in, hired by former Broncos super star and new Executive Vice President, John Elway, 51.

Elway introduced Fox by praising his “wisdom and energy.” Is this a trend to bring back wisdom instead of relying on youth?

Not so fast. During the same week, we saw Google replace Eric Schmidt, 55 with founder Larry Page, 37. On his twitter account, Schmidt, who took $100 million worth of equity with him out the door, tweeted: “Adult supervision no longer required!”

Of course Schmidt, who had successfully birthed the company through a public offering, had arrived at Google when the young computer jocks were sleeping under their desks and playing ping-pong at 2:00 a.m. Schmidt was known for issuing intemperate remarks such as suggesting that people will want to change their names as adults to escape the dumb things they’ve said on the internet as kids. He also thinks that it’s better that Google (a company beholden to shareholders) has all your personal information over the Government (an institution theoretically beholden to its citizens). Bloggers and stock watchers had speculated that Schmidt was a figurehead, helping keep founder Sergey Brin out of the spotlight. Schmidt, for example, didn’t even know that Google bought Android. In his own words, he said, “One day Larry and Sergey bought Android and I didn’t even notice.”

Interestingly, Fox has had an equally checkered career. Although he brought the Panthers to a surprise Super Bowl match, last year he had the NFL’s worst record at 2-14. The team didn’t renew his contract, although in nine years with the Panthers, he went 78-74.

McDaniels, Fox’s predecessor, was on the job less than two years after replacing Mike Shanahan in January 2009 but he left a team shattered by the loss of major talents including Jay Cutler, Peyton Hillis and Brandon Marshall.

While other strong candidates interviewed for the job, team president Joe Ellis said Fox’s credentials put him over the top. “Just his depth of experience, knowledge, contacts, and scheme. Put it all together, it’s the complete package.”

Now of course, you wouldn’t want to use language such as “return of the old guys” in your workplace, but it does cause one to stop and ponder whether wisdom trumps youth.

Perhaps the take-away from all the recent moves is what we always preach in diversity training: don’t stereotype. As I wrote in my book, Tough Conversations, With Your Boss From Promotions to Resignations Tackle Any Topic with Sensitivity and Smarts, none of us likes to be stereotyped and we shouldn’t do it to others.

But as one of the over-forty crowd myself, I understand that there’s a reason that age discrimination is the fastest growing class of discrimination cases in federal court: there’s so many baby-boomers and we’re still feisty, so don’t mess with us!

You never know whether the old guy or the young guy (not to mention gal) is going to be the best fit for your team. Try to put aside your preconceptions and pick the best candidate.

Talk about holding a grudge.

“Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” the message said. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”

Ms. Thomas went on. “So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.”

As I remember the familiar images from the hearings play out over the newscasts and thought of some recent sexual harassment investigations that I’ve done, I was shocked at how little we’ve learned about this topic in twenty years.

If anyone would have told me that we would still be facing this issue when I wrote my first book about harassment in 1992, Sexual Harassment a Reference Handbook (ABC-CLIO) I would have not believed them.

Yet I just completed a really messy investigation with executives making the same kind of unwelcome and sexual comments to employees, including an allegation that a male executive said in the office that he “beat off” while thinking about a female employee.

As we watched the Thomas/Hill saga unfold, however, one thing we did not receive was good modeling about how to conduct investigations.

For example, the employer’s obligation is to be neutral. The Bush administration clearly was not.

Investigations should also be kept as confidential as possible. Broadcasting on national TV? Not so much.

The investigator should ask open ended, non leading questions. Did we see that? No. As usual in congressional hearings, there were a lot of speeches, not questions.

An investigator should interview all relevant witnesses. The democrats had a second witness, Angela Wright, ready to testify that she experienced the same kind of conduct from Thomas when she worked for him. For a variety of political reasons, she did not end up testifying.

The standard should be a preponderance of the evidence, not a criminal standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

In their book, Strange Justice, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, then with the Wall Street Journal, wrote that the evidence suggested that Hill was telling the truth and that much evidence was ignored. The senators seemed stuck on the idea that they had to prove beyond a doubt who was telling the truth. In reality, an investigator merely has to conduct a full and fair investigation and come to a reasonable conclusion. Even if it’s the wrong conclusion, the investigation itself will be defensible.

Live and learn? Not so much.