Author: debbie

Maybe The Tech Industry Deserves a Platinum Anvil?

With Just three words . . . “Leave it alone,” the tech industry globally mobilized thousands of companies, organizations, individuals, and industries. Like an experienced parent who wants their child to do something, or not do something, but might have difficulty persuading them, they simply say, “Don’t do . . . you name it” and it becomes a do-or-die mission. So it has become for AI.

Are these tech people brilliant, or are they really that smart? We may never know. What we do know is that thousands have been mobilized, and millions or billions are being spent and all in the quest to figure something out with little or no help from the tech industries who started all of this. Clearly, the tech industries deserve a prize of some kind.

Never have so few words mobilized so many human beings and a colossal amount of cash for what appears far less fearsome than forecast.

Typically, in such a huge venture, something called an “Operational and reputational risk assessment and fact based recommendations” would have been prepared. In the case of AI, since no one had any facts to go on, everything kind of got made up in a huge fiction like activity. Which has yet to yield much except sporadic anecdotal success stories. And one large failure that of Donald Trump’s former attorney using AI to generate what turned out to be fake legal references for a motion he was proposing in federal court.

That’s because, of course, the tech industry does not intend to share additional information until it’s in their interest to do so. During the last year, I have attended a number of policy-level discussions (people who own, run, and make crucial decisions in the organizations)  of AI and while organizations like PRSA were busy developing hypothetical situational responses based on zero facts and data, the tech companies were having a great success with “leave it alone.” Why spoil all the fun with facts?

In contrast, virtually every policy-level discussion I attended developed only a sketchy, fuzzy concept called things like, “Responsible AI.” The responsibilities were described in a list of words with little explanation: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Sometimes described as core principles without much additional explanation. It’s still impossible to know what guidance is truly needed. We’ll need a few surprises and disasters to begin developing useful information.

It’s probably time for all of us to get back to work on our regular jobs and regular activities and await the inevitable catastrophes the media has predicted, always aiming for the worst-case scenarios. Where are the truth tellers when you need them most?

Destructive Language Decimates Trust

Leadership language choices in difficult situations are often early indicators of dysfunction. In fact, their adverse behaviors and language choices are often diagnostic of their dysfunction. Here are some examples to watch for:

  • Denial
  • Defensiveness
  • Deflection
  • Denigration
  • Disrespect
  • Demeaning
  • Discrediting
  • Distain

Not only do these behaviors, attitudes, and language choices destroy trust, they create victims, critics and angry people, families and organizations. These groups will work tirelessly to make leadership pay the price for unwanted behaviors.

These negative examples are enormously time-wasting, often trigger similar even more emotionally negative responses in return, foster contentiousness, confrontation, contempt, confusion and consternation. These behavior choices are corrosive to trust.

James E. Lukaszewski (loo-ka-SHEV-skee) is widely known as America’s Crisis Guru. He is a speaker, author (13 books and hundreds of articles and monographs), lecturer and ethicist (Emeritus member of the PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards BEPS). His book Lukaszewski on Crisis Communication, What Your CEO Needs to Know About Reputation Risk and Crisis Management had dozens of examples of corrosive behaviors and what to do about them.

© Copyright 2023, James E. Lukaszewski. America’s Crisis Guru® Get permission to reproduce or quote. Contact the copyright holder, jel@e911.com.

New Year’s Resolutions 2024

Action #1 Required This Day

Your Personal Daily Ethics Audit

By James E. Lukaszewski,
 ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus

Resolve today to get in the habit of regularly assessing your personal daily ethics exposure. It’s likely that your exposures will be a surprise. This paper presents a simple series of response options. In my crisis work the appearance of ethical questions was pretty frequent and I found that I needed a way to quickly assess these situations and determine what, if any, action might be needed.

We start with the first signs…the queasy stomach that tells you something is out of order or going there, perhaps soon. Then the remaining steps in the process are designed to help you move into a response mode if necessary, even a deeply responsive mode if extremely necessary.

Click on Moral Questions link to review a blog post for deeper penetration of more serious situations.

Step One:
Respond to First Signs or Concerns

The moment your stomach gets that twinge about what you are doing or planning to do, or someone else in your company is starting or plans to start doing, stop and ask yourself:

    1. What is the ideal ethical behavior here?
    2. How are ethical questions being surfaced and addressed?
    3. What is remaining unsaid, ignored, actually covered up?
    4. When will leaders address the ethical expectations of others?
    5. Is the profit or personal gain motive in balance with The PRSA Code of Ethics and your own ethical expectations?
  2.  
  3. First mentioned to me eons ago by Emmanuel Tchividjian former PRSA BEPS member, Principal –  The Markus Gabriel Group – US Phone Number: 646-209-0711, Norwegian Phone Number: 983-555-63,    Email: emmanueltchividjian@gmail.com, Website: www.markusgabrielgroup.com.

Step Two:
Ethical Decision-Making Guide to
Help Resolve Ethical Dilemmas

By Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, JD, APR, Former Member BEPS
On PRSA.org

*Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, J.D., APR – Former Member of BEPS   Director and Professor, The Zimmerman School at University of South Florida   Email: fitzpatrick10@usf.edu   Website: usf.edu/zimmermanschool

For public relations and other professionals, ethical dilemmas arise when responsibilities and loyalties conflict and a decision about the appropriate – i.e., ethical – course of action must be made. Often, a choice is required among actions that meet competing obligations. For example, when might the obligation to serve the public interest override loyalty to clients? When does a particular stakeholder’s interest take priority over an employer’s interest? In other words, just exactly what is “responsible advocacy”? Apply these questions to sort things out:

    1. Define the specific ethical malpractice issue/conflict.
    2. Identify internal/external factors (e.g., legal, political, social, economic) that may influence the decision.
    3. Identify key values.
    4. Identify the parties who will be affected by the decision and define the public relations professional’s obligation to each.
    5. Select ethical principles to guide the decision-making process.
    6. Make a decision and justify it.
  2.  

  3. Step Three:
    Use The Lexicon Of Unethical
    Public Relations Behavior

Every Code provision in the PRSA Code of Ethics, as well as every Professional Standards Advisory (PSA) contains examples of improper conduct. As subsequent Professional Standards Advisories are developed by the PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards (BEPS), approved and deployed, additional terms to describe improper conduct will be further explained, and examples provided.

The current PRSA Code lexicon of improper conduct includes:

    • Unethical conduct – Clear conduct that goes against the Code.

    • Improper conduct – Conduct that should be questioned.

    • Malpractice – Obviously, poor or flawed judgment and behavior.

    • Inappropriate behavior – Feels wrong, needs to be stopped.

    • Inconsistent with the Code

    • Disruptive to or can undermine ethical practice – Behavior that should stop, may require remedial action.

    • Destructive to the reputation of practitioners, our profession, or our Society – You’ll know it when you see it, stand up, speak out, and stop it.

a. Voluntary Societies Have,
Established Inspirational Codes Of Conduct.

Journalism, public relations, advertising, Word of Mouth (WOM), The Global Alliance, and many other voluntary professional or trade associations, failing to have a legal basis for using enforceable regulatory oversight, have focused on inspiration and education of their members. Lawyers, doctors, accountants, police officers, dentists, hairdressers, barbers, and other services that are licensed by a state, county or government authority, can and do impose penalties and sanction violations. The PRSA Code is an aspirational document designed to facilitate, educate, and inspire ethical behavior and also to call out malpractice and unethical conduct.  

b. Using the PRSA Code of Conduct (From PRSA.org)
With Examples of Improper Conduct

Conduct #1 – Free Flow of Information

Core Principle:

Protecting and advancing the free flow of accurate and truthful information is essential to serving the public interest and contributing to informed decision-making in a democratic society.

Intent:

  • To maintain the integrity of relationships with the media, government officials, and the public.

  • To aid informed decision-making.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Preserve the integrity of the process of communication.

  • Be honest and accurate in all communications.

  • Act promptly to correct erroneous communications for which the practitioner is responsible.

  • Preserve the free flow of unprejudiced information when giving or receiving gifts by ensuring that gifts are nominal, legal, and infrequent.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under this Provision:

  • A member representing a ski manufacturer gives a pair of expensive racing skis to a sports magazine columnist, to influence the columnist to write favorable articles about the product.

  • A member entertains a government official beyond legal limits and/or in violation of government reporting requirements.

Conduct #2 – Competition

Core Principle:

Promoting healthy and fair competition among professionals preserves an ethical climate while fostering a robust business environment.

Intent:

  • To promote respect and fair competition among public relations professionals.

  • To serve the public interest by providing the widest choice of practitioner options.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Follow ethical hiring practices designed to respect free and open competition without deliberately undermining a competitor.

  • Preserve intellectual property rights in the marketplace.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • A member employed by a “client organization” shares helpful information with a counseling firm that is competing with others for the organization’s business.

  • A member spreads malicious and unfounded rumors about a competitor in order to alienate the competitor’s clients and employees in a ploy to recruit people and business.

Conduct #3 – Disclosure of Information

Core Principle:

Open communication fosters informed decision-making in a democratic society.

Intent:

To build trust with the public by revealing all information needed for responsible decision-making.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Be honest and accurate in all communications.

  • Act promptly to correct erroneous communications for which the member is responsible.

  • Investigate the truthfulness and accuracy of information released on behalf of those represented.

  • Reveal the sponsors for causes and interests represented.

  • Disclose financial interest (such as stock ownership) in a client’s organization.

  • Avoid deceptive practices.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under this Provision:

  • Front groups: A member implements “grassroots” campaigns or letter-writing campaigns to legislators on behalf of undisclosed interest groups.

  • Lying by omission: A practitioner for a corporation knowingly fails to release financial information, giving a misleading impression of the corporation’s performance.

  • A member discovers inaccurate information disseminated via a website or media kit and does not correct the information.

  • A member deceives the public by employing people to pose as volunteers to speak at public hearings and participate in “grassroots” campaigns.

Conduct #4 – Safeguarding Confidences

Core Principle:

Client trust requires appropriate protection of confidential and private information.

Intent:

To protect the privacy rights of clients, organizations, and individuals by safeguarding confidential information.

Guidelines:

  • A member shall: Safeguard the confidences and privacy rights of present, former, and prospective clients and employees.

  • Protect privileged, confidential, or insider information gained from a client or organization.

  • Immediately advise an appropriate authority if a member discovers that confidential information is being divulged by an employee of a client company or organization.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • A member changes jobs, takes confidential information, and uses that information in the new position to the detriment of the former employer.

  • A member intentionally leaks proprietary information to the detriment of some other party.

Conduct #5 – Conflicts of Interest

Core Principle:

Avoiding real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest builds the trust of clients, employers, and the publics.

Intent:

  • To earn trust and mutual respect with clients or employers.

  • To build trust with the public by avoiding or ending situations that put one’s personal or professional interests in conflict with society’s interests.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Act in the best interests of the client or employer, even subordinating the member’s personal interests.

  • Avoid actions and circumstances that may appear to compromise good business judgment or create a conflict between personal and professional interests.

  • Disclose promptly any existing or potential conflict of interest to affected clients or organizations.

  • Encourage clients and customers to determine if a conflict exists after notifying all affected parties.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • The member fails to disclose that he or she has a strong financial interest in a client’s chief competitor.

  • The member represents a “competitor company” or a “conflicting interest” without informing a prospective client.

Conduct #6 – Enhancing the Profession

Core Principle:

Public relations professionals work constantly to strengthen the public’s trust in the profession.

Intent:

  • To build respect and credibility with the public for the profession of public relations.

  • To improve, adapt and expand professional practices.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Acknowledge that there is an obligation to protect and enhance the profession.

  • Keep informed and educated about practices in the profession to ensure ethical conduct.

  • Actively pursue Personal Professional Development.

  • Decline representation of clients or organizations that urge or require actions contrary to this Code.

  • Accurately define what public relations activities can accomplish.

  • Counsel subordinates in proper ethical decision-making.

  • Require that subordinates adhere to the ethical requirements of the Code.

  • Report practices that fail to comply with the Code, whether committed by PRSA members or not, to the appropriate authority.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • A PRSA member declares publicly that a product the client sells is safe, without disclosing evidence to the contrary.

  • A member initially assigns some questionable client work to a non-member practitioner to avoid the ethical obligation of PRSA membership.

A Days End Assessment

When those days come along where your stomach is queasy at the very beginning, you know you’re going to have a long day and you will want to have a sensible process for wrapping things up at the end of the day. Just take a few moments to review what happened during the day from an ethical point of view on the things you need to be concerned about and take action on. Create a simple to-do list to get these things done before they fall through a crack.

If you have any questions at all, contact your Chapter Ethics Officer who is ready and waiting to be of assistance. Good luck and remember, working through these ethical issues and questions is one of the most important things we can do as practitioners.

I, too, am available 24/7 to answer questions and to be of service in these important matters at any time. Besides, I’ve committed my life to working these areas of importance and really do love talking about them and helping others have better days. jel@e911.com

James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus, is the longest-serving member of BEPS, 35 years. In 2015, the PRSA Board of Directors conferred Emeritus status. So far, Jim is the only Emeritus BEPS board member. He publishes a wide variety of commentaries, lexicons, manifestos, and analyses of ethics practices and malpractices in public relations, business, and society every year.

Moral Questioning A Key Process For Resolving Ethical Dilemmas  

Step One:
Noticing Early Warning Signs

The moment your stomach gets that twinge about what you are doing, just hearing about, or planning to do, or someone else in your company, your family, or the community is starting or plans to start doing, stop and ask yourself, and perhaps others:

  1. What is (is there) ideal behavior here?
  2. How are ethical questions being surfaced and addressed?
  3. What remains unsaid, ignored, actually covered up?
  4. When will leaders address the ethical expectations of others?
  5. Is the profit (personal benefit) motive in balance with your own ethical expectations?

Step Two:
Use the Fitzpatrick Ethical Decision-Making Guide
to Help Resolve, Some Ethical Dilemmas

By Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, JD, APR, Former Member Public Relations Society Of America (PRSA) Board Of Ethics And Professional Standards (BEPS) Found On PRSA.org

For public relations and other professionals, ethical dilemmas arise when responsibilities and loyalties conflict and a decision about the appropriate – i.e., ethical – course of action must be made. Often, a choice is required among actions that meet competing obligations. For example, when might the obligation to serve the public interest override loyalty to clients? When does a particular stakeholder’s interest take priority over an employer’s interest? In other words, just exactly what is “responsible advocacy”? Apply these questions to sort things out:

  1. Define the specific ethical issue/conflict.
  2. Identify internal/external factors (e.g., legal, political, social, economic) that may influence the decision.
  3. Identify key values.
  4. Identify the parties who will be affected by the decision and define the public relations professional’s obligation to each.
  5. Select ethical principles to guide the decision-making process.
  6. Make a decision and justify it.

Step Three:
When We Need to Go Beyond the Fitzpatrick Model
The Moral Questioning Menu

Often at first, it seems most ethical questions have simple direct answers. Closer examination generally requires that we expand our investigations and questions to develop more thoughtful, deeper, and often more complex responses.

This list of questions is a menu of deeper exploration of ethical issues. Pick the questions that are most likely to reveal and explore important information to help you make your decisions and choices.

  • Who does the questionable behavior bother?
  • Who has been involved, injured, afflicted, or victimized??
  • Who made decisions?
  • Who was asking questions, and of whom?
  • What affirmative steps are now being taken to remedy the situation?
  • What are the principles involved?
  • What are the relevant facts of the situation?
  • What alternatives are available?
  • What decisions were made, when, where, and by whom?
  • What did we know, and when did we know it?
  • What ethical standards or principles of conduct are involved or at issue?
  • What is the fundamental cause of the situation?  Omission? Commission? Negligence? Arrogance? Action? Inaction? Denial? Indecision?
  • What is the truth?
  • What lessons can the organization learn as this dilemma is revealed?
  • What other questionable decisions or actions may come to light?
  • What was sacrificed to benefit the outcome or the victims?
  • How could this have been avoided?
  • How will future unethical behavior be disclosed? To whom and how fast?
  • How will our principles be advanced or violated by each alternative action?
  • Is it really our problem?
  • Is it really an ethical question?
  • Are all the critical ethical questions being asked and answered?
  • Are our actions open and honest?
  • As an organization are we prepared to comment on the behavior that led to ethical compromise?
  • Did this happen because there’s an institutional code of silence?
  • Has all of the information been presented honestly and correctly thus far?
  • Was there a serious and prompt attempt to find out what was really going on?
  1. When bad things happen, they often come to our attention as dilemmas – that is, situations where we must choose between two equally bad, sometimes repugnant choices:
    1. “Are you still beating your wife or just being arrogant and obstructive?”
    2. “Did you or your company/organization do this intentionally, maliciously, or negligently?”
  2. Bad situations often have a moral dimension and questions that need to be asked promptly to assess the moral dimension, if any. Asking these moral questions early can trigger prompt, appropriate detoxifying actions and decisions and assess appropriate ethical behaviors.

Failure to ask questions can be considered an ethical failure by omission. Ask the right questions early as suspect situations are developing. Moral questioning may help you to head off serious difficulty or perhaps even enhance the value of your decisions and actions.

How To Build The Happiness You Thought Your Success Would Bring You But Hasn’t Yet Arrived – Part One

Success, accomplishment, happiness, thank you’s, accolades, and gratitude only come, for most of us, when you build your own happiness triggers into your daily life, and the lives of others.

I’m talking about personally building a really fun and important personal habit, remembering what you learned every day that helped you help others have a better life. Guess what, every day and time you make someone else more successful, they will in turn remember and acknowledge your role in that success.

Task One:
How to Help Yourself Remember
What You Learn Every Day and From
Whom Your Daily Lessons Learned Log

Consider these six questions every day. (The discipline is that you respond to at least one. The more you harvest daily from your life, just brief reminders, a word, phrase, name, idea, or short sentence, the more you brilliantly and magically remember later will inspire you, and others around you. The six questions are:

  1. What’s the most important thing I learned today? From whom?
  2. What’s the most interesting thing I learned today? From whom?
  3. What’s the most unusual, surprising thing I learned today? From whom?
  4. What questions have arisen today that need answers? From whom?
  5. What will I do differently tomorrow, based on what I learned today, and thank whom?
  6. How can I share these learnings with others?

Make it formal. I still like notebooks, so I have a notebook for lessons learned and I generally require all of my employees to maintain them for themselves and copy me on them daily. The notebook is simply filled with the six questions.

  • Each question has two or three lines on which to jot something down.
  • Keep it in your computer or wherever it is convenient. I like notebooks because standing by my desk they remind me to do this every day.
  • Once you start doing this you really recognize how many people you owe your own success to and they should know about that and they should hear it from you.

A simple and meaningful, personal note is quite powerful.

When I was 26 years old, I was in a management training program at a large retail music company in Minneapolis and the management training program consisted of assigning an up-and-coming individual to supervise store departments. I worked part-time here for several years out of high school in the band instrument department. The first department, they assigned that I managed for a month was Stereo Components and Electronic Devices.

My manager, Dick Loberg, gave me just two assignments every month.

First, I needed to conduct a sales meeting at 7:30 every Tuesday morning for an hour and provide the department’s five award-winning salespeople a fresh idea to use that week in closing sales.

Second, at least twice during the month I needed to send each of the five men a brief note thanking them or recognizing them for something they were doing that I liked.

I learned quickly that successful salespeople can make any suggestion a success.

The notes were a little harder, but I managed in the first month to give everybody two brief notes about something I liked about what they were doing.

In the second month, one of these salesmen, Tom, passed away. It wasn’t my fault but my boss came down and said to please go through Tom’s desk because his family was coming over tomorrow to spend half the day in the space where Tom worked for 35 years. “Be sure you get rid of anything that could embarrass him or the company.” I found nothing.

My last item to tackle was Tom’s desk. There in the lower right-hand drawer was a box, way in the back. I was prepared to pitch it then noticed that all the pages were in chronological order going back almost 30 years, the length of time Tom worked in the company.  Every piece of paper had a note from someone complimenting Tom on something. There were several from the founder of the company who said things as simple as, “Tom, you saved the Anderson’s business, I owe you for that one!” It was signed by Paul A., the founder of Paul A. Schmitt Music. Because they were in chronological order leading up last week, there at the head of the stack, were the two notes from me. I teared up.

I put that box on his desk just in time for his family to arrive the next morning. The whole family dove into this box with great excitement and they pulled out papers and talked about when Tom, their dad, uncle, or grandpa had talked about these various events at the dinner table. Tom had taken them home, showed them off, talked about them, and was very proud of them.

People remember being thanked. And maybe all of us need to be thanked a lot more often. I tear up almost every time I tell this story. This experience is something you want to be responsible for.  

In Happiness File #3, I’ll be talking about “The Platinum Rule” for making a happy life.

The Platinum Rule for making a happy life. “Help others achieve those things they feel are meaningful, helpful, and important for others beyond themselves, but need help completing what they hope to accomplish.” Translated, do good things for others who are doing good things for, yet others and they’ll all come to thank, recognize, and do good things for you in return.