“Systems of engagement.”

Isn’t that an evocative term?

The minute I read it, I knew that the term “systems of engagement” captured something important–but what? I searched the web, I even consulted Quora, but I found no definition of “systems of engagement” that incorporates all that the term evokes for me. So at the end of this post, I’ll propose a definition.

But first let me tell you why the concept of “systems of engagement” is useful.

The term “systems of engagement” evokes complexity, dynamism, a sense of purpose, and a set of values about stakeholder interaction.

As a term:

• “Systems of engagement” includes any kind of tool or medium that focuses on engaging any stakeholder–internal or external.

• “Systems of engagement” encompasses all forms of “social media”, but they aren’t limited to the activity of the organization connecting outward to external stakeholders.

• “Systems of engagement” highlights the complex, recursive, dynamic nature of the tools and the processes that they support. Explicitly, the term takes us away from any notion of broadcasting.

• “Systems of engagement” focuses on the goal, the reason for being, behind these tools & processes: Engagement. These tools are built and used explicitly to facilitate people getting involved in the interpersonal, communicative and creative elements of the work that they do.

“Systems of engagement” invokes a perspective on technology that captures how we need to think differently about technology, when we want to use this technology in a social organization.

“Systems of engagement” is a term that will –I hope– be used to describe all manner of interactive, digital, communication oriented systems, used by organizations, to support engagement among stakeholders.

Where did the term “Systems of Engagement” come from?

Geoffrey Moore coined the term “systems of engagement” (though I cannot find a citation) and contrasted them to “systems of record”. Moore offers a simple definition of systems of engagement, calling them

“social business systems designed to dramatically improve the productivity of middle tier knowledge workers. … (they) enhance the ability of knowledge workers to quickly cooperate with each other in order to improve operating flexibility and customer engagement.”

That definition is a good start, but it really doesn’t embrace all that the term implies, and all that the actual systems mean to an organization.

The term popped into my awareness with the Jan 2011 AIIM report “Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT”. It has been discussed somewhat by process management specialist Jacob Ukelson and by CRM/eCommerce specialist Richard Hughes, both of whom bring an IT/Content management perspective to it. Michel Bauwens has created a Wikipedia page for the term. And, JP Rangaswami has elaborated on the concept of Systems of Engagement, especially drawing in some history of the evolution of these sorts of social systems.

But no one, as yet, has directly addressed the organizational, cultural, and leadership issues related to systems of engagement. (Richard Veryard, I’m with you in this concern.)

Consider just this one direction:

When we think about systems of engagement, we are triggered to think about engagement as a concept, and as a process, as it has been understood and facilitated by organization development and change agents since before the dawn of the human relations movement.

We are triggered to remember, for example, that engagement requires a commitment to four organizational principles:

1. widening the circle of involvement
2. connecting people to each other, to ideas, and to emotions
3. creating communities of action
4. embracing democracy

When we think about these underlying principles of engagement, and consider how they need to be built into digital tools to support stakeholder interaction, we explicitly create the bridge from a tech focus (like Enterprise 2.0) to a social focus on individual and organizational flourishing (e.g., social organization, wirearchy).

Let’s Co-Opt the Term “Systems of Engagement”

I want to co-opt this term, popularize it, and promote it in conversations about social media, social business, and social organizations.

“Systems of engagement” reminds us that we need to step beyond customer relationship management– we need to include more than just customers, and to focus on processes in addition to “management”. Even when we talk about constituent relationship management, we’re still talking about a view where the organization controls the medium and controls the engagement for its own purposes–not necessarily for maximizing the value that’s exchanged between and among stakeholders.

When we think of systems of engagement, not just ‘social media inside organizations’, we invite ourselves to think differently, more expansively, and more creatively about what we need to do to support the engagement of all organizational stakeholders.

The term suggests, maybe even reminds us, that these tools are attached to values, norms, and a worldview about users, managers, leaders, and those whom these systems will serve.

As a term, “systems of engagement” solves a problem for us.

The term creates room for our imagination, for us to create additional systems that support and facilitate stakeholder engagement. It also triggers us to think about the organizational context that will support, and use these systems.

Old Wall, New Coat of Paint?

Craig Rhinehart, an enterprise content specialist, believes that “systems of engagement” is really just a clever label for systems we have been using all along, a “proven idea with a fresh coat of paint”.

He’s right, I think, in recognizing that tools such as email and instant messaging were used to facilitate engagement long before “social media” etc. were created. It is a proven idea that engagement needs tech system support.

But we haven’t yet fully explored and explained how systems of engagement are attached to values, norms, and a worldview about users, managers, leaders, and those whom these systems will serve. There is still a lot we can do to understand how a class of systems, engagement systems, can be fit in next to old(er) paradigms of digital technology, and older paradigms of leadership and organizations.

So here’s what I propose:

If the term “systems of engagement” feels useful to you, let’s hear how. Let’s just co-opt the term, and work together to define it. Where do you want to start?

[ Note: I use social organization instead of social business to include nonprofits and other organizational forms as well as businesses.] More links to follow but I’m out of time for now…

images: Complex Beauty – Liatris …from 1Sock The Complex Plane from Garrett Crawford Williamsville Water Mill Complex from johncpiercy

What would Facebook be like if it were designed by women?

In my earlier post, I proposed that Facebook would look, feel and function differently if it had been designed by “women”.

[What I actually was writing about what what Facebook might look like if it had been designed by Feminists-- but I used "women" in the title to enhance SEO. Sometimes we make tradeoffs, and write headlines that prioritize discoverability over precision.]

Distinguishing Between Women and Feminists

Clarifying how a facebook designed for women is different from a facebook designed by feminists is an important place to begin the conversation, because so many people struggle to distinguish between “women” and “feminists/feminism”.

“Women” is a social category, based on a person’s gender self-definition. When we talk about “Women” we’re talking about a social category with predictable, empirically verifiable, modal preferences. We can measure what women as a group prefer, and we can design to appeal to these preferences.

“Feminists” is a social category, based on a person’s political orientation. Many women advocate feminism and many feminists are women. Some feminists are men, and some feminists choose to define themselves without using the terms like man or woman. Feminist have values they want to ‘build in’ to products, services and organizations.

When it comes down to distinguishing between women and feminists, we need to separate marketing and politics.

Marketing to Women

Designing something “for women” is a marketing challenge. Products designed for women are intended to appeal to women by reflecting the preferences of women as a social group.

If you want to get lots of women to like, buy, use your product, you identify empirically what kinds of features “women” prefer, you design your product to have these features, and viola, you’ve got a product “for Women”.

Feminist Design

Feminist design of a product is a political action. Products designed by feminists are intended to change power relationships and advance social change, on behalf of women and men.

Facebook was not and is not designed “for women”. It is not designed in ways that reflect what women prefer in terms of the tool’s appearance, functionality, and raison d’etre.

A facebook designed “for Women” might have begun with some research into how women might want to create, sustain and recreate social relationships in an online forum. That research might have included what kinds of visual appearance they’d like the site to have, as well as what kinds of functions they’d like the site to enable, and what different ways they’d like their social relationships categorized, organized and represented.

Women would have been asked:

• What do you want to be able to share, see and do with your ‘friends’? (Would we even call them “friends”?)
• How do you understand the variety of your relationships?
• How can relationships best be presented graphically/visually and over time?

Maybe Facebook for women would have been pink, with flowery text and pictures of cats; maybe not. Maybe a facebook designed by women would display the romantic relationship status of each user; maybe it would have displayed each person’s answer to the question “If I could make the world a better place, I would ________.”

Facebook for women might have had:

• Ways to evoke and express emotion
• Ways to personalize the look and feel to make it more ‘us’
• Ways to rate men on how supportive and mature they are (just kidding)

Who knows — no one seems to have asked women what they might prefer to find on Facebook, either in terms of appearance or functionality.

Facebook Designed by Feminists:  Feminist HCI

A Facebook desinged by Feminists would be a much different ‘product’.

I am not an expert in Feminist HCI (Human Computer Interface) so I’ll just give you the general, layfeminist /layperson’s view:

There is a feminist approach to software design, a feminist model of social community, a feminist political and economic ideology, a feminist technology movement, and a feminist social movement. All of these are engaged and reflected in feminist design.

As a movement, feminism focuses on changing power relationships to bring about social, economic, and ecological justice. (While feminism initially focused on changing gender relations, the movement and ideology has expanded dramatically. For an introduction to feminism, please go to Feminism 101.)

A social network platform designed by feminists would aim to facilitate egalitarian and inclusive social relationships, distribute authority and responsibility, encourage collaboration, honor individual agency and self-definition, and more. A Feminist Social Network Platform would “give the user a tool to express her choice and the truth of her existence”.

A feminist social network would not be a ‘product’ to be sold to users, but would instead be a service that was supported by users. We tend to forget that Facebook is a product because we don’t pay anything to use it– as far qas we know. But, we users generate a great deal of profit for Facebook not only by looking at profiles and feeds, but also by creating content ourselves.

Some additional ideas?

A ‘facebook’ designed by feminists:

• Would show relationships between people as more flexible and dynamic, represented more like these twitter tools than like a hierarchy. (thanks Ryan!)
• Would involve users in the creation process, perhaps not as FLOSS experts but certainly as experts in what they want.
• Would put privacy decisions in the hands of each user.
• Would not own people’s data or people’s content. It would not aim to profit from this data and content without an explicit profit sharing agreement.
• Would not sell people’s private information to companies that want to market to those people, without the explicit, ongoing, informed consent of those users.
• Would not be privately owned by individual shareholders, although it might be privately owned by members or by a for-purpose organization.
• Would be created and sustained through feminist design processes and feminist ‘management’ (a topic for another post).
• Would be socially, economically, politically inclusive.
• Would allow for privacy and identity protections related to political action.
• Would from the very start have embraced accessibility issues for people with vision-related and other ability challenges.



• Would have default settings that are inclusive and self-presentation choices that are more varied.
• Would have TOS and regulations about what is and is not allowed that did not reinforce sexism and racism.

Feminists would approach the project with a political goal in mind. The overall intent of the platform might be ” general social networking”, just as with the current Facebook. but the driving interest might have been for creating friendships, affinity groups and social movements, not checking out chicks to evaluate whether you want to date them.

A feminist social network would be designed on open-source software (as Facebook is), as a political value driven choice, not (only) because open source is less expensive, more malleable and often more reliable than proprietary software resources.

The processes through which a feminist Facebook would be created would also be different– feminists would approach the very project of building a platform very differently from the way that Facebook was designed.

As Jon and other commenters have mentioned, there are some alternatives out there– some alive, some defunct, some in alpha, some in wireframes — that are trying to do things differently. Not many of these are explicitly feminist designed, but some like Diaspora have political and economic justice as a driving value.

Where do we go from here?

I’m excited by the thoughtfulness and complexity of the comments shared after the last post, and I will take them up in future posts. Thank you all so much for these insights. From my research, it looks like the conversation about values and technology is confined within expert tech communities, and I think it needs to come further out into the mainstream social media conversation. Any suggestions about how to do this? I’m open….

The general point to remember is that any piece of technology reflects implicit assumptions of the people/ business that designed it, along with the explicit design / commercial goals of the product. We often miss this, because we take for granted the male-ness of our dominant approach to technology. And, we take for granted that profit motives will dominate what is included and excluded from a product — unless we set different priorities.

These last few weeks there’s been a great conversation about whether social networks can facilitate advocacy and social change. The answer is obvious, although more complex than some make it seem.

No technology is neutral. Every technology reflects values and a political stance towards the social world. Many technologies can be co-opted so that they facilitate unintended purposes. Truly revolutionary technology has social justice and liberation built in.

Facebook is changing our world, that’s for sure. But is it truly revolutionary? Not the way a social network designed by feminists would be.

I look forward to continuing this conversation!

See Also:

Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog
The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted

Organizations are organic things — they are born, they die, they suffer and they thrive. But very few organizations flourish.

Organizations that flourish are rare creatures.

We find them where business goals are tied to larger purpose, where larger purpose is linked to community needs, and where individuals’ authentic selves are nourished by and engaged in the collective enterprise.

The opposite of a flourishing organization is a withering organization.

Many organizations that we assume are doing well are, in fact, withering.

A majority of organizations are just getting by. They hit their profit or service targets, they hire and retire members, they serve customers, and they do this all adequately. But, in the service of short term goals and/or selfish missions, these organizations are sapping themselves and their stakeholders dry.

These organizations are a net energy drain on their stakeholders. They take rather than contribute to the net value of the systems they are part of.

These organizations are withering.

We fight organizational withering, but we don’t promote organizational flourishing.

Organization leaders, advocates and members spend a lot of energy trying to prevent withering. We try to make organizations ‘better’ by addressing specific dimensions of improvement. We advocate and work towards everything from employee engagement to diversity to sustainability to enterprise 2.0.

The problems addressed by each one of these initiatives are root causes of organizational withering. Fixing, improving, changing and even transforming the organization on any one of these dimensions does make an organization genuinely better.

But ‘better’ isn’t the same as flourishing.

These single-issue change initiatives, and those of us who advocate for them, work as though “better” is our goal, and not as though organizational flourishing is our goal. I’m not sure whether this is because flourishing is just something we don’t let ourselves consider, or whether it’s because we’re so focused and so invested in the one particular issue that calls to us and feels like “our” work.

What Flourishing Requires

To be sure, getting an organization to flourish requires that we work on each of these important change dimensions:

Flourishing requires engagement.
Flourishing requires sustainability.
Flourishing requires leadership.
Flourishing requires diversity.
Flourishing requires employees with full, balanced lives.
Flourishing requires connections to causes that matter.
Flourishing requires products and services that meet real community needs.

Flourishing requires coordination and connection.

Most of all, flourishing requires coordinated, other-aware participation, from all of us who are advocates and agents of organizational change.

The success of the initiatives we each care about depends on us recognizing how that one dimension is connected to and depends on all these other initiatives. And, organizational flourishing requires that we deal with each of these initiatives in their relationships with other initiatives.

Each of us who advocates some dimension of organizational change needs to recognize, acknowledge, support and link to the organizational change efforts on other dimensions. We need to be aware of other initiatives, and coordinate our change efforts to include the initiatives important to others.

Flourishing requires a multi-pronged, networked change strategy.

To get to flourishing, we don’t have to abandon our commitment to a particular change initiative– we simply need to adjust how we approach our own initiative.

Oh, and think bigger too.

I realize that this is what some might call a tall order — too complicated, too complex, too ambitious. You’re right, it is complicated, complex and ambitious.

But I don’t really see a sensible alternative. I don’t want to rearrange deckchairs on a sinking ship, or tie up the weakening branches of a withering vine.

More specifically,

• I don’t want to contribute my energy to improving the environmental sustainability of an organization that is exploiting its workforce.
• I don’t want to improve the work-life strategy of any corporation that is taking advantage of the American financial system.
• I don’t want to improve the social learning at an organization that makes fun of LGBTx consumers.
• I don’t want to develop leaders in organizations that are fundamentally selfish.

Do you?

I didn’t think so.

What I do want to do, and what I want you to do with me, is to focus on flourishing.

Our goal should be helping organizations to flourish.

Our strategy should embrace every progressive organizational initiative and work to leverage the connections between them.

Our tactics should center on the initiatives that are dearest to us and where we can make a unique contribution, but always moving to connect with other advocates and ally our initiatives with theirs.

Are we together on this?

Images from Flicker:

Vine on blue from tanakawho
Funny from tanakawho

HT to Akhila Kolisetti (@akhilak, blog: Justice For All) for recommending Paul Rogat Loeb’s book “Soul of a Citizen: Living with conviction in challenging times.” page 283.

See Also:
A Benevolent Perfect Storm for Progressive Organizational Movements
Socialism, Capitalism, 5 Points of Ignorance, and Progressive Organizational Movements

[Trigger alert: This post is about racism.]

There is no more incendiary question than the implicit and unspoken question that often follows the promotion of non-white and/or non-male employees:

Did s/he get the job because s/he’s qualified, or did s/he get the job because s/he’s (fill in the diversity criterion here)?

Corporate American is seldom so stupid as to promote a candidate simply & only because s/he has the right diversity characteristics. Women don’t get promoted because they are women, non-whites don’t get promoted because they are not white, and folks with disabilities don’t get promoted so that we can see a person who uses a wheelchair at a stockholders’ meeting. That’s not how it works.

But, and it’s a big ‘but’:

Organizations can and often do benefit when the demographic attributes of their employees add value to the organization’s public image.

Indra Nooyi didn’t get her job as PepsiCo’s CEO because she’s Asian Indian and a female, but it certainly helped Pepsi’s image to have a prominent executive who is female and non-white.

The demographic and physical attributes of an employee often do extra “work” for the organization that employs them, by presenting a certain desirable image that consciously and unconsciously provokes positive responses from their audience.

BP is currently benefiting from the appointment of a Black employee, Darryl Willis, as the spokesperson for their claims efforts. Willis wasn’t chosen (or volunteered) because he’s Black– he has many other credentials that make him a great candidate for this job. But it is not insignificant that the prominent, identifiable person in BP’s television advertisements is a Black man.

Using a Black spokesperson, in a rather perverse way, helps BP take advantage of white American racism.

Having a spokesperson like Willis allows BP to take advantage of the Teddy-Bear effect — where the perceived warmth, niceness and personality of a Black man’s appearance disarms white people’s concerns and invites them to be comfortable trusting that person. Using a perceived “teddy bear” as a spokesperson may lead white Americans to trust the organization the “teddy-bear” represents.

But before we consider the Teddy-Bear Effect, check out all the other ways that BP is working to disarm us and get us to trust them, through the television and print ads that feature Darryl Willis.

Comforting, disarming visuals

In the BP Claims television and print ads, Willis’s appearance is crafted so that he appears to be more approachable. He’s wearing khakis and a polo shirt, not a suit and tie. He’s walking one-on-one with a ‘Gulf resident’, not speaking from a podium behind a name card to a large audience.

He is relaxed, direct, unhurried, and earnest.

All of the characteristics presented by Willis are intentionally crafted to make him look as friendly and trustworthy as possible.

Comforting, disarming words

The way Willis audibly delivers BP’s message is disarming. Willis has a warm, low voice and speaks with an identifiable Gulf (Southern LA) accent.

Willis’s words are also carefully crafted to make us want to like him and trust him. He’s the head of “Claims”– getting reparation money to people who’ve been hurt. He’s not an employee who helped to cause the Oil Spill; instead, he’s all about the solution. He describes himself as a ‘volunteer’. He mentions his family and Hurricane Katrina. He describes himself as “from here”.

(I don’t know whether he “volunteered” or not, but the other two description are verifiably true– his mother lost her home to Hurricane Katrina, and he has a personal anchor in the Gulf Coast, having graduated from the University of New Orleans.)

All of these features make us think:

• This spokesperson wasn’t pressured, he really cares.
• This spokesperson has a personal stake in fixing this problem.
• He’s one of ‘us’, one of the people hurt, and so he’ll treat us right.

Dis-arming the Details: What we are NOT shown

Would it surprise you to know that in addition to being the head of “Claims”, Willis is also:

• BP’s Vice President of Resources, BP America

• A scientist, specifically, a geophysicist, who is one of the 50 Most Important African-Americans in Technology

• Worked for BP most of his career, much of it on projects related to deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?

None of these details disqualifies him from the job of spokesperson or Head of Claims– but they are details that might make viewers trust him less.

– A VP? (executive compensation and access to power)
– A Scientist? (cool, rational, all about numbers not about people).
– A BP lifer? (a company man who puts the company and not us first).

So, here we’ve got an important executive, with technical credibility and scientific expertise, handling the payout of insurance claims.

And that’s even before we bring in the issue of race/racism.

TeddyBear vs. Toff

As a thought experiment , compare your impressions of Willis to your impressions of Tony Hayward in a similar kind of television ad. (You can watch this on YouTube.)

The first (Willis) is warm, friendly, approachable, trustworthy, and one of us. The second (Hayward) is cool, distant, elitist, and dismissive. One’s a Teddy-Bear and one is a Toff.

What’s a Toff? “Toff” is slang for a British person of the upper class.

What’s a “TeddyBear”? [ trigger alert] :

A Teddy-Bear is a Black CEO with a “babyface”.

A babyface is characterized by combinations of attributes, including a round face, full cheeks, larger forehead, small nose, large ears and full lips. “Babyfaced adults are treated differently compared with mature-faced adults: baby-faced adults are considered more warm, innocent and trustworthy.”

Now, add race to this picture.

The “Teddy-Bear Effect” describes a racist dynamic where (some) white people (tend) to feel more comfortable with a Black man with a “disarming” appearance.

That is, they tend to feel more comfortable with Black men who, because of the overall gestalt of their facial features, appear to whites to be warmer, more friendly and open.

Black male CEOs with more babyfaced characteristics seem to non-Black observers, to be more competent and less threatening that Black men with more ‘mature” faces.

By extension,

Using a Black male spokesperson whose facial appearance may seem less-threatening to some white people might help the audience feel warmer and more trusting towards BP.

Let me reiterate that Willis is obviously quite qualified in any objective way to speak publicly on behalf of BP. He’s a VP, a geophysicist, and a long-term BP employee. He also has roots in the Gulf community. And, he comes across as warm, friendly, personable and trustworthy.

• Is it cynical to suggest that BP is benefiting from white people’s possible tendency to feel more comfortable with powerful Black men who have Teddy-Bear characteristics?

• Or to suggest that Willis’s appearance is part of an overall effort to craft BP as warmer and more caring?

What do you think?

6/31: Some additional articles on this issue:

• Bruce Ritchie, The FLorida Tribue and Environments.com: BP’s “media star” tries to reassure Florida officials

• Larry D. Woodard, ABC News/Money online: Will this man save BP’s reputation?

References:

• Robert W. Livingston & Nicholas A. Pearce (2009). The Teddy-Bear Effect: Does Having a Baby Face Benefit Black Chief Executive Officers? Psychological Science, vol. 20 no. 10 1229-1236.

• Willis has his masters degree in Geophysics from University of New Orleans, and according to their alumni newsletter was working in the Depwater Gulf of Mexico for BP as early as 2001.

See also:
From AuthenticOrganizations:BP’s Bravest Brandividual: What could be motivating Darryl Willis?
McCain Campaign Exploits the Race of Their Hired Help

From the blog: Stuff White People Do: Prefer babyfaced black men
From Black Voices: BP Chooses a Black Man to Head its Claims Process, by Boyce Watkins, PhD

Image:
Willis Testifies Before Congress, from African-American Environmentalist Association web page

Somebody at BP has been reading The Onion.

BP has figured out that dressing their employees in groovy outfits can help build esprit, camaraderie and a even a sense of importance.

Okay, I’m being snarky here… but I am wondering about the positive (and possibly negative) effects of the outfits these BP control center personnel are wearing.

Check out these three photos of BP team members.

When I was viewing a video of a morale-boosting speech by COO Doug Suttles, my attention was drawn to the array of work vests sported by the control center members in the audience. Further investigation of photos of BP employees at several different “command centers” show that these vest are common attire.

You can see the array of vest and their features more clearly in the video, but a quick look at the photos here should suffice.

Almost all the control center employees in the photos on the BP website, with the exception of Suttles (and later, Hayward), are wearing vests.

The idea that control center personnel need to wear color-coordinated vests with reflective safety stripes is intriguing to me. What’s this all about?

Take a look at these photos, and take note of the vests. There are at least four colors of vests.

Each vest has a large label that stretches across the back. On the front is a built-in name tag holder, where some individuals have name tags. Other individuals wear name tags on lanyards, some of which are then tucked into the name tag pocket.

Vests as uniforms.

These vests, like uniforms, as much about communicating information about the wearers as they are about being functional.

The vests, serving as uniforms:

• Define this aggregation of individuals as one “group”,
• Allow for fine, controlled distinctions within the group,
• Provide some physical, body-related, functions, and
• Project the organization’s desired values and attributes to members and to outside viewers

Colored Vests Create Unit

Wearing the bests puts all the vest wearers in the same group e.g., we’re all command center staffers. It’s easy to tell that a vested person is part of the command team. It’s easy for an incoming member to take the vest of an outgoing member and just stick his or her name tag in the holder…. personnel are interchangeable, as long as they are wearing the appropriate vest.

BP’s Colored Vests Create Differences

Note who isn’t wearing a vest. Doug Suttles, COO, wears a crisp, short-sleeved dress shirt. With a tasteful BP logo on the chest. The color– uniform khaki — is subtly workmanlike and uniform-like (for example, the shirt is not pinstriped or faint plaid, which would make it more like a business shirt). It’s neither white-collar nor blue collar; instead, it’s “official”. Suttles is the only person I can see who is wearing this kind of logo shirt. I guess that makes it easy to tell that he’s from HQ.

BP’s Colored Vests Coordinate Groups

The different colors of vests indicate difference work groups. In addition, the large labels on the back of the vests note which sub-team team that person is assigned to (e.g., Coast Guard Situation). Both from the back and from the front, it’s as easy (if not easier) to tell the person’s sub-team than it is to tell anything else about them.

Colored Vests Cover Possibly Important Differences

You’d think that the (only) people willing to put on a BP-issued vest would be BP employees themselves.

However, not everyone in a vest is a BP employee. Note these four individuals to Suttles’ right in the this photo at left. All four of them are also wearing Coast Guard uniforms, and the fellow seated in front of the computer is actually a Coast Guard Officer.

I find the symbolism of Coast Guard Officers and Coast Guard Persons to wearing BP vests a little bit disconcerting. On the one hand, yes, this could mean that everyone, regardless of the company, service branch or agency that they come from, is part of the team. And, it could also mean that the authority of the people in uniforms is subordinated to the group represented by the vest they are wearing — in this case, BP.

I also wonder whether, among the Coasties, having an officer wearing a vest over his or her uniform influences the authority relationship. What’s it like for a Guardsperson to take direction from a BP manager when her or his officer is seated nearby? Does wearing the vest neutralize the Officer’s authority over . Or both meanings. It certainly doesn’t look like the Coast Guard or anyone else from the US government is in charge here.

The Physical Functionality of the Vests

Sometimes, uniforms are also functional (e.g., they have pockets & tool loops, they are waterproof or insulated). These vests seem primarily to be about distinguishing group members rather than providing some kind of physical comfort or service to them.

Given the array of possible ‘uniform’ items, I can understand why these folks might be wearing vests instead of other uniform elements. Baseball caps are too sporty (plus, rude to wear indoors). T-shirts are much too casual (it’s not a fun run or concert).

Haz-mat Jumpsuits, like the ones worn by the folks cleaning the beaches, would just be overkill (and hot). Vests are easy to put on, take off, trade with your friends. And, they’re one-size-fits-all.

But what’s with the reflective stripe?

There is one feature of the vests that is odd to me: the reflective stripe.

Most of the vest have either white or safety-yellow reflective stripes across both front and back. The strips make these vests look like ones worn by a road construction crew member. But what’s the function of the safety stripe?

Outdoors, in the fog, dusk or dark, the stripe increases other people’s ability to see that there is a person there. But inside the control centres, the stripe serves no “real” purpose. What then might be the symbolic purpose?

• Maybe the reflective stripe makes them feel like “safety workers”?

• Maybe the reflective stripe makes them feel like they are more physically attached to “cleanup” (rather than to data on screens)?

• Maybe the reflective stripe protects not the workers’ bodies, but instead protects the workers’ psyches… maybe the reflective stripes make the vest feel like protection for the team members, telling reporters and other audiences that these folks are working hard to fix the problem?

As a team-builder, I like the coordination provided by the vests. As a former Girl Scout, I like the camaraderie encouraged by the vests. As a US Citizen, I distrust the way the vest prioritizes BPs authority over the Coast Guard’s. But putting myself in the shoes vest of one of these individuals?

If I was working with BP, I think I might appreciate the psychic protection of the vests the most.

Photo Credits:
BP COO Doug Suttles talks to Houma LA Joint Information Center employees, AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, on CBNews.com
Other photos from BPs website page: Command Centre, BP, and clipped from the Suttels Visits the Houma Team video.

Was anyone else annoyed by the use of this image, below, on the front page of today’s New York Times?

The image is being used to illustrate an article on “death by Powerpoint“, or the overuse of linear, bullet-pointed presentation methods in today’s information-drenched warfare.

I have no quarrel with the reporting in the article itself —

We need to pay attention to the concern that the Army might be overusing bad visual presentation formats (like PowerPoint, unlike Presi) that inadvertently force an inauthentic, unreal simplicity and ‘logic’ onto complex situations.

PowerPoint presentations, in the wrong hands and inexpertly wielded, are weapons of knowledge destruction. They destroy the complexities of a system of knowledge by chopping it into phrases marked with asterisks.

Bullet Points = Weapons of Knowledge Destruction

PowerPoint presentation formats push presenters to reduce and ‘streamline’ the information they want to share, usually eliminating important detail and suggesting a rationality and linearity that don’t always exist in the information itself.

This is a problem for our military leaders and for us (not to mention, the people of Afghanistan). We want our military leaders to have good information, rich solid information, that is easy to understand.  We want them to have information that leads to knowledge, and that can help them capture and share wisdom. And, we want them to spend their time leading, not figuring out how to animate the bullet points and sync the slide transitions to the overture of Götterdämmerung.

Wrong Image = Complexity Fail

There are two important problems with using this particular image to illustrate the problems of over-reliance on PowerPoint.

I. This is not an illustration of a typical PowerPoint slide.

It’s an illustration of a kind of mind map, called a “causal loop diagram”.

There are significant conceptual and practical differences between the mind maps and your typical bullet-pointed PowerPoint slide.

Bullet point slides are great for presenting data that has its own internal organization… such as steps in a process, the outline of an argument, or a plan of attack. These slides offer a ‘topline’– no detail, “just the summary Ma’am“. They are great ways to present some kinds of information.

Mind maps are different– their primary function is to show complexity.

Mind maps are not about steps, they are about webs and networks. In mind maps, there are no beginnings and no ends. Instead, there are relationships. Interactions. Collateral effects. Repercussions.

Mind maps are used to help with problem understanding and problem solving. Mind maps are not designed to help “transmit” information or propose an argument. (Although, of course, mind maps are rhetorical devices. They are just harder to deploy in that way, compared to bullet pointed outlines).

2. This particular image, a causal loop diagram, is actually a terrific example of good visual analysis.

Causal loop diagrams are a very useful tool for understanding complex systems. (By definition, systems cannot be explained by linear, hierarchical tools.)

These diagrams help us untangle complicated relationships– some of which actually ‘exist’ and some of which are what we ‘assume’. One we get these assumptions out onto the diagram, we can interrogate them and see what links can be verified and what links cannot.

This diagram is nothing to laugh at, and nothing to make fun of. This diagram is something to celebrate, because it shows us that our military leaders are trying to take a systems approach to the complex problems in Afghanistan. The opposite of a laughable waste of energy, this particular causal loop diagram has been held up (in scientific circles) as a masterful example of how to make complex systems simple enough to understand.

Like any graphical illustration, a mind map is not a perfect representation of what’s ‘out there’. It is an effort by by folks who are creating it so show what they understand about a situation. Mind maps don “tell us” “that” things are related, but they do tell us what we think is related– and they invite us to think more closely about what else might be influenced if we take an action in one place or another.

Mind maps and causal loop diagrams are EXACTLY the kind of graphics that our military leaders should be creating, should be sharing, and should be using. This is not the kind of visual presentation that’s part of ‘death by PowerPoint.’ This is the kind of analysis that might save lives.

Without analysis  and diagrams like these, how will the military (or anyone else) understand the influence of an action directed at “Narcotics” on the situation over there in “ANSF Institutions”?

So, a wag of the finger to the editor over at the New York Times.

The editor made the mistakes of assuming that this image was an example of some kind of analytic overkill, and that this causal map has any link at all to the problems of death by PowerPoint.

There must have been a million images of slides with too many bullets that are too closely spaced and too inanely organized, any of which the editor could have chosen to illustrate ‘death by Powerpoint”. What we have, instead, is actually a useful, well-done causal loop diagram here to show us, what, that the situation in Afghanistan is complex? Like somehow, knowing it’s complex is a problem?

Why did the editor chose this chart, the wrong kind of chart, as an illustration? Maybe the editor’s choice tells us how little most folks  know about how to use images (slides, outlines, diagrams, mindmaps, whatever) to share complex information. Maybe, if s/he’d used an image with bullet points, we’d have assumed the situation was under control, and therefore nothing to worry about?

What we did miss, with this illustration, was a chance to consider how PowerPoint really does lead to oversimplification. And, we missed the chance to consider the real complexity of the situation in Afghanistan, something that too many would prefer to ignore.

What a shame.

See also:

Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War – PowerPoint – NYTimes.com
Introduction to Mind Mapping: a tool to help you be more creative …
We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint – At War Blog – NYTimes.com

For more on the diagram itself, see:

• So what is the actual surge strategy? Richard Engel, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent,  December 02, 2009:

The slide is undoubtedly overwhelming.  For some military commanders, the slide is genius, an attempt to show how all things in war – from media bias to ethnic/tribal rivalries – are interconnected and must be taken into consideration.  It represents a new approach to war fighting, looking beyond simply killing enemy fighters.  It underscores what those fighting wars have long known, that everything matters.

• Mark Vallen at Art For A Change:  COIN Pentagon Postmodern considers the mind map as a kind of ‘art’.

[Jan 21: In light of yesterday's Supreme Court Decision, I'm re-posting this serious & pop-culture critique of the anti-democratic argument that Corporations Are People. Scott Klinger writing over at Alternet, sets out what it would/should mean for corporations really to be treated as "persons" and thus have the same responsibilities as people too. Me, I'd like these corporate persons to be held to the same contribution limits as the next person-- so that I and Exxon would both be limited to $2,400 per candidate per election.]

If we were to list the top five or so Supreme (Court) mistakes of the last 200+ years, on that list would be the mistake in 1886 to treat a Justice’s unofficial remark about corporations’ hypothetical legal status as though it were part of the Court’s actual decision. This offhand suggestion that corporations could be considered ‘persons’ in the eyes of the law is a mistake that’s compounded over the years, to the point where it has fundamentally distorted democracy and capitalism as we “know” them.

Okay, so now you know my feelings about the issue.

But did you know that Stephen Colbert feels the same way?

Check out this clip from a show earlier this week, where Colbert makes sense of a most unfunny perversion of civil rights.

Corporations’ ‘Personhood’ is an inauthentic identity

The notion that corporations should have rights (but not responsibilities) as though they were actual human citizens has become so taken-for-granted as “the way things are” that it handicaps our ability to understand any for-profit organization’s authentic identity.

The ‘personhood’ that grants corporations the same rights to free speech and grants them even more political power than a human individual contradicts both our understanding of “person” and our understanding of “citizen”. It makes it hard for us to have a thoughtful discussion of how a for-profit corporation should participate in democracy. It distorts not only how we consider corporate cash contributions to political candidates and parties, but also how we think about corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship.

Do you understand the ‘Corporations as persons’ logic?

There are many arguments for why corporations make bad “people” and even worse “citizens”. Chief among these is the difference between why people exists and why corporations exist. Consider this argument from the Attorney General, in this excerpt from the oral arguments to the Supreme Court, courtesy of the DailyKos,

JUSTICE STEVENS: One of the amicus briefs objects to — responds to Justice Kennedy’s problem by saying that the problem is we have got to contribute to both parties, and a lot of them do, don’t they?

SOLICITOR GENERAL KAGAN: A lot of them do, which is a suggestion about how corporations engage the political process and how corporations are different from individuals in this respect. You know, an individual can be the wealthiest person in the world but few of us — maybe some — but few of us are only our economic interests. We have beliefs, we have convictions; we have likes and dislikes. Corporations engage the political process in an entirely different way and this is what makes them so much more damaging.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, that’s not —I’m sorry, but that seems rather odd. A large corporation just like an individual has many diverse interests. A corporation may want to support a particular candidate, but they may be concerned just as you say about what their shareholders are going to think about that. They may be concerned that the shareholders would rather they spend their money doing something else. The idea that corporations are different than individuals in that respect, I just don’t think holds up.

GENERAL KAGAN: Well, all I was suggesting, Mr. Chief Justice, is that corporations have actually a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to increase value. That’s their single purpose, their goal.

If organizations exist to make money (aka increase shareholder value), then their concerns are ultimately far more narrow than the concerns of real people, real citizens, whose life goals and purpose are far more complex. More broadly, citizenship itself requires a concern for more than short-term profit. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and even Alexander Hamilton all understood this too.

Defining Citizens & Citizenship: An Important Topic for Management Education

Whether you agree or disagree that corporations should be people, we should all be having a conversation about what it means to grant equal citizenship to corporations. Yes, many of us are focused on the organizational issues around the political conversation about Health Care reform, and thus may not be paying attention to Supreme Court rulings. Even so, we should also be educating ourselves about both sides of the argument about corporate personhood.

A conversation about the relationship between business, politics and society should be part of every MBA students education about business. Were I to redesign an MBA curriculum, or even teach again my class on “Books for Brave Managers”, this topic would be on our agenda.  One 90 minute class on this topic could teach future business & non-profit leaders how to think more deeply about the roles of organizations (for profit and not for profit) in our national and local civic lives.

As we wait for MBA curricula to be redesigned to reflect the emerging needs of business and society, we can learn more about this topic ourselves. It may seem very abstract to ask questions like “What is an organization really?” “Should organizations be the legal equals of individual people?” “Is making corporations ‘persons’ the best way to have corporate (for profit) entities participate in democracy?”, but the implications of our explicit and implicit beliefs are quite real. Just consider What could Change if Corporate Personhood Were Abolished?

What about you: Do you think that more managers and leaders should understand the arguments for and against Corporate Personhood?
Originally posted September 18, 2009

Here are some resources to check out:

David Korten’s book ” When Corporations Rule The World”
Thom Hartmann’s book “Unequal Protection: The rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights”.
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Reclaim Democracy.org

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Supreme Court examines Citizens United vs. FEC, the case of an anti-Hillary documentary. (slate.com)
• Citizens United Case Underlines Court’s Deep Ideological Divide (christyhardinsmith.firedoglake.com)

Media Watchdog Eric Boehlert blasts out of the gate this morning with an incisive critique of a longstanding, problematic relationship between NPR and Fox News. Please go to Eric’s post “According to its ethics code, NPR still has a problem” at MediaMattersForAmerica to read the entire story, which he has been covering for several years. The elements of the story are complex and the implications of the story are quite damning.

A Problem of Brandividuals

In addition to many other important points Boehlert raises about news vs. politicized rhetoric, about the politics that deter NPR from right action, and more, the NPR vs. Fox “News” conflict demonstrates the downside of Brandividuals.

Brandividuals are employees who represent their personal reputations/brands as well as the organization’s reputation/brand to establish their expertise and credibility. As employees, brandividuals are effective because they draw on either their personal brand, their organization’s brand, or both, to establish their relationship with stakeholders.

InAuthentic Ethical Commitment by the Organization

At the meta-level is NPR’s ethical problem. Boehlert outlines how NPR, an organization with well-defined non-partisan identity and a clear ethics policy, allows two of its well-known journalists to appear regularly on Fox “news” programs as paid contributors. These two journalists, Mara Liasson and Juan Williams, are usually identified as NPR correspondents when they appear on Fox News.

Boehlert takes NPR to task for allowing this ongoing violation of its own ethics polices:

Public broadcasting guidelines clearly state that when appearing on outside programs “journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.” And, “They should not participate in shows electronic forums, or blogs that encourage punditry and speculation rather than fact-based analysis.”

The activity of these two brandividuals, Liasson and Williams, violates their main and original employer’s ethics policy. Yet, their employer is doing little to resolve this problem. This raises the question:

Is NPR really committed to being an ethical news organization? Is NPR being authentic?

Lack of Accountability & Responsibility by the Employees

Boehlert emphasizes the responsibility of NPR for the behavior of its own employees. Yet, in addition to the organization’s reluctance to act responsibly, we also see a lack of responsibility by the employees.

Consider this situation from the perspective of brandividualism and the ongoing challenge of balancing of the individual’s personal brand/reputation and the reputation of the organization that employs them:

The brandividuals owe their professional skill development, in part, to NPR.
Both Liasson and Williams have earned their high profiles through their employment relationship with NPR. Were it not for their employment by NPR and the cultivation of their journalistic skills within the NPR professional community, they might not have become the well-skilled journalists they are.

The brandividuals owe their national name recognition, in part, to NPR.
Both Liasson and Williams earned their high profiles through the significant, national exposure they received on the NPR network. Were it not for this significant exposure, they would not have become high-profile enough for Fox to want to hire them.

Self-promotional behavior by these brandividuals is damaging NPR’s reputation.
Both Liasson and Williams are earning additional name recognition and additional money by appearing on Fox “News”, by representing themselves as NPR employees. They are trading on the reputation of NPR for their own career advancement.

Worse, in this case their personal individual career advancement is not independent of NPR’s reputation.

By having NPR employees appear on Fox “News” programs, Fox “News” is able to devalue the brand of its “news” competitor NPR. Every time these NPR journalists appear on Fox “News” as ‘journalists’, they diminish and damage the other brand (NPR) that they (also) supposedly represent.

Brandividuals are not being paid for the ‘value’ they bring.

Both Liasson and Williams ‘add value’ to Fox “News”. But, I’ll bet my totebag that they are not being paid any kind of premium by allowing Fox “News” to free-ride on NPR’s reputation for ethical, balanced journalism. Although Fox “News” gets the halo affect of association by having “the same” journalists as the real news organization, Fox “News” is probably not paying either contributor for this particular “added value”.

[Note, Boehlert explains how the brandividuals' association with Fox News might allow NPR to avoid some criticism from the far-right. So, one could argue that the brandividuals' appearance on Fox "News" has some value to NPR.]

Can Anyone’s Brand Reputation Be Saved?

Boehlert takes NPR to task, arguing rightly that NPR should uphold its own ethics policy, either by firmly prohibiting NPR employees to appear as regular contributors on Fox or by asking these journalists to resign from NPR.

And what about the brandividuals themselves?

• Shouldn’t Liasson and/or Williams feel more responsible to NPR, and more responsible for NPR’s reputation?
• Shouldn’t these brandividuals act responsibility, either sever their ties with Fox “News” or resign from NPR?
• Shouldn’t Liasson and/or Williams feel more responsible to their own personal brands as journalists, and chose either to protect their personal reputations for professional journalism by severing their ties with Fox “News”?
• Alternatively, should they try to change their personal brands from “journalist” to “opinion-vendor”, by resigning from NPR and upping their profile on Fox “News”?

If you were these brandividuals, what would you do?

See also:
What’s your *personal* ROI as a Brandividual?
How are Brandividuals special?
Why We Want Brandividuals on Social Media

[Disclosure: My brother-in-law appears on NPR as a humorist. Eric Boehlert is a Montclair neighbor. ]

Boycotts don’t work.

Boycotts rarely, if ever, achieve the goal(s) set out for them, in large part because boycott organizers lack clear goals for what response the boycott is supposed to trigger and especially for what the boycotting action has to demonstrate in order to be seen as “successful”.

So I’ve got a proposal, for those who want to use a boycott to show Whole Foods that they disagree with John Mackey’s comments about Obamacare:

Boycott Whole Foods, and do it in a S.M.A.R.T. way:
Make it a 10- day boycott

A 10-day boycott is more likely to succeed than an unscheduled, unlimited boycott, because a 10-Day Boycott is:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

Your remember SMART objectives, don’t you? I first learned about SMART objectives as a sales rep for P&G, where we had to manage and choose among a bunch of competing goals. This nifty acronym has long worked for me for crafting goals that work. Just this week, Alan Skorkin posted a full great description of this kind of goal-setting, which you should read for more details. But back to Whole Foods. …

How a 10-Day Boycott Works

Folks advocating a boycott of Whole Foods should choose one 10-day period, and advertise the start and stop date of the boycott to all who are interested in participating. This will work better than an open-ended boycott because it will be –

Specific:

Set a specific time span. The boycott would cover a single 10 day span. Note that 10 days is the maximum amount of time in a grocery purchase cycle (most every one buys groceries at least once in a 10 day period.) With a boycott that spans this length of time, each participant is asked to skip one (maybe two) purchase cycles. Set a specific action within the time span: Don’t shop at Whole Foods. Lets boycotters know exactly what they are supposed to do– shop somewhere else during those 10 days.

Brayden King, boycott scholar, recommends that organizers be specific about two other elements of the boycott plan, beyond the date and the action:

• Make the GOAL of the boycott specific too, so that the boycott target knows just what you want them to change or do.

• Offer a specific Alternative Action (like, “Shop at the People’s Food Co-op”).  When people have an alternative action to replace the action they are boycotting, it makes it easier to follow through.

And an added bonus– you can throw some support to an organization who *does* share the boycotters’ values.  [8.28.09]

Measurable:

A 10-day boycott spans enough time, a specific enough time, and a specific enough action that its impact cam be measured. Metrics 101 reminds us that its difficult to measure something that has no specific beginning and no specific end…  Boycott organizers could measure the impact themselves if they choose to, and do this more easily than with an ongoing boycott. While the most precise measure of the effect of the boycott would be to compare same store sales vs. the previous year, even without access to that kind of data, activists could use reasonable proxy measures; they could count the # of cars into the parking lot for a week before the boycott vs those in the parking lot for 7 days of the boycott. Time intensive, yes, but also measurable.

A 10-day boycott is measurable in another way too— other people can see a focused boycott more easily than one stretched out over time. This visibility helps boycotts do their best work, of damaging the organization’s reputation. Mashable notes the drop in consumers’ positive perceptions of Whole Foods, and suggests that this is linked to boycott efforts on Facebook.)

Achievable:

For angry Whole Foods customers, it’s just not that hard to skip one purchase cycle. And, even for those who are not quite so angry or quite so convinced, a 10 day boycott is something they might participate in. It’s a lot easier to shop elsewhere just once or twice, and then to go back to Whole Foods, becuase this requires much less commitment than an ongoing boycott.

Relevant:

Folks who are mad at Whole Foods, want to demonstrate just how angry they are. A 10-Day boycott of Whole Foods will show that many regular customers are mad. Customers can direct their anger/values into their behavior, and “do something” rather than just stew about it. And, they can direct their frustration at the purported source of their concern– the organization that is Whole Foods.

By not shopping their during this limited focused time, customers can demonstrate that the support they give to Whole Foods because of what (they think) Whole Foods stands for can also be rescinded if Whole Foods turns out to be different from what it has been telling customers. If values draw customers, then values repel customers.

A 10-day boycott is relevant in another way– It is focused enough that folks who are ambivalent about whether ‘punishing’ the organization is really the right thing to do might participate anyway. Boycotts are so often ‘all or nothing’ efforts that they end up being nothing because they cannot (seem to) get big enough to matter. But the goal of a 10-day boycott is not to shut down the business– that would be nearly impossible.

The goal of a 10- Day Boycott is to say, “Hey, we’re pissed. We want you to recognize that we shop here because we like your values, so you’d better adhere to these values.” As Savoyards anywhere would note, we must “let the punishment fit the crime.”

Time-Boxed:

Setting a specific time frame– just 10 days– makes it easy for people to commit to participating. They know just what they are getting in to. With sharp start and stop limits, a 10-day boycott can have a more focused effect ( i.e., better that 100 people skip Whole Foods over 10 days, than this same 100 people over 38 days). And, a time-boxed boycott is just easier for any slacktivists… it might get the out of their armchairs and off to the local food coop, because it’s simple.

Is a 10-Day Boycott the right thing to do to respond to Mackey’s Op-Ed piece?

Personally, I think that people who are really concerned about Mackey as a leader of Whole Foods and as a defender/promoter of progressive values would be better off writing letters to Whole Foods’ board, and telling the Board that they want Whole Foods to be lead by people whose personal values are firmly aligned with the ones that Whole Foods’ purports to hold.

A boycott may not be the ‘right’ response, but if a boycott is called for, then a 10-day Boycott is a S.M.A.R.T.er way to go.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Who Does Boycotting Whole Foods Help? (takepart.com)
• As Whole Foods Boycott Grows on Facebook, Brand Perception Drops (mashable.com)
• The Two-Faced CEO: Citizen or Whole Foods Shareholder? (socialmediatoday.com)

From Feministing. com

Really, Ann Friedman nails it. No sense in trying to recap this… just head to the full article. (captioned photo from Feministing)

Supreme Court: Pregnancy discrimination A-OK!

“Today our nation’s highest court ruled in AT&T v. Hulteen that women who took maternity leave and were discriminated against by AT&T are shit out of luck.

Before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed, when women took leave from their AT&T jobs to have a baby, those days did not count toward their pensions — even though other types of leave, such as temporary disability, were not removed from the pension equation. So when the women went to retire, they had lower pensions than other employees who had worked there the same number of years, even those who had taken leave for other reasons.

AT&T lawyers said their pension plan was legal when the women took pregnancy leave, so they shouldn’t have to recalculate their retirement benefits now. Congress did not make the Pregnancy Discrimination Act retroactive, they said, so the women should not get any extra money.

A majority of the justices agreed. “A seniority system does not necessarily violate the statute when it gives current effect to such rules that operated before the PDA,” wrote Justice David Souter, who will retire next month.

Basically seven members of the Supreme Court are saying, “You were discriminated against? You’re about to retire with less money because of it? Tough.”"