Corporate Rats Running Wild

Jack Nicholson, Leonard DiCaprio and Matt Damon delivered exceptional performances in the 2006 crime flick The Departed.

The basic premise: Nicholson (the mob boss) leans on his police informant to find an undercover officer who has infiltrated his organization. It turns out that Nicholson is also on the take, leaking information to federal authorities about the illegal activities of his partners in crime.

Basically, this is a story about what happens when rats run wild. In the end, everyone takes a bullet.

Life appears to be imitating cinema at Yahoo! these days. New CEO Carol Bartz is determined to stop the leaking of inside information to reporters like the Wall Street Journal’s Kara Swisher (http://kara.allthingsd.com/). One of Bartz’s ideas is to offer cash payments to employees who turn in their colleagues for such transgressions. Ironically, word of this policy leaked (http://tinyurl.com/d5ux4g) to Swisher.

OK…a couple of thoughts on this. For starters, it is incomprehensible for staffers to knowingly violate the terms of their employment agreements and disclose confidential information. There are more appropriate and ethical ways to express dissatisfaction with a company’s policies.

I also continue to be perplexed by the desperate measures employed by smart, experienced executives in an effort to squash leaks. For instance, members of HP’s Board hired private investigators who then used illegal tactics to identify an undisclosed media source.

And now we have Yahoo!’s Bartz who is creating an environment where rats will run wild. The company may in fact put an end to the leaks. Yet, they’ll be left with a culture defined by suspicion and mistrust.

I raised this issue with my colleague Chris Parente (http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisparente) who faced a comparable situation at a former employer that battered by leaks to a local business reporter. Chris’ thoughts:

“(The payments) Never could work because it turns a bad situation even more poisonous. Employees spying on each other. That will further erode morale.

The approach that was effective for me was getting executives out of bunker mentality and actually talking with the media about what they could; making sure accurate information was included in the stories.”

Marc Hausman is president/CEO of Strategic Communications Group, a public relations consultancy based in Silver Spring, MD.  Read more at http://www.strategicguy.blogspot.com.