Page 268 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

Unfortunately, there are lots of business terrorists lurking out there,
too. People who will use whatever they find on you in order to embarrass
you, sue you, or prosecute you.
It never ceases to amaze me that executives continue to think that when
they communicate digitally, these communications are as private as those
carbon-paper memos once were. Or
that they are anonymous—as if leaving
THERE ARE LOTS your name off an e-mail or a post were
OF BUSINESS the equivalent of flipping a stranger the
TERRORISTS bird on the highway. Or that they are as
LURKING OUT ephemeral as the spoken word. As a
THERE—PEOPLE lawyer I respect once told me, “Hard
WHO WILL USE drives last forever.” That ought to be a
WHATEVER THEY mantra for senior executives.
FIND ON YOU IN It’s been shown over and over that
ORDER TO sending any message electronically is
EMBARRASS YOU, tantamount to publishing it. As New
SUE YOU, OR York State’s attorney general, Eliot
PROSECUTE YOU. Spitzer was able to bring down target

after target with incriminating e-mails.
One prosecutor in Spitzer’s office called e-mails “the functional equivalent
of eavesdropping.” New York Magazine also reported that Spitzer’s office
used law students to go through the e-mails that would help to build its bid-
rigging case against insurance broker Marsh & McLennan. It was that easy.
E-mails can cause you a world of trouble within your organization, too.
There was an executive at John Hancock, for example, who once wrote a
scathing memo about a peer. Scathing. But instead of hitting “Reply,” to
send it to the person she trusted, she hit “Reply all,” publishing her ani-
mosity throughout the company. This was a mess to be unscrambled, and
it did not do wonderful things for her career.
I not only refused to send anything electronically that I wouldn’t want
to see in an analyst’s report, but I also strongly discouraged other people

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