Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Amy Pascal was reading an email from her colleague, company co-chair Scott Rudin, just as she had probably read hundreds, if not thousands, of emails from him before.
Pascal — a Democratic party donor and supporter of President Obama — asked Rudin before a fundraiser what she should ask the president.
Rudin joked: “(Ask) if he’d like to finance some movies.”
And then, unprovoked, Pascal took the conversation in a very ugly direction.
“Should I ask him if he liked DJANGO?” says Pascal, according to the reported e-mails.
Rudin writes back: “12 YEARS.”
Pascal responds: “Or the butler. Or think like a man? [sic].”
Rudin: “Ride-along. I bet he likes Kevin Hart.”
On Nov. 24, Sony Pictures was hacked and — over the next few weeks, in what may continue over the next few months, if not longer — the above emails, and a number other problematic and embarrassing disclosers, have hit the Web.
On Dec. 12, Pascal issued an apology for the offensive emails: “The content of my e-mails to Scott were insensitive and inappropriate but are not an accurate reflection of who I am (my emphasis),” Pascal said in a statement.
Now, to be sure, there are a number of lessons here for CIOs. First off, as professionals charged with the information security of your organization’s computer systems, you must be able to show, in the event of a breach, that you did everything a prudent professional would have done to protect your organization. Many say that hacks and breaches are not a matter of if, but when, so when the when happens, you need to show how and why you shouldn’t be fired.
That being said, there are leadership issues illustrated by the above exchange: namely that you don’t ever want to put yourself in a position where you must explain why anything you’ve done — in either a personal or professional setting — it not an accurate reflection of who you are.
Yes, we all know that actions are louder than words, and we want to be judged not for what we say but for what we do, but as many leaders have pointed out, you are always being watched and listened to, which is why leading by example is so effective, and imploring others to do what you say and not what you do less so. Your actions matter more, but your words, written or spoken, matter a lot too, especially when those words show you to be one person in public and another in private.
And, as Peter Diamandis — an engineer, physician, and entrepreneur, and a speaker at the spring CHIME Fall Forum — said, the age of privacy is dead, thus blurring the line between your public and private lives, and certainly between the professional exchanges which are public and those you think will be eternally private. He went on to say that such may not be such bad, for many unpleasant things (totalitarianism, oppression, injustice), flourish in dark places.
If Pascal had believed that privacy was dead, she would never had engaged in that email exchange. If she had made the criteria for sending any email communication that it must be able to stand the light of day, she might have simply chosen not to reply or certainly taken the conversation in a different direction.
So, in the first place, as a leader, try to order your mind in the proper way and think kind and benevolent thoughts. If you can’t manage that, at least don’t share those thoughts with your colleagues. And if you can’t manage even that, at least don’t share them in an email — which can easily be forwarded or saved for future vengeful reference, and perhaps even hacked and posted on the Internet should you displease Kim Jong-un.
Keep your actions, words and deeds in harmony and you’ll never have to explain the unexplainable, because no matter what you say when it all comes to light, people will always wonder if, rather than those words not reflecting who you are, they do so — perfectly.
Aileen Katcher says
Spot on. The situation has caused me to update my mantra – “if you don’t want to see it or hear it, don’t say it, write it, or post it” to include -” or email it.”