Shades of Gray
Somewhere in the back of our minds, whether we know it or not, we find ourselves looking for signs that the economy won’t hold up; except when we speak of the economy, we mean the internet economy. We find ourselves harboring increasing doubt every time a major acquisition occurs for a value that doesn’t make sense or some company like Twitter can raise $15 million on an $80 million valuation even though it doesn’t make money. As we saw from two weeks ago, the not turning a profit, didn’t stop ad network Adify from selling to Comcast for upwards of $300 million. Perhaps, though, the real sign that tough times lay ahead comes when we read an opening like the following, "The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday filed civil lawsuits against eight former America Online executives, accusing them of participating in illegal accounting practices that inflated the online giant’s reported revenue by more than $1 billion." Nothing says good times coming to an end like officials at public companies getting charged for fraud and employees within companies being involved in a "series of unconventional deals."
Now, despite these charges coming to light now, the purported illegal deals actually took place six-plus years ago, beginning right around the time that AOL and Time Warner looked to merge. That same time period though, also overlapped with the decline of the stock market and the bursting of the internet bubble, in other words, not an easy time to make your company’s numbers look good on their own. With the dual pressure of acquisition and broader trends going south, you can almost see how individuals might look for creative solutions to booking revenue such as one of the alleged practices where the company would overpay for a company’s goods and services if that company spent money advertising. Cut off at least six-months from the sentence for that type of ingenuity.
You don’t have to have worked for one of the largest public companies to have experienced some form of unscrupulous activity; it just so happens that when those at ultra-large, public institutions go down, they go down much harder. Unfortunately, such creative behavior does not confine itself to large companies, nor does it always take such a pro-company spin. In fact, more often than not, activity that your straight edged coworker would deem unacceptable rarely goes towards trying to increase the enterprise value of the institution. Usually,when someone at a company engages in activity not in the best interest of the company, they do so for their own personal gain. The unspoken truth about our industry, and I think of performance-based internet advertising not those working on Madison Avenue, we have a lot people looking to generate money outside of their employment. Side work often gets referred to as "moonlighting," and it is easy to understand in the context of someone that has a certain skill and makes their money in the employ of a company, like a graphic designer. Those doing design have a very specific skill that can get applied on a project by project basis, and their role in most companies has them working rather standard hours. The job can pay well, but it won’t make someone rich, and as a partial consequence, many graphic designers do work on the side to supplement their income. Some companies have explicit policies against moonlighting, others will look the other way so long as the person gets their job done, especially if the person works on unrelated projects and not designing landing pages for a direct competitor. What about someone in technology, or a field with a less tangible skill set like account management?
If you worked in a hair salon and left to go to another job, it is not unreasonable that your clients would follow you. It is also not unreasonable that a person cutting hair when moving to a new job would continue to cut hair. Someone who cuts hair though doesn’t really consider work outside the salon as a way to make real money. If they want to do extra work, it means having a location to do it. Only a select few will have meaningful side jobs, such as weddings or photo shoots, but the vast majority won’t, because the barrier is too high. If a client comes in the door or they meet a potential client, they don’t have the luxury of thinking, "For this client, I think I’ll help them outside of the salon." Our business, though, isn’t so tactile; it doesn’t have the same physical requirements. We still encounter the same human behavior of people wanting to make more money, but in our industry, people think of it as a now viable option. What’s to stop them from cutting a deal on the side, or the common beginner mistake, of setting up a referral account within their own company and assigning that account as a referrer? The problem is it’s just too easy for people to do it. Consequently, if it’s easy, people will do it. We see it when times are good and when they are bad. When times are good, people start to see how much money goes not to them, and they want a piece. When times are bad, they want some additional insurance. And, as employer in this space, it will happen in your company. You can’t stop it 100%, and if it’s happening in your organization, especially repeatedly, you have to ask yourself why. What about the culture and values makes that the case? What about the way people feel towards me and the company would have them do work that harms both? Part of it will not be your fault so long as the reward to resources ratio remains low.
The big difference between the graphic designer and someone who manages relationships when they take part in the extracurricular revenue generation is that one not only hurts the company, it more often than not couldn’t exist without the company. I’m not trying to pick on account managers; it just so happens that their position makes them especially vulnerable. Account managers work with the clients who can make a lot of money, and they see what the person does, and in many instances, they start to think that either they could do it too or that they don’t receive enough compensation for the level of business that they allow to happen. Account management though isn’t like being a doctor. It is a soft skill but the clients don’t seek out the account manager because of their skill; they seek out the company they work for, and that means that when someone in account management tries to take business as their own, they do it by harming the company. Now, it’s not our job to say don’t do work on the side, but for many that do, it might make more sense to learn from the people they see as their inspirations. These people took risk, and they make their money because of that risk. They don’t have someone paying their salary; they are doing acrobatics without a safety net, and many who want to follow them don’t see that, and they especially don’t see the countless number that have fallen. Some working on the side don’t engage in activity that leverages the company’s assets. That’s why it is often a shade of gray, but most do. And for people thinking about, the real question to ask is if it is worth taking part in behavior that could not only get you fired but prevent you from getting an equal or better job in the future. Just because you can and it’s easy doesn’t mean you should. Character is a long-term item, and acting of good character might not bring in the extra money, but acting of questionable character can almost guarantee you won’t. It’s not something we can solve, but it’s something that we need to raise awareness of in our space.
