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A rather fruitful conversation has been occurring over at Evan Yares‘ site and brings up the thorny issue of what happens when internal communication goes outside of the company walls.
Background: A software development company decides to create a video of senior execs ridiculing a competitor, the video to be played at a sales convention. Not strictly ‘in house’, but certainly ‘within the family’ as the convention is for resellers of the company’s software.
The video is in bad taste and is ‘leaked’ on to a popular video site, YouTube, where the whole world can view it [keep watching past the intro advert].
Dismayed at the bad press the video seems to be creating, several ‘anonymous’ and ‘John Doe’ posters express their support for the company, only to be ‘outed’ as employees of the beleaguered software developer.
Not only are there copyright issues (the background music is by the artist Beck and possibly not licenced for use), but the storyline itself is highly denigratory and potentially inflammatory.
The software company that created the video defends it by saying it was a ‘parody’ and meant for internal use only. But it has now appeared ‘outside’ the company walls.
The question I pose, then, is “How secure do you think your internal communications are?”
My own answer is, “Not very.”
In these days of ‘leaky’ corporate walls and porous employee membranes, it is the wise company that recognises that any communication it creates has a high chance of finding its way outside the protection of the corporate firewall or security gates.
Not only does the video in question show a clear lack of understanding about the porous nature of business information today, but it also shows an incredibly tasteless, tactless and clueless senior management at the helm of a shareholder-financed company.
I hope that by the disclosure of this video they are suitably chastened.
Congratulations to the Divine Miss Heidi for getting the first mention of ‘King of the Hill’ in on the comments to Evan’s post, and thanks to Sallie Goetsch for pointing me to it all.
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