Truth: how great a virtue is it in business?
We’ve written previously about how founders can get into trouble when they aren’t completely honest with their customers or investors. Blogging under an assumed name earned Whole Foods CEO John Mackey some heat from the media and regulators, too. Some of you found Mackey’s disingenuousness unseemly for an executive. Others said that in a blog forum anonymity is a privilege.
Anonymity is one thing. But what about MySpace outright lying?
Today our friends at TechCrunch have an interesting post about one of the social network’s cofounders, Tom Anderson, who has apparently been misrepresenting himself to MySpace users from the get-go.
Ok, so Anderson might only to be lying about his age: He’s not 32, as his profile says. He’s 4 or 5 years older.
But as Mike points out, vanity for youth or ‘cool-factor’ in pursuit of a marketing edge isn’t the problem here. The more important issue for all constituents — especially investors — is that executives at MySpace and, eventually, News Corp., knew about Tom’s little lie, and did nothing about it.
Does this mean Mr. Murdoch doesn’t care about how old Tom is? Probably.
Or could it also mean News Corp. sees “truth” as a business principle to be applied selectively?
Which prompts our Question of the Day: If we can’t see integrity in the ‘little things,’ how can we take integrity for granted in the big things?
I actually always “lie” about my age on public forums where that information can be seen to avoid identity theft. A birthday is a key piece of information for identity thieves.
better to be honest up front or come out as soon as possible then keep covering up even if it will be problematic to bring it to light. it just gets that much worse later on and the longer you wait. if what you are doing, you would not like written on the cover of the new york times then you should probably think twice about it.
better to be honest up front or come out as soon as possible when you find out there is a problem then to keep covering up even if it will be problematic to bring it to light. it just gets that much worse the longer you wait. if what you are doing, you would not like written on the cover of the new york times then you should probably think twice about it.
for our company we are as upfront as possible and error on the side of giving too much information. here are two posts we wrote about it:
http://cutcaster.blogspot.com/2007/09/culture-of-trust-at-cutcaster.html
http://cutcaster.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-cutcaster-will-protect-producer-who.html
I really appreciated this post. I wanted my readers to see this also so I’ve provided a link to it from one of my recent posts.
http://northstarthinktank.typepad.com/northstar_thinktank/2007/11/the-entrepreneu.html
Keep up the good work!