Data Bullying

In the past month, we’ve seen no less than three clients who are actively being bullied by their own staff or their consultants. What do I mean by bullying? Being at the hands of someone who holds information as their weapon of choice. People who deliberately make their jobs as vague as possible to hide their inefficiencies or inadequacies. They do most of their work off the books or systems that their company utilizes. This means spreadsheets that can only be filled by them, pipeline reports that have no context, CRM tools not updated, candidates whose resumes are not in their ATS or even access to company data not provided.

I’ve talked to CEOs who are the mercy of their bookkeepers who somehow mysteriously run payroll, invoicing and financials as if no one else can possibly figure it out. CEOs who aren’t provided financial reports in a timely fashion to make important decisions about their companies. I’ve talked to those who have outsourced their accounting functionality, only to find that they don’t actually own their own company data. They’ve signed contracts with ridiculous clauses requiring payment for getting out early, while their data is either held hostage or not returned at all.

I’ve seen business development people run an entirely different CRM tool that they can take with them should they leave a company. They use excuses such as the “data entry is tedious,” or that “the company CRM tool is too hard to use.” They leave proposals on their laptops and forget to check entire documents back into the company’s repository.

I’ve seen recruiters who are “too busy” to upload resumes into the ATS or who correspond apart from their company email. Or worse, they recruit for several different companies at the same time for the same candidates and positions, and play companies off each other (without their knowledge) in an effort to drive up their commission or fees.

Finally, there are PMs or Ops people who hold their relationship with the client hostage. They are the only ones who can communicate directly. They keep their deliverables on their laptops, they won’t allow their contracts shop, or even their management to speak with the program office. They keep their relationship deliberately convoluted, yet report all greens on their PMR charts.

To this, let me be clear in my message – NO ONE, absolutely NO ONE is indispensable. CEOs commonly think that they can’t live without a certain person. They whisper that they will lose their re-compete or that they won’t have payroll processed or that their BD person will change companies, or they will lose financing with their banks. While there is no argument that losing this person will hurt in the short term, having this type of hostage situation resolved will absolutely provide peace of mind to your organization in the long term. Not being beholden to someone for their data (which, is YOUR data) is freeing. Coming to the realization that no one is indispensable is freeing. 

Take back your company, CEO…. it’s your risk, your reputation and your livelihood. Own it.

Do you feel you’re in danger of or in the midst of an information-held-hostage situation? Let’s have a conversation and see what’s really going on, [email protected]