Wassup Jose Weblog nonsense at its best!

Organizational Policies Driven by Personal Preferences

Now that we're somewhat removed from the MilkMan drama of a couple months ago, I wanted to reflect on possible ramifications that one man's actions had on an particular organization's way of doing business. I realize that I'm drawing the theoretical conclusions out a little far from the pratical realities, but I think the scenario is a basis for existing archetypes and social patterns within our society.

 Let me lay the background for the situation. In early August, our site creator made this post deeming that the MilkMan had found our little BitchFest and connected what dots needed to be connected. After reading many of the negative posts he demanded that the site be blocked from his clients site. I imagine that he walked around making a big stink to the network staff demanding that the site be blocked and from the rumors I heard may have actually requested the names of the people that were viewing the site from the place of business. Oh my.

When I used to work at this site, of which I was an actual employee of the organization and not a consultant, the organizational policy on web filter was open. In other words there were no restrictions. This was a decision from the CEO...that's how they liked it. Then after the MilkMan caught wind of our posts, WassupJose.com was the only site on the list. Barred for social networking. The problem that I see with this action is that instead of the organization (CEO, CIO, etc) deciding the direction of their web filtering methods, the decision was instead made by a contrator who simply happened to dislike the content of a given site. I think you can read into this action on a much larger scale and perhaps extrapolate the reasons why the government is so whacked out. This is just one man and one organization and the real end result of this little debacle is really harmless (those employees should be working anyway). But think about this action applied ten of thousands of times across multiple government agencies across the national board. One website blocked here, funding denied here, and special interest bonuses there. The wheel keeps turning and ultimately the system is just a series of exceptions built to create solutions with all the gears siphoning the driving force into private coffers.

The situation bothers me most because this is really about a personal vendatta that ends up affecting the way the organization runs. Milky is now gone, but I'm sure the ban is still in place and, although this is reversible, I don't think removal is likely. Furthermore, when we multiply the effects to a larger scale this can mean some serious changes to the way businesses work, the way we think about those businesses and their ability to get things done. So perhaps you can see that this ends with America being a little less capable than it otherwise had been. All that was needed was a bit more self-restraint and a bit more tolerance to the 1st ammendment.