…I think the two of you will really get along!
What I’ve observed over and over is the following disconnected conversations:
H: They aren’t legally obligated.
S: Doesn’t matter, it’s just not right.
H: Of course it matters, they aren’t legally obligated, so why should they?
S: They should because it is the right thing to do.
H: So? They would lose time and money if they did it.
S: They will lose trust if they don’t.
Last year at the Community Roundtable discussion I held at the Web 2.0 Expo/Open, this matter came up over and over. Heather Champ, one of my favourite community managers in the whole wide world said the following:
“Well, there is legally right and then there is right.”
In referring to treatment of the Flickr community members. It totally stuck with me. Say that a member is angry and wants their money back. Flickr isn’t legally obligated to return it to them, but if they feel the person is justified in their anger, they will do it. (not the example Heather gave)
Too often, we fall back on the head (sounds funny, doesn’t it?) and disregard the heart in matters of community.
Head = legal, economic, logical, linear arguments and solutions - mostly cut and dried
Heart = ethical, social, emotional, complex arguments and solutions - fuzzy in nature
Leaning too far one way or the other can lead to real issues…and has. Usually it is the head with it’s uber logical outcomes that end up making everyone feel forced upon and crappy. IMO, legal rulings in communities very rarely satisfy any of the parties. Sort of a lose-lose outcome. A zero sum game where even the ‘winners’ end up losing because they lose the trust and the closeness of the community. In the same vein, emotional solutions can run amok. They could potentially provide no outcome, constantly battling and escalating. Too much into ‘ethics’ and we get judgement casting as well. Grey areas and mobs can get very scary.
But if you combine the two, it works nicely. An airline isn’t legally obligated to issue an apology and/or a voucher to their customers after being delayed by snowstorms, but they could win alot of future business by doing so. Here, the airline is driven by both the right thing to do (heart), plus an economic incentive (head). A blogger isn’t legally obligated to link to the post they are quoting, but does so because it is the right thing to do (heart) AND it drives traffic from the trackbacks (head) and goodwill in the community (heart), which leads to future link returns (head). The Richter Scales weren’t legally obligated to attribute all of the photographers, but it was the ethical thing to do (heart), which would have probably led to more of the photographers promoting the work themselves (head) and avoided the whole legal mess (head).
None of these are purely ethical decisions and shouldn’t have to be. In the case of blogging, the blogosphere itself has made it abundantly known that linking is essential to the survival and acceptance of one’s blog. There is no ‘law’ anywhere except for, perhaps, a community enforced one. There have been hundreds of blogs over the years that have received the community wrath and been set in place…sometimes politely, sometimes aggressively…so that they would follow the ‘rules’ and attribute and link content. The most cited reason? Well, I haven’t empirically checked this, but my gut (heart) tells me that these bloggers are reasoned with on the level of “without attribution, you won’t get any links back to you.” (head)
A while back, I read Sir Ken Robinson’s wonderful book, Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, in which he talks about how much has been lost as our world has become more and more logical and scientific. Of course, the world PRE-scientific revolution was a mess of corruption and greed, driven by the religious institutions enforcing ‘ethics’ in their own best interest. If only we could let the pendulum swing to the balanced middle…or somewhere around the middle. Things like Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence matter very much and are just as vital as logic and I.Q. As human beings, we are rarely, if ever, black and white. We are all sorts of shades of all colours.
I was totally honoured a while back when one of my heroes, John Coate, wrote me note saying:
“I must say that I have to marvel at your output. Always so interesting with such mind/heart balance.”
I think it was the best compliment I’ve ever received. This balance is important to me and I really work hard to achieve it (although I think I tip to heart more often).
Capitalism needs heart and head, too. The dichotomies that exist in the current incarnation are hard on everyone. I see nothing wrong with doing something good that leads to financial income as well. And I think all companies with a concentration on the ‘bottom line’ should be more careful about their responsibility to the community and the environment if they really want to succeed over the long term. The balance is win-win for everyone.
Personally, I believe that we are headed for a great balancing of the world. I have real faith that it is happening and those who fail to recognize it will be left behind. Opposites DO attract. And they work very well together. 
13 Comments
Amen.
I’d even add this: Great things in life come from a melding of head and heart. It’s the only way great products, great collaborations, great art and music, even great web projects come together. A project with one and not the other will always fail eventually.
The faster people understand that living our lives is not a zero sum game, we’ll be able to enjoy our brethren a lot more. I hope the balancing is coming soon.
The nature of work in the last few decades has caused people to turn down their heart for survival (heart is not something that often appears on a corporate annual review), and now we’re seeing a revolt by people that WANT to be more balanced.
Thanks for helping knit the two together.
Many times we excuse behavior as being legal… but the law is there to tell us what’s definitely out of bounds - where the precipice is. That doesn’t mean you have to walk right up to the edge.
Carol Gilligan addressed this issue brilliantly in “In a Different Voice,”, where she posits that women and men typically have different emphases in their moral sense. Women tend to balance “legal right” with a concern for the “heart” issues you mention, and make moral decisions that attempt to balance both law and relationship. Men tend to stick to a more black & white letter-of-the-law approach.
“Leaning too far one way or the other can lead to real issues…”
I agree there and that sentiment resonates…but the notion of balance is tricky. Too often the assumption is made that balance means 50/50. It doesn’t have to be 50/50.
Head arguments form the basis of decisions I make for my company, but with refinements and adjustment from the Heart department. It ends up being somewhere between 80/20 and 70/30, but that’s not the interesting part.
What is really compelling is that the 20 or 30 percent of that decision that comes from the Heart is really the most powerful part of the whole interaction. Customer remember the humanness of a transaction more than they remember the logic, legality, or linearity, however well reasoned or justified. We try to remember this when we call a customer to sell, or to request payment of an invoice, or just to see how it’s going.
Love that reference! Thanks Sara!
Hmmmm…very interesting, indeed. Certainly, 50/50 isn’t always the perfect balance, but it sounds like you get something like this:
70/30 input (head/heart)
30/70 output
Yep. I think it’s much better to internalize ethics than test the limits of the law.
Thanks for bringing up the non zero sum game argument. Very true.
Would it be totally nerdy to say that I’m super stoked that you read this post?
You are kind of my heart/head hero.
I do give Flickr Full Props for their Attentiveness to their Users! I recently needed Help with something + they are Fantastic at Responding to Users Needs or concerns. In fact I’ve never seen any other Big Co. with Millions of Users interact the way they do!
The Fortune 500 or 1000 could certainly learn a thing or 12 from them.
To my mind even tho they’ve made a coupla bonehead moves they are still the Shining Light of the Web2.0 Universe + something Every Co. who has Customers should take a close look at!
;))
So first off, I completely agree with your core point here. You’ve made a strong case for the issue of balance, and it’s a case that I talk about with clients.
OK, that said let me raise a few counter points, or points for discussion anyway:
You’ve made several general statements that I’m not sure I’d fall in line with:
“The Richter Scales weren’t legally obligated to attribute all of the photographers, but it was the ethical thing to do” (not sure that it’s a “fact” that it would have been clearly the ethical thing to do. I’ve seen lots of discussion around the web about whether or not this was with opinion going both ways)
“the blogosphere itself has made it abundantly known that linking is essential to the survival and acceptance of one’s blog.” (First off, “the blogosphere” is an ever evolving concept. Perhaps once links were demanded by everyone participating in the “blogosphere”, but I’m not sure that same demand is still there today. I look at what blogs my wife reads, or what she blogs about and rarely are links included in the content.)
I’d also say that “complex arguments” is both a heart AND head issue. I’ve seen many blogosphere blow-ups, for example, that surround a company being forced to make hard choices that involve many issues that bloggers don’t, can’t, or won’t see and then assume that the company is simply being foolish.
Overall, you’re absolutely right that a balance has to exist and extending your point, companies must train their employees to recognize the importance of policy AND common sense in their daily decision making process.
The reality is, however, that this issue won’t be resolved until we start to rethink how to evaluate employees. This is the same ROI of community discussion that comes up a 1000 times, but until we have an ability to quasi-objectively evaluate a group of employees based on their subjectively critiqued work output, we’re going to have a problem with the balance.
Great discussion!
I disagree with the following comment: “Of course, the world PRE-scientific revolution was a mess of corruption and greed, driven by the religious institutions enforcing ‘ethics’ in their own best interest. If only we could let the pendulum swing to the balanced middle…or somewhere around the middle.”
Just because the religious institutions were enforcing ethics doesn’t mean that they were working from their heart. We see this today in fundamental religions; their hearts full of fear, refusing to honestly assess and examine what is behind their anxieties, they mentally (head) manipulate their religious ethics to make sense to their fear-based needs. Whether it was before the scientific revolution or after, there has been an imbalance of heart and head. The pendulum does indeed need to swing… more toward the heart (when WAS the last time it was there?), and then find a balance.
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