Here’s a little story, compelling in its simplicity, about an organizational situation that raises issues of loyalty, commitment, and engagement.
When I heard about the initial situation, I had an immediate reaction. My analysis was quickly followed by a few recommendations for the employee involved. [ Of course, as an ENTJ, I am quick to come to conclusions — and I try to balance that by quickly re-opening to new interpretations.]
Turns out, my analysis was completely wrong. So, I’m interested to hear your interpretations of what could be going on here.
The story:
This recent MBA grad works as the communications/ public relations/ social media/ odds ‘n ends person for a small-ish tech start-up. The start-up’s team is composed of full-time employees, some Hr- & accounting-ish folks loaned to them part-time by their investors’ other companies, and a few of the investors themselves.
A few weeks ago most of them participated in a meeting where they talked about their product development plans for Q4. Their market and their products have been changing rapidly; they have several new and revised product ideas and were tossing around some potential names. A few of the names were really great combinations of their main product’s name and these new features, and seemed like winners.
The day after the meeting, while thinking about social media opportunities for these new products, this manager thought she’d run a (Google) search on some of the proposed names.
Should she have been surprised to discover that three of these possible product names had been registered as domain names, that very morning? Not by her, not by the product manager, not by somebody’s staff attorney, but by somebody.
Oh, yes, and these domain names were up for sale.
Coincidence? Conspiracy? Coordination problems?
If you were this employee, how would you have reacted to your discovery? Then, what would you do?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. And, I’ll share the rest of the story tomorrow in the comments.