Supposedly, this is what the dolphins said when leaving Earth right before it was destroyed. It is also the title of one of the four books in the "Life, the universe and everything" trilogy, which could have gotten me fired. When I got the first book, I was young programmer still very early in my career. I was so into the book, I took it to work with me and would sneak it out of my desk drawer and read it when no one was looking. Yes, the rumors are true. I am leaving Spirit Lake Consulting and starting my own company, The Julia Group. The reason I have not posted here for over a month is that I have been working on finishing the last reports for Spirit Lake during the day and working on my new company site in the evenings. We already have one course up and running, an on-line Autism for Early Childhood Educators course.
I have also have a new blog on The Julia Group site that you are welcome to check out if you are interested in what I will be doing for the rest of my life - or next week, anyway.
A lot of people have asked about the reasons for my leaving the company. The truth, I am afraid, is far more boring than the rumors. Erich is much more interested in the ethics and management training workshops where I wanted to focus on the technical aspect. With my new company there will be a lot more time to add the newest applications to our site. You'll notice we have a lot more video and links to the forum in the Autism course, and that is just scratching the surface. The first pages on the Spirit Lake Consulting site were actually an Internet course on Developmental Psychology, written using Netscape Navigator back around 1997 - the Paleolithic era in Internet time. We have been through a lot of changes - to Adobe CyberStudio - to frames - to Dreamweaver - to templates.
Things change. Erich, April and I founded the company together, I think it was five years ago. Before that, Erich and I had worked together on one project or another since 1990. That's eighteen years. I've had three marriages and none of them lasted that long! I am coming up on my eleventh anniversary this year, so I may beat that record yet.
Over the past several years we have received over a million dollars in grants and contracts. We've created a dozen on-line courses, gotten millions in grant funds for our clients, provided training to thousands of people. During it all, I learned a lot about starting a business, teaching on-line, web design, writing, documentation and a hundred other skills large and small - knowledge that is definitely the most valuable asset I take with me as I wander off into the horizon.
What will I do now? After working full-time for 34 years straight, ever since I was 15 years old, I am going to take it easier. We have collected a substantial amount of data on our research projects over the past few years which I have never had the chance to write up for publication. There are several articles I intend to submit to scientific journals, so those are high on my to-do list. I am going to finish the Developmental Psychology course for The Julia Group. This will be the first course i am not writing to a deadline, so I am going to do it exactly the way I want it. After that, I have a statistics course I want to do as well. I submitted a proposal for an on-line mathematics program, that. if funded, will start in a few months. By Wednesday I will finish the last grant I will be writing for Spirit Lake Consulting, Inc., one on which The Julia Group will be subcontracted for the web design, blogs, forums, wikis and other fun stuff.
As you can see, I have a lot planned for my "retirement", but on Thursday, the first day of my non-Spirit Lake Consulting life, I only have one item on my calendar - sleep late.
Goodbye and thanks for all the fish!
"Can I succeed in business?"
Worded one way or another, this is a very common question we get on the Spirit Lake Forum small business section. Obviously, it is impossible for me to say whether an individual person will succeed or not, especially not someone I have never met. There are thousands of books, articles and websites on what makes one succeed or fail in business. If any of them had the "one, true answer", the author would be a billionaire, everyone else would be following his/her plan and there would be no more failed attempts.
There are a few suggestions I can make, have made, in our Courageous Leadership workshop. These include taking a good hard look at whether anyone would pay you for whatever product or service you intend to provide.
I sometimes read the Idea Cafe website for small business. It is a very interesting site, visited by some very knowledgeable people and some who really don't have a clue. I would recommend people interested in starting a business go there for a couple of reasons. One is that they have some genuinely good articles and good advice. The other reason, though, is that you will read ideas for businesses that make you wonder,
"What were they thinking?!"
It's a very nice site and no one ever says,
"Are you out of your mind? No one is going to buy knitted sweaters for turtles?"
or
"Life coach? What qualifications do you have to tell other people what to do with their lives? You worked as a clerk for twenty years, lost your job and now you are going to give other people advice?"
Nope, no one says that. They say nice things about what an original idea knit caps for turtles is or assure the person that she sounds so nice and enthusiastic that, of course they are sure she will be successful in her business of offering life coaching seminars. Next thing you know, nice person # 2 is posting on the same site about her difficulty finding customers and asking for marketing advice. What I learned back in business school in the 1970's (yes, I am that old) was that the first rule of marketing is to have a good product.
It is possible to succeed in business despite ignoring a lot of the basics, like having a business plan, monitoring your cash flow and so on, although it is not the way to place your bets. I suppose the individual who posted on our website was looking for something more original than that. So, here is my two cents worth:
Worded one way or another, this is a very common question we get on the Spirit Lake Forum small business section. Obviously, it is impossible for me to say whether an individual person will succeed or not, especially not someone I have never met. There are thousands of books, articles and websites on what makes one succeed or fail in business. If any of them had the "one, true answer", the author would be a billionaire, everyone else would be following his/her plan and there would be no more failed attempts.
There are a few suggestions I can make, have made, in our Courageous Leadership workshop. These include taking a good hard look at whether anyone would pay you for whatever product or service you intend to provide.I sometimes read the Idea Cafe website for small business. It is a very interesting site, visited by some very knowledgeable people and some who really don't have a clue. I would recommend people interested in starting a business go there for a couple of reasons. One is that they have some genuinely good articles and good advice. The other reason, though, is that you will read ideas for businesses that make you wonder,
"What were they thinking?!"
It's a very nice site and no one ever says,
"Are you out of your mind? No one is going to buy knitted sweaters for turtles?"
or
"Life coach? What qualifications do you have to tell other people what to do with their lives? You worked as a clerk for twenty years, lost your job and now you are going to give other people advice?"
Nope, no one says that. They say nice things about what an original idea knit caps for turtles is or assure the person that she sounds so nice and enthusiastic that, of course they are sure she will be successful in her business of offering life coaching seminars. Next thing you know, nice person # 2 is posting on the same site about her difficulty finding customers and asking for marketing advice. What I learned back in business school in the 1970's (yes, I am that old) was that the first rule of marketing is to have a good product.
It is possible to succeed in business despite ignoring a lot of the basics, like having a business plan, monitoring your cash flow and so on, although it is not the way to place your bets. I suppose the individual who posted on our website was looking for something more original than that. So, here is my two cents worth:
- Make sure you have something people are willing to part with their money to get.
- Learn from the failures of others. That is one reason I recommended the Idea Cafe website.
Are incompetent workers more likely to be unethical?
In my experience, the answer is an unqualified, "Yes."
Years ago, a very dear friend of mine had a very good-paying job at a major corporation. He found out that the company was engaged in fraud involving government contracts and it went all the way up to the vice-president, who had always been a mentor to him. When he confronted his boss about it, he was told to keep his mouth shut. Faced with a dilemma between going along with what he knew were unethical and illegal activities and losing a very good-paying job, he took off his company badge, threw it at the vice-president and walked out.
A week later, he had a better job.
That last line is key. For someone who knows he can find another job within the week, it is not such a soul-searching dilemma to challenge unethical behavior.
"What if I expose the number of people using using tribal property for their own benefit, charging for time they never worked and hiring their relatives who never come to work either?"
Well, what if? If you are one of those people who is excellent at their job, who is responsible and reliable, it means that you will be working at a different job next week. That may be uncomfortable or inconvenient but it is certainly not the end of your life as you know it.
On the other hand, what if you really don't know how to do that high-paying job? What if you were appointed because you were related to someone who no longer holds office, and you are just being tolerated in that job because people don't want to rock the boat? What if you pretended to have experience or skills you did not really have, as a counselor, a manager or a grant writer? You really would not want to rock the boat because if you lost that job your chances of getting another like it are not good.
You need courage to be ethical because otherwise you will only be ethical when there is no risk. As Aristotle said, Courage is the virtue upon which all others are based.
When we were writing our on-line ethics course and discussing Marianne Jennings' Seven Signs of Moral and Ethical Collapse, one of those I thought did not apply was 'Young 'uns and a larger than life CEO. Now that I think more about it, I am not so sure.
Yes, we don't see so many very young managers on the reservation and I don't see a lot of larger-than-life CEOs like the heads of Enron, although there have been some. However, what there is in common is people who get into jobs over their heads and don't speak up because they are afraid of 'being found out' or afraid that they will lose their jobs and not be able to get another one like it. So, they go along and our atmosphere of fear and silence grows.
The next time you ask,
"So what if Ernie's brother really isn't the best person for the job. All right, let's be honest, he can't even SPELL the name of this department, but Ernie is an important person to us, and really, what is the harm?"
According to the responses on our Ethical Questions forum, there can be lots of harm and an increasing likelihood of unethical behavior is just a start.
In my experience, the answer is an unqualified, "Yes."
Years ago, a very dear friend of mine had a very good-paying job at a major corporation. He found out that the company was engaged in fraud involving government contracts and it went all the way up to the vice-president, who had always been a mentor to him. When he confronted his boss about it, he was told to keep his mouth shut. Faced with a dilemma between going along with what he knew were unethical and illegal activities and losing a very good-paying job, he took off his company badge, threw it at the vice-president and walked out.
A week later, he had a better job.
That last line is key. For someone who knows he can find another job within the week, it is not such a soul-searching dilemma to challenge unethical behavior.
"What if I expose the number of people using using tribal property for their own benefit, charging for time they never worked and hiring their relatives who never come to work either?"
Well, what if? If you are one of those people who is excellent at their job, who is responsible and reliable, it means that you will be working at a different job next week. That may be uncomfortable or inconvenient but it is certainly not the end of your life as you know it.
On the other hand, what if you really don't know how to do that high-paying job? What if you were appointed because you were related to someone who no longer holds office, and you are just being tolerated in that job because people don't want to rock the boat? What if you pretended to have experience or skills you did not really have, as a counselor, a manager or a grant writer? You really would not want to rock the boat because if you lost that job your chances of getting another like it are not good.
You need courage to be ethical because otherwise you will only be ethical when there is no risk. As Aristotle said, Courage is the virtue upon which all others are based.
When we were writing our on-line ethics course and discussing Marianne Jennings' Seven Signs of Moral and Ethical Collapse, one of those I thought did not apply was 'Young 'uns and a larger than life CEO. Now that I think more about it, I am not so sure.
Yes, we don't see so many very young managers on the reservation and I don't see a lot of larger-than-life CEOs like the heads of Enron, although there have been some. However, what there is in common is people who get into jobs over their heads and don't speak up because they are afraid of 'being found out' or afraid that they will lose their jobs and not be able to get another one like it. So, they go along and our atmosphere of fear and silence grows.
The next time you ask,
"So what if Ernie's brother really isn't the best person for the job. All right, let's be honest, he can't even SPELL the name of this department, but Ernie is an important person to us, and really, what is the harm?"
According to the responses on our Ethical Questions forum, there can be lots of harm and an increasing likelihood of unethical behavior is just a start.
Since I am working on the final report on our Disability Access: Computer-integrated training project, I thought I would browse around the Internet and see how other on-line training is received.
One source full of supporters and detractors was Dave Taylor's Intuitive Business Blog, where many, many people weighed in on the University of Phoenix. It sounds as if, like with any institution, there are some good instructors and some bad ones. From the comments overall, the administration sounds terrible. Of course, the fact that they were fined twice by the Department of Education, once for $9.8 million and once for $4.4 million has got to make you think twice about their credibility.
I reviewed a number of sites and articles on on-line learning and distance education. I understand the profit motive, after all, WE are a for-profit corporation, but still, the bias in some of the research by people who surely no better was troubling. After a while, I could almost tell what the results of the 'research' were going to be by looking at the advertisers on the site.
It always irritates me when people say, "You can show anything with statistics."
What you ought to show is the truth, as close as you can get to it. Instead, we have people who say "there is no difference with on-line education" and then measure variables that have no difference. So far, most people really don't want to talk about drop-out rates.
It appears to me that there are significant differences in favor of classroom-based instruction for student drop-out rates. For those students who do persist and complete courses, there seems to be no substantial difference in how much they learn as measured by most types of assessment.
Still, for both students in classrooms and on-line, the number who DON'T complete courses is far, far too high. That is the problem Spirit Lake Consulting is aiming to address next.
One source full of supporters and detractors was Dave Taylor's Intuitive Business Blog, where many, many people weighed in on the University of Phoenix. It sounds as if, like with any institution, there are some good instructors and some bad ones. From the comments overall, the administration sounds terrible. Of course, the fact that they were fined twice by the Department of Education, once for $9.8 million and once for $4.4 million has got to make you think twice about their credibility.
I reviewed a number of sites and articles on on-line learning and distance education. I understand the profit motive, after all, WE are a for-profit corporation, but still, the bias in some of the research by people who surely no better was troubling. After a while, I could almost tell what the results of the 'research' were going to be by looking at the advertisers on the site.
It always irritates me when people say, "You can show anything with statistics."
What you ought to show is the truth, as close as you can get to it. Instead, we have people who say "there is no difference with on-line education" and then measure variables that have no difference. So far, most people really don't want to talk about drop-out rates.
It appears to me that there are significant differences in favor of classroom-based instruction for student drop-out rates. For those students who do persist and complete courses, there seems to be no substantial difference in how much they learn as measured by most types of assessment.
Still, for both students in classrooms and on-line, the number who DON'T complete courses is far, far too high. That is the problem Spirit Lake Consulting is aiming to address next.
For anyone beginning a website, whether it is to deliver on-line training as a web-based business or have a home page for your son's Boy Scout Troop, the major mistake is usually the same. That is, failing to consider the time needed to maintain it. Over the years, I have been involved with several organizations - my children's schools, sports teams, grant-funded projects - and have created a website for them, either working as a volunteer on my own time or as an added service thrown into a contract. Some of these websites were done back when the idea of having a presence on the Internet was a fairly new concept.
Regardless of the year written, type of organization and topic, most of these sites have one thing in common. They are in the exact same condition as the day I left the organization.
I am not alone. It is very common to run across websites for small organizations that have not been updated in years, listing events or topics "of the week" when the week they were referencing ended June 12, 1999. For larger entities - corporations, colleges and some multi-million dollar non-profits, their websites are updated far more frequently than the little guys, so it is not so glaringly obvious that maintenance is a problem. You won't find a home page with sales prices from 2003.
What you may find, however, is an increasing number of links that don't work or documents that you download that turn out to be hopelessly out of date.
Key lesson we have learned with every web-based course or project: budget in money for maintenance. Life changes. If it cost you $60,000 in hours paid to your staff to write the content, even if you estimate only 10% of the material will change each year, that still means $6,000 per year just to keep your site up to date, never mind expanding it.
If the website was done free by a volunteer, when he or she leaves, someone will need to be found to update changes to your calendar, planned events, board of directors, contact information and anything else that might be subject to change. That "anything else" includes almost every aspect of your operation.
We are working on a new grant right now and I intend to budget about 20% for maintenance after our final draft. I am hoping that will keep us on track for at least the first two years.
Regardless of the year written, type of organization and topic, most of these sites have one thing in common. They are in the exact same condition as the day I left the organization.
I am not alone. It is very common to run across websites for small organizations that have not been updated in years, listing events or topics "of the week" when the week they were referencing ended June 12, 1999. For larger entities - corporations, colleges and some multi-million dollar non-profits, their websites are updated far more frequently than the little guys, so it is not so glaringly obvious that maintenance is a problem. You won't find a home page with sales prices from 2003.
What you may find, however, is an increasing number of links that don't work or documents that you download that turn out to be hopelessly out of date.
Key lesson we have learned with every web-based course or project: budget in money for maintenance. Life changes. If it cost you $60,000 in hours paid to your staff to write the content, even if you estimate only 10% of the material will change each year, that still means $6,000 per year just to keep your site up to date, never mind expanding it.
If the website was done free by a volunteer, when he or she leaves, someone will need to be found to update changes to your calendar, planned events, board of directors, contact information and anything else that might be subject to change. That "anything else" includes almost every aspect of your operation.
We are working on a new grant right now and I intend to budget about 20% for maintenance after our final draft. I am hoping that will keep us on track for at least the first two years.
These last several days are the longest I have ever gone without posting here. No, I have not quit working and become a beach bum, spending my days drinking Pina Coladas and my nights sleeping in the sand. As my lovely children commonly say, "Dude, don't I wish!"
The sad truth is far more boring than that. We finished the final draft of the Ethics Course. That has taken a fair bit of work. Erich (a.k.a. Dr. Longie) has been working his - well, his something - off teaching workshops on every reservation in sight, snow storms or no. He has collected almost all of the data needed on the on-site version of the workshop, so, if you want to attend, you will need to go to our on-line version and enroll. It is still free until the end of January. Erich has also been going to points far and wide teaching our workshop on Special Education Rights. I think he just heard one too many stories about children not getting the services they needed or school districts not listening to parents, because he has been from one reservation to the next meeting with parents and school staff explaining to them exactly what rights children have under the law.
With Erich off fighting the good fight and collecting data at the beginning and end of each workshop to boot (the government is smarter than you think - no, I am serious - and they insist on data to show we are making a difference) - well, I have been back at the office analyzing all that data, creating a PowerPoint presentation for our webcast on December 14, analyzing the data for our final report on the Disability Access project (now renamed to the Family Life Series) and other research in progress.
I am also working on our next grant for the Tribal Leaders with Character project (Phase II) and doing a lot of minor and major changes on our website. Does it ever drive you crazy when you click on a link and it comes up "not found"? Yeah, me too. So, my helpful assistant, Jenn, found a few that I fixed. I am also working (slowly) on adding media features, especially video, to our virtual library and adding better menus to the disability-specific section of the virtual library. Okay, well, honestly, we don't have any menus for that section right now, so anything at all will be better.
With the end of the year approaching, we are winding down data collection and training a little, which allows me to get caught up. Then next year starts up with the grant due by the first week in February and I will be tearing my hair out again.
Oh well, at least there is never a dull moment around here.
Yes, we are an Indian-owned company based on the Spirit Lake Nation, providing training, research and evaluation for programs run by disability services, schools, colleges, tribal governments and businesses.
We are also, though, a technology company that offers on-line learning, statistical programming, research and database design. As such, we are always interested in staying ahead of the curve. In my personal blog, I have been known to rant about the over-abundance of stupid people on the Internet. Today, I want to talk about the opposite, really great, intelligent blogs that I have come across lately.
The 463 blogs on tech policy. Obviously, people who are interested in tech policy will most enjoy this blog, but it has more than the subject (which does happen to interest me) to recommend it.. While policy can be deathly dull, especially when taught by some of the professors I have met, it is also what shapes the future. I have a keen interest in the future because I intend to spend the rest of my life there
I also like the writing style of this blog, where they manage to be intelligent without being impressed with themselves, example -- the detritus of the Second Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is being disassembled and packed away. (Ed note: Detritus? WTF, who is this McGuire guy?)
This blog also has a link to several others I found interesting. As much as I like the blogger interface. I have found a higher proportion of blogs of interest to me outside of blogger. Am I just searching incorrectly? Or is blogger really turning into MySpace for grown-ups?
Maybe the best thing about The 463 is that they had links to other blogs that were just as interesting
The Technology Liberation Front is another blog I am going to add to my 'to-read' list. They're opinionated. I like that. Sometimes their opinions are a bit obvious, e.g., venture capitalists are looking for killer-apps and not modest investments. Other times, e.g., their criticism of Citizendium versus wikipedia make me think about an issue in a way I hadn't really considered before. It's like being involved in an intelligent conversation without having to go to the effort to converse. If you have never felt like that at the end of the day, then you probably aren't working hard enough.
The Technology and Democracy Project is a perfect fit for me as it includes a bit of everything, from how criminals could hide their on-line activity to regulations of cable companies (I skipped that article) to the increase in broadband access, which is a very relevant point for one of the grants we currently have in progress.
So, those are my recommendations for blogs of the day. Read each of them and you may find yourself a little smarter by the end of the day, although I can't guarantee it.
We are also, though, a technology company that offers on-line learning, statistical programming, research and database design. As such, we are always interested in staying ahead of the curve. In my personal blog, I have been known to rant about the over-abundance of stupid people on the Internet. Today, I want to talk about the opposite, really great, intelligent blogs that I have come across lately.
The 463 blogs on tech policy. Obviously, people who are interested in tech policy will most enjoy this blog, but it has more than the subject (which does happen to interest me) to recommend it.. While policy can be deathly dull, especially when taught by some of the professors I have met, it is also what shapes the future. I have a keen interest in the future because I intend to spend the rest of my life there
I also like the writing style of this blog, where they manage to be intelligent without being impressed with themselves, example -- the detritus of the Second Annual Internet Governance Forum (IGF) is being disassembled and packed away. (Ed note: Detritus? WTF, who is this McGuire guy?)
This blog also has a link to several others I found interesting. As much as I like the blogger interface. I have found a higher proportion of blogs of interest to me outside of blogger. Am I just searching incorrectly? Or is blogger really turning into MySpace for grown-ups?
Maybe the best thing about The 463 is that they had links to other blogs that were just as interesting
The Technology Liberation Front is another blog I am going to add to my 'to-read' list. They're opinionated. I like that. Sometimes their opinions are a bit obvious, e.g., venture capitalists are looking for killer-apps and not modest investments. Other times, e.g., their criticism of Citizendium versus wikipedia make me think about an issue in a way I hadn't really considered before. It's like being involved in an intelligent conversation without having to go to the effort to converse. If you have never felt like that at the end of the day, then you probably aren't working hard enough.
The Technology and Democracy Project is a perfect fit for me as it includes a bit of everything, from how criminals could hide their on-line activity to regulations of cable companies (I skipped that article) to the increase in broadband access, which is a very relevant point for one of the grants we currently have in progress.
So, those are my recommendations for blogs of the day. Read each of them and you may find yourself a little smarter by the end of the day, although I can't guarantee it.
We have been planning for the last several months to split the company and go our separate ways. Oddly, the most current attempted revision of our website made it clear that a separation is inevitable. We are always trying to look at our products and services as our customers might see them. In this case, I started with the menus on our home page. We have the Caring for Our People training project for staff serving people with disabilities. We have the Family Life and Disability Series designed for people with disabilities and their families. Then, we have the Individualized Education Plan training, for parents, on guaranteeing their child's rights in special education. I set up a tab for "Disability Staff". I set up a second tab on the menu for "Family" and a third for "People with Disabilities". So far, so good, right.Next, we have the courageous leadership project, for training managers, new employees and entrepreneurs for business success in Native American communities. Then, we have the Ethical Training for Indian Nations project. So, I could create a third tab that says "Small Business" or put them all together under "Leadership".
This would make sense if we were talking about leadership specifically in disability programs or ethics in disability services, but we're not. The Ethical Training Project is focused on developing more effective reservation programs and businesses through education in ethics, everything from working eight hours for eight hours' pay to not hiring your girlfriend. The Courageous Leadership project is related, discussing evaluation of employees, helping employees with no work experience to adjust to a business environment, starting a business - and how all of this requires discipline, honesty, courage and respect for oneself and others.
It is becoming clear that, over the years, we have gradually diverged into two separate businesses. One of those is focused on on-line education, parent education and working with people with disabilities and their families. The second is targeting leadership training with an emphasis on ethics.
So, rather than spend the time revising the website, I decided to leave it as is until we split up in a few months. Then I will have the new company site with Family, Educators, Students with Disabilities, Library and Student Union.
The Spirit Lake Consulting site will then have:
Leadership Training
Small Business
New Employees
Business Library (including reference and forms)
Meeting Room
Rather than try to merge two disparate companies into one, I think it makes more sense to split and have two companies that function well in their areas of expertise. A farmer explained it to me this way,
"Sometimes it's a mistake to combine two successful business ventures. It's like when you cross a thoroughbred race horse with a sweet little donkey. All you end up with is a jack-ass. You'd be better off recognizing and accepting the differences."
I think we are on the right path, as much work as it will be in the months ahead. I think our other option is to end up as a couple of jack-asses, and no one wants to do that.
According to Marianne Jennings, 99% of employees surveyed believe that they are more ethical than the majority of their co-workers. Our own research at SLC certainly bears that out. Whenever Erich goes to a reservation and discusses our new course on Ethics the same thing will always happen. First, someone will say
"The Housing Board really needs this ethics training. Boy are they unethical."
When he talks to the housing board members, they'll say,
"The Tribal Council really needs this. You just won't believe some of the decisions they make."
Talking to the tribal council, we hear,
"This is something the Project Directors could use. Some of them really need training in ethics. It's a big problem."
It's always someone else's problem. There are many aspects of this situation I don't understand. First of all, if these are such big problems and you know about them and you haven't done anything - doesn't that make you part of the problem? Everyone likes to point at the boss who is charging the tribe for days he doesn't work or took a computer home that was tribal property.
I am having difficulty writing up the by-stander portion of our Ethics course because I am trying to find a way to not make it sound too accusatory. I do understand that it is hard to speak up, to stand up, particularly when no one else is doing it. When you really are the most ethical person in a room, it can be a pretty lonely room (Erich has also written about that, which I need to find some place to include in the course).
Yes, it's hard, but it's not impossible.
As we say over and over in our course, major ethical violations don't occur in a vacuum. If someone is taking thousands of dollars in tribal funds or program funds, putting unqualified relatives on the payroll, missing work 50% of the time and still getting full pay, they need a lot of other people to turn a blind eye to it and pretend it never happened so they can get away with it.
I have to give Erich credit that he is really committed to trying to establish an Ethics education program on the reservations. He will be meeting with the Spirit Lake TERO Board at 5 pm November 13, on November 20 with the Spirit Lake Tribal Council, on November 21 with the Tribal School Board. He has already had one meeting with the Three Affiliated Tribes and is planning more, along with traveling to Turtle Mountain and other reservations.
Why? This is from the home page of our Ethics course:
Ethical violations are costing tribal organizations hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Most of these costs are not from large-scale embezzlement or kickbacks on multi-million dollar contracts. Small violations on a large scale are what bleed money from tribal and federal funds. If we are ever to move from 'survival' mode to 'success' mode in Indian country, we need to address these constant, daily ethical ''cuts" to our funding that are bleeding our tribal nations. We need to heal ourselves.
We write a lot of grants here at SLC. It is expensive, time-consuming and the grants don't always get funding. If we could cut half of those small violations and increase the percentage of money going where its supposed to go and being used how it is supposed to be used, that would be millions of dollars, equivalent to getting several new grants.
AND it would be what the most ethical person in the room would do.
"The Housing Board really needs this ethics training. Boy are they unethical."
When he talks to the housing board members, they'll say,
"The Tribal Council really needs this. You just won't believe some of the decisions they make."
Talking to the tribal council, we hear,
"This is something the Project Directors could use. Some of them really need training in ethics. It's a big problem."
It's always someone else's problem. There are many aspects of this situation I don't understand. First of all, if these are such big problems and you know about them and you haven't done anything - doesn't that make you part of the problem? Everyone likes to point at the boss who is charging the tribe for days he doesn't work or took a computer home that was tribal property.
I am having difficulty writing up the by-stander portion of our Ethics course because I am trying to find a way to not make it sound too accusatory. I do understand that it is hard to speak up, to stand up, particularly when no one else is doing it. When you really are the most ethical person in a room, it can be a pretty lonely room (Erich has also written about that, which I need to find some place to include in the course).
Yes, it's hard, but it's not impossible.
As we say over and over in our course, major ethical violations don't occur in a vacuum. If someone is taking thousands of dollars in tribal funds or program funds, putting unqualified relatives on the payroll, missing work 50% of the time and still getting full pay, they need a lot of other people to turn a blind eye to it and pretend it never happened so they can get away with it.
I have to give Erich credit that he is really committed to trying to establish an Ethics education program on the reservations. He will be meeting with the Spirit Lake TERO Board at 5 pm November 13, on November 20 with the Spirit Lake Tribal Council, on November 21 with the Tribal School Board. He has already had one meeting with the Three Affiliated Tribes and is planning more, along with traveling to Turtle Mountain and other reservations.
Why? This is from the home page of our Ethics course:
Ethical violations are costing tribal organizations hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Most of these costs are not from large-scale embezzlement or kickbacks on multi-million dollar contracts. Small violations on a large scale are what bleed money from tribal and federal funds. If we are ever to move from 'survival' mode to 'success' mode in Indian country, we need to address these constant, daily ethical ''cuts" to our funding that are bleeding our tribal nations. We need to heal ourselves.
We write a lot of grants here at SLC. It is expensive, time-consuming and the grants don't always get funding. If we could cut half of those small violations and increase the percentage of money going where its supposed to go and being used how it is supposed to be used, that would be millions of dollars, equivalent to getting several new grants.
AND it would be what the most ethical person in the room would do.
As I was writing our latest quarterly report for the RUSH grant, I found myself laughing out loud, something that doesn't usually happen when you write government reports. The disconnect was just too funny between the ways that textbooks and government offices expect research to be done and how it really happens on the reservation. I learned in graduate school that people are supposed to be assigned to an experimental group (in our case, who receive training) and a control group (who fills out the same tests but receives no training). Everyone is supposed to be treated the exact same way, come in at the same time and leave at the same time, getting the exact same amount of training. Here is the reality - people come in when they do. Some come late. Some leave early. A few people both come late AND leave early. People assign themselves to the experimental group or the control group because if a person doesn't want to attend the training then there is nothing anyone can do about it.
Erich and I had talked a lot about the differences between what really works and how things are 'supposed' to work in conducting research and publicizing the results of that research in a way that it benefits the community. So, when was asked if we would be interested in giving a webcast on working in Indian communities, we were all set.
Yes, we can all get along, those in the field and in academia. (I even included a picture of Erich with a faculty member from UND as photographic evidence.)
In fact, rather than ordering us to do research following a diagram (like THAT'S going to happen!) the nice folks at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory recommended that we do a webcast on what we have found works and doesn't work. It will be a challenge for Erich and I to reduce all of those differences we have talked and laughed about down to an hour and a half. It will definitely be something different than their typical webcast, but I think we will all enjoy it and actually learn something.
Research and Dissemination in Indian Country: Indianonish, Email, and Other Surprises
a webcast by Dr. De Mars and Dr. Longie through the National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research will be held on December 14, 2 p.m. Central Time.
To read more about this webcast, click below
http://www.ncddr.org/webcasts/webcast9.html
Or, go to this link to register
http://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/12291g2e606
It is open to the public and free.
Erich and I had talked a lot about the differences between what really works and how things are 'supposed' to work in conducting research and publicizing the results of that research in a way that it benefits the community. So, when was asked if we would be interested in giving a webcast on working in Indian communities, we were all set.
Yes, we can all get along, those in the field and in academia. (I even included a picture of Erich with a faculty member from UND as photographic evidence.)
In fact, rather than ordering us to do research following a diagram (like THAT'S going to happen!) the nice folks at the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory recommended that we do a webcast on what we have found works and doesn't work. It will be a challenge for Erich and I to reduce all of those differences we have talked and laughed about down to an hour and a half. It will definitely be something different than their typical webcast, but I think we will all enjoy it and actually learn something.
Research and Dissemination in Indian Country: Indianonish, Email, and Other Surprises
a webcast by Dr. De Mars and Dr. Longie through the National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research will be held on December 14, 2 p.m. Central Time.
To read more about this webcast, click below
http://www.ncddr.org/webcasts/webcast9.html
Or, go to this link to register
http://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/12291g2e606
It is open to the public and free.
