Lessons Learned

A code of professional conduct is a necessary component to any profession to maintain standards for the individuals within that profession to adhere.  It brings about accountability, responsibility and trust to the individuals that the profession serves.

For writers such as Alexander Pope and Samuel Johnson, struggling in the transition from the age of patronage to that of Grub Street professionalism, Shakespeare offered not only a body of poetic invention but also an inspirational career trajectory.  I have lived my professional life to this standard since day-one.

As a writer, I’ve learned the in’s and out’s of just how powerful the spoken or written word can be.  Words (spoken or unspoken) can hurt or heal.  They can resolve, through mediation, great disparage and disagreements; yet they can also dig a chasm of resent so vast and so deep that no action can ever fill it.  In these instances, the resulting void is a scar that can never heal…leading to the death of any future talks.  I include “unspoken” in this narrative because recent events have underlined just how much hurt can come from what isn’t said just as much as what is.

In business, this is all the more important to keep in mind.  Be careful with whom you conduct business, because those who are sometimes close to you and are amazing people at their core, can also show to have absolutely no business savvy whatsoever.  If they even so much as researched their dealings, they might not be setting themselves up for, what I see as, several contractual lawsuits down the short road of this endeavor.  And you sometimes have to discover this through watching everything they try to conduct professionally fall through the floor.

I am currently standing at the edge of this professional and intellectual abyss.

Not too long ago I was asked to join a business venture that, at face value, appeared to be both novel in it’s originality as well as long overdue in it’s ideals.  I was asked to come on board as their Communications Director, which involved editing all web and email content, as well as turning their website from a sows ear to a silk purse.  I also worked for weeks getting their link added to thirty nine LGBTQ (and LGBTQ-friendly) websites as a means of helping to spread the message of this company.  “All Inclusive” and “In this business, we exclude NO groups” were the original themes batted around.  Of course I was all over this project.

It didn’t take long to figure out this message of theirs was not, in fact, entirely true.  No matter how much the two ladies who’ve taken the lead want to protest.  I am truly sorry to have to say that even the name of their so-called production company has become a bad joke.  Mostly because their actions and, sorry to say, business ethics have proven that name to be completely opposite in meaning.

Without going into the gory details or play-by-Play, suffice it to say that if you can’t take a courteous and professional criticism (that you asked for, by the way), then you shouldn’t jump into the deep end of the professional Pool.  I love working with people, and always have.  But in business, like I’ve always said, if you want to bark with the big dogs, you can’t pee like a puppy.  And you need to grow a thicker skin so that when someone tells you that when you write official emails or texts to companies, you’d better not sound like a Jr. High drop-out.  Yes, I said it…Punctuation…look into it!!!

Bottom line, if you can’t or won’t take professional criticism as a positive lesson learned, and would rather continue speaking to people professionally in a manner that makes you look like the most complex sentence structure you can come up with is “Was up wichew?”, good luck on your next business venture.  Because this one will be short-lived.  Especially when I get done with it online.  Only unlike you, I can do it by telling the truth.

Professionally speaking.