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You know, you wouldn’t think it would cost that much to hire an editor or a proofreader — my 16 year old son. True, son, and if we’re spreading truths then the fact is your old man can use one almost every day.  I’m not quite the King of Typos, but I am the Emperor of Dropped or Wrong Words.  Then again, I write a blog for Silver Beacon Marketing’s clients and the people who pass by, not as the representative of a major market television affiliate.

There were big doings here in the DC area yesterday.  You see, it snowed three inches at Dulles Airport, just a few miles from my house.  Had this been a Monday rather than a Saturday, the federal government would have invoked its liberal leave policy, and hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren would have joined my son in sleeping late. But it was a Saturday, which meant those same people who watched the monster three inches bear down on Dulles also braved the storm to go to the B.J.’s Wholesale Club that’s certainly within sled dog distance to see Sarah Palin.

Our nation’s culture of celebrity meant that the district that overwhelmingly rejected Ms. Palin and Senator McCain’s candidacy showed up in the snow with copies of a book for her to sign. (The greedy opportunists probably have it on eBay now, and had I not been doing an SEO audit yesterday, I think I may have done the same.)

But my son Jared nailed the real issue behind today’s headlines and he even spotted why an editor was needed.  You see, editors are filters.  I deliberately wrote this blog with a heavily slanted voice, allowing more of my own voice to creep in to the writing than any professional journalist should allow. When I asked Jared why he thought the headline and lead on the WJLA-TV site was inconsistent, he said, “I’m guessing someone doesn’t like her very much.” Then he pointed a typo in the last sentence’s introductory clause.  He certainly has Mom’s proofreading skills. But if all of this nitpicking on the local ABC affiliate (story below) is a lighthearted Sunday rant,  the fact is that as newsroom budgets get cut and mainstream media resources are stretched, you’ll see more of “hundreds” in the headlines and “thousands” in the text as a writer talks about braving what was then a solid inch of snow. As my son says, the least you could expect from an ABC affiliate is that they had enough money to hire an editor.  You see, editors are filters, and we need more of them everywhere.

WJLA online article about Sarah Palin book signing
WJLA online article about Sarah Palin book signing
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A network connection’s DNS settings are kind of like your body’s DNA.   DNS is an acronym for Domain Name System.   This is the system that translates a string of numbers into the words you type in a browser to go to a web address.

One way of thinking about this is accessing Yahoo! via your phone.   You type m.yahoo.com.    That gets translated in the connections to 69.147.76.15, which is an address where Yahoo!’s servers for mobile versions of their sites reside.

Now Google is offering a service that harnesses the company’s extensive data center and connections in what company officials say will make your browsing experience faster.  I’ve tested this through several connections, and I have seen faster results using different operating systems and browsers.   Whether you trust Google’s privacy promises to not tie all of your browsing history to your account is another matter.   Remember that your workplace or your home Internet provider already has this information.

This is not a recommendation that you use Google’s DNS service, but if you choose to do so, Google’s DNS  instructions are in plain English on the company’s site.  And in a first for the company that famously doesn’t talk to end users, there is even telephone support.

Yessir, Google wants you sending their traffic through them, and the service is noticeably faster in some cases.  Your mileage may vary, and you have to choose the privacy options best for your particular situation.

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I first came across Keurig coffee pods years ago when the sales rep pitched our CFO on employee pilferage and our office manager on cleanup.  What a slam dunk.

It's good coffee, but sell it that way rather than reducing employee pilferage
It’s good coffee, but sell it that way rather than reducing employee pilferage

Even when calculating the cost of the pods running as high as 50 cents each, throwing in the machine was a no-brainer.  Give away the razor and sell the blades works almost a century after the fact.   And like those Gillette razors I scrape my face with, the K-cups were pricey relative to the substitutes in the market. That sales pitch is shot now.  Nearly everyone I know who has more than one coffee drinker in a house has bought or is considering buying a Keurig or Senseo.   Yes, real coffee snobs, I know you grind your own beans and use distilled water for each pot.  I didn’t mean to insult you.  Keep reading because there is a lesson here for you too.

The pilferage pitch worked in part because we had people walking out with plants or a ream of paper or a roll of paper towels.  We employed thieves.  Our response was the same as any company.  We locked things up, made it difficult to have access to the things people used in their daily work like pens and paper and other equipment.  I can’t count how many calculators we bought.   Then we tasked someone with running around and opening locked closets and cabinets when people needed equipment.

Office pilferage exists everywhere.  But when a company moves from a handful of employees where everyone knows everyone’s business to enough employees to mask pilferage, what should the response be? Restrictive, paternalistic policies may not be the answer.  Firing someone for walking out with a pen is silly.   But you would fire someone who walked out with a $25 case of coffee.  Or you should, and if you wouldn’t, now is a good time to ask yourself why.

Building a culture of honesty is a hard process.  The rewards can be monetary in terms of profit sharing, communicative and my wife’s favorite saying to our children when they were growing up:  “That’s not okay”.   Ultimately, time spent policing employees is a command-and-control leadership technique that’s easiest to implement and manage.  The rigidity stifles creativity, encourages office castes and stops the casual rule breakers. Workplaces need rules and consequences.  But no one should be able to sell a basic product like coffee on the premise that it uses a delivery system that was then in very few homes.  Think about your workplace today — everything from missing lunches to missing toner.  Then think about your team and how you can begin adapting a culture of honesty. Start with yourself.  If reports are “good enough”, if vendors are paid “just a little late”, if office politics are a way of life, today is a great day to declare a new era.   Start with yourself, work to your lieutenants and change your culture.   Because the real issue is not that your culture is spending more on time to lock up office supplies.  The real issue is the broken windows theory of what’s acceptable becoming commonplace and transferring to your partners, your employees and most importantly, to your customers.