What Does It Say?

I haven't written much this month on my blog.  To tell the truth, it was hard.  I had thousands of ideas and wanted to start, but every time I would want to start, it was just too painful.  There have been so many things happening lately that would have required me to open up and write from the heart.  I simply was not up to it.

However, it is important that i WRITE!  Yes, I know I got my capitalization backward just now.  That's part of what I'm trying to say.  I am not important.  The writing is.  Sometimes it is the message itself that is important.

A lot of my work requires that I deliver messages, that I help other people interpret messages, cut through layers of meaning and get to the heart of something that may be deeply emotional, and may have been avoided for far too long.  It's important that I pay attention to the details about messages so things don't get lost.  It irks me then when people deliberately distort messages or pretend they never got a message when they clearly did for no good reason.

Sometimes messages are sent inadvertently because of lack of proportion.  The whopper that comes to mind for me right now is Brett Favre.  Roger Goddell, Commissioner of the National Football League, fined the Minnesota Vikings' quarterback the sum of $50,000 for "failure to cooperate with the investigation in a forthcoming manner."  Now in most of corporate America, anyone would be fired if he or she "fails to cooperate with an investigation in a forthcoming manner," especially when it is a workplace investigation into an allegation of sexual harassment.

The problem with the message here is the lack of proportion where Favre is concerned.  If he were an average Joe Wage-Earner, (meaning you or me) $50,000 would be a hell of a penalty.  The average salary for 2010 is right around $50,000 -- actually it's a bit under that amount.  Now if you take the numbers that Favre actually gets under his contract, the picture changes dramatically.  His base salary -- no incentives or anything else -- is $16,000,000.00 for 2010.  That translates to $1,000,000.00 per game.  (I didn't perform the math, and just went to ESPN for the calculations, so if I'm wrong, blame them for this next bit.)  That means he earns $16,667.00 PER MINUTE.  Therefore, it will take him all of 3 minutes to earn $50,000.00.

Shall we apply that to average Joe?  Joe's penalty under an equivalent scenario would be a penalty of $1.20.  Let's take it up a notch to the average degreed professional in America -- with a salary of $100,000 per year.  Okay that would be a penalty of $2.40. 

Oooh, I'm certainly deterred by that message, Mr. Goddell.  It's not even a good parking ticket!

Why did you even bother?

Frankly, it would have been better to have done nothing than send this message that makes a mockery of whatever policy the NFL might have concerning workplace conduct and investigations.

But then, no one asked me.  I'm not their lawyer.  I'm just an observer who looks at the messages that get sent.