Disagreeing Shows You Care
I was watching this TEDx video: Margaret Heffernan “Dare to Disagree” and it really made me think.
https://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_dare_to_disagree
One of the reasons I suspect I was laid off from About.com was because I had the temerity to disagree with staff. I would point out bugs and flaws in their code or design. I had discussions with both editors and senior executives about how the site could be improved and what I thought was going wrong and right.
When I Was Laid Off, on One Level I Was Not Surprised
Because the new team that they had built up was not made up of people who were interested in discussion. They were interested in hearing how wonderful they were. They weren’t interested in improving the network, just in improving their bonuses and take-home pay. They weren’t interested in helping customers or the writers who created the content that drove the site. They were interested in helping themselves, and possibly the shareholders.
But, When I Was Laid Off, a Lot More of Me Was Shocked
I had devoted a good portion of my life to About.com at that point, and I was tireless in trying to make it better. I felt very strongly that the site had the power to be great, and it was up to passionate people like myself, other writers, and most importantly staff to face what was wrong head on and make it right.
Instead, I learned very clearly that they were not interested in discussion.
I learned that they were not interested in passion.
They were not interested in improving the site or making it better—unless better meant more money for the shareholders and the executive team.
About.com Threw Out the Past
If there was one thing that the (then) new CEO impressed on us it was that he wasn’t looking backwards. Anytime a writer said anything like “we used to…” or “that’s how we’ve always done it” he would jump in and shut them down. “We don’t care about the past!” he would shout.
That is a great mentality to have if you’re trying to revive a business and try new things. You can’t let past history get in the way. Something that didn’t work before might work well in the new economy. Something that worked spectacularly last year might be a dud this year.
But looking to the future isn’t the same thing as ignoring or outright throwing out the past. The fact is that whether Neil Vogel liked it or not, the About.com network was built by writers like myself who had spent thousands of hours writing millions of words of content. That content was all created in the past, but it was still earning About.com money in the present, and much of it would continue to earn money into the future. And most of those writers were very passionate about the topics they wrote about, and as such, they were passionate about the platform where they wrote—About.com.
If you Care About Something, You’ll Fight to Make it Right
The most passionate people tend to also be the most argumentative. As Ms. Heffernan said in her TED talk, disagreeing is often a sign of love. The person doing the disagreeing loves the site or the person or the topic so much they want to discuss it. They want to talk about it. They want to disagree about it.
But management at About.com isn’t interested in making the site better, making the content more interesting for customers, or doing anything other than lowering pay to most writers, setting up gimmicks to get more page views, and generally doing anything they could to make a quick buck. I have no idea if this strategy has worked for them, as I was laid off. But royalties for my remaining content continue to drop and drop, so the only measure I have seems to suggest they are failing. Who knows. I wish them well. I still have friends who write for them (although most of the staff I was friends with has either left or been laid off themselves).
But I do wish that they could grasp that disagreement improves a company, rather than degrading it.