“One Of Us! One Of Us!”

The plot of Freaks is driven by Cleo, a selfish trapeze artist who seduces a little person sitting atop a large inherited fortune.

The secret plan is to marry Hans, murder him, then run away with the money–and the circus strongman.

Despite Cleo’s outward normalcy — the other circus freaks resolve to accept her as one of their own in a bizarre show of community, compassion, and respect for Hans’ feelings toward her.

At Cleo and Hans’ wedding reception, their generosity frightens and disgusts the drunken Cleo. She explodes with rage and reveals her true colors.

Cleo is riding high after making everyone else feel really bad about themselves. But things don’t go well for Cleo in the end…

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think Google plans to murder us or have extramarital affairs with circus strongman.

However, I do think Google needs to re-evaluate how their company views their customers — and our privacy concerns — before it’s too late.

Secrets Are For Bad People

Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, made his philosophy about end-user privacy very clear in his interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo last December:

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” – Eric Schmidt

Is that the viewpoint of Google? Looking at the mess that was Buzz, it certainly seem so.

Only bad people keep secrets, right? Otherwise, who wouldn’t want the world to know who they email with and what they talk about?

Buzzing About Privacy

Privacy isn’t about being good or being bad — it’s about the right of each individual person to choose when, where, and how we reveal intimate knowledge about ourselves.

Working quickly to address people’s privacy concerns about Buzz is a nice gesture, but deeper work appears to be called for–and Google’s product management team can help.

Don’t Throw That Drink

Google has admitted to not doing enough real-world testing on Buzz before making it widely available. If that’s the case, Google’s Trusted Tester program might help shake out privacy issues like this before they become headlines.

If Buzz comes from the start-up culture of Minimum Viable Products, then the PMs may want to re-evaluate the benefits of MVP versus the potential hit Google’s brand takes from a string of products with bad buzz. Because a “beta” tag isn’t bulletproof shielding when you’re a company that people expect great things from.

Lastly — and most darkly — if Buzz wasn’t so much a mistake as it was part of a deliberate scheme to slowly whittle away our expectations to a right to privacy … because, ultimately, Google can profit more, the more they know about us… then it’s time for the PMs at Google to take a good, long look in the mirror and fight for some cultural and philosophical changes within their organization.

Otherwise, inevitably, Google will end up throwing that drink in all our faces, and then have to deal with the legal, financial, and political consequences.

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Today, Apple announced a fix that will let me do that kind of work in iTunes instead. But instead of talking about the importance of usability in a product, which should be pretty obvious, let’s talk about the importance of hate, which might be less obvious but an important competitive advantage.

World’s Finest #194 & #195 present a good case for how veering into the darkness can bring you back to the light.

In World’s Finest #194, an undercover Batman suffers a knock to the head that convinces him he’s actually a mobster. In WF #195, Superman maneuvers Batman into a situation with Robin and Jimmy Olsen that so fundamentally challenges Batman’s moral code that it restores his memories.

Product managers need to do the same thing.

Not masquerade as mobsters, suffer amnesia, or threaten teens into digging their own graves. But stop trying to get customers and users to like you and your product, and instead figure out what it is about your products that people hate.

Sometimes, you can just ask them. Other times, it’s worth sitting with customer service to get a sense of what the users of your product are talking about.

Taken on a case-by-case basis, it might seem like nothing’s there. Just isolated incidents. Crazy people. Cranks. But if you take a step back, patterns may start to form.

Angry emails and hate can mask real issues. New problems to solve that could make a mediocre product good, and a good product great.

(Now, to start rearranging those apps on my iPhone via iTunes.)

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Today: We’re using this story recap as a springboard into this week’s topic: In product management, do the ends justify the means? Do we need a moral code?

Disclaimer! Not all ethics quandaries can be resolved with hellfire.

Death Is Coming For You–And Death Never Loses!

In the Marvel Universe, Death rides a sled and challenges bikers to duels to the, well, death. The problem is, Death cheats. Constantly.

At one point, Ghost Rider tires of Death’s cheating ways and blasts him with hellfire. That doesn’t work. So Ghost Rider cheats a different way–kicks Death’s front wheel during the duel, sending the macabre biker over a cliff–and this time, it works! Ghost Rider wins and escapes with his life.

The moral of the story: To win, you need to understand–and apply–the rules of the game, even if they bend or contradict your own moral code.

Moral Codes: All The Rage

The Harvard Business School recently graduated 800 new Masters of Business Administration, and these graduates all swore an Ethics Oath. Other B-schools are taking similar pledges.

Some people think this focus on ethics codes and honor pledges is a sign of the times. Others, a waste of time–or, worse, that these things trivialize business ethics altogether.

Philosopher Tom Morris Makes A Good Point

Of these oaths, Morris observes:

The core commitments of business ethics aren’t complicated in principle. But their application in the real world demands nuance, sophistication, hard thought, wisdom, skill, and consistency.

In theory, what product manager worth their salt would be against accountability, transparency, or even basic honesty? And yet…

Ethics Is More Than Not Breaking Laws

Ethics is about character. Integrity. Courage.

About being reliable, authentic, and above reproach. About owning up to mistakes and demanding accountability from others. About standing on principles, even if it means going out on a limb.

Too often, discussions about ethics seem to focus on the rule of law. What gets ignored is what Morris tagged as the “application [of ethics] in the real world”.

In the real world, most of us aren’t going to embezzle cash like the Adelphia boys or fraudulently recognize $1 billion in revenues like Enron.

But–what about the tiny lapses? The everyday misdemeanors? Individually these infractions are nothing, right? But add them up, over time… does the equation change?

And as product managers, what particular ethical hurdles do we face that other business functions might not?

Do We Need A PM Moral Code?

As product managers, we seek to understand peoples’ problems and deliver effective and appropriate solutions to those problems.

But who defines effective?

And who says what’s appropriate?

What guidelines do you follow to ethically evaluate a target market? Do ethics even enter the equation? Should they?

What about your reports? Do you round numbers up or down to suit a certain agenda?

When you report status or generate plans, how much padding do you insert to ensure you under-promise and over-deliver? Isn’t knowingly under-promising, essentially, lying to your superiors?

Is morality for product managers a cost-benefit analysis where you balance the costs and benefits of taking an action versus not taking that action? Or do you have a more well-defined moral code?

Do we need a written PM moral code? Or does that kind of oath trivialize business ethics?

Bonus Content!

In this Ted talk, Barry Schwartz (author of The Paradox of Choice) makes the case that we need to teach morals and wisdom, not passive ethics…

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