i-organisations can seriously damage your health

[Lucien Taylor]

@etaylaw just blogged about Nominet.

i-organisations can seriously damage your health

 

[Nigel]

What a well written piece - look forward to listening to the Radio 4 documentary in September. Emily's right about fear - and most whistleblowers don't have the means, or the strength to take on these goliaths - but she's done it and won in court - which makes Emily such a credible witness to the tactics being used.

Fear is also, in my opinion, keeping nominet's BOD in place. They're kept there by the large registrars who fear what might happen to profits and reputations should new faces appear on the scene. So they've all resorted to - don't rock my boat and we won't rock yours.

 

[Emily Taylor]

“Choose your battles wisely. After all, life isn't measured by how many times you stood up to fight. It's not winning battles that makes you happy, but it's how many times you turned away and chose to look into a better direction. Life is too short to spend it on warring. Fight only the most, most, most important ones, let the rest go.”

Lucien, Emily had her day in court, she won a victory and was compensated. If Emily's health really is of such a concern to you, why are you picking fights?

Thanks Sean

Sometimes in life you are confronted by "the most, most, most important ones". Sometimes, the important ones choose you. But you're right, every individual does have a choice. In my experience, trying to pretend that a bad thing hasn't happened, and everything's fine, is more damaging to your health than almost anything else.

I did win in court, and I expected that those damning tribunal findings would have their own natural consequences - organisational learning, signs of change - take your pick. Compare and contrast the response of the BBC to a dreadful scandal - we saw organisational changes, studies, internal campaigns to support whistleblowers. They owned the news story, they accepted they had to rebuild trust, and set about it with humility. OK : you will say, you can't compare what happened with Savile to Nominet. I don't, and I don't want to trivialise the suffering of children who were not listened to or believed for more than 40 years. It's the organisational response I'm talking about.

The end bit has not happened at Nominet. The organisation continues in what appears to be a state of denial. They are right and always will be.

I am not a natural campaigner, but I feel I owe it to many others who find themselves frightened to speak out, to try and make things better.

Your question is valid, and please keep asking! I am happy to answer you and I hope you will also ask Nominet the same question. I don't think yesterday's AGM needed to be like that, and I hope that once the group think platitudes have been spoken ("Nutters", "Nominet Haters", "Domainer Lovers" "Inappropriate", "Disrespectful" ...) the board may take some sober reflection on how they have managed to unite a small but significant minority of disparate members who only have one thing in common - they have a trust issue with their board.

This is a time for Nominet to change tactics, and break out the peacemakers. Lucien and I are actually pretty reasonable people!