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CARES Act help summary for small businesses and nonprofit entities
RIP U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
Five years ago I joined a client as she testified to the House Government Reform Committee on which Rep. Cummings served. Though the client was blowing the whistle about misconduct that occurred at an agency headed by a Democratic appointee, Rep. Cummings did not hesitate to say on the record that it was among the worst things he had heard in his 17 years in Congress. I’d wish for a hundred more Rep. Cummings: unafraid to show their humanity, unafraid to criticize even their own party when it goes astray, unafraid to maintain friendships across party lines. The nation has lost a hero.
Look Before You Leak (Scaramucci Didn’t)
By David Schleicher and David Gallagher
The recently fired Anthony Scaramucci no doubt knows now the difference between a leak and an on-the-record (and profanity-laced) interview. Whether from within the White House, the intelligence community, or deep inside the bureaucracy, the U.S. government is leaking worse than a toddler in a day-old diaper. Everyone seems to be disclosing, condemning leaks, or leaking to both disclose and condemn the disclosers.
Some see these as patriotic checks on government overreach, bad policy or even criminal acts. Others see them as self-serving political maneuvers, possibly illegal in their own right, and certainly not helpful to an administration struggling to find its footing.
In any case, the decision to leak documents or information to the press is one to be taken with eyes wide open. Combining our backgrounds in representing federal whistleblowers and decades of public relations work, we offer these suggestions for anyone licking their lips in anticipation of blowing the whistle:
- Put on your big kid pants. Whistleblowing is not for the faint-hearted. Consider a client who testified about her agency’s wrongdoing to the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on a panel that also included her agency’s own management officials. Or the one who walked up to his agency’s Inspector General before a hearing and in full view of his bosses introduced himself as a whistleblower and handed over a folder of incriminating materials.
- You are not as invisible as you think. Higher ups frequently can discern who told what. Go ahead and copy them on your disclosures, with return receipt. Otherwise, when they’re accused of retaliation, they’ll deny having had any idea it was you. It’s a management defense that has worked.
- Don’t go it alone. Call us biased because we advise people on career survival and public persuasion. But 10 minutes after walking into the lion cage, you’ll wish you had taken a zookeeper with you. Better they know your plan in advance than have to come in to clean up afterwards.
- Know the rules. Is your disclosure one protected by law (such as a violation of a law, an abuse of authority, or substantial danger to public safety)? Or one specifically prohibited by law (such as leaking classified information to media)? Some may decide their obligations to the constitution and to defend against “all enemies, foreign and domestic,” compel them to disclose things that violate laws that otherwise prohibit disclosure. But don’t stumble into illegality–there are protected channels for disclosing even classified matters, such as to Congress or an Inspector General.
- Go for the gold. If you are leaking documents simply to embarrass your enemies within the building or on the other side of the aisle, don’t waste your time waiting around for a medal. Make sure your whistleblowing is over something your grandchildren can admire you for. We believe that heroes also stay around to face the music. No retiring to Moscow permitted.
It is our theory that no major human disaster has occurred without someone first attempting to call attention to the impending doom. (Remember the INS employee who reported the strange flight school activities of those who would go on to bring down planes on 9/11?)
Whether Daniel Ellsberg and US policy in Vietnam, Karen Silkwood over unsafe nuclear plant practices, Cathy Massiter (MI5 surveillance of political activists), or Laurence do Rego (fraud with Nigeria’s Ecobank), there’s a reason the public holds whistleblowers in high regard: it takes guts and there’s often hell to pay. But done intelligently and for the right reasons, they can change history.
David Schleicher, of the Schleicher Law Firm, PLLC, represents U.S. government employees and splits his time between Waco, D.C., and Houston. David Gallagher is London-based, where he is president, Growth Development, International, for Omnicom Public Relations Group.
Just Say No (When to Steer Clear of a Client)
By David Gallagher and David Schleicher
As any fan of courtroom TV drama knows, the accused are entitled to professional legal counsel, no matter how heinous the charge. In the court of public opinion, the rules are a little less established but arguably similar: everyone should have access to advice, and a spotty reputation is not by itself a sufficient reason to be turned away by image consultants.
But as the recent resignation of White House press secretary Sean Spicer underscores, it’s well worth advisors of all types considering in advance when to walk away from an opportunity, and when to run. We’ve compiled these suggestions:
(1) It was once a given, but we feel compelled to say it: don’t do anything illegal. Don’t help anyone else do anything illegal. Don’t attempt to mask the illegal acts of others, or obstruct the law from investigating potentially illegal acts.
(2) Consider the ethics. “It’s legal” does not equal “it’s right.” This is a greyer area than the law, but professional bodies in communications and other areas of business advice have ethical frameworks to clarify ambiguities. Things like disclosing who you represent or are advising, sticking to facts and avoiding deliberate misrepresentation of the truth.
(3) Be pragmatic. Will a new assignment alienate others you work with already? Can your colleagues support the assignment in good conscience and to the best of their abilities? And if you do not own your business, will your shareholders be happy to be associated with the new project? Will your family be embarrassed by your work?
(4) Be realistic. Do you have the skills, experience and in, some cases, the stamina to do what’s required? Is the client willing to change the story by changing their behaviour, or simply demanding a change in the way they are portrayed?
(5) Think about the future. You may feel fully justified in what you’re doing and for whom you’re serving, but if it requires you to burn bridges with others you may need in the future – say, journalists, or the judiciary – you may want to pause before striking the match.
Your client who is ostracised today may with the hindsight of history become the hero (think Martin Luther King). At the other end of the spectrum, no professional wants their dying realization to be that they did such a good job at promoting the shunned that they will be recalled as the next Leni Riefenstahl.
(6) Finally, to thine own self be true. If you’re asked to advise on issues that don’t square with your own gut feeling of what’s right, regardless of the legal or practical circumstances, you’re unlikely to do the job as well as someone who’s truly on board. That’s unfair to the client and compromises your own integrity.
We can only assume in the case of Mr. Spicer and others advising the president that the lure of fame, the proximity to power, or a sincere belief that in some cases the ends justify the means (however unsavoury) is enough to endure the daily humiliations, questionable requests and vicious undercutting to which they are publicly and privately subjected.
This may be good enough for them, but we wouldn’t recommend it for others.
David Gallagher is London-based, where he is president, Growth Development, International, for Omnicom Public Relations Group. David Schleicher, of the Schleicher Law Firm, PLLC, represents U.S. government employees and businesses.
Oreo Cookies, Cash, and a Gun
by David Schleicher
A friend who did work overseas for the government explained to me how she would deal with those days when she had to venture into the middle of a conflict zone. “I’d take a box of Oreos, a wad of cash, and a gun.” She found there were many times the cash was needed and more than one time when the tension level was eased with the cookies. As a result, the gun stayed in its holster.
All too often, we encounter–or see in ourselves–someone who carries nothing but cookies, or only cash, or goes to the gun as step one.
Few question that being a jerk can be damaging and–at the top–even deadly to an organization. The platitude that “one person can make a difference” often has proven itself true as a narcissist drives a country or a company into the ground. Today’s question is a more difficult one: when does your niceness become dysfunctional? All cookies all the time?
The amiable-looking fellow above, Neville Chamberlain, is as good a starting place as any. A British Prime Minister, he reached a 1938 agreement with Adolf Hitler that made some concessions in an effort to quench the dictator’s thirst for territory. What Chamberlain got in return was not peace, but his photo in the dictionary under the word “appeasement.”
Attempting to buy peace (whether with cookies, cash, or by looking away at territorial grabs) with a megalomaniac merely delays a war, in the process deluding an organization into believing it need not be preparing for one. Likewise, if you’re viewed as someone who can be easily rolled because your highest goal is keeping the peace, those who most seek you out will not be prospective clients and business partners, but bullies. (The same applies to your personal life.)
Treat people how you want to be treated is a rule as old as time and a precept that is the universal to the major religions. As few of us enjoy being bullied, it makes sense to start with collegiality and kindness (the Oreos). Sometimes it takes another level of negotiation to get things accomplished (equivalent to the cash). If all else fails, don’t forget that you came prepared with your metaphorical gun.
Figuring out who you are dealing with is half the battle: someone who views you with hostility but is open to change? A gatekeeper who needs lunch money before letting you in? Or a narcissist who will exploit every opening?
Next time you are dropped into hostile territory, don’t go it alone…pack all three.
(c) 2017 David Schleicher. Permission granted to share in entirety with attribution.
Disobedience As A Business Strategy
By David Schleicher and David Gallagher
Watching the rise of President Donald Trump, we ask if it’s time to dump or delete all those books by the experts on how to succeed in business or politics. Love or loathe him, all can agree he doesn’t play by the usual rules. He nonetheless defeated some 20 other major-party candidates on his path to the White House, also gaining a historic number of Republican primary votes and collecting wall-to-wall media attention.
Do the world’s leading experts need to recalculate their advice or is it only a matter of time before the usual rules bring Trump to defeat? His willingness to violate norms leaves some fearing doom of the American experiment in democracy. But it is that very eagerness to implode existing structures that makes his fans adore him. They take the resistance he encounters as proof he’s fighting the good fight against an out-of-touch and corrupt establishment.
Consider this common wisdom from business and political canons of the past:
- If bad news is coming, get out in front of it.
- To get legislation passed, be a consistent and credible source of expertise.
- When you have greatly erred, admit it publicly and outline steps to prevent future occurrences.
- Humility helps prevent disastrous decision-making.
- Unnecessarily antagonizing a reporter will backfire on you.
- Independent voters in the middle decide elections, so politicians should focus on them.
Trump, without embarrassment or hesitation, disregards all these tenets. Consider the drip-drip of bad news out of the White House, widely varied messages to Congress, the refusal to apologize for refusing to apologize, omnipresent boasting, declaring media the “enemy of the people” and a laser-like focus on pleasing his base. The combination is not coincidental.
But as much as one may “love winning,” the reality is that his legislative priorities remain stuck on the runway: repealing Obamacare, tax reform and infrastructure funding. Even with Republicans holding the White House, both houses of Congress and more often than not prevailing at the U.S. Supreme Court, his list of accomplishments is surprisingly diminutive.
Gallup polling labels Trump’s approval ratings “unusually low, unusually early.” They have reached record lows for a president’s first year in office and sit within 15 points of Nixon’s numbers at his resignation. On the other hand, Newsweek recently asserted that the “people who loved Donald Trump in November largely still love him in July.” Visit the right neighborhood in the right part of the United States and it’s not difficult to find Trump campaign signs still displayed proudly.
True, leaders who question assumptions and toss outdated norms can improve their success rate. Trump, by example, demonstrated that some who voted for Barack Obama could be converted to Trump voters and — equally valuable to him — others who turned out for Obama could readily be persuaded to stay home in spite of Obama’s strong endorsement of Hillary Clinton. We nonetheless decline to cease advising leaders to attend to core values such as empathy, clarity and purpose.
If Trump does succeed, it will not be at being “presidential.” Instead he offers a destination so different from the present that he will have gotten there because of, not in spite of, flouting the advice of experts, ignoring well-established customs, and traits and behavior previously deemed repugnant. This may be his goal; the prerequisite question for other leaders is what they hope for.
If it is to win within the current system and eliminate the dinosaurs among the competition, new methods and questioning assumptions are entirely appropriate. If you instead want to demolish an existing marketplace or political system, then feel free to start by tossing out the entirety of the wisdom of the ages and advising your experts to jog on.
Just keep in mind that when burning down a building from the inside, you are not guaranteed an escape route. If an approval rating in the 30 percent range is tolerable for you or your business, then by all means please feel free to give it a try. Someone has to star in future case studies.
David Schleicher is an attorney representing U.S. government employees and a former DC lobbyist. David Gallagher is President, Growth Development, International, for Omnicom Public Relations Group. This originally appeared in the July 19, 2017 Waco Tribune-Herald.
Don’t Read This! Or Else!
However much you may have enjoyed being a child, chances are you don’t like being treated like one now. And that you feel like you are being treated as a child when someone gives you an order about how to behave. Such as ordering you not to read a particular blog post.
When you feel like someone is treating you like you are a child, it is natural to respond like a child. Whatever you may say out loud, your inner two-year old is yelling, “NO!” Like a child, when someone orders that you don’t do “X”, your desire to do “X” is suddenly increased. “Reactance” is what psychologists call that urge you feel to do the opposite of what you are ordered to do, as your mind resists what it perceives as a threat to its freedom.
You probably would agree that direct orders and threats rarely motivate you to do your best. Having served on a school board for six years, I found that someone in a conflict with the district who threatened to sue or to make sure a particular board member lost their next election rarely motivated my fellow board members in the intended direction.
In my years as a lobbyist and in my later practice of law, many times I have seen those threatened take their eyes off of the problem to be solved and instead focus on fighting the threat-maker. We know threats don’t work on us, yet it is one of the first things we try on others when we are not getting our way.
Clients sometimes will ask me why I didn’t raise more hell with the lawyer on the other side of the case. The reason is that when an attorney on the other side from me starts yelling and making loud demands, I begin to think that what I have been doing for my client has been effective enough to get under their skin. In other words, it tells me I might just be winning. I also cut off negotiations until the lawyer can get back some self-control and I may document the details of the conversation in an email or a letter.
Lawyers on the other side of cases have told me that they appreciate that I argue the law and the facts, rather than pounding my shoe on the table. Some of those same lawyers have come to me when they got in legal trouble or referred friends. Shoe pounding does make some clients feel better, but it does not serve their interests.
As challenging as it is not to make threats the first arrow in our quill, it is hard work training ourselves when threatened to stay focused on what is in our interests versus on the urge to squash the threat-maker. It may be, for example, that a settlement would be in your interest even though the threat you just heard makes you want to fight to your last dollar. A truly devious opponent may threaten you simply to make you act irrationally in response.
There are rare occasions when a threat is necessary and even rarer instances when it is productive. If you are going to have to impose a very severe consequence on someone–such as firing them or invading their country–then it is rational to give advance warning that “if you do ‘X’, then I will do ‘Y’.” It also may be needed so that those watching realize that the severe option also was your last option. But even in these situations, the threat (such as to another country’s leader) often results in a reaction that is the adult or national equivalent of “nanny, nanny, boo, boo…”
If you must threaten, make sure that the threat can be carried out successfully. If not, the next threat you make make be answered not with anger, but derision. The better approach is to set out the facts as you see them and let your subordinate or opponent come to see the threat on their own.
For example, rather than telling a sales team, “Every one increase sales by 20% this quarter or I’ll fire you,” try explaining that you have $1 million less in revenue than expenses and hope you can count on the sales team to help the workforce survive these challenging times. Set a date on everyone’s calendar three months from then to jointly review the sales results.
Rather than threatening an opponent with litigation that you say will embarrass them for their evil deeds, consider suggesting to them you would like to explore options for reaching an agreed resolution that would avoid the headaches of litigation for all involved. Just today, I observed someone attempt to persuade a group to change course by telling them that they would become irrelevant if they did not, adding that some of their concerns were absurd. The reaction was not a change of mind but anger over the perceived presumptiveness.
Just as you can draw more flies with honey than vinegar, facts may persuade, but threats almost never do. If someone is pointing a gun at you and telling you to hand over your money, you may comply. The boss that leaves employees feeling they had a gun pointed at them, on the other hand, will leave those employees looking for excuses to undermine her for the other 39 hours and fifty-five minutes of that week.
The fundamental rule is this: what doesn’t work to persuade you, probably doesn’t persuade others either.
Heroes, conspiracy theories, and biscuits
In a time when political gamesmanship rules the day, it’s refreshing to know that heroes still walk among us. Take a Secret Service agent I will refer to as “B.” When I last saw B, I had stopped momentarily by his traffic booth in front of the White House to let him know his recommendation a few days earlier for nearby breakfast biscuits (WTF—Woodward Takeout Food) had made my morning. He patted his stomach and assured me he knew his biscuits.
He promptly returned to the tasks at hand, checking a truck that was seeking entrance to the White House. As I walked on to my next meeting, his unassuming yet professional, firm but good-natured, manner left me feeling the security of those around me was being well served.
Moving forward 11 weeks, the government had shut down. Pay was being cut off to his household, but as an employee deemed “essential” he was expected to report to work, paycheck or not. And on Oct. 3, he was at his duty station, still carefully stopping traffic seeking to enter the White House. Suddenly a vehicle crashed into the security checkpoint. Without drawing his gun or using other force, B motioned the driver to stop.
The driver aimed the car at him and gunned the engine, crashing into B, knocking him in the air, rolling him over the hood and windshield, then finally on to the pavement, where his head was narrowly missed by her tires. The driver fled the White House area and headed toward the Capitol at a high speed, putting pedestrians in danger and breaching another security zone. The driver rammed a Secret Service vehicle at the Capitol and ignored the handful of \officers with drawn weapons who attempted to stop the car.
The driver backed up, nearly hitting Capitol Police officers, and sped away, resulting in officers opening fire. Encountering another barrier, the driver ran into a guard house not far from the Supreme Court. During the chase, a Capitol Police officer was reported injured when his car struck a barricade. Eventually more shots were fired by the police and the driver was killed.
Police then learned the driver had her 1-year-old with her — thankfully unharmed. Though it was certainly capable of killing, her car turned out to have been her only weapon. We now know the driver had a history of mental illness.
Critics have questioned whether excessive force was used by the officers who fired at the driver. Had the driver been in a car packed with explosives that was run past barriers into tourist-filled areas, causing countless deaths, you can be sure the same critics would have demanded to know why the same officers did not do more to stop the car.
Being second-guessed at everything you do and having the worst of motives attributed to you is often the price of public service anywhere; this is truer than ever in Washington these days. Moreover, never slowed by facts, conspiracy theorists prove themselves to be nature’s most reliable source of endless renewable energy. Every tragedy is another chance to prove a plot.
In this tragedy, the driver’s actions sent B to the hospital and left the rest of us very grateful he was alive. B’s response was not anger at the woman but a wish he had been able to do something to help her when they encountered each other. We all would wish society could have helped keep the driver from reaching the point that her mental issues would cause her to drive in a manner that led law enforcement to believe she was the sort of threat people like B are trained to stop. The driver’s willingness to subject her child to such dangers reflected her desperate mental state.
In a week he was working without pay, B to his great detriment risked his own safety in an attempt to resolve the situation without force, coming close to laying down his life for others. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill gave a standing ovation to the law enforcement response to the incident. But they apparently were not moved enough to ensure B and the Capitol Police officer who suffered injuries would get their paychecks before the shutdown ends.
Physical condition permitting, you can be sure both officers will plan to be back at their jobs, paychecks or not, protecting those they serve without regard to the insanity that so often goes on around them.
Many these days enjoy vilifying federal employees. Those like B would assure us they are not heroes, but then that is the sort of thing a real hero would say. Including one who knows his biscuits.
There is no disputing the incident was a true tragedy. But perhaps we can suspend for a day the second-guessing and conspiracy theories that are their own breed of mental illness. Instead, let’s pause to thank our heroes.
{This material originally appeared as a Board of Contributors column by David Schleicher in the October 13, 2013 edition of the Waco Tribune-Herald, at page A10 and is (c) 2013 Waco Tribune-Herald.}
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