I was 10 when the riots happened 20 years ago and I lived another world away in Portland. Other events from that time are a bit hazy (the first Gulf War, my parent’s divorce) but I remember the LA riots for some reason.

Why? Sports. Specifically, my Portland Trail Blazers were playing the hated Los Angeles Lakers the night the riots broke out.

Arash Markazi at ESPN has a great breakdown of its impact on the Lakers and Clippers.

But for me at least, it helped underscore the way sports can help people understand the world, current events and even some of the workplace lessons I’ve talked about here.

I was barely aware of what happened to Rodney King or the ensuing trial. I didn’t even have any real concept of what race meant or why people would be upset about the outcome until much later. But in a series where the Blazers had won two games and the Lakers (without Magic Johnson, due to him retiring that year because of HIV) were facing a must-win situation, the commentators pre-game were talking about what was going on outside of the arena.

They cut to a blimp shot. You see the lights from the Forum and you see it pan toward emergency lights, smoke, fire and people out in the street. It seemed close. And while it was still somewhat light when the game started, the night grew darker and darker and the fires seemed to grow brighter along with the amount of emergency lights every time they cut back to the shot.

I don’t know how my dad explained it to me. To be completely honest, I had no perspective to base it on so I doubt I would have understood it. I lived in a place where there weren’t many people from different races. My idea of other races came from a teacher who looked different from me, a couple of classmates and from following the NBA. Even if I had that perspective, I was still 10. Understanding wouldn’t come until later.

Still, there was something surreal about watching the game. From the announcers continuing to make references to it, to fans leaving midway through an elimination game that went down to the wire in overtime. I still remember seeing those empty, ugly orange seats dotting the landscape of the arena while the minutes ticked off the close of a back and forth battle.

Why are people leaving? Don’t they realize that if the Lakers lose, they are done for the season?

I didn’t understand. I may have guessed that whatever was going on outside of the arena was important, but I didn’t know it the same way I knew this game. I knew if I was at a game like this and my team were on the brink of elimination in the playoffs, you’d have to drag me out of there kicking and screaming.

But then I realized something: it must be important. If people are leaving because of what is going on outside, it must be really scary. Or something. And while Laker fans aren’t exactly the model game day fans, they certainly had to understand the importance of the game and chose to leave instead.

Whatever was going on had to be important. I didn’t know why but it had to be.

The Lakers opted to move game 4 to Las Vegas due to their proximity to the ongoing activities and summarily lost badly. Meanwhile, the Blazers made a long run to the finals where they lost to Jordan’s Bulls in six.

As I learned more about the riots, about Rodney King and Reginald Denny, the LAPD and the trial in Simi Valley, and about race in south LA, I was interested in all of it. I wondered what went through the minds of people who left before overtime started. Something trumped sports for those people that night. And on the most important night of that season, people vanished into the night to confront something beyond sport.

I won’t pretend to know all of the issues that erupted that night in LA but that night, sports opened up the world beyond just basketball. If you’re willing to look beyond the superficiality of the game itself, there are a lot of interesting issues that it can bring up. Whether it be HIV, race, feminism, fairness, leadership or compensation, sports can be a powerful storytelling device. When it doesn’t devolve into meaningless clichés or played out story lines, it can transcend the sport itself.

This time, it’s not very far. About 5 miles from where we live, to a better neighborhood that’s closer to my wife’s work. We’re excited to move out of our small, outdated apartment into a newer townhouse with a garage, lawn and patio. Not to mention a gas stove because a year of trying to cook on standard electric burners has left me exasperated and feeling like I had the ultimate first world problem.

I’ve moved six times in eight years. I was pretty sure that was a huge number until my buddy George LaRocque told me he moved five times in eight years (and he has kids, we don’t). Okay, fine. You beat me, George.

Still, moving that much doesn’t leave much accumulation of stuff. We have about six totes worth of personal keepsakes that we don’t use on a daily basis (including things like holiday decorations, nice dinnerware, family heirlooms and the like). Everything else is pretty much what we use. And I get rather irritable if we have too much stuff and end up making a couple of trips to charities each year or passing down to families and friends.

A certain part of me likes moving. I’m restless. I like new spaces. The other part of me likes things to stay the same, in a predictable routine. I know I feel healthier and better balanced in a routine.

Whatever. Break that routine.

I worked with a guy who advocated taking a different route home from work every once in a while. Just that sort of subtle routine shift can help make you think outside of that normal routine. I think of the many times I sat on Highway 217 in traffic every single day instead of thinking about different ways I could come back home. Sure, it could have cost an extra few minutes. And it would have meant I couldn’t zonk out to more sports radio since I had pretty much memorized the pace and flow of rush hour traffic.

And now with so much of my day scheduled and sort of regimented, breaking that routine has become more essential. Taking a walk, or following up with someone I was putting off, or even washing dishes can help shift to something I wouldn’t normally do during that time.

You don’t have to move every year or two but you have to be willing to break your routines. Whatever excuses you have for not doing it aren’t good enough.

Of course, the idea of fair and balanced is rightly mocked when it clearly isn’t so but even truly balancing the issues leaves something to be desired.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked into a meeting with a person who presents me with all of the facts of the situation (something I already knew) as well as the possible solutions (something I could have deducted) and considers that a meaningful contribution. When pressed for an opinion, they state the fact that there are some great options available and that their are strengths and weaknesses to each one.

I’ve also worked with people who expected that role of balancer to be filled by the HR person. Some thought I was supposed to facilitate discussion, make sure every viewpoint was heard and help balance out the conversation.

That’s bullshit.

I will not make sure every dumb viewpoint is heard for the sake of being heard. I will not give equal weight to the wrong decision as I would the right one. HR isn’t Switzerland. It isn’t Geneva. This isn’t a court of law. And try as you might, HR will never ever truly be that anyway.

So what do you do? You try to be fair. You try to not bend over backwards for assholes who try to take advantage of your fairness. You try to follow a smart process. You try not be handcuffed by that process. You try to follow the advice of your boss. You try to keep your job. You try to be considerate of people’s privacy. You try to carry out thorough investigations. You try to detect lies. You try to remember you aren’t a mind reader.

Here’s what you don’t try to do: You don’t try to be right. You make the right decision. Every time. And when you make the wrong decision, you correct it. And when it isn’t your decision to make, you let the decision maker know exactly where you stand on it.

Maybe a fair process isn’t mutually exclusive of a right decision all of the time. But when the choice is between either handcuffing yourself to a process or making the right decision, you have to remember what is important.

You aren’t a neutral party. Be opinionated, be imbalanced and be right.

Several things should be noted.

First, not too many people can just walk off the job and napalm the bridge on their way out. Smith made good money and even a reasonable amount of savings over the course of those dozen years could support some modest living for awhile. There’s no career lesson here: people with money can do this.

Second, there’s more to this story than just this. Call me cynical but in all my years in HR, it is never one thing and it is never the one thing we talk about. Maybe Goldman Sachs screwed him? Maybe he hit a road block in his career? It doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t see this as one man’s fight against the machine.

Third, there are plenty of ways to get attention on your way out. Running your side of the story in the NYT is probably interesting fodder for Goldman employees, shareholders, and for people who love good gossip (which, okay, is everyone). People also think he did a number on their stock but a week later, it is up $2 over it’s March 13th close.

In consideration of all of this, how should we remember Smith? As a person who fought against a culture sliding the wrong way and the people at the top who perpetuated it? A mid-level person isolated from its highest branches, throwing caution and common sense to the wind to bash an easy target? Or as a conflicted character being pulled in multiple directions, the epitome of the human condition?

How about none of the above? The reality is that Greg Smith won’t be remembered six months from now. Why? Because he has media notoriety, not actual notoriety.

If this came five or six years ago in true whistleblower fashion, it would be a different story. Instead, it is simply airing some dirty laundry on the pages of a very popular newspaper. Dirty laundry that probably won’t result in anyone being fired, won’t likely change any minds about Goldman and will likely follow him around much longer than it will any of the people he chose to call out.

It’s the difference between, “Hey, you’re the guy who resigned in the Times,” versus, “Hey, you’re the guy that blew the lid off all the crappy stuff that Goldman Sachs was doing.” All of these career lessons, social media lessons, ethics lessons and every other angle courtesy of the resignation will disappear. When I read older stories like that in my archives where I reference a particular situation (usually sports) that seemed to be big at the time but truly aren’t, there’s always that feeling of confusion until I read back about it or remember.

I can appreciate how tough it must have been to do it. I can understand the frustration of his former company. Mostly though, I hope that the next pseudo-scandal will be one that brings significant change or exposure to an important issue while it can still be moved, not a post-mortem on a once great institution.

It’s a standard disclaimer on many of the Twitter accounts I see out there. You’re an HR or recruiting pro in the great wide world and you hear that you should get on the Twitters from some person at a conference or in a publication somewhere. Only, one of two things happen:

1. You create the account without checking and think that by putting that disclaimer there, you are somehow protecting yourself and company

OR

2. You check and your boss or PR person requires you put the disclaimer on there, somehow protecting the company

I’ll tell you what that disclaimer means in the real world: jack squat. Only, at least on Twitter, I never can tell people how ridiculous the whole disclaimer actually is in 140 characters without sounding like a jerk. And also because this statement is ridiculous for a wide variety of reasons, all of which need to be further explained. So let me lay out the various scenarios and why each one doesn’t warrant the use of any sort of disclaimer:

1. You couldn’t conceivably represent the company

Look, all the rage these days in the HR/social media world is about using employees as mini-external brand advocates. The number of employees this encompasses is a small population of the overall employee population, though. There are millions of blue-collar workers, both union and non-union, who have no intention of being your brand advocate, ever. There are also millions of white-collar workers in the same boat.

Some of these people are on Facebook, setting up a page for their all-female Journey tribute band “Just Some Small Town Girls” (and if that’s an actual tribute band name, I apologize). Others are on news sites, forums or blogs, commenting under monikers about Obama’s birth certificate, why a Mormon shouldn’t be elected president or debating whether or not Kobe is better than Jordan. In other words, personal reasons. Probably more personal than most HR people care about.

You probably don’t have a disclaimer and if you said anything bad enough to warrant a disclaimer, you’d probably be quietly canned anyway with little fanfare. Try to keep your nose clean and at least a little hard to trace and it probably doesn’t matter.

2. You could possibly represent the company

If you’re in a higher level client/candidate facing position, or you’re a part of company leadership, there’s a good chance that at least some people will recognize you and possibly snoop beyond your professional profile. If all you have out there is a professional profile and an innocuous, private Facebook account, you don’t have to do anything.

But if you want to tweet or blog or do other fun things like that on the internet, there are two steps beyond that: disclosure and self-moderation.

Disclosure is pretty simple: what do you have out there that someone else can find that might be less than innocuous? If there’s something out there beyond a Michael Bolton fan page, you probably want that information coming from you, not from an angry client or a snoopy shareholder.

This is where the manager or PR person is going to tell you to get that disclaimer up, stat. This is where you resist with the promise of self-moderation. If you have established accounts, show them how you’ve handled it responsibly. Tell them that most people don’t assume you are speaking for the company unless you say so. Tell them the people who will be most outraged about what you say won’t care about your stupid disclaimer anyway. Because nobody reads it and says, “Oh, never mind.”

But if you have something more personal or risqué, then it is time to assess where you, your personal life and the company stand. Somebody will eventually notice if you’re in one of those positions. Some of those people will care, others won’t.

But again, none of those people will care that you have a disclaimer stuck somewhere on your personal pages or social media accounts saying that your views are your own or that it isn’t associated with your employer. Some of them will associate anything you do with your employer, others won’t. If you say something really bad (or you run a site that is really taboo), some people will ask your employer why you’re working there. And if it gets publicized, then there is a whole other world of pain with that too.

It’s a question each company has to be comfortable answering on their own. And if there is a good chance you’ll represent the company in some less-than-minor capacity, you should push that to them so you have an opportunity to make a decision for yourself with time to do a cool-headed evaluation. Nobody said it’s fair but at least to some segment of the population, you’ll represent the company.

3. You most definitely represent the company

No amount of disclaiming or get-out-of-jail-free cards will get you out of anything. If you are a C-level exec, founder, partner, PR firm or PR lead, or any official social channel of the company, you are speaking for the company 24/7. You say stupid things and they become associated with your company.

What if the company says I must have that stupid disclaimer?

So you reasoned with the unreasonable but they are still saying that you should definitely have the disclaimer that nobody reads or cares about, no matter what level you are in the organization? Lay out a hypothetical: let’s say you have the disclaimer and you openly mock the fact that your company makes you put a disclaimer in your bio. What is their reaction? Do they:

1. Not care. You aren’t an official voice for the company so everyone will read that disclaimer and go about their day.
2. Freak out and make you take it down, just like they would have done if you bad-mouthed anything else they had done publicly.

If the answer is 2, then there is no sense in the disclaimer if their constant reaction will be to act like you are representing the company. They have to either get comfortable with you being out there, train you to be better or not allow it. And yes, that last option is a real one.

If the answer is 1 though, have fun. It might be the only time that disclaimer actually does any good.

About a month ago, that changed. I’ll spare the details for once and get right to the meat of it.

This morning, I woke up to my first full, undistracted week as editor of SourceCon. I’m still with ERE but shedding my roles as community director and contributing editor (I’m still highly involved in the Recruiting Innovation Summit).

Of course, one could make the argument that I’m not shedding either role. The people in the sourcing community are a passionate bunch. They care about their craft and they know each other. It’s a great situation to walk into. There are also challenges involved, though. There are a lot of people to talk to and meet. There’s figuring out what the community needs and then figuring out the best way to deliver it to them. I’m ready to face those challenges, as soon as I get a bit of coffee in me.

Unfortunately, this new challenge meant I left two jobs unfinished. There’s probably a whole host of things I learned from being community director and how drastically my views shifted over the last couple of years. I will be able to take many of these lessons over to SourceCon but much of the behind the scenes work won’t be seen. And I started at the very beginning with John Hollon on TLNT, going from zero pageviews to month-after-month growth and we just pulled off our first event last week.

But this is a huge step forward in life after HR. And for that, I’m excited.

The 2011 edition is now available for download!

The five members of The 8 Man Rotation have released our second e-book. You can download it now (PDF). For free. Do it, read it, share it and love it.

Like a young Lenny Wilkins, Matt Stollak plays the role of player/coach, making some serious contributions in the book as well as putting together the final package that makes us look so good. Without Stollak, the e-book doesn’t happen. It’s also no coincidence that this comes out after football season is over but before March madness and baseball start heating up. This is an e-book about sports that is dictated by sports schedule.

This year, we have introductions from William Tincup and Trish McFarlane. Like Will Ferrell introducing the lowly New Orleans Hornets, these two can make anyone look good. Or at the very least, make light of the fact that five grown men write about sports and enjoy trying to explain their a-little-too-inside-to-be-funny name.

Outside of Stollak, the 8 man rotation is Steve Boese, Kris Dunn, Tim Sackett and myself. Take any major (or minor) sports related development over the last few years and there is an e-mail chain in my Gmail account making snarky comments about it. We crack ourselves up.

I hope you enjoy this round of The 8 Man Rotation as much as we enjoyed writing it.

So if you are a sports journalist of any kind, you have to cover it. A bunch. Even if everyone else is writing about it, you still have to write it. You get to find different angles, explore different points of view. That’s part of the gig.

But what if you’re beat writer for a local paper? Or a tech blogger? Or a writer for a HR trade publication? How big does something have to be before you buy into the hype and incorporate something about a current event into a column?

That’s the question I struggled with as I wrote my pieces this week for TLNT. I’m a natural basketball fan so his first big night was on my radar immediately. And as his performance (and legend) grew, the temptation to write about it–or even just mention it–was strong.

So why didn’t I?

I had what I thought were better stories, more poignant to what I thought HR people needed to hear this week. I read some really great pieces about Lin, I thought about some different angles and didn’t think it was a good fit.

Maybe something will come up later that might make a good story that relates to Lin. But this time, the hype didn’t fit.

I worked at one place where nobody left company premises for lunch. This wasn’t in the handbook and there were a slew of restaurants within a mile of work (even a couple within easy walking distance). Other people have told me about places they’ve worked where nobody leaves before the boss leaves. You get the idea.

We often leave this out of the discussion when we talk about culture but it is a huge part of that and of other parts of our lives too (like taboo subjects to bring up during family get-togethers or air travel with smelly food). Or in this case, sports fandom.

If you’re a sports fan, you’ve inevitably met a certain type of fan. They’ve lived their entire lives in a place (often in a big enough city with 3-4 of the major sports) but they root for the Lakers, Yankees, Patriots, Red Wings and, worst of all, Duke basketball. No real connection to any of the teams. But if you ask the more traditional fan about this type of fan, it won’t elicit the most positive response.

Now to be clear, it isn’t against the law to just pick the best teams to root for out of thin air. But it is against some very sacred, unwritten rules of sports fandom.

People unaccustomed to sports fandom might be surprised that you can’t just pick the best team every year and just root for them to win, greatly increasing the chances that the team you root for will be successful. Enter the guy at your Superbowl party this weekend who was confused as to why you care about the outcome of the game if you aren’t a fan of either team. “It’s so illogical.”

Illogical? Perhaps. But they are as much a part of the game as hot wings, little smokies and at least one guy drinking a little too much. And go against those unwritten rules and you’ll face the wrath of your peers (like the one lady my mom’s age who decided to switch which team she was rooting for because the team she picked was doing poorly a couple of years ago).

Same thing is true of these unwritten rules at work. Walking out of work that first day to grab a bite to eat seems more logical than sitting and eating the light snack I brought and being hungry for the rest of the day. Looking back, it feels even more stupid now. But unwritten workplace rules that helps you navigate everything from getting decisions made, running through the bureaucracy of work or not getting on the bad side of the boss can make a big difference in your career. And when you’re the new jack in town, you cling to the first couple of co-workers who help translate those unwritten rules to you.

It seems silly that it’s even necessary. As silly as rooting for the same team for 30 years that has gotten close but hasn’t won the big game in your lifetime. No matter how silly it is though, these unwritten rules tie people and your workplace together and if you don’t understand them (and its impact on your culture), you’ll be in the dark. If you care about your business and the people there, you owe it to them to understand the hidden language that moves your organization.

Often, when people talk about disclosure, they are usually talking about money. And if you’re a blogger or writer and money is changing hands, I think you should always be on the side of clear, full disclosure. And just for the record, I’ve been called out about disclosure. More on that in a second, though. First, let’s talk about money.

$ $ $

Money is powerful. I think about the work I do with ERE and how I take our work there (and especially the parts I’m intimately involved with) very personally. But I should, because ERE doing well means I do well and there’s a trigger there in my brain. That’s why I disclose when I talk about our events or publications, usually right in line with the text so you can’t miss it.

I also think about the relationships I developed with the folks at Crimcheck, Halogen Software, Rypple or Vault.com (who paid me for the first time, not as an advertiser, but as a writer). Or when I worked on MeritBuilder or for some of the other companies I’ve been lucky enough to be at, it makes sense that I became vested.

That’s not easy an easy reality when you’re solo and trying to put your best pieces out there without conflict of interest. We have a stellar sales team at ERE and they take care of all of the deal making. It is so much easier when there is that separation. When it is just you, it is a struggle. And I’ve seen a lot of bloggers and writers go down that path and take some wrong turns.

Even though it is difficult to know when or where to disclose, I think there is a clear line: when money (or something of value) changes hands, that’s when you look for opportunities to disclose. And the part about looking for opportunities to disclose is the distinction there, and I think it is the right and appropriate choice. Do it often, with clarity and bake it in with a one-time visitor in mind (if someone comes in off a Google search knowing nothing about you or your publication and reads a piece with a conflict of interest, do they know money changed hands?).

Beyond Money: Honesty

So if you disclose money relationships, shouldn’t that be enough? Well consider what I did above: I linked to an article critical of my ability to disclose. Now obviously, I wasn’t paid by Workforce to include that link. While I didn’t think it was very fair at the time, I do think it is fair to point out that some may have questioned my approach in the past. You should have the opportunity to see that.

Similarly, I may disclose the fact that ERE is my employer, but if I blow smoke up your ass about the company, spin the truth or you get the feeling like I’m not giving you the full story, I become less credible. At least as far as writing is concerned, being honest about both successes and struggles of what we’re doing means people take me mostly at my word, even with the knowledge that I’m an employee.

That’s why disclosing about money is simply not enough. The best way to gain and maintain trust is by abandoning (as best as possible) the built-in bias that the relationship creates and speak the plain truth. And you have to do both, consistently, over a period of time to gain trust.

The Changing Rules Of New Media? Not So Fast

Two and a half years ago, I said at a conference that bloggers were not, in and of themselves, journalists. That’s still true today. I struggle with the term myself but I don’t lose sleep over it, either.

The principles of the old ways, of that idealistic view of journalism as the respected fourth estate, is still within reach, even in this digital, anon-blogging, rumor-monging, money-changing-hands-under-the-table environment that the new media works in these days.

What’s easy to forget is that there was a time when the most prominent people evaluating technology didn’t just pick a side and arrogantly and mindlessly defend it until the bitter end. Or that trading money for half-hearted disclosures and favorable coverage was harder to come by. Or that concepts like black hat SEO, astroturfing and throwing anonymous commenters at a situation could influence the discovery and perception of information.

We’re not talking about a zine or underground newspaper with significant costs and logistical hurdles to get it beyond a few dozen miles of its origin. We’re talking about the same web that you used to get to this very low cost blog today can get you to other sources with millions of dollars staked into their sites.

The biggest misconception is that old media rules are outdated and unneeded. In reality, the key thing that happened is that not playing by those rules was finally a choice for nearly anyone who wished to publish something with almost unlimited (and low-cost) distribution.

That’s a great thing for information flow. But if you want to be trusted wholesale as a writer, blogger, or whatever you want to call yourself, you’ll quickly learn that these journalist quacks may have been on to something with their silly rules. They knew it was about trust. Even if you had to get ink on your fingers to read about it.