How a health IT CEO shouldn’t behave on social media

It happened this week, and it's raising questions about what's appropriate in the professional use of social media.

Social media bubble word cloud

Spats on social media happen all the time. Just read the comments on any random YouTube video or Google “celebrity Twitter fights.”

But have you ever heard of a longtime, accomplished health IT entrepreneur and executive launching a personal attack on business-focused networking site LinkedIn?

Matthew Dooley, a Cincinnati-based social media strategist, had not. “It’s rare to see this kind of behavior on display, given the professional nature of LinkedIn. Of all of the social blunders I’ve witnessed over the years, I can’t recall one that took place on LinkedIn,” Dooley wrote in an email.

Would it be stranger to know that it was over the sharing of a popular comic strip that’s available in hundreds of daily newspapers? Well, that happened this week, and it’s raising questions about what’s appropriate in the professional use of social media.

On Sunday, Mandi Bishop, lead for Dell’s health plan analytics consulting practice, shared someone else’s post of a Dilbert cartoon that makes fun of older people working at a tech business. It wasn’t even her original post, as this screen grab from Bishop shows.

Then the, um, fun began. Note the response to the first comment, from Michael Cadger, founder and CEO of Monocle Health Data, an Atlanta-based company that ranks and scores healthcare providers on price and quality. “Mandi doesn’t have any advice worth learning. She’s a misogynistic hater.”

“Misogynistic” means biased against or hateful toward women, but you knew that. There isn’t any mention of women or gender in this particular strip, so the comment is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Cadger didn’t let up. Per this collection of screen shots and blog post by Bishop, Cadger said the sharing of the cartoon was “Tasteless blather,” “Unworthy of anyone at Dell” and “worthy of firing.” He later called Bishop an “offensive idiot” and in possession of a “crude mission to discriminate against anyone who isn’t female and/or a techie.” (For the record, hatred against men is called misandry.)

He also vowed to get her fired.

So what was Cadger thinking?

“The cartoon was mocking and endorsed bullying. She posted it as entertainment first to start the discussion. I called her out on the tastelessness of the cartoon. Now Mandi is claiming bullying. She has it backwards,” Cadger said via email.

“Mandi used a cartoon to get a laugh at someone else’s (and entire class of people – older managers) expense.  I find this offensive, not funny. And it’s totally inconsistent with Dell’s stated philosophy on its website,” he added.

“Granted my words were strong but she was the one that started the bullying with a tasteless, discriminatory cartoon. There’s no place for reinforcing negative stereotypes especially in business social media. Her presenting such a cartoon does just that and it’s as morally wrong as a racist or sexist cartoon.”

For her part, Bishop didn’t want to address Cadger directly, but she did tell MedCity News, “If sharing Dilbert was against Dell’s philosophy, several thousand of my co-workers would be fired.”

Dooley was confounded by the situation. “If he was offended by the post, the normal and professional response would be to reach out to Mandi and explain why it upset him. She would have maybe learned from it and possibly even taken it down. But instead, he jumped to major conclusions and made assumptions about someone he doesn’t even know,” he said.

Dooley noted that social media users often have second thoughts and even regrets about what they share and what they say online. Bishop having second thoughts about Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams is a classic example.

“In general, you have to respect other people’s reactions and take ownership of your social media updates, even if you’re just sharing someone else’s post. It’s still an endorsement and might have consequences (some of which you may never be made aware of),” Dooley wrote.

He said that Bishop “has every right to expose this situation.”

That said, Dooley doesn’t necessarily think Cadger is a bad egg, nor is this exchange likely to end anyone’s career.

Dooley continued:

Despite the intensity of Mike’s remarks, I believe we all make mistakes — and they’re easy to make through social media, where they’re public and can be shared so easily. It’s way too easy to type something up and press send, if only for the momentary satisfaction. But it’s much harder to pause, breathe, maybe even walk away for a minute, reflect and assume “good person, bad circumstances” as we deal with people online — especially the ones we don’t know (because we have no way to know if this is their character or just a lapse in judgment).

The ball is completely in Mike’s court to correct this, with a heartfelt apology to Mandi. He should send her a private message, but he should also post it (or something similar) publicly because the audience is now more than just the two of them — and it’s probably growing. He should post it wherever this situation shows up, while there’s still time for people to empathize with him. It’ll help if he shows empathy first.

Photo: Bigstock

 

Shares0
Shares0