Track Time to Make It Work for You
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This article was prepared for the
September 12, 2001 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights
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Caveats for Gathering New Economy Information
Harold (Chip) Jerry, now a principal in the 731
Alexander
Road law firm of Jerry & Jerry, spent nearly a decade and a half in
banking beginning in the early 1980s. From that vantage point, he
saw that collection of customer data was a common — and lucrative
— practice. “That was my introduction to data processing,”
he says.
The banks for which Jerry worked as legal counsel began to add more
and more products throughout the 1980s. Institutions once prohibited
from doing much more than setting up passbook accounts and making
loans began offering business checking accounts, insurance, brokerage
services, estate management, electronic banking, Internet banking,
and more.
“As the barriers broke down, banks saw they could market other
products to existing customers,” Jerry says. Banks invested
heavily
in data mining software, and enthusiastically found out all they could
about customer’s banking habits. Customers, meanwhile, were rarely
aware that data they had submitted, and transactions they had
completed,
were being used as marketing tools.
Banks weren’t the only businesses that gathered customer data.
Companies
of all kinds have used customer data to cross-sell their products
for decades, and any number of companies have boosted their bottom
lines substantially by selling customer information. “Companies
in the old economy — the pre-Internet economy — routinely
did what the Internet companies now are doing,” says Jerry.
“They
always gathered information, and they often sold it.” So why the
uproar over these practices on the Internet?
“What the Internet is doing,” says Jerry, “is making
people
aware of how much information is available.” Traffic violations,
criminal records, home addresses, phone numbers, voter registration,
it’s all oh-so-easy to call up on the Internet. “People thought
they were anonymous, invisible,” says Jerry. “But not
anymore.”
The information individuals are appalled to find available to
absolutely
anyone has long been accessible to those who knew how to look.
“You
used to have to hire an investigator,” says Jerry. But now anyone
with Internet access can call up his daughter’s boyfriend’s arrest
record or find out the selling price for the house next door.
Jerry explains how to “Protect Yourself in CyberSpace: Legal
Essentials
for Business,” when he addresses the Princeton Chamber of Commerce
on Wednesday, September 19, at 7:30 a.m. at the Nassau Club. Also
speaking is Cathryn Mitchell, principal with the State Road
law firm of Miller & Mitchell. Cost: $21. Call 609-520-1776.
Jerry studied history, specifically the intellectual history of 19th
and 20th century Europe, at Princeton (Class of 1969). A member of
the university’s press club, he briefly considered a career in
journalism,
but found the need “to turn everything into news” distasteful.
A conscientious objector, he took two years out from law school to
work in a hospital during the Vietnam War. He graduated from Columbia
Law School in 1974.
Upon graduation, he practiced litigation at Shearson & Sterling, then
the largest law firm in Manhattan, where one his cases involved
intellectual
property rights to amoxicillin. Beecham claimed that Bristol-Myers
Squibb had infringed on its rights to what is one of the most popular
antibiotics. The case settled with Bristol-Myers obtaining a license
to distribute the drug.
Jerry left Shearson after nine years, and spent the next 13 years
in banking before starting his own firm. “It’s something I had
always wanted to do,” he says. Much of the impetus for the move,
however, came from his wife, Marilyn, who also is a lawyer. The couple
have three children, Christopher, a senior at the University of
Chicago;
Elizabeth, a sophomore at George Washington; and Steven, a junior
at Princeton High School. Marilyn Jerry had been at home raising the
children, but eventually felt it was time to return to her career.
In 1996 the couple started their firm, which specializes in general
corporate law and commercial litigation, including debt collection.
Jerry says businesses have to be careful in using the Internet,
especially
as a tool to collect customer data. “My years in banking
sensitized
me to privacy, and to people’s expectation of privacy,” he says.
In addition, companies have to be careful about how their employees
use on-site Internet connections. Here are some suggestions.
Post a privacy statement. This is not optional, Jerrysays. Every business must put language on its Internet site assuringcustomers that their private information will be safeguarded, andwill not be sold to third parties without their knowledge.Watch the wording of the privacy statement. When Toysmart,an Internet toy store, declared bankruptcy, consumer groups objectedto the sale of its customer list. Eventually, Disney, which had aninterest in the company, paid $50,000 to buy — and destroy —the list. Had the case gone to trial, however, Jerry says the courtmost likely would have allowed the list to be sold, probably toanothertoy company, which could be expected to use it responsibly. In thewake of this case, companies are being more cautious about tellingconsumers their information will not be sold.”Amazon has changed the wording on its site,” Jerry says.It now reads that in the “unlikely” event that it is acquiredor sold, its customer list would be sold along with the company. Thisis a smart move, one that every company would do well to emulate,Jerry says. Consumers may not know it, but their names, E-mailaddresses,home addressees, and other personal information is worth a bundle.In many cases, lists of this information is among the most valuableassets a company has. Don’t give away rights to them, Jerry says.Tailor privacy language in a way that it will reassure customers,but at the same time, allow the company to retain rights to listsof their names and data.Post an Internet policy. “It is vital that a companyhave a policy in place on Internet use,” says Jerry. Absent sucha policy, it can be difficult for an employer to punish, or rein inthe activities, of a worker who is using the Internet to viewpornography,set up a business of his own, or send out offensive E-mails.When he headed up bank legal departments, Jerry routinely saw listsof employee phone use detailing every number each employee dialedand how long each call lasted. Telephone monitoring was common, andso is Internet monitoring now. Employers still have a broad scopeof power in looking into what their employees are looking at online.While Jerry says eavesdropping on employees’ private phoneconversationsis now forbidden by law, there is no such prohibition against readingtheir E-mails. “If E-mail is written at work, it is assumed tobe for purposes of the company’s business,” he says.Consider E-mail a conversation that lasts forever.Claiminga power few speechmakers achieve, E-mail missives “live virtuallyforever,” says Jerry. He advises employers to educate theirworkersto this fact, stressing that pressing the “delete” buttondoes not erase their messages, which will still be retrievable yearsdown the road.Jerry points to Bill Gates, in some ways the father of E-mail, orat least father of the software that allowed it to become ubiquitous,as one of its victims. Some of the most damaging testimony againstMicrosoft in its anti-trust battle came in the form of E-mails Gateshad written years before that were trotted out to refute histestimony.Employees should also be drilled on editing E-mail carefully. “Weonly retain something like 10 percent of what we hear,” saysJerry.”The written word has a much greater impact.”Free doesn’t mean help yourself. Because there is no costfor reading the wealth of information, news, and stories on theInternet,many businessmen feel free to take it and use it any way they wantto. This, says Jerry, can be an invitation to be sued.One of his early clients was putting together an information websiteand asked Jerry’s advice on whether he could include material freelyavailable on other websites. “No,” was the answer, at leastnot without permission.”Gigantic” is the way Jerry describes businesses’Internet-enabledability to gather customer data. Their obligation to do so responsiblynow may be critical. He says there are 30 or 40 bills in Congressaiming to limit Internet data gathering. The new administration isless eager to see these measures get through than was the lastadministration,so businesses may have time to avoid being regulated. Assuringconsumersthat their data won’t be sold to everyone with the cash to buy it,may be key.Top Of PageTrack Time to Make It Work for YouRobin Fogel, former assistant treasurer for thestate of New Jersey, knows what she wants to get out of life. “Iwant to be present in my children’s lives,” the mother of teenagechildren says. She also wants to spend time in her garden and to domore reading. As for work, Fogel, now principal in Robin Fogel andAssociates, a Titusville-based coaching firm, wants flexibility and”control over my career.”Fogel is on the way to achieving her goals. In a recent familymeeting,she announced that she would be spending half an hour reading —uninterrupted, please — two evenings a week. A master gardener,she makes time for her plants, but marshals that scarce commodityby turning a blind eye to the nearby lawn. “My real joy isgardening,”she says. “I could care less about the grass.” In startingher own company, Fogel has the flexibility to spend time with herchildren when they need her, and a vehicle to grow her career in waysshe finds satisfying.Fogel shares her strategies for creating the life she wants when shespeaks on “Making Time in Your Life for What Matters to You”at a meeting of the Central Jersey Women’s Network on Wednesday,September19, at 6p.m. at the Princeton Raddison. Cost: $35. Call 908-281-9234.A graduate of Stockton College, where she majored in finance andaccounting,Fogel holds a graduate degree in human development from FairleighDickinson. She says the two disciplines, with little in common atfirst blush, have melded exceptionally well in her career. She hasworked as an accountant and as a banker in private industry. She beganher career with the state in accounting, and when an opportunity toswitch to human resources came up, she took it, and found it a goodfit. Among the posts she has held are personnel director for NewJersey’sOffice of Administrative Law and for the state’s Treasury Department.Like many busy career women, Fogel has had to work to get time onher side, but she is quick to point out that finding enough time tofit in the basics of a satisfying life is not a women’s problem. Mentoo are crunched between work and family, and are often hard-pressedto find time for exercise and leisure activities. It’s not easy, shesays, but given thought, the week can be carved up into enough slicesto yield a living, as well as a life. Here are some of hersuggestions:Track those minutes. “Be clear about how you actuallyare spending time,” says Fogel. Her clients often are surprisedabout how the precious hours really are spent.Keep a diary. The best way to find out how many hoursa week pass in semi-somnolent TV watching, marathon phoneconversationswith gabby acquaintances, waiting on line, picking up after the kids,or reading junk E-mail is to write it all down. Only when youunderstandwhere your time going will you be able to grab hold of it and useit in ways that satisfy, rather than frustrate.Beware the arm-twisters. Fogel says it’s important toseparate out the things you do because you want to from the thingsyou get sucked into doing by an inability to say no. Time demandsare intense. Every volunteer group badly needs committee chairs, mostyouth sports teams could use another coach, many bosses have projectsthey are eager to unload. Before saying yes, Fogel suggests, do someresearch. How long will the project take? Just how many hours a weekare required to keep the soccer team’s snack stand manned?Set limits. If you see your charity’s fundraiser as animportant event that will raise needed money for an important cause,go ahead and volunteer to help, but, says Fogel, decide just how manyhours you can spend. “Say you are able to give two hoursmonth,”Fogel gives as an example. And then stick to it.Unload some burdens. Fogel speaks of a woman with toolittle time who shed her nightly responsibility for preparing dinnerby enlisting her husband and each of her teenage children to takeone night of the week. She now has to come up with an evening mealnot more than two nights a week, and has gained no fewer than fivehours to spend as she pleases. A key here, which can apply to theoffice as well as to the home, is to avoid hovering, and to acceptthat the work delegated may not be done exactly as you would do it,and that that is okay.Figure out why you have to stay late. One of Fogel’sclientscould not get away from work into well into the evening. A littlegentle probing revealed that she was so tied up in reading andansweringE-mail that she didn’t get to her assigned projects until late inthe day. Fogel suggested that she set aside two or three time slotseach day for reading E-mail, and let it sit the rest of the day.There are people, says Fogel, who waste a lot of time between 9 and5 and end up having to work late when a little time management earlierin the day could have gotten them out the door on time. For modelsof productivity, she says, look back to the early days of flex-time.”Some of the most productive workers were young mothers who wantedto be home,” she says. Given the incentive of a young childwaitingfor them, these women, she recalls, organized themselves and got theirwork done in record time.Fogel admits, however, that in some companies it doesn’t matter howmuch work has been accomplished before sunset. There are corporatecultures that value face time, and want to see a full parking lotno matter what the status of projects and deadlines. “Certaincultures just want you around,” says Fogel. She suggests thatanyone with different priorities might do well to look elsewhere forwork.It’s all about control, says Fogel. Figuring out where yourtime is going, and then making decisions about how to re-allocateto accommodate your priorities is the path to a fulfilling life. Butthis isn’t always easy. On the very first night after Fogel’sannouncementthat she would be unavailable at the end of the evening because shewas reading, one of her children came to her with an urgent request.There was a school project that could not wait. “I jumped up,”Fogel says. But then she reconsidered, and told her child that itcould wait until the next day.Top Of PageTech ShowcaseVenture Association New Jersey and the New JerseyBusinessIncubator Network hold their fourth annual Business Incubator andTechnology Showcase on Monday, September 24, at 9 a.m. at the WestinHotel in Morristown. There is no charge to visit company exhibits,but the cost for a morning workshop, limited to 50 participants, is$50, and the cost for a luncheon program is $60. Call 973-267-4200.The showcase offers young tech companies an opportunity to networkwith venture capital firms, angel investors, other early stagestart-upcompanies, professional service providers, and corporate productplanners.Fifty New Jersey incubator startups are expected to exhibit at theshowcase. The exhibition area will be open from 10 a.m. through 4p.m. The morning workshop, beginning at 9 a.m., features a talk byRandy Harmon, director of technology commercialization for theNew Jersey Small Business Development Center at Rutgers.The luncheon program is an angel investor and venture capitalist paneldiscussion. Panelists include John Ason, an angel investorspecializingin early stage pre-revenue companies; Warren Bagatelle, managingdirector of Loeb Partners; Joseph Falkenstein, general partnerof the NJ Technology Council Venture Fund; Bryan Finkel,managingdirector of Advanta Growth Capital; and Ronald Hahn, presidentof ESE Partners.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
