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Contrary to popular belief, judgment can be taught. As I wrote in last week’s post, “Matters of Judgment Can Be Taught: Starting with Leader (Mis)Behavior”, most leaders know the rules, but some choose to disregard them, in a misguided belief that the same standards don’t apply to them, that they won’t be caught, or that their great value to the organization overrides any misdeeds.

Where ambiguous workplace issues are concerned, it has become even trickier to determine when certain behavior crosses a line or whether it is merely a nettlesome business issue that requires careful factual analysis and an examination of the issues within the broader context of multiple circumstances.

I saw the red light go off – it blinked rapidly, insistently. The vibration began a few seconds later. I looked down: “You need to call the office immediately. We have to talk.” I called in. You have to make a decision – now. I didn’t have time to think. But I made the decision and made a big mistake. It cost me $10,000.

After that, I got rid of my pager as soon as I could.  That was 15 years ago. 

Now, I’m more closely bound to my BlackBerry than I ever was to that primitive pager.  The red blinking light goes off all the time –not just when a call comes in, but also when anyone has a random thought and pushes the email send button. My BlackBerry lights up 100 times a work day, 12 times an hour, every five minutes or so. The red light means danger – there’s a crisis that threatens you and needs your attention now, not later, but right now. Stop what you are doing, pay attention, act, respond!

Some time ago, I had lunch with a colleague, a compliance officer for a widely known and respected organization who told me he’d spent several months reading almost one million emails as part of discovery in an employment case. Now he had only about 72,000 more emails to go.

During the discovery process, he reviewed executive correspondence, middle-manager emails, and exchanges between entry-level personnel. He discovered what certain people really thought about their team members, their jobs, roles and the company strategy. He read jokes, some proper and some not, and saw lots of exchanges that had no work purpose whatsoever.

A week ago, I listened to the best guitar music on Earth with my good friend and colleague, Ray Amelio, and 80,000 other fans at Eric Clapton’s “Crossroads Guitar Festival” in Chicago.

For 12 hours, the hot Chicago sun blistered us, despite lots of suntan lotion, as we listened to performances by ZZ Top, Robert Randolph, Vince Gill, Sheryl Crow, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, BB  King, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and Jonny Lang, to name just a few of my favorites.

From time to time, conversations with prospective clients go like the one I had last week.

“They‘re simply not getting it. Managers, executives and employees are saturated with information and they’re zoning out. We give our leaders and employees great training videos to watch. We have them go to classes that address our issues. We deliver engaging e-learning and we send them reminders. But something’s not working. Not enough are getting key points and applying what they’re supposed to learn. How do we fix this?”

Two unrelated trends will soon collide at work, triggering a perfect storm of workplace discontent and employee disengagement

Tiger Woods is in sex rehab, Jay Leno is returning to Tonight, Curt Schilling loves the Yankees, and Johnson and Johnson is charged with kickbacks and failure to address product safety issues.

Tiger Woods has been the premier sports brand for the past several years. We’ve wanted our businesses to perform like he plays golf, our kids to behave the way he acts, and our commitment and intensity to approach his impossible standards.

The New York Post made its own headlines last week, after being sued by a former employee for a range of blatant, outrageous acts of sex- and race-based discrimination and retaliation.

“We need your help – a doctor abused our patients. He’s gone, but this can’t happen again, ever.”

I’ve wondered when it would happen – for years there have been stories of athletes, proxies for other celebrities, who say and do what they want while their behavior is ignored, minimized, or attributed to “locker room” humor or conduct.

David Letterman is lucky. Some may question how that can be when his private affairs, literally, are now so public. And some may say, if he can do it and keep his job, so can I.

I just returned from a fantastic bike trip in France with my daughter, Rebecca, and my first cousin Craig, her godfather. We biked along the coast of Normandy and saw where our courageous soldiers stormed the treacherous beachheads to begin the D-Day invasion.

I was a discouraged defense trial attorney. During case after case, I was brought in to resolve a situation at a point where the facts had been established for as much as three years or more.