Kent Alan Robinson

Why I Wrote “UnSend”

While in New Jersey on business in February 2013, I read a USA Today headline that Standard & Poor’s (S&P) was being sued for $5 billion by the Department of Justice (DOJ). All the evidence used in the DOJ’s lawsuit was provided by the emails, texts, and postings written by S&P’s own employees. In looking further, I found stories of lives being upended and company operations disrupted by the misuse of electronic communication at Citigroup, Pixar, Apple, the White House, Harvard, Google, and the U.S. Senate. These stories raised four questions:

1. Why do so many well-educated, experienced people write such incriminating emails and texts?

2. Why are these electronic destructions so common?

3. How can a person guard their job and career from email, text, and social media disasters?

4. What role does management play in electronic communication debacles?

Even with so many people derailing their careers through the misuse of email, text, or social media, we are not learning from the mistakes of others. The news stories tell what a person wrote, but not why it was written nor how to prevent it from happening again. In “UnSend,” I reveal probable motivations and identify patterns leading to electronic communication disasters; information necessary to assist everyone who uses these media.