True Confidentiality is Rare These Days

Darryl Dash:

I was about to hit "send" on an email last week when I paused. The email was fine for the recipients, but what if it was forwarded by one of the recipients? It contained confidential information, so I saved it as a draft and decided to think about it for a while.

Around that time I began listening to the audiobook version of Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul. The author, Howard Schultz, writes about a confidential email that was forwarded to a Starbucks gossip site. He writes:

Staring at the screen, I was speechless. Not because my criticisms were now public. What upset me, what felt like a blow to my gut, was the leak. I could not imagine who would do such a thing.

It was nothing less than a betrayal.

One of the lessons: Never assume that something you write in an email will stay confidential. Assume it will get out there, and write accordingly. As the book says, "Nothing is confidential."

Read the rest.