Authenticity

Now I think I know what people mean about being authentic.

A couple of days ago I received an email from a guy who posted his comment in the Project Control group of LinkedIn. On the surface of it, he was directing us to a “mystery” blogger who was writing about his ‘day in the life of a project controller” kind of thing.

Note I said: “on the surface of it”.

I thought, “Cool! Someone else is blogging about project control.” I was curious about a CMO highlighting the blogger to the project control group but I didn’t think much more than that.

I clicked the link to the blog where the writer started out talking about trying to finish up a spreadsheet for his boss under a looming deadline. Then the blog segued into a comic about this same guy talking to another guy who was questioning him why he was using Excel spreadsheet to do the work. The comic ended with a thinly veiled advertisement to use Axes Prism rather than Excel spreadsheet.

Ah, the aforementioned CMO happens to work for Axes.

Not kosher, not kosher.

It might have been different if he had couched it as “an interesting comic ” discussing the pitfalls of using Excel to track your projects. But a “mystery blogger”? That’s right on the edge of false lead ons if not having crossed over the line.

I tried to find that “discussion” in LinkedIn but I couldn’t find it. Maybe the guy was kicked off for such behavior.