Articles by Allan Jenkins

On February 21, I wrote on Desirable Roasted Coffee, my blog, about the advice Dee Rambeau has given you. In posts here and on his own blog he told you:

Public Corporations: blogs are useless and irresponsible. No Corporate Communications person in their right mind would allow a C-level executive to blog. The Jonathan Schwartz’s of the World aside, it is not a sensible PR move to allow a top executive to share his thoughts in Cyberspace.

I called this “simply the most ridiculous advice I’ve ever heard.” Since then, a couple of you have asked me to explain my views in more detail.

Dee’s advice is ridiculous because it is based on several flawed assumptions:

1. that communicators control corporate communication
2. that C-level executives shouldn’t communicate on their own hook
3. that the communication needs of public and private companies are remarkably different

Let’s take each myth in turn, and then add them up.

Communicators control corporate communication. Wrong. Dee seems to think corporate communicators are in a position to “allow” or “not allow” senior executives to blog. They never are. Never have been. Never will be.

The good corporate communicator is, at best, a trusted adviser to the CEO. And that is a wonderful place to be, but the communicator who thinks she is going to “allow” or “not allow” the CEO to blog or speak at a convention, etc, is demented.

C-level executives shouldn’t be allowed to communicate on their own hook. Wrong. Many C-level managers are great spokespersons for their companies: they know the products and markets, and are enthusiastic. We all know that; that’s why we try to get managers interviewed in Fortune or onto a speaker’s list at a convention.

So why Dee thinks these same managers shoudn’t blog is beyond me. As Mark Cuban points out, why spend an hour a week in interviews that the journalist screws up, when you could just spend an hour a week blogging?

Maybe Dee thinks Fortune interviews and convention speeches are done by the PR department.

Communication needs of public and private companies are vastly different. Wrong.

Dee  says  executives of public (traded on the stockmarket) companies especially should stay away from blogs. That’s surely because he knows a blogger could affect investor sentiment.

Well, yes, a blogging executive could. Just as he or she could affect investor sentiment in a dozen other ways. Why blogging is singled out is beyond me.

But Dee misses a far bigger trend: investors increasingly matter less. Money is cheap; for most companies, it is instantly available. Especially for newer, growing public companies, stock market price is largely irrelevant.

The scarcest input today is, in fact, people: employees and customers. Employess gravitate to companies they feel an affinity for. Customers gravitate to companies they feel an affinity for. Who’s behind those companies? Invariably, it’s one or several senior managers who are good public communicators. Who can make employees, potential employees, prospects and customers feel welcome at the company.

Summing up:

When Dee says you wouldn’t be in your right mind to “let” your boss blog, he forgets you have no choice in the matter.
If he means “don’t advise your boss to blog,” he’s broad brushing. Many C-level managers are excellent communicators.

Finally, if he means “public company” managers shouldn’t blog… he’s living in the 80s. You can safely ignore him — the companies that count today are those who reach out to employees and customers, not the stock market.

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Almost 20 years ago, I joined McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy, where I was a communication specialist. My job was guiding our teams on how to communicate hard recommendations to clients (”lay off 4000 workers”) and helping clients figure out how to do their own communication.

About a month into my job, I was invited by one of the firm’s senior partners to attend a team meeting. Agenda: how do we best communicate to the client that the client should buy the “Acme Company”, but not at a price over “X”.

I worked days and nights on this meeting. Covered the angles. Covered my ass. And, when asked my view, I was ready with long answer about how to do it, replete with “On the one hand, we could say this… on the other hand, we could say this…”

Finishing, I beamed. They glared. Suddenly, I was radioactive.

A kind soul (she now runs a global engineering firm) took me aside and gave me this advice: “You were all in favor of option A, but you presented option B because you thought you needed ‘balance’… and now no one believes you. And you offered no facts to back up either stance. In our culture, facts count. Both sides can’t stand you. The only reason you won’t get fired is because you are so new.”

Tough words.

I later learned to love McKinsey precisely because outspokeness backed by facts was appreciated. I learned to feel free to speak up to senior partners and client CEOs, men and women with enormous business experience, when I felt I was right and had the facts to back me. I learned to say, to people who could fire me with a flick of a finger, “That’s the wrong argument, and here’s why…”. As long as I had a competently constructed “why”, I was safe. When I moved on and became an agency manager, I worked hard to inculate the same ideal.

I bring this up because I read so many of the comments and posts by you students. Many are in the “on the one hand… on the other hand” vein: “John raises an important point… on the other hand, you have to consider Sue’s idea….”

That’s often an acceptable tactic in undergrad courses. “On the one hand, and on the other handâ€? is usually born of trying to understand both sides (or the many sides) of an issue. High school teachers and college professors want to see that you can do this (and rightly so!), which is why you all have written countless “Explain the issues of the Civil Warâ€? or “Compare and contrast X & Yâ€? essays.

That gets you an A in college. It gets you an F in business.

While knowing and understanding the arguments of both sides (or all the sides) is important, decision making is about picking one. In working life, two or three fairly good solutions usually exist for any one problem — the bad solutions sift out early. Most people can tell you the merits of each. Good. But leadership is about picking one and being able to say why.

“On the one hand, and on the other handâ€? says, “I have two opinions, and I am really, really trying to figure out which one you like most.” What it makes me ask is “Does she have an opinion? Does he have an argument? Do I want her running my PR? Do I want her in my agency? And can I learn anything from him, since he looks like he will take any position I take?”

The answers? No, no, no, no and no.

Some companies will fire you for saying what you think. Some will fire you for not saying what you think. Which would you rather work for?

The Marcom Blog is a remarkable chance for some of us lucky “pros” to get a head start working with our future colleagues. But there is an implied contract: We say what we believe… you say what you believe. None of this “on the one hand, on the other hand” that will get you an F after graduation.

Deal?

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