External

Items dealing with external communications, including media relations, PR, investor relations, and marcomm

Monday, October 12, 2009

Voice vs. angle

The Net has rendered the notion of corporate voices obsolete. The fact that anything a company says to one stakeholder audience can be found online by members of a different audience means inconsistencies in messages will be found, analyzed, and spread.

Nowhere is this more true than the traditional distinction between a company’s internal voice and the one it used to communicate with external audiences. Interviewed for IABC’s CW magazine, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said,

There isn’t anything I send to employees that I wouldn’t be prepared to have published on the front page of the newspaper. I don’t think control actually exists. The question is, did it ever exist? Probably to some degree, but social media, the explosion of technology, has just amplified the folly of the notion of internal versus external voice. I don’t think there’s such a thing anymore.

Companies that have given up on the multiple-voice approach apear to be reaping benefits. One financial services company was the subject of scorn when an internal memo to employees was leaked. But Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital CEO Paul Levy earns praise when he publishes employee memos to his blog for the world to see.

But it’s important to distinguish between voice and angle, the adjustments made to content based on the interests and information needs of the audience to whom it is being delivered.

Employees need different perspectives on information than, say, consumers, investors, or customers. Employees want to know what impact the news will have on their day-to-day jobs, something that isn’t of much interest to investors, who want to know what it means to the prospects for their investment. Customers want to know if the price will go up, product features will change, or customer service will deteriorate.

In most cases, crafting a one-size-fits-all communication is a bad idea. It would either be bursting at the seems with too much information to accommodate everybody, or it would lack the information different segments need in order to make informed decisions.

Social media provides organizations with a set of tools that makes it easy to maintain a common voice while delivering targeted information to different communities. In a company that has embraced blogging, for instance, the head of investor relations can talk with investors about the news from an investment perspective while a marketing-focused blog can let customers know what to expect from the product itself.

A Dow Jones Newswire article points to blogs-as-spokesmen as a trend among companies. In one example, a Microsoft turned down a journalist looking for a comment, but forwarded the reporter links to employee blog posts on the subject; reportable comments would be found in those posts.

It was also the idea behind Voxeo’s use of an “attention wave,” the label the company’s Dan York has assigned the idea of posting an item to multiple blogs that cater to different audiences.

These are among the factors communicators will need to consider as they update their thinking about communication models and strategies to accommodate a networked, transparent world. How do you balance the need to speak with one voice and the need to distribute a package of related content, each with its own angle, through multiple media?

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Transparency, engagement, responsibility: Hospital exec Paul Levy is a role model for CEOs

CEO reputations are already in the tank. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, used car salesmen have more cred than CEOs and official corporae spokespersons. Those same CEOs should be looking beyond the current economic crisis. A rehabilitated image will be important once the sting of the recession has faded.

Writing on ReputationXchange.com, Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross pointed out that a CEO’s internal communications stand to have a bigger impact on how a CEO is perceived by external audiences than external marketing or PR efforts. Gaines-Ross, chief reputation strategist for Weber Shandwick, said, “as companies continue to announce layoffs, reputations will be built and destroyed on how well job losses are communicated and how fairly the process is handled.”

Gaines-Ross’ perspective is consistent with the findings of a 2006 study conducted by Fleishman Hillard and the National Consumers League. When asked what how they assess a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR), most people said it hinged on how well the company treated its employees.

From what we’ve been hearing, the future does not bode well for a lot of CEOs who have taken a slash-and-burn approach to reducing the workforce.

Paul Levy, on the other hand, is one CEO who shouldn’t worry.

Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Massachusetts, has been using his Running a Hospital blog to keep internal and external constituents up to date on his efforts to control expenses while a combination of factors conspire against the hospital’s goal of meeting budget.

Paul reported on a series of quickly-assembled town hall meetings convened to explain the financial situation to employees. An even bigger goal of the meetings, though, was to solicit ideas from employees about how to address the budget gap. The meetings were convened following the distribution of a memo to employees. In a demonstration of what it means to be transparent these days, Paul posted the memo to his blog, a much more above-board approach to sharing internal matters with the public than deliberately leaking a supposedly internal-only document, the approach Citigroup took to get the word out that it had performed well during the first two months of 2009.

Overtly disclosing information will build much greater trust than pretending that an internal memo found its way outside of the company.

The memo included these candid and sobering remarks:

For BIDMC, our hoped-for 2% FY09 operating margin (about $18 million) has disapeared. The state has reduced Medicaid payments by over $7 million, our major insurerer is paying us less than we had hoped, and reseach funding has also fallen short by several million dollars. In addition, patient volumes are substantially lower than budgeted as people in the community defer or forgo medical visits and treatments.

Right now, at best, we can break even for the year if patient volumes return to budgeted levels. However, if they stay at current levels, we will face an operating loss of up to $20 million.

Now, sadly, we have to crank p expense reduction…Part of the solution to this problem will be to lay off people. I’m not sure how many yet, and I am hoping you can help me figure out how to minimize the number by using more creative and less disruptive ways to solve the problem.

Levy encouraged employees to write him with their ideas, use an electronic chat room he was setting up, or talk to him in person at the town hall meetings. He suggested elimination of pay raises, reduction of future earned time accruals, forfeiture of one or two days of past accruals, voluntary pay cuts, and unpaid leaves of absences.

Then he threw in the zinger:

The senior managers of the hospital have recognized their personal responsibility to help with this problem. The senior vice presidents, vice presidents, and chief operating officer have been asked to take voluntary 5% pay reductions, and I have eliminated all of their bonuses for 2009, a total potential pay reduction of 15% to 25%. I am personally taking a 10% salary reduction and will forgo my bonus opportunity for this year, a total potential pay reduction of 30%.

If it wasn’t already clear, Paul articulated the rationale for the measures imposed on senior staff and requested of the rank and file while face-to-face with employees at the town hall meetings: “to protect (BIDMC’s) lower wage earners (e.g., transporters, housekeepers, food service people) from measures we take, even if it means that the other people have to give up more of their salary and benefits.” After all, he explained, it would be harder for these people to find new jobs and the impact of being unemployed would be harsher for them. “A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them,” Levy told his employees.

Here’s another surprise: Kevin Cullen, a Boston Globe reporter, was in the room. That’s right; rather than try to keep word of the meetings from leaking, Levy invited the press to attend. Here’s what Cullen wrote: “He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when Sherman Auditorium erupted in applause. Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause. Paul Levy stood there and felt the sheer power of it all rush over him, like a wave. His eyes welled and his throat tightened so much that he didn’t think he could go on.”

On a follow-up post, Paul shared some of the emails he received from employees after the meetings, like one from a nurse who wrote, “I would be more than happy to forego a pay raise and reduce my earned time if that would mean another person in the hospital could keep their job. I think this is a great idea and I hope my colleagues feel the same.”

Levy plans to keep reporting on his thinking and inform employees of final decisions by April 1. Those decisions will also, no doubt, appear on his blog for the world to see. In fact, just today he provided an update to employees, posted (of course) to his blog. Among his messages:

Your participation in this process and your advice to me has succeeded in accomplishing two very important things: First, we have reduced the number of necessary layoffs dramatically, from over 600 to about 150. This is a major victory and will mean a lot to more than 450 families who would otherwise lose their income from BIDMC. Second, we will do this at the same time we provide earnings protection to our 900 lowest wage workers. As you will see, this does come at a higher cost to the rest of us, but you have all made clear to me that this is consistent with our community’s values and expectations. Thank you in advance for your generosity of spirit.

The entire post is well worth reading, especially for the detailed explanation of how those to be laid off will be selected.

My friend Albert Maruggi, who also blogged this story, sums it up well:

Much of America has a very long way to go to eliminate the culture of “gotcha,” of confrontation, a culture of “keep the info, keep the power.” All these insecurities and tactics of greed will hinder the benefits of what social media can bring to an organization and our society. With each blog post, each honest answer to a criticism, each good idea raised and implemented, the organization becomes stronger.

Somehow, I don’t see AIG’s CEO Ed Liddy meeting face-to-face with employees to seek their input on how to turn things around. Even if he did, I don’t see him sharing the experience on a blog or inviting the press to attend the meetings. Instead, I hear the protests, “We’re a financial institution, not a hospital.”

More’s the pity. Liddy’s reputation is most likely beyond redemption, but Levy will long be remembered as a beacon of responsibility, transparency, and engagement.

Hat tips to Ron Shewchuk and Albert Maruggi for some source material for this post.

Monday, October 27, 2008

How many execs really leave “to pursue other oportunities?”

At one of the Fortune 500 companies where I directed corporate communications, many years ago, a reorganization consolidated some of the company’s business units. In a game of executive musical chairs, one high-ranking exec was left without a job.

The press release the company issued used the typical jargon claiming that the poor fellow was leaving the company “to pursue other opportunities.” I suppose that was true. The interesting he was leaving to pursue was finding a job after being dumped from the organization.

Journalists are wise to this kind of euphemism. A night copy editor at one of the dailies covering the company ran the story under the headline, “So long, pal.” The clueless leaders of this company—my bosses—reacted to the headline by insisting that I call the lead business reporter who covered the company and inform him that we weren’t going to deal with him any longer.

The headline may have been snarky, but the “pursuing other opportunities” phrase, along with the lack of any substantive information at all, invited that snarkiness. Of course, the reason companies resort to such vague, non-communicative lingo is that the separation agreement reached with the departing executive insists on it, presumably because they don’t want anybody to learn the truth of the matter. I’ve often wondered how people can rise to such lofty positions in big companies with such thin skins.

This experience leapt to mind as I read a post by PR luminary Jim Horton about a similar announcement from iRobot announcing that its co-founder, Helen Greiner, had resigned as the company’s chairman to be replaced by her fellow co-founder Colin Aigle, who was serving as CEO.

The most Greiner or iRobot have had to say about the reason for the former chairman’s departure is that it was a mutual decision. This, according to the C|Net report, has fueled speculation about what really happened, suggesting that Greiner’s departure was not entirely voluntary. This will come as no surprise to people working in corporate communications who know that, in the absence of authoritative information, second-tier sources and gossip-mongers will rush in to fill the void. Information abhors a vacuum.

As Horton notes, it is the lack of transparency that sparked the rumor. “Wouldn’t it be better just to say that X left because she had a disagreement with the board, or she is tired and wants to move on, or she has another opportunity she wishes to pursue? That, at least, provides a context for stakeholders,” he says, adding, “Silence speaks louder than words.”

The next time an executive leaves your company’s ranks, consider the novel approach of just truthfully telling what happened. It may cause some discomfort, but that’s better than inaccurate speculation affecting perceptions of the organization.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Don’t give Apple a pass

I was embarrassed today during my presentation at New Media Expo in Las Vegas. John C. Havens, the co-author of my new book , and I were delivering a talk on the the theme of the book, “Tactical Transparency.” When discussing the notion of being transparent about business processes and problems, I used Apple’s Mobile Me as an example, showing a screen shot of the MobileMe Status page on the Apple website.

As soon as I started talking about it, a hand shot up. Allison Sheridan said the MobileMe status page was a terrible example.

I was confounded. After all, the inaugural post to the MobileMe status page made my point precisely:

Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know what’s happening with MobileMe, and I’m working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date.

But Allison explained that updates to the site had stopped. David G., the site’s author, did not make good on his promise. Her husband, she said lost weeks worth of email and looked to the status page for information that was never posted. I had added the screenshot shortly after the third update was posted because John and I were required to meet a deadline for delivering a copy of the presentation. I hadn’t checked the site since then. Big mistake.

When I got back to my room, I visited the site. There are still only three posts there, the most recent from July 29. That final post concludes with these words:

“Next post later this week.”

Is David willing to blow off Jobs’ instructions to “write a posting every other day or so?” (That would take some chutzpah.) Has Jobs decided to return to Apple’s traditional opacity when it comes to communicating with customers? I can think of a dozen or so other reasons the updates may have been suspended, none of which excuse the shrugging off of a commitment made to customers to keep them informed. To make matters, worse, there have been continued problems with the service. Still, no updates.

But, hey, that’s just Apple. We’ll let it go because they make such cool products, right?

In fact, Apple frequently gets a pass for atrocious communication practices (among other things) because the manufacturer of such cool products can do no wrong. The Apple faithful turn a blind eye to any flaws, excusing the company because, well, we all just love our Macs and iPods.

Personally, I prefer Windows to the Mac. I had a Mac for 15 months and wound up giving it to my daughter and returning happily to the Windows world. But I have several other Apple products that I do love. And I still don’t think that makes the Mobile Me situation acceptable. Any organization that makes a public commitment to communicate and then clams up is, more than likely, hiding something. Even if they’re not, that’s the perception that will be created by their sudden silence.

MobileMe was (and continues to be) an unmitigated disaster (particularly compared to the relative trouble-free launch of Microsoft’s Live Mesh). The company launched a status page and promised updates “every day or so.” The company provided three updates, then went silent. And there has been barely a whisper of protest. (I say “barely” because there have been some reports of the sudden halt to updates, but not many…certainly not nearly as many as there would have been had it been Microsoft in the hot seat.)

Yeah, Apple’s products are cool. But it’s time to stop giving them a pass.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Non-threatening ways to get your company started with social media

As organizations seek to expand their communication efforts to include social media, they often find themselves facing the same hurdles that were faced and ultimately overcome by earlier adopters. Efforts to introduce social media have been hamstrung by questions of time commitment, IT issues, and legal concerns.

Usually, blogs are the tactic that face these obstacles (although I have also heard of other challenges, such as a legal objection to the construction of a special-purpose Facebook page). The assumption that blogs must be the company’s point of entry into social media is most likely based on the fact that blogs were the first social media tool. By the time other tools, like Twitter, came along, tens of millions of blogs already populated the Web and companies from Sun Microsystems to McDonald’s were already showing results from their blogging efforts.

While there are plenty of good reasons for a company to blog, there’s no rule that says blogs must kick off a company’s foray into social media. In fact, if you start with something that isn’t threatening to the lawyers or likely to raise much concern among IT staff, the successful implementation of smaller, less flashy tools can pave the way for more involved engagement.

If your company hasn’t touched social media yet, consider starting with these approaches:

• For your external communications, add a “share this” link to every article or page
• For internal communication, add a rating-and-comment feature to every page

Share this

People increasingly use aggregation tools to find interestithe websites of media outlets like The New York Times or CNN. (Max Kalehoff says he visits the Times site only to read particular blogs.) Democratized content sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and NewsVine —where the users determine what’s important rather than a gatekeeper—are also growing in popularity. Even in the world of search, it’s not unusual to hear someone suggest that they get more targeted results by searching Delicious or Furl than Google.

It’s altogether possible that a reader will submit a news item or press release from your website to one of these services. It’s far more likely, though, if you make it easy by giving them the utility to submit with just two clicks (one to open the “share this” box, the other to submit). Consider the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A search of Digg produces several pages of results, most of which are less than flattering with headlines like “FDA’s handling of proposed cancer drug defies compassion” and “Shame on the FDA.” There is, however, a link to an FDA press release about the formation of a nanotechnology task force. The press release itself features no links at all. A “share this” link would certainly lead far more people to do so—people to whom it might never occur to share at all without the nudge.

In fact, if all of the FDA’s press releases contained “Share This” links, it’s likely that more positive material would find its way to Digg, Delicious, and other sites where they would be visible to people who would otherwise never see it, providing some balance to content submitted by the agency’s critics.

It’s important for organizations to get their messages out to where people are spending their time and consuming their information (which is not your dot-com website).

Rate-and-comment

Most intranets are hard to navigate and contain content of questionable value. The simple act of letting employees comment on and rate a page can make good content easier to find and increase the usefulness of a lot of that material.

A simple YouTube-like five-star rating system serves a number of purposes. It gets employees accustomed to interacting. It provides an at-a-glance indication of how valuable other employees have found a page (assuming it has amassed enough votes). And a “highest-rated pages” listing can help direct employees to useful content (as opposed to most-viewed).

Enabling comments on pages lets employees enhance the content with their own experiences and observations. Consider the page containing the travel policy. An employee might add a comment noting that his expense report was kicked back multiple times because currency conversions were wrong, then directing employees to the right resource for calcuating conversions.

In both the external and internal cases, the value of social media should become evident in relatively short order and serve as a basis for introducing those blogs, Facebook pages, and other tools that help organizations engage in dialogues with their publics.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

One message does not fit all

On episode 335 of The Hobson and Holtz Report, Eric Schwartzman shared bits of an interview he conducted with Maureen Kasper, senior director of communication at Cisco Systems. In the interview, Maureen addressed an issue that I’ll be talking about during my session tomorrow at the New Communications Forum: the blurring of the line between internal and external communications.

We did create content that was different—here’s the external face to something and here’s the internal face to something. I don’t think you can do that any more. It’s the same. It’s better communication. You’re not worrying about, “Am I thinking externally or am I thinking internally?” What you’re thinking about is, “What’s our message?”

Maureen noted that Cisco employees once criticized the company when they perceived they were getting the same spin on messages as external audiences. Now, she says, it’s a strength. “It goes back to transparency. What you say externally has to be the same as what you say internally, and vice-versa. If not, you’ll get found out very quickly.”

I agree—and I disagree. The core message absolutely must be consistent. The days are long gone (not that this was prudent or ethical behavior when those days still existed) when you could deliver one message to employees and another to, say, investment analysts:

Employees: We’re merging with Acme in order to absorb a major competitor and bolster our earnings.
Analysts: We’re merging with Acme because of the natural synergies between the two organizations and because we’ll be able to better serve the marketplace working together.

However, I don’t agree with the notion that you can craft a single communication for each audience. Whether or not you share your external communications with employees, they’ll see it—or, at least, have access to it. The message to analysts ends in analyst reports which find their way into investment blogs, the media message is published on news sites and from there into the blogosphere.

But employees still need the internal spin, and I’m using that word in the constructive sense. In a merger, analysts care about the impact on value and share price. Employees may also care about that—particularly if they own stock—but they have more immediate concerns that aren’t on the minds of other publics (including local communities, NGOs, activist groups, the government, and so on). They want to know about the security of their jobs, the status of existing projects, where they’ll wind up in the revamped structure of the new company and whether their benefits will change.

Spinning stories (in the good way) to accommodate the unique interests of each constituency is at the heart of effective communication. It’s why we research the audiences before we craft the communications.

By the way, I’m absolutely certain they do this at Cisco Systems and that Maureen didn’t mean to imply otherwise. Her remarks just led me to want to articulate this point of view, which also argues for the continued need for some traditional communication. A single blog post from the CEO about the merger just won’t get the right information into the right hands. Targeted communication can start targeted conversations among publics with different interests.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Brian Solis on Social Media Release

The February “Cafe2Go,” IABC’s monthly podcast, is up, featuring an interview I conducted with Brian Solis about the Social Media Release. Brian is an original member of the Social Media Release working group. He was selected for this interview because IABC members—communicators—are the audience for Cafe2Go, and Brian’s background is in communication. Among the members of the working group, he (and Todd Defren) represents the people who will be crafting such releases.

You may be wondering why we’re talking about the Social Media Release on Cafe2Go. The short answer: IABC is assuming a role in the development of SMR standards. An official announcement is slated for mid-week next week that will go into more detail.

The podcast kicks off with the usual discussion between Julie Freeman, IABC’s staff president, and Todd Hattori, the 2007-08 chair. This time around, they’re talking about accreditation; a survey reveals that members do, for the most part, find real value in getting accredited. It’s an interesting talk, but if you want to skip right to the SMR part of the show, it’s at around the 18:18 mark.