Public Affairs
EconTalk (at www.econtalk.org) is among the most popular and respected podcasts on the web. Voted Best Podcast in the 2008 Weblog Awards, it is hosted by Russ Roberts, Professor of Economics and the J. Fish and Lillian F. Smith Distinguished Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Posted weekly, the program usually features Roberts interviewing a distinguished economic thinker. On February 8th, Roberts broke from this format to discuss his own thinking about why trade is good. Drawing on Adam Smith and David Ricardo, 18th and 19th century respectively giants of economic thought, he explored how trade increases personal productivity by a factor of a hundred and more. As he summed up, “Self-sufficiency [in a person, a tribe, or a country] equals poverty.” Read
Litigation Services
Have you seen those new Toyota ads? The ones in which the company apologizes for letting quality slip. These are very unusual for a corporation facing product liability suits — and they are exactly the right thing to do.
Typically companies in Toyota’s position, clam up. Statements are defensive and evasive. Maintaining such a posture during the long life of a litigation will leave a company’s reputation in badly compromise.
Yet public opinion studies have shown that companies that publicly speak to their problems — that defend themselves but also that acknowledge faults and both pledge and work to fix them — build the trust of potential jurors, not to mention customers and suppliers.
Toyota is right to put corporate reputation first, and is likely to do better in court as a result.
Public Affairs
Tonight (Sunday, January 29th), as the opening act in the Grammys, Stefani Germanotta, also known as “Lady Gaga”, will sit at the piano with Reginald Kenneth Dwight, also known as Elton John. They will sing a duet. Corporate communicators facing public affairs challenges could learn a thing or two from this appearance.
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Writing
As I write, Mr. Obama has just finished delivering his first State of the Union Address. We can debate the policies later, but for style, I felt he missed a key grace note of leadership. Over and over he used the word “I”. But the essential word of leadership is “we”. Nothing is about me. Everything is about us, the people, whom I, the leader, serve.
Policy Dinners
When considering communications strategy, most people think of television, radio, publications, and the Internet — this even though research has long found that face-to-face communications is often, perhaps always, the most effective.
When targeting elites, we at WHWG are big fans of policy dinners. We gather between 10 and thirty of the kind of people our client wants to reach. They may be D.C.-based journalists, or part of the Washington policy world (usually not current office holders but people office holders consult), or industry elites around the country (high tech or financial leaders for example), or even policy and political leaders in London or Brussels. We hold the dinners at private clubs or fashionable homes or in the private dining areas of first-class restaurants. We attract guests with a featured speaker (usually the client’s CEO or a globally acknowledged expert on the issue we want our guests to think about). At least one member of the client’s staff is present, too. Read
Digital Services
Taking a new look at old assumptions is as difficult in the digital world as it is elsewhere — something Wikipedia is currently discovering. The stewards of the open source site have started asking themselves if they can increase the accuracy of their entries.
As the Financial Times reports, the site’s stable of voluntary editors has not grown apace with its increasing volume of articles. The result, says the FT, is that entries “will be harder to monitor quality — and vested interests will find it easier to make alterations that reflect their own views.”
Not that the site lacks for accuracy challenges now. The FT notes that “even optimists… agree with the more skeptical observers on this: that in terms of reliability and service, Wikipedia still has along way to go.” Yet attempts to “subject changes by newcomers [i.e., new contributors] to approval by more experienced editors and flagging any revisions” have run into intense resistance in the hyper-egalitarian Wiki-corps.
The communications problem here is a familiar one: The world has changed. The organization needs to adjust. But both members of the organization (those most involved with Wikipedia are volunteers, not employees) and many of those it serves see the adjustments as violating the values and standards that got the organization where it is today and that they believe in. Part of leadership in a time of change is to communicate how fundamental values are being preserved, not thrown over, by recognizing that circumstances have changed.
Services Training
Surveys have found that, for most people, fear of public speaking exceeds fear of death. How does one in its grip deal with this fear? Former Microsoft executive and current professional speak Scott Berkum says just keep in mind that your audience dreads listening to you. They expect to be bored silly, so they won’t be disappointed if they are. For a witty review of his new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker, read this article.
International Practices
This is a story I heard in Brussels. A globally prominent CEO was having troubles with the EU’s competition commission. He announced he was coming to town. He arrived with a fleet of black cars. He insisted on a reserved elevator to take him to his meeting.
The result: His company’s troubles with the commission continued for years.
Remember two things in dealing with Brussels.
First, the commission staff is made up of genuine experts in their fields. If you talk to them knowledgeably and with clarity, they will listen and they will hear.
Second, treat the staff with respect. Don’t sweep in like the king of the world. Show some humility. The staff knows you have your job to do. Show that you know they have theirs.
Litigation Practices
In every lawsuit or Supreme Court appeal we have worked on, the heart of our approach is to start early.
We don’t wait until the week before the trial or the oral arguments to brief key reporters. We go to them months before and walk them through the issues in the case. We get them fully up to speed — early.
Then we keep in touch.
This way, when the action heats up, they will already know our side of the story and our chances of favorable or at least balanced coverage go way, way up.
Even reporters inclined to dislike our corporate clients appreciate being treated with professional respect and, in most cases, respond accordingly.
Services Training
Some people think that speaker training is all about loading the trainee with gestures, pauses, and all the elements of stage acting. Wrong.
More than anything else, speaker training is about getting the speaker so comfortable with a text that his or her enthusiasm for the subject and natural charm can come out.
Most business people are very good extemporaneous speakers, a skill that requires a fast mind and a heightened sensitivity to the audience. On the other hand, speaking from a text requires practice, practice, practice — practice until the text is so familiar that the speaker can stop thinking about the next word or sentence and start thinking about the idea being put across or the sale being made.
The first task in speaker training is getting the speaker to where he (or she) is prepared to make that connection with the audience.