Corporate Communication - Theory to Practice

How to Do What You Love

2006-01-30T02:47:00.000-05:00

Gary Radford said he was going to be pointing the Executive Lectures students to my blog, so I thought I'd share this item, recently forwarded to me by a young colleague who, like so many of us, is still struggling with what he wants to be when he grows up.

I also recommend perusing the links under Free Books at right.

Schering-Plough Executive Lectures

2006-01-30T02:24:00.000-05:00

The first session of the 2006 Executive Lectures Series at Fairleigh Dickinson University went off beautifully on Saturday. The speakers were all members of the board of corporate advisors for the MA Program in Corporate & Organizational Communications:

* Stuart Goldstein, Managing Director of Corporate Communications, The Depository Trust and Clearing Corp.

* Justin Lash, communications consultant, Metro New York region, Towers Perrin

* Marion Pinsdorf, Vice President, Hill and Knowlton (retired)

* Pamela Golgolab, President/Owner, PNA Associates Inc., Public Relations, Corporate Communications, Marketing, Advertising, Chester, NJ

and yours truly.

About 20 MA program students and alumni participated. It was a great first session that included formal lectures on strategic corporate communications, crisis management, and ethics; lively discussion among the students and speakers; and an eye-opening role-playing exercise, moderated by Stuart, based on a real-life crisis scenario.

If things go as well as they did last year, it will only get better as the series progresses. We have a wonderful line-up of speakers this year.

Schering-Plough Executive Lectures

2005-12-30T07:15:00.000-05:00

The 2006 Schering-Plough Executive Lectures schedule is available. The series is part of the MA program in corporate & organizational communications at Fairleigh Dickinson University. Speakers will include journalists, marketing and PR executives, academics, and others. Questions about the series or the MA program can be directed to me or to Dr. Gary Radford, director of the program.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2005-12-30T06:54:00.000-05:00

I just discovered that Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance can be read for free online in its unabridged form. I keep hearing that the book continues to sell millions of copies every year, but so many people I meet in my professional life have never heard of it. This can only mean the folks who most need to hear what Pirsig is saying aren't. I don't know how many of these "busy" people will have the patience for a book of this length and depth that doesn't offer a quick fix for their professional and personal problems, but I do know that they talk a lot (mostly very superficially) about quality, and Quality (yes, with a capital "Q") is what ZAMM is all about.

For those who have read it, there's also a very good, very rare interview with Pirsig on NPR's website. The interview was conducted shortly after the publishing of Lila--the sequel to ZAMM.

End-of-Year Thoughts

2005-12-23T03:36:00.000-05:00

The winding down of a year is a good time for summing up one's thoughts and impressions of the old year and aspirations for the new...

I started this blog in February 2005 to "help me get my thoughts in order about this field I've devoted 20 years of my life to, as well as provide a useful forum for others who are interested in communication theory, corporate and organizational communication, journalism and media studies." I started it as I was in the homestretch of writing my thesis; beginning a new job after two years of observing the corporate world from the sidelines while completing my coursework and serving as an advisor to the MA program in corporate and organizational communications at FDU; learning a new industry (telecom) after nearly two decades in the world of financial services; and growing another year older and experiencing the joys and difficulties of being a parent of a teenager and two pre-teens (talk about "communication challenges"!)

2005 has given me a lot to think about, only a small part of which has made it into this blog. Translating my academic voyage in the world of communication theory back into daily corporate practice has not always been easy. The process has generated a few answers, but it has led to better, more interesting questions, including:

Is there any fundamental difference between corporate communication and human communication?
Is the phrase "corporate communication" meaningful, or does it muddy the very specific, practical concepts of marketing, media relations, investor relations, government relations, etc.?
Can communication ever be strategic, or are the two notions antithetical? This is a big one, as I've come to believe that "communication"--correctly understood--entails a willingness to give up some amount of control, while so much of what we call "corporate communication" typically involves "managing messages."
What is the relationship between communication and ethics? Another big one. In an age of eroded authority, what is ethics, if not saying what you mean and behaving in a manner that is consistent with what you say?

These and other questions won't be easily answered, which brings me back to why I started this blog. I've described this as "An attempt to get beyond the 'discursive structures' of the university and the corporation and find out what the two have to offer each other." My work with FDU has been a major support and inspiration in this effort. Interacting with graduate students who are either beginning to explore this field or who have been in it for some time and (like me) have begun looking for a deeper understanding of what they've been doing and why has been invigorating (what an awful sentence! But it's early a.m. and, in the interest of authenticity, I'll let it stand). I learned yesterday that I have been accepted into a Ph.D program at Rutgers' School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies. I'm thrilled and humbled and, quite honestly, don't have a clue how I'm going to work it in to an already full and chaotic life--but I'm going to do it. I have made similarly crazy decisions in the past, and, looking back, they have always been the most fruitful.

Long ago, after finishing my undergrad work, I decided to pursue "some kind of writing career." I viewed my first corporate job as a necessary detour--"something to pay the bills." Then it was financial journalism--a place to "learn the ropes" until I could find "something real." And so forth...

Well, this has been real. Instead of trekking far outside the corporate mainstream, I've taken my explorations inside the corporate structure in which the vast majority of people live and work. I've found it endlessly fascinating. I turned an "involuntary hiatus" (layoff) into an opportunity to return to school and spend two years thinking about and discussing the field in which I've become an accidental expert--and I've been able to share these thoughts and discussions with academics, professionals, and students--as well as anyone else who stumbles upon my blog. The next step is to further develop the research tools I need in order to broaden and deepen my explorations; to study and to teach; and to remain engaged in this corporate world. I once envisioned an "escape into academia"; I now see that as a naive fantasy. For better and worse, the university and the corporation are intricately and intimately joined. Let's keep them honest and see what they have to offer each other.

Quantum Mechanics & Corporate Communication (continued)

2005-12-08T05:50:00.000-05:00

As I have already written, communication is like light. I don't mean this poetically, although it is a fortunate analogy. I mean that, like light, it can validly be viewed in classical mechanical terms (information transfer from sender to receiver) or in what I'm referring to as quantum mechanical terms (distributed, imprecise, contingent upon the myriad disturbances and distortions that are inevitably involved in human communication).

Both modes of speaking about communication have their limitations.

The classical mode is best represented by the Shannon & Weaver model. It is primarily concerned with the engineering problem of accurate signal processing. It is utterly unconcerned with meaning.

I have not yet found a model that captures what I've been calling a quantum mechanical way of talking about communication (this analogy is, I'm sure, imprecise at best), but a good start is Gary Radford's book On the Philosophy of Communication. Radford provides a nice overview of how our "common sense" way of talking about communication as information transfer came about and a good argument for thinking about communication in alternative ways.

So, as long as we treat communication as information transfer and ignore meaning, we can hold the subject still and take it apart. Communication becomes sort of like the frog with all its organs pinned neatly to the dissecting table--good luck ever getting it to hop again. If all you're concerned with is--oh, I don't know--let's say conveying enemy positions to those operating the mortars, then a signal-processing model of communication is just dandy. Communication is an engineering problem.

In your personal and professional worlds, however, information transfer just isn't enough. There is no right answer to "Does this outfit make me look fat?" because the question is not really a question, even though it is constructed as such. It is an expression of anxiety by a particular person within a particular psychological or social or emotional context. The job interview question "Tell me what you think your greatest weakness is" is not concerned with what you think your greatest weakness is. It is a test of your ability to craft a plausible-sounding answer to that question (just as the SAT is not a test of the student's intelligence or mastery of a subject, but the student's facility at taking timed, multiple-choice tests).

Ignoring meaning is attractive because meaning is the messy, indeterminate part of communication. As soon as you venture off the well-worn trail of process or transmission theory, you risk becoming lost in a swamp of subjectivity. Swamps can be scary or beautiful, depending on what you bring to them, but two things are certain:

There is much more in a swamp than first meets the eye; and
If you focus only on the map of the swamp, to the exclusion of what's around you and directly under your feet, you will find yourself in trouble.

Resurrect Your Writing, Redeem Your Soul

2005-12-02T03:59:00.000-05:00

This article from Digital Web Magazine was forwarded by a colleague with whom I share long, pleasant, frustrating conversations about corporatespeak. Writing is about soul, which is why it is no coincidence that just about anyone can fill in the blank in the following phrase: "The soulless _____________".

Some choice quotes from the article:

"Bad writing that has been “Webified” can look great on screen and to search engines, but to human beings, it’s still just bad writing. Applying the new rules of Web writing to muddled thoughts is a bit like hiding dirty hands in clean gloves." (more later to tie this back to my Heisenberg posts);"
"Corporate language—the monotonous native tongue of business—is manipulative and carefully constructed around psychological insights. It takes many forms, but always defies normal understanding in order to control. Politicians, managers, and the media toss it out like a net to drag in the public like helpless fish."
"You know you’re on the Information Superhighway to Hell if crap like enhance, leverage, implement, context, driver, focus, core, actionable, outcome, and stakeholder crops up in your copy."

Good to see the webbies are on top of this. The war for your language and your soul is being fought at the margins of the corporate, academic, and technical worlds. Engage the enemy; reclaim your humanity (just don't get yourself fired).

FT's Lucy Kellaway on Business Jargon

2005-12-01T05:50:00.000-05:00

Nice column by Lucy Kellaway in the Nov. 28 Financial Times: "Why There Has Been an Uptick in My Tolerance of Jargon". If you follow the link above, you can read the full column, but you'll have to take a 15-day trial subscription to the paper (worth it, in my mind--I love the FT, and Lucy Kellaway is particularly a joy).

After talking briefly about why she turned down an offer to add to the already vast pile of books decrying jargon by writing another one, Lucy makes some important distinctions among three types of jargon:

"Class A jargon," she writes, "is the lethal stuff, the verbal equivalent of crack cocaine. At an analysts' meeting given by a big drinks company recently one of the directors boasted of the company's `global front-end ideation resource'.... Any business person who talks this way has lost sight of what he or she is supposed to be doing. Had I been at that meeting, I would have advised selling the shares promptly."

At the other end, Lucy recognizes "Class C jargon", which consists of "business words that have now entered the language. These are the equivalent of cannabis but even less harmful -- which is just as well, considering that the spread is unstoppable." She provides some nice examples, but I'm sure you can think of your own.

"In between the two extremes," Lucy writes, "Class B jargon covers all those clunky phrases such as "pushing the envelope" and "blue-sky thinking".

After providing several examples that she finds particularly vexing, Lucy writes, "Despite these hateful phrases, I am not proposing a pointless war on Class B jargon. In fact, I am becoming increasingly tolerant towards it."

She attributes her growing tolerance, in part, to two recent books, one from the U.K. and one from the U.S.

The first is called Ducks in a Row, an A-Z of Offlish ("written by a frightfully nice man with a Ph.D. from Oxford"), whose "priggish" tone turned her off. The second is called Green Weenies and Due Diligence("written by a scrap-car dealer whose personal motto is `mission possible'.") Among the book's 1,200 terms (that enable readers to "talk the talk" so they can "walk the walk"), Lucy notes several that, as she puts it, are "fresh enough to be funny," eg.:

"Chair plug" -- someone who sits in a meeting contributing nothing
"Inbox dread"--what you feel before turning on the computer
"Square headed girlfriend"-- your computer.

These are cute and probably will quickly catch on and become stale.

While I agree with Lucy that "people who are already heavy users are beyond help" and that other people's use of Class B jargon is "not the end of the world," I also have to agree with the priggish Oxford man who writes: "Offlish is highly contagious. It is vital that these people are mocked, ridiculed, and undermined in order to prevent its spread."

The trick, of course, is doing so without committing professional suicide. The "challenge" is to achieve sufficient status within your organization (and, ultimately, your industry) that imitating your use of the language becomes as important to underlings as imitating your clothing style and other superficial indicators of your success.

Less Than Words Can Say

2005-11-29T19:28:00.000-05:00

Less Than Words Can Say--the classic eloquent rant by the late "Underground Grammarian" Richard Mitchell--is available on line and for free. More than 20 years ago, I saw Mitchell lecture at St. John's College in Annapolis. The title of his lecture: "Split Infinitives, the First Step Toward Moral Decay." The title of "Less Than Words Can Say" was a compromise with his publisher...Mitchell told us he wanted to call his book "The Worm in the Brain" (the title of Chapter 1).

I won't presume to summarize. Read it!

Quantum Mechanics & Corporate Communication

2005-11-28T19:44:00.000-05:00

I may be getting at why the universe wanted me to read Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg at this particular moment and what quantum mechanics has to do with corporate communication.

Within the widely but not universally accepted Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is taken to mean that, on an elementary level, the physical universe does not exist in a deterministic form—but rather as a collection of probabilities, or potentials.

Okay, let's back up a minute.

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle states that one cannot assign with full precision values for certain pairs of observable variables, including the position and momentum of a single particle, at the same time. You can know precisely where a particle is or how fast it's moving, but you can't know both precisely at the same time. All the weirdness of quantum mechanics--things occupying more than one location at the same time, going from point A to point B without passing through any point in between, action at a distance--is supposed to go away at the macro level of our day-to-day world.

Still with me?

Okay, so the other aspect of quantum mechanics that's relevant here is the fact that the very act of observation disturbs the experiment. This is not something correctible. At the level of the very small, very fast objects quantum mechanics is interested in, you cannot remove the impact of the observer. Observation affects what is being observed and thereby impedes precise measurement.

Now, what does this have to do with corporate communication?

This discussion has to be broken down into three parts:

* Communication
* Mass communication ("mass" is taken to mean "between more than two people.")
* Strategic corporate communication

The nearest communication theory has managed to come to anything resembling classical Newtonian mechanics has been Shannon & Weaver's model, which treats communication as a mechanical process of information transfer, in which--if the source and the sender and receiver and encoding and the decoding all work the way they should, and if the system is purged of "noise"--communication happens. That means, the message makes it from the source to the receiver in substantially the same form. What Shannon & Weaver had to give up in order for this model to work was any concern about "meaning". They were concerned exculsively with accurate signal processing.

Shannon & Weaver understood the limitations of their model with regard to human communication. Implicit in this is the understanding that signal processing is, if I may, a Newtonian activity, a matter of classical mechanics, of pushing discrete particles of information down definable channels; while human communication is more like a quantum mechanical activity, subject to all kinds of strangeness. This is because human communication is concerned with the creation of meaning, which is not discrete. It is more "wavelike" in nature, occuring in simultaneously in many media and contexts, continually changing.

Taken together, then, communication looks an awful lot like light--both particle and wave, depending on how you choose to observe, think about, and use it. Restricting yourself to the Newtonian perspective is necessary in certain contexts and when addressing certain problems. As long as you realize this, you'll be okay. The problem comes in when you try to apply classical thinking to the quantum mechanical realm. Put another way, there is nothing wrong with thinking of communication as information transfer; the problem comes in when you start to believe that communication is information transfer.

Remember the words of Neils Bohr: "The opposite of a true statement is a false statement; the opposite of a profound truth often is another profound truth."

More to come.

"Physics & Philosophy" and Language

2005-11-26T05:41:00.000-05:00

On a recent day marked by several amazing coincidences, I stopped at Borders with the intention of "just browsing." To help keep my promise, I restricted myself to the Business Communication section, where I felt I would not be unduly tempted by such titles as "Life Is Just a Series of Presentations" or "Words that Sell." Any book in that section worth owning, I reasoned, I probably already own.

I was about to leave when something caught my eye. Between "The Essential Managing Change" and "The Essential Managing Teams", someone had jammed a copy of Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg. I tried to imagine how something like this could happen. A stocking error? Doubtful. On what basis would even the most green of new employees accidentally place this book on that shelf? A customer's change of heart? Would a book buyer who had already decided to purchase Physics and Philosophy suddenly feel moved instead to buy The Essential Managing Management (or whatever else might normally come between "Change" and "Teams")?

No, Heisenberg had been placed there for a reason. Someone or something (perhaps some great cosmic force) wanted me to find and buy this book in spite of my resolution. When the universe conspires in this way, how can you say no?

I've been reading it for a week now, trying to figure out what the universe wants to tell me through this book. I don't yet have the answer, but I believe it has something to do with the fact that much of this book about quantum mechanics and its impact on philosophy actually is about language -- specifically, the "limited range of applicability" of language before the rise of quantum mechanics to the experimental situation after quantum mechanics.

Maybe the universe is trying to get me to relax a bit -- to accept the limitations of language as a fundamental aspect of reality. If minds like Heisenberg's and Einstein's and Bohr's and Bohm's couldn't nail it down, why should I expect to be able to? Or maybe the universe is trying to impress upon me the seriousness of the endeavor, the fact that how we talk about reality actually affects the nature of the reality we perceive. The fact that pure objectivity has gone out the window does not mean we are left with a world of total subjectivity and contingency. Some forms of nonsense are still nonsense.

It is comforting to know that greater minds than mine continue to struggle with these issues. It's scary to know that those who wield real power in the world--if they think about language at all--think of it as a means to a particular end, the perpetuation of their own power. Life is a series of presentations. It's all about words that sell. Simple, right?

Cluetrain Is Back

2005-11-26T05:32:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to report that the Cluetrain Manifesto is again available on line!

Happy Thanksgiving

2005-11-25T06:21:00.000-05:00

During a Thanksgiving-morning supermarket run to pick up a handful of holiday necessities, I was engaged in a scavenger hunt for the final item on my list: apple cider. It wasn't in Produce; it wasn't among Juices or Non-Alcoholic Beverages (supermarkets in New Jersey can't sell alcoholic beverages -- so, why the superfluous category?); I even searched Dairy on the assumption that similarity in packaging might be sufficient reason for mis-characterizing the product. No go.

I was perusing the Juices aisle for the second time, when a fellow customer, standing in front of a display of apple juices, sputtered in disgust. Upon noticing that he had company--and that his company had noticed his sputter--he turned to me and said, "Someone oughta tell the company." Then, jabbing his finger at a bottle of apple juice, he read from the label: "100% apple juice, with other ingredients." He looked at me, eyes wide with desire for shared understanding and contempt, and explained, "If there are other ingredients, then it's less than 100% apple juice!"

I nodded sympathetically and commented on the fact that this brand (begins with "M", ends with "TTS") had a strong reputation for wholesomeness, a sharp edge of irony forced into my voice. Truth is, I've become so used to this sort of abuse I've learned to conserve my outrage.

My poor compatriot shook his head (I could tell he had already had a rough morning before being smacked upside the head by this example of half-truth in advertising).

"I just wanna get some apple juice for my little girl," he said forlornly.

I decided against asking him if he'd seen any apple cider during his supermarket travels. He'd been through enough. I settled for, "Good luck." As he trudged toward the end of the aisle (gripping one of the offending bottles), I stopped to read the label he had pointed to. The exact wording was "100% APPLE JUICE from concentrate with additional ingredient". Easy enough to unpack and justify. First, they put in the "100% APPLE JUICE from concentrate." Then, they added the "additional ingredient." Any judge in the world would've laughed my friend out of court.

Of course, my friend (a blue-collar fellow, I inferred from his clothing and speech, although I stood beside him in my leather jacket, beat-up jeans, Pay-Less sneakers, and sweatshirt stained with coffee from the QuikChek cup I clutched in my left hand--from what bottomless pool of hypocrisy do we draw our inferences about others?), was right. The word choice, the type face, the syntax were all carefully chosen to confound and insult the consumer's intelligence. The label might as well have read "Caveat Emptor, you schmuck!"

Instead of my banal observation about the reputation of this apple juice brand, I should have quoted Tom Stoppard, as follows:

"Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos."

I could have. I know the speech by heart. If I'd plagiarized Stoppard, without fear of appearing a hyperliterate snob, perhaps my acquaintance might have walked away a little taller, unshaven chin held high, instead of dragging his butt toward Hot and Cold Cereals (why not, simply, Cereals?) with a dejected air. Maybe...

I'm thankful for this fellow whose name I'll never know. He's one of a significant minority who still care about being misled, even when not actually lied to, of having his intelligence insulted by claptrap.

I'm thankful that Stop & Shop's express lane bears a sign that says "12 Items or Fewer", rather than "12 Items or Less." Is there a connection between that fact--that tiny bit of grammatical correctness--and the friendly smiles and words of their cashiers, compared with the "S'that all?" I receive at Acme?

I'm thankful that when I tell my kid to tie his shoe, he corrects me by quietly muttering, "Sneaker" (even though I yell, "Whatever, just do it!" every time).

I'm thankful for Tom Stoppard and Lynne Truss.

I'm thankful for all the small bits of resistance I see in the world.

Happy Thanksgiving to All.

p.s. The cider was in Produce after all, just tucked away very discreetly. I guess it's not the big holiday attraction it was in my boyhood. Alas.

The Cluetrain Has Left the Station

2005-11-23T11:33:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry to report that the Cluetrain Manifesto no longer appears to be online. I'm removing the link from my blog. If it becomes available again, the link will return.

Top Politically Incorrect Words for 2005

2005-11-21T22:24:00.000-05:00

This is from The Global Language Monitor :

"2005 was the year we saw the Political Correctness movement become a truly global phenomenon," said Paul JJ Payack, President of The Global Language Monitor (GLM). "The list is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life."

The year has been rife with examples that have been nominated by the GLM's Language Police, volunteer language observers from the world over.

The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2005:

1. "Misguided Criminals" for Terrorist: The BBC attempts to strip away all emotion by using what it considers neutral descriptions when describing those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes. The rub: the professed intent of these misguided criminals was to kill, without warning, as many innocents as possible (which is the common definition for the term, terrorist).

2. "Intrinsic Aptitude" (or lack thereof) was a suggestion by Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, on why women might be underrepresented in engineering and science. He was nearly fired for his speculation.

3. "Thought Shower" or "Word Shower", substituting for brainstorm, so as not to offend those with brain disorders such as epilepsy.

4. Scum or "la racaille" for French citizens of Moslem and North African descent inhabiting the projects ringing French cities. France's Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, used this most Politically inCorrect (and reprehensible) label to describe the young rioters (and by extension all the inhabitants of the Cites).

5. "Out of the Mainstream" when used to describe the ideology of any political opponent: At one time slavery was in the mainstream, thinking the sun orbited the earth was in the mainstream, having your blood sucked out by leeches was in the mainstream. What's so great about being in the mainstream?

6. "Deferred Success" as a euphemism for the word fail. The Professional Association of Teachers in the UK considered a proposal to replace any notion of failure with deferred success in order to bolster students' self-esteem.

7. "Womyn" for Women to distance the word from man. This in spite of the fact that the term man in the original Indo-European is gender neutral (as have been its successors for some 5,000 years).

8. C.E. for A.D.: Is the current year A.D. 2005 or 2005 C.E.? There is a movement to strip A.D. (Latin for Year of our Lord) from the year designation used in the West since the 5th century and replace it with the supposedly more neutral Common Era (though the zero reference year for the beginning of the Common Era remains the year of Christ's birth).

9. "God Rest Ye Merry Persons" for "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen": A Christmas, eh, Holiday, carol with 500 years of history is not enough to sway the Anglican Church at Cardiff Cathedral (Wales) from changing the original lyrics.

10. Banning the word "Mate": the Department of Parliamentary Services in Canberra issued a general warning to its security staff banning the use of the word 'mate' in any dealings they might have with both members of the Parliament and the public. What next? Banning Down Under so as not to offend those living in the Up Over.

Holiday Bonus: Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings for Christmas (which some U.K. schools now label Wintervale. (In the word X-Mas, the Greek letter 'Chi' represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two letters of the name Christ.)

Last year the Top Politically Incorrect words were: Los Angeles County's insistence of covering over with labels any computer networking protocols that mention master/slave jargon. Following closely were "non-same-sex marriage" for marriage, and "waitron" for waiter or waitress.

Splogs

2005-11-18T20:43:00.000-05:00

I say "blogspam", Newsweek says "splogs" .

All together now: "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off!"

Failure to Communicate - NPR

2005-11-18T20:02:00.000-05:00

Wonderful spot on NPR this week: What We Have Here Is a Failure to Communicate.

Special thanks to WNYC Listener Services Associate Michael J. Andrews for tracking this down for me on the basis of an e-mail request in which I provided very few clues as to what I was looking for. I heard only a small bit at the end of the spot and didn't get around to sending my e-mail until the next day. If you listen to this spot, I think you'll see why I found it so engaging and right on the money.

It's tempting for those of us in the CorpCommBiz to chuckle at this and say, "How true" and move on; I hope you'll take a moment to contemplate the horror beneath the humor. Maybe a dose of George Orwell would help:

"It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. "

or, further on:

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?"

Where do we draw the line?

2005-11-08T22:24:00.000-05:00

Where do we draw the line between taking mild liberties with language and out-and-out lying? Eg., a company I once worked for "postponed" its annual conference following the 9/11 terrorist attacks (suggesting, of course, that the 2001 meeting would be rescheduled). When a former colleague (I had already moved on to new, if not greener, pastures) inquired when the event was being postponed to, she was told, "October 2002" -- the following year's regularly scheduled event. In truth, the 2001 event had been "canceled", not "postponed."

Now, this was not sloppiness. It was a deliberate misrepresentation. But no actual harm done, right?

Okay, now think of the common semantic maneuver, in which a company's offerings are said to "include" X, Y, and Z (suggesting, of course, that there are other offerings than X, Y, and Z that are being omitted simply for the sake of space or convenience), when, in fact, X, Y, and Z are all the offerings there are. You can substitute "accomplishments" or any other numerable positive item for "offerings." What matters is that "include" is being deliberately used to create a misleading effect. Any harm done there? Probably not, except for the fact that, now that everybody knows the trick, the lawyers require "including" to be superflously followed by "but not limited to".

It's "only" the language that is harmed. The words, as Tom Stoppard put it in The Real Thing, "have had their corners knocked off and are no good anymore."

Several posts ago, I blogged about the intimate connection between communication and ethics. I promised to get into the subject in more detail...a promise I have not yet kept. This is a conversation that should be started. It's a root issue.

Somewhere between suggesting and saying is an implied chasm that, I submit, is wholly imaginary. To deliberately misuse language in order to suggest something that it would be ethically wrong to actually say is unethical. The fact that no one loses a dime over a particular instance of it is irrelevant. It is the same long, slimy slide that got us to "It depends on what the meaning of the word `is' is." It's the adult equivalent of "My fingers were crossed, so it doesn't count."

Here's the pivotal question for the corporate communicator. If you accept my premise that such (mis)use of language is unethical--can you do your job ethically?

FREE BOOKS ONLINE!!

2005-11-04T23:50:00.000-05:00

No, this is not more Blogspam!

I just wanted to point out the additions to my link list at right: The entire texts of The Cluetrain Manifesto and Power & Accountability are available online for free. This is what makes the Worldwide Web great (incidentally, the Web is 15 years old this month -- it apparently was 15 years ago this month that Tim Berners-Lee published the first webpage). Happy reading, gang!

Update to Previous Post: "Euphemize"

2005-11-04T23:45:00.000-05:00

According to Dictionary.com, "euphemize" is a legitimate word, but not "euphemization" or, still worse, "re-euphemization".

Emerging "Dirty Word"; Jargon & Cliches

2005-11-04T22:37:00.000-05:00

True story: A CEO reviews a piece of writing (composed by someone else) that is being sent out over his signature. His only edit--replace the word "challenging" with "exciting". Maybe it's nothing, or maybe it is the beginning of an inflection point, the start of a euphemistic arc. What do I mean? Well, everyone knows (at least everyone who does corporatespeak for a living) that "challenging" is euphemistic code for "scary" or, at the very least, "problematic." The challenging thing about corporate euphemisms is that they have a useful life--once everyone knows what they mean they cease to be code and become synonymous with what they are intended to euphemize (Note to self: is "euphemize" a word? Look it up) "Challenging" is way overdue for re-euphemization. Will "exciting" be the new "challenging"? How long before "challenging" becomes a dirty word? How long before everyone knows what "exciting" really means...

For more on corporate dirty words, see my previous post In Defense of Some Dirty Words.

I was having an e-mail conversation today about corporate jargon, and I wrote the following, which the person I was corresponding with suggested I include in my next blog post, so here it is (somewhat edited, since much of the original would make no sense out of context):

"What’s really funny (at least to me) is that so many people seem blissfully unaware that corporate cliches are cliches at all. Don't they even listen anymore, or do they just let the noise wash over them? I recently got a genuine laugh when I used the phrase “open the kimono”—I mean a REAL laugh from more than one person! Then I was in a meeting and someone used “herding cats”—it got a similar reaction. The bar for corporate wit is that low. "

Now, I'll grant that what I do for a living may make me unusually sensitive to these distinctions. Here's the possibility that scares me...maybe the people laughing so hard at these hackneyed bits of corporatespeak really do know what they're doing. Maybe it's a kind of etiquette: "I'll laugh at yours if you laugh at mine; maybe we can convince ourselves that we're cleverly convivial."

Cliches serve a social purpose. They spare us from the burden of original thought.

Teaching

2005-10-14T06:02:00.000-04:00

Had great fun guest lecturing at FDU Wednesday night. Students were very active and engaged.

It was interesting to note what comments of mine generated flurries of note-taking--mostly those having to do with the potential of communication to have a "humanizing effect" on the corporation. Maybe it was a bit of hope and relief after watching The Corporation last week and having to write about it for this week's class. Gary Radford's Intro to Corporate Communications gives students a lot more to chew on and wrestle with than the version of the class I took as an MA student. Gary's critical, scholarly perspective, combined with the presentations of guest lecturers with many years working in the corporate trenches, creates much greater potential for thought-provoking discussion than the more "trade school-ish" approach pursued in similar programs elsewhere. There's a really nice balance of theory and practical insight. That the students respond to this was clear in the range of questions I received--from the eminently practical "will an MA increase my earning potential?" ("Probably not, but it could well be the factor that differentiates you from an otherwise equally qualified candidate") to questions about ethical dilemmas and why, after 20+ years in the business, I felt impelled to return to the classroom. Even among the students who didn't participate much, you could see the lights were on.

CHECK OUT MY BLOG SPAM!!

2005-10-11T06:29:00.000-04:00

I've begun receiving "comments" on my posts from "anonymous"--the latest attempting to generate interest in a psychic website. I guess it was inevitable. I'm not exactly disturbed by this...more curious and faintly amused...do any of these parasites actually wind up selling anything this way?

Follow-up to Friday's Post -- BBC, Bush, God & Iraq

2005-10-11T05:39:00.000-04:00

In response to his complaint to the BBC, re: its misleading press release ("God Told Me to Invade Iraq, Bush Tells Palestinian Ministers"), Steve Lubetkin received the following:

"Dear Mr Lubetkin

Thank you for your e-mail regarding a BBC Press release which was promoting a major three-part series on BBC TWO entitled 'Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs'.

I appreciate that you feel the paragraph which says "President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq" is misleading as when you read further you learn that the source for this revelation is a Palestinian leader and not the White House, I also understand that you feel Mr Bush's political and religious beliefs have no place in a BBC news release.

Please be assured that the Press Release was in no way meant to be misleading however your comments will be carefully registered on a daily log, which is made available to our programme makers and senior management.
Feedback of this nature helps us when making decisions about future BBC programmes and services and your comment will play a part in this process.

Thank you for taking the time to contact us with your views.

Regards

Jonathan Dunlop
BBC Information"

Okay, let's start at the top:

"I appreciate that you feel the paragraph which says `President George W Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq' is misleading as when you read further you learn that the source for this revelation is a Palestinian leader and not the White House..."

I'm glad Mr. Dunlop "appreciates" Steve's feelings--but he completely (and I can't help thinking deliberately) misses the point. Mr. Dunlop suggests that Steve is objecting to a paragraph that appears misleading until you read on. In other words, it's lack of effort on the part of the reader that makes the paragraph appear misleading.

Excuse me, Mr. BBC--we're talking about the headline and lead paragraph! As a representative of a reputable news organization, you certainly should know that the head and lead often are the only parts of a news story that get read. Yes, I know it's NOT a news story but a press release...and that distinction might hold water coming from some tech company hawking its latest cyber-widget (actually, it wouldn't, but I'll allow it for the sake of argument)...but the BBC is not selling widgets. Your press releases should -- and may be presumed to -- adhere to the same standards as your news copy. If you're selling news, it should be able to stand as news without being made misleading.

Let's move on...

"I also understand that you feel Mr Bush's political and religious beliefs have no place in a BBC news release."

Back to "understanding" Steve's "feelings", as if they--and not the BBC's shoddy PR practices--were the issue...

Here's what Steve said (bolding is mine):

"The BBC's reputation for journalistic integrity is severely damaged by this kind of hyperbole, and it could have been avoided if the press release writer had simply added the phrase, 'according to a Palestinian leader who claimed to have heard the statements.' The way it's written makes it look like the Beeb interviewed George Bush and he said these things to a BBC news team. It's misleading, and whatever you think of Mr. Bush's politics or religious beliefs, it has no place in a BBC news release."

It may take a bit of attention to keep track of the referent, but the "it" Steve refers to as having no place in a BBC news release is the "hyperbole", not Bush's political and religious views. If Bush's religious views were relevant to the news story, they are relevant to the press release--but don't make it appear that he said something unless you have it for attribution...or at least give him a chance to confirm or deny! Not having seen the BBC piece the press release refers to, I don't know if the White House had the opportunity to respond--if it had, some reference to it ought to have been in the release. In addition to being fair, it would have made the release more compelling.

The rest is just corporate mush and claptrap.

I don't know what's worse: A reputable news organization's PR department playing this sort of game (I wonder what the BBC's position is on the White House's use of video news releases, which got the administration so much heat last year--what's the difference, in principle?) or the fact that, rather than acknowledge their error they position a reader's legitimate, informed complaint as a matter of his "feelings". Or, perhaps, that this bit of gossip was the most newsworthy aspect of "a major three-part series" on the Arab-Israeli peace process.

Look, I know, PR people spin and hype--it's what they do. Been there. I also know, from the inside, that legitimate news organizations have nothing but contempt for such practices. News organizations are in the unique position of being able to set an example for PR practitioners as to what constitutes a credible approach to positioning a story. The BBC, by doing what "everyone else does," validates a scuzzy practice. Not only does this make the job of journalists more difficult--it also makes it harder for PR professionals who want to uphold solid PR standards within their organizations to justify taking the high road. "Come on, even the BBC spins..."

If You Want Media to "Get it Right", Don't Mislead

2005-10-07T06:26:00.000-04:00

So often, I've heard executives complain about how "the media just can't get it right"--meaning, the story that appeared in the press didn't match the spin in the company's press release.

The following (thanks to Lubetkin's Other Blog for pointing it out) is a particularly egregious example of why journalists (good ones, anyway) exercise a healthy disregard for what appears in press releases:

God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers

Since Steve Lubetkin brought it to my attention, I'll let him spell it out for you:

"The lead of the breathless press release states that 'President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals. ' Wow, I knew GWB was religious, but I didn't know he was messianic in that way!

But wait, this is pure hype and editorializing by the BBC.When you read further, however, you learn that the source for this amazing revelation is actually one of the Palestinian leaders engaging in some tasty hearsay. This didn't come from the White House.

The BBC's reputation for journalistic integrity is severely damaged by this kind of hyperbole, and it could have been avoided if the press release writer had simply added the phrase, 'according to a Palestinian leader who claimed to have heard the statements.' The way it's written makes it look like the Beeb interviewed George Bush and he said these things to a BBC news team. It's misleading, and whatever you think of Mr. Bush's politics or religious beliefs, it has no place in a BBC news release. "

Is such hyperbole effective? The BBC story certainly did get press. Here are two examples, one from CNN and one from Xinhuanet.

But as Steve correctly points out, BBC doesn't gain any points for credibility--at least not among credible news outlets.

In Defense of Some "Dirty Words"

2005-10-05T19:27:00.000-04:00

No, not the ones you can't say on T.V.

I shouldn't have been surprised, in these days when everything corporate is supposed to be "strategic", but it recently was brought to my attention that "tactics" and "tactical" are among the dirty words in the corporate lexicon.

I'd just written an article for internal distribution that referred to a cross-organizational team I described as "developing the strategies and tactics" associated with a particular corporate initiative. The relevant paragraph was rewritten by an executive to expunge all references to tactics. No one wanted to be associated with anything tactical.

I should have anticipated this. One of my more culturally attuned colleagues frequently referred to any project that he deemed beneath his talents as "tactical." "It's just so tactical" is a phrase I've heard more than once from him.

"Strategy" may be defined as the general scheme of the conduct of a war, "tactics" as the planning of means to achieve strategic objectives. In the end, the distinction is a matter of scale and timeframe. The general may consider his role strategic and the captain's tactical; but, from the captain's point of view, achieving all of his tactical goals certainly involves strategic thinking and activity. Similarly, the "strategic" general operates at a tactical level relative to the commander-in-chief. So, is the president the ultimate strategist? Anyone who has to contend with changing circumstances and shifting alliances at local, national, and global scales necessarily must think strategically and tactically--either in turn or simultaneously.

The distinction between strategy and tactics is not as clear as those who use the words would have you believe. It is a useful distinction, up to a point; but, like all types of binary thinking, it can be limited and limiting, particularly when we let ourselves believe it is more than a verbal convenience.

Why does this distinction matter to corporate communicators? Because--like everyone else in the corporate world--we are under pressure to work within the strategic/tactical dichotomy. Is your work strategic or tactical? Proactive or reactive? If we embrace one and eschew the other, we fall into a ditch. This is true for everyone in the corporate world, but particularly for us because we operate across our organizations, frequently within the gaps created by more clearly defined job descriptions.

More on this later...

Death Sentences

2005-10-03T22:09:00.000-04:00

The full name of the book is Death Sentences: How Cliches, Weasel Words, And Management-Speak Are Strangling Public Language. Written by Don Watson (described on the jacket as "one of Australia's best-known writers and public intellectuals") and published by the people who brought us Lynne Truss's brilliant Eats, Shoots & Leaves, this book should be an undiluted delight for those of us who work in corporate communications and nevertheless continue to love the English language.

It should be, but is not.

The book begins promisingly enough:

"This book was not written by a linguist on behalf of the language, or by a grammarian on behalf of grammar.... The book is written from my experience as a writer and a reader and, if it is written on behalf of anyone, it is the people who have to write and read and listen to our public language every day of their lives. It is an argument on behalf of what these days are called the stakeholders."

After a brief autobiographical excursion (Watson was a speechwriter for Australia's former prime minister, Paul Keating, as well as several CEOs), he launches a series of eloquent jabs at PowerPoint, Total Quality Management, bureaucracies, lawyers, and politicians. Watson is as well-read as he is eloquent. He sprinkles his prose with quotes from Martin Heidegger, Karl Kraus, George Orwell, and many others and manages not to sound pedantic.

My suspicions should have been raised by the fact that the book begins with a Preface, followed by an Introduction. Bear in mind that this is not a long book. It is all of 173 pages, including the Conclusion, Glossary, Acknowledgements, and Bibliography. Such padding seems particularly sad as you begin to see that Watson is not a "fatty" writer. In fact, he throws away many promising ideas, as if they were incidental, that could have become chapters of a better-organized book than this one.

For example:

"Implicit in the recruiting of wordsmiths to the political and corporate cause is the notion that writing is an activity distinct from thinking.... Government and corporate powers go on thinking in what they imagine are the only ways for governments and corporations to think, and employ writers to tinker with the words. The next generation may not believe that there was a time when people in business and government were able to think and write at the same time."

This is just left hanging, a tantalizing shred flapping in Watson's stream of consciousness.

This lack of structure or design may be the first maddening thing to strike me about the book. For the life of me, I can't figure out why the chapters appear in the order in which they do--nor can I suggest a better order. This is because they are not chapters. They are not even essays. Despite Watson's assertion that he has an argument to make, I see none--only a rant. Yes, Don, I agree with you--bad writing is bad, and the rotten writers outnumber you and me by a lot! Why is it so? And, more important, what can we do about it?

And here comes the second maddening thing about Death Sentences. Despite Watson's apparent knowledge of history--despite his frequent invocations of Orwell--he seems to believe sincerely that the decay of public language is rooted in the Reagan and Bush presidencies and supply-side economics. With the exception of one poke at Hillary Clinton (in the name, I suppose, of "balance"), most of the barbs in Watson's quiver are reserved for the current U.S. president and Australian prime minister. There might be an interesting case to be made, but Watson doesn't make it. Once again, he doesn't argue--he only rants.

And this is the most frustrating thing about Watson's book. There is nothing in it to disagree with. You can take or leave his politics according to your own preference, but his basic premise--that the degradation of our language by our corporate and political leaders is a bad thing that should be resisted--is not going to rouse anyone to outrage who is not already there. He is preaching to the converted.

When Lynne Truss tells you why commas matter, you can agree, disagree, or dismiss--but you have to listen and think before you do so. She gives the reader more to chew on in her book on an essentially trivial subject than Watson does when he writes on a topic that is of utmost concern. The trouble with Death Sentences is that it doesn't know whether it wants to be a book or an essay--and it winds up being neither.

A Truly Frightening Technological Development

2005-10-02T10:18:00.000-04:00

See this, from CNN.com:

"Two German students have created a device that will stop beer lovers having to get out of their seats for a refill.

The "smart" beer mat, created by Matthias Hahnen and Robert Doerr from Saarland University in Saarbruecken, southwest Germany, can sense when a glass is nearly empty, sending an alert to a central computer behind the bar so waiters know there are thirsty customers.

The students' supervising professor, Andreas Butz, told CNN the plastic beer mat had sensor chips, which measured the weight of the glass, embedded inside. When the weight of the glass drops to a certain level, the sensor chips detect that it is close to empty and alerts the bartender via a radio signal.

"You could have hundreds of beer glasses in the bar and the beer mat would, for example, tell the bartender, 'table 14 needs a refill,' " Butz told CNN."

Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

"Dude...you have to come down to this place, they've got these really cool beer mats..."

Right. And by the time it's caught on, it's too late. The damage has already been done.

No more need for bartenders and waitpersons who actually pay attention and kill potentially productive time idly chatting up the customers, getting to know them, maybe even care about them. No more conversation, no more relationship...

Anyone who thinks going to a bar is about seamlessly efficient service is already one of the "undead".

If these German students have their way, going to a bar will become as pleasant as the checkout lane in your local supermarket. Remember when cashiers smiled and chatted with you? Remember when they knew how to make change and speak your language, or at least cared enough to make a pleasant attempt? No need anymore. They now are barely necessary, thoroughly interchangeable conduits in a meangingless commercial transaction.

And when the computer goes down, nobody knows what to do. It's break time...

The next step will be to have a single bar supervisor who oversees a stream of customers who go behind the bar to mix their own drinks from computerized spigots that measure out the shots, tally the cost, and charge it directly to your account. No more bartenders, no more cute waitstaff to flirt with...and will this fleshless efficiency lead to cheaper draughts? If you believe that, I've got some waterfront property in New Orleans you might be interested in. But I can guarantee you that we still will be expected to tip.

This is the transmission model of communication taken to its logical, horrifying conclusion. Going to the pub is all about getting the beer from tap to toilet in the fastest, most efficient manner. Hey, there's a thought...you walk into the pub and are automatically fitted with a catheter....

This Time I Mean It

2005-09-28T18:50:00.000-04:00

No excuses...despite having a perfectly fine new computer, I haven't blogged in months. In fact, the only thing that got me off my duff this time was Gary Radford's telling me that he had assigned his students in "Intro to Corp Comm" a number of blogs to read, including mine. Yikes! I'm going to be lecturing to those students in a few weeks--can't have their first question be: "Why don't you keep your damn blog up?"

I'm going to be speaking on the subject of "Corporate Communications: Discipline or Job Description"? This goes back to when I was finishing up my MA and several of my fellow students and I were trying to persuade (okay, bully) Gary into initiating a Phd. program in Corporate Communications. Seemed strange that there was no such thing anywhere. During one of these sessions, Gary announced (as if it were the most obvious thing in the world) that "corporate communications isn't a discipline, it's a job description."

Sometimes a statement like that gets stuck in your head and you can't let it go. I've been in corporate communications in some form or another for more than 20 years, during which time I've had many job titles--media relations manager, managing editor, director of employee communications--all of which have had job descriptions associated with them. But "corporate communications"--isn't that larger than any of these job descriptions, inclusive of all of them and more? In short, a discipline?

Seems to me like the most obvious thing in the world--until I really stopped to think about it. Of what does this discipline consist? What, that is, that differentiates it from the discipline of "communications". Isn't corporate communications simply the application of the discipline of communications in a corporate context?

Yeah, but, yeah, but....answers met objections that raised more questions whose answers met more objections....where will it end?

Niels Bohr said, "The opposite of a correct statement is an incorrect statement; the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." I think something like Bohr's observation may be at work here. And I have to pull a lecture on this together in a couple of weeks--what have I gotten myself into?

Back in the Saddle...

2005-05-11T21:01:00.000-04:00

...after a prolonged period sans computer (corrupted hard drive), I'm ready to blog again.

Here's what (among many other things) has been driving me nuts: all these stories about the price of gas at the pump, none of which explain the cost in inflation-adjusted dollars. This is bad enough, but an article in today's USA Today (Prices at Pump May Have Peaked) notes that its numbers are "not adjusted for inflation"--but fails to say what the inflation-adjusted numbers are!

So, what does gas cost in inflation-adjusted dollars? According to inflationdata.com:

"Even though a gallon of unleaded in the US has shot up 21 cents per gallon recently...

And gasoline is fast approaching the peak prices seen during both Gulf Wars...

Though many in the press are claiming that gas prices are at an all time high...

When adjusted for inflation, it is clear that gasoline prices are far below the 1981 inflation-adjusted peak of $2.94."

The gas price story (as generally told) is the business news equivalent of the Michael Jackson trial or the "runaway bride". It's entertaining spin, disguised as news.

What else? Oh, check out my good friend Robert George of the New York Post on Ariana Huffington's new blog:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/2005/05/lampleyyork-smackdown.html

This Friday is Gary Radford's shindig for friends and supporters of the MA in Corporate & Organizational Communications at Fairleigh Dickinson University, featuring music by Radford's band, The Professors.

Communication for Its Own Sake

2005-04-13T06:21:00.000-04:00

At the last Executive Lecture, Tom Hoog of Hill & Knowlton said, in effect, that corporate communication "for its own sake" is a waste of time. This position is at the crux of corporate communication theory and practice. It is the issue. Is communication in all its forms a strategic tool or a core competency, a good in itself that contributes to the overall health of the organization?

When I was teaching a class in public relations at Mercer County Community College recently, I had the opportunity to explore with my students the relationship between ethics and credibility and how these tie in with the practice of corporate communication. Over the next few posts I'll try to unpack these relationships and clarify them. Ethics tends to be treated as some kind of abstract good (a "noble goal"--ie., irrelevant) or to be justified as a means to an end (eg., managing reputation); credibility is treated pragmatically: if you are not perceived as credible, no one will believe you and your reputation will suffer, with everything that entails. True enough. But this link between ethics and credibility--and their being bound up in communication, as well as being goods in themselves--this is something I have not yet seen explored.

Final Schering-Plough Executive Lecture

2005-04-03T22:14:00.000-04:00

We had three outstanding speakers for the final S-P Executive Lecture in our series. The speakers were:

Barie Carmichael, until recently a partner with the Brunswick Group, LLP. Barie spoke about her experience in crisis management, particularly her role at Dow Corning during silicon breast implant controversy;

Camilla Jenkins , Vice President of Corporate Communications at Fujifilm USA. Camilla oversees Public Relations, Corporate Contributions and Community Relations, Financial Relations, Environmental and Safety Affairs, Consumer Information Services, Internal Communications, Website Operations, Corporate Sponsorships, and Airship Operations; and

Thomas W. Hoog , chairman (retired) of Hill & Knowlton USA and a member of the company’s Worldwide Executive Committee. Hoog led the U.S. firm during an era of unprecedented growth, both through the development of its internal resources and through acquisitions.

Highlights:

Barie talked about viewing crisis "through the windshield" (as opposed to "the rearview mirror"). This sounds really cute, but in fact she provided an excellent case study of Dow Corning's experience (failures, as well as successes) during the breast implant controversy. She also talked about the need for companies to identify their potential negatives because, as they grow more successful, the greater the danger from those negatives becomes. If a company, for example, is exposed on an environmental front, this exposure only grows greater as the company becomes more successful, unless it does something in advance to mitigate that exposure.

Barie and Camilla both talked about the importance of engaging credible third parties to address crises, making sure they are well informed. They were not just talking about the media--they were talking about analysts, experts, consumer advocates, and the like.

Hoog--who said he wanted to be a teacher when he started college but changed directions at his father's prompting--gave a really engaging speech. He's a natural teacher. The first part was largely textbook stuff, but well delivered. He talked a lot about the importance of research. He also talked about the need today for corporate communication professionals to specialize ("I couldn't get a job today," he said, "because I'm a generalist").

This position (in my humble opinion) deserves a load of caveats. He's probably right when it comes to getting hired and distinguishing oneself, becoming an "expert"...however, I worry about excessive specialization in this field. One of the benefits good corporate communicators can bring to the table is the ability to break down silos, not create new ones.

Hoog also talked about the need for corporations to create the position of chief communications officer--a senior-level post responsible for ensuring that marketing, public affairs, advertising, employee communications, corporate communications, media relations, etc., all are operating in synch and ethically.

So What?

2005-03-29T06:55:00.000-05:00

So, what does all this stuff about the origin of the modern sense of the word "communication" mean?

Words and usage evolve over time. But why do they evolve in one direction and not in another? And what is gained or lost as a result?

The shift from "communication" meaning "sharing" to meaning "transmission" (it seems to me) causes or reflects a separation of the participants in the process. What we share in common belongs to all--all have a stake in the outcome. When we simply transmit information to and fro, some kind of agenda on the part of the "sender" and "receiver" can be inferred. Maybe it's the same agenda, maybe not, but some opposition is created. It's us versus them, the few trying to persuade the many--it's debate, selling, marketing, advertising.

These and others--what I'll call forms of "strategic persuasion"--have come to dominate our notions of what constitutes communication. As a result, creation of new knowledge or new ways of thinking assumes a low priority. Is this something only idealists can mourn?

Let's bring this back to corporate communication. In a "knowledge economy" that values "idea creation" and "innovation"--does strategic persuasion add or subtract value?

Is It Communication? (Part 4)

2005-03-28T07:05:00.000-05:00

After writing my previous post, it occurred to me to look to Montaigne, who wrote his Essays a little more than a century before Locke, for some reference to "communication." After all, this is the man who invented the essay and who wrote on such varied topics as "Of Thumbs" (I'm not making this up), "Of the Resemblance of Children to their Fathers", "That to Study Philosophy is to Learn to Die", "Of Drunkeness," and so on....

Bear in mind, now, that I have not read Montaigne in the original French, so I'm counting on the translator (Donald M. Frame, Stanford University Press). In The Complete Essays of Montaigne (yes, the same Montaigne who wrote "Of Cannibals" and "How the Soul Discharges Its Passions on False Objects When the True Are Wanting"), I found two that touch lightly on the subject of communication.

The first is "Of Not Communicating One's Glory" (p. 187), which I thought would be an essay on modesty. Quite the contrary: after two paragraphs about how highly men value glory and reputation, Montaigne writes: "All other things can be traded; we lend our goods and our lives to the needs of friends; but to communicate one's honor and endow another with one's glory; that is hardly ever seen."

This is clearly not the modern sense of "to communicate." Whatever word Montaigne is using, Frame surely could have substituted with "share" to achieve the translator's goal (stated in his "Note on the Translation): "to capture in modern English not only [Montaigne's] meaning but also the living, natural quality of his style."

"Communicate" must have been the closest word in English for the verb that Frame translated into English. It also is interesting to note that Frame originally published his translation of Montaigne in 1957. Is it possible that this sense of the word "communicate" was sufficiently current five years before my birth that the translator would consider it "modern"? Hm....

This, I might add, is the only use of the word in the entire essay, apart from the title. The rest of the essay consists of examples of people who indeed shared their reputations with others (in the sense of letting others be glorified in their place). No sense of "transmission" here.

The only other use of the word "communication" that I was able to find in Montaigne was in "Of the Art of Discussion." Only one use of the word in a 17-page essay by this title. The use is interesting:

"As our mind is strengthened by communication with vigorous and orderly minds, so it is impossible to say how much it loses and degenerates by our continual association and frequentation with mean and sickly minds. There is no contagion that spreads like that one." (p. 704)

Now, to our modern ears this sounds like communication as transmission--the analogy between communication and the spread of contagion (we might say, "communicable disease"). Is this citation a bridge to Locke's clear expression of the transmission model of communication a century later? I'm not so sure. How much traction had the germ theory of disease gained by the time Montaigne was writing? Were illnesses supposed to be transmitted from one body to another or shared through some vague, ill-understood process of "association and frequentation"? It's hard to say.

The difficulty of making this judgment should not distract, however, from the main point: that our modern sense of communication as transmission is not "given" in any sense other than being culturally given. It has evolved as it has because of specific cultural and socio-economic pressures on the language.

There is nothing wrong with this. There is no conspiracy. It's the way language works. The important thing to remember is that it could be otherwise. If conditions make this "commonsense" view of communication problematic, it can and probably will change.

Is It Communication? (Part 3)

2005-03-27T05:51:00.000-05:00

This from Radford ( On the Philosophy of Communication), pp. 16-17:

"The OED (1933) defines the modern transmission sense of the term `communication' as follows:

"The imparting, conveying, or exchange of ideas, knowledge, information, etc. (either by speech, writing, or signs). (Vol. II, p.700)."

Radford proceeds to point out that the first and earliest citation of "communication" being used in this sense is in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

This was simply amazing to me--that our "commonsense" way of talking about communication is not much older than the 1690s. Even if this way of thinking about communication predated Locke by hundreds of years, it remains a relatively young concept. Here are Locke's words:

"To make Words serviceable to the ends of Communication, it is necessary...that they excite, in the Hearer, exactly the same Idea, they stand for in the Mind of the speaker. Without this, Men fill one another's Heads with noise and sounds; but convey not their Thoughts, and lay not before one another their Ideas, which is the end of Discourse and Language."

This is as clear a definition of our modern sense of communication as one could find--and it's less than 400 years old! So, say people were using the word this way for 100 or 200 years before that...how did they describe communication before that? Or did "communication" even exist as a concept, apart from what we today would call forms of communication: storytelling, gossip, chat, poems, rumormongering, argument. And if speakers of English did not require a separate word to express the broad concept of "communication" before the 17th Century, we then have to ask--what changed in the 1600s to require the coining of this term in its modern meaning.

Bear in mind that the words "communication" and "community" both come from the Latin root meaning "to share or make common." It's interesting to note that the Greek root for the same concept is Koine--the name for the "common" Greek of the New Testament (as opposed to the highfalutin', fancy-schmancy Homeric Greek of the Iliad and Odyssey) and, I suppose, the source of our word, "coin." Communicate, community, coin, currency....

So, one might infer (please feel free to help me out with this...anyone?) that before the 17th Century, the word "communication", if it was used at all, would have carried with it a sense of community building, of things shared in common, perhaps the creation (as opposed to the "transmission") of mutually understood meanings.

More from Radford (p. 16):

"From the late seventeenth century, there was an important extension of the term to cover the means of communication. `Communication' was often the general abstract term for the physical facilities of roads, canals, and railways. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, "communications" came to refer to other means of passing information and maintaining social contact, such as the press and broadcast media."

So, here and elsewhere (see also, The Cluetrain Manifesto: "Markets Are Conversations"), we see the meaning of words related to communication evolving in line with the business and economic ecologies of the day. This is such an important point: The "commonsense" way we talk about something as apparently fundamental and intuitive as "communication" has been constructed over time in line with business imperatives. In this sense, all communication is corporate communication.

Somewhere along the way, things turned bass ackwards.

Is It Communication? (Part 2)

2005-03-24T07:27:00.000-05:00

Ask someone what "communication" is, and they will likely answer with examples: talking, writing, etc. Press further and ask what these activities have in common that makes them communication, and the answer will likely be some form of the "process model" of communication:

"I have an idea in my head that I want to share with someone, so I put it into words--through speech or writing--and transmit the idea, through words, to them. If they understand--that is, if the idea in their head matches the idea that started in my head--I have communicated successfully."

Does this description make sense to you? Probably. It is the dominant model for describing communication and, as such, we tend to accept it uncritically. It's "obvious" that something like a process of transmission occurs when we communicate. What most people don't realize is that this is not the only model of communication that exists and that it's not even particularly old. I'll get into this further, but for right now let me recommend Gary Radford's book, On the Philosophy of Communication, as a resource for understanding how the "process" or "transmission" model came to be dominant.

Here's what I'd like to explore over the next several posts: If communication is a deeper, richer concept than the dominant model suggests; if the dominant model, far from being a complete picture of communication, is really a limited and limiting construction--what are the implications for corporate communications as a discipline? If "communication" represents more than we perceive it to mean--because our model has prepared us in advance to perceive only certain aspects of it--what opportunities are we missing? And if "communication as process" turns out not to be a given, what happens to other givens, such as the need for corporate communication to be strategic in nature, maybe even to the notion that "corporate" communication is in any way different from (for lack of a better word) "ordinary" communication.

These are the sorts of questions that started me on this blog; funny that it has taken me about two months to get around to articulating them. Maybe this says something about communication. Maybe it just says something about me.

Is It Communication?

2005-03-23T18:51:00.000-05:00

What do the following have in common?

Public relations
Marketing
Selling
Persuasion
Media relations
Advertising
Investor relations
Community relations
Conversation
Discussion
Debate
Polemic
Rhetoric
Diatribe
Con job
Journalism
Storytelling
Preaching
Argument
Shouting
Sobbing
Management
Leadership
Negotiation
Joke
Teaching

Which ones are forms of communication? What makes them communication?

Corporate Reputation - Alsop - Laws 4 & 5

2005-03-23T06:57:00.000-05:00

Laws 4 and 5 in Ron Alsop's 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation--in my humble opinion--are the whole ball of wax:

Law 4: Live Your Values and Ethics

Law 5: Be a Model Citizen

Thought exercise: Name a company that adhered to these two "noble goals" and had its reputation suffer as a result. Some--ignoring the rest of the laws of "reputation management"--may not have gotten the "bang for their buck", may not have been able to justify their good behavior in bottom-line terms to shareholders; but neither, I'm sure, would they bear the brunt of popular cynicism: "Oh, sure, they gave millions to charity--that's all PR and tax deductions."

Charlie Young, Senior Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer at Tyco International, recently told graduate students at FDU's Schering-Plough Executive Lectures about how Tyco is working to rebuild its sullied reputation. One of the things that has kept Tyco going, Young said, is the vast number of really strong brands with solid reputations that are not associated in the public mind with Tyco and its problems. This is a really powerful point. All these companies, out there diligently doing their business without active "reputation management" from above, have propped this drunken giant up while it works to get its act together.

Dana Milbank's article - Bias in the Blogosphere

2005-03-22T05:58:00.000-05:00

The following excerpt from theWashington Post article sited in my previous post makes the point pretty clearly:

"In political journalism, complaints from ideologically driven readers come with the territory; sometimes I've gotten dueling complaints that I have betrayed my conservative and liberal biases in the same story. But I think the growing volume and the vitriol of the bias accusations are part of a new -- and dangerous -- development.

Partisans on the left and right have formed cottage industries devoted to discrediting what they dismissively call the "mainstream media" -- the networks, daily newspapers and newsmagazines. Their goal: to steer readers and viewers toward ideologically driven outlets that will confirm their own views and protect them from disagreeable facts. In an increasingly fragmented media world, ideologues have already devolved into parallel universes, in which liberals and conservatives can select talk radio hosts, cable news pundits and blogs that share their prejudices."

If the point requires illustration, check out this post on a site called Here's What's Left

After characterizing Milbank as "one of the relatively few trustworthy mainstream reporters" and supporting all of Milbank's left-leaning points, the author goes on to blog:

"In too many places, Milbank's successful diagnosis decends into on-the-one-handism"

This because in the middle of his article, Milbank acknowledges that:

"Many on the left harbor their own fantasies that they consider fact -- about how Bush knew of 9/11 in advance, or how he was coached during one of the presidential debates via a transmitter between his shoulder blades."

Here's What's Left continues:

"this kind of on-the-one-handism is a net gain for republicans. Republicans have been trying to manipulate the media for years, and only recently has the left started to fight back. If both are just sides dismissed an "short-sided partisans" the insidiousness of the republican strategy goes unnoticed. And people will go on thinking whatever they want about the mainstream media."

Think of what the blogger is actually blogging: "balanced reporting benefits Republicans"--Rove would love that. And the big danger of balanced reporting? "People will go on thinking whatever they want." Gasp.

Look, the notion of journalistic balance is anathema to the far Left and the far Right, which is just fine in the blogosphere. Let the extremes crystallize the issues and clarify their objections (just beware because they do tend to play fast and loose with the facts). Just don't sell the farm based on what you read there.

If the mainstream media are doing their job well, the extremes will be perpetually pissed at them. Unfortunately, the converse is not true: just because the Left and Right are pissed at the MSM doesn't mean the MSM are doing their job well. THAT (not bias in the Blogosphere) is what is really scary to me.

Lubetkin & George Follow-Up

2005-03-21T06:02:00.000-05:00

The podcast of Saturday's Schering-Plough Lecture can be heard at Steve Lubetkin's blog.

After listening to Steve Lubetkin and Robert George discuss (among other issues) media bias, you may want to read this relevant Washington Post article:

My Bias for Mainstream News
By Dana Milbank
(Sunday, March 20, 2005; Page B01)

Schering-Plough Lectures - Lubetkin & George

2005-03-19T23:40:00.000-05:00

The Schering-Plough Executive Lectures resumed today at FDU, with excellent presentations by Steve Lubetkin of Lubetkin & Co. and Robert George of The New York Post. Excellent speeches individually, terrific chemistry between two speakers who had never met before this morning, and the students were truly engaged. Making things more interesting, Steve recorded the session on his i-Pod (Steve, if you're reading this, please correct me as necessary on the tech stuff) and will Podcast it from his blog

Where to start?

Steve is a PR pro who had a front-row seat for two major bank mergers: FleetBoston's acquisition of Summit Bancorp, then Bank of America's acquisition of Fleet. Actually, the phrase "front row seat" is misleading...he was not in the audience--he was deeply involved in the communications efforts associated with both transactions. Before restarting his communications consulting practice in December 2004, he led the national media relations team for the Consumer Segment of BoA through the merger integration. From March 2001 to April 2004, he was Vice President and Director, Corporate Communications, for Fleet Bank’s New Jersey and Pennsylvania franchise.

Full disclosure: Steve is a friend and colleague of mine. We worked together briefly at Standard & Poor's, then, years later, he hired me to work with him at Summit and asked me to continue on at Fleet. I've always been impressed by Steve's technical PR skills and the personal qualities that distinguish him from the pack. These qualities were the reason I recommended him as a speaker for the Schering-Plough series, the theme of which is "Business, Media, and Ethics".

Steve spoke eloquently on PR Ethics, using the PRSA Code of Ethics as a springboard. He spoke at length about the controversy in the media about the Bush Administration's use of video news releases. He put this tempest in a teapot into context, citing past administrations' use of VNRs and other PR tools and techniques; the double standards applied to VNRs versus print and audio press releases; and the hypocrisy (my word, not Steve's) of the mainstream media's finger-wagging at what is, at the end of the day, a case of their own failure to live up to basic standards of diligence (you can read Steve's own views about this controversy on his blog.

Robert George is Associate Editorial Page Editor for the New York Post . He also is a columnist for National Review Online and a regular CNN contributor. He served in a variety of communication roles for the Republican National Committee and has held sideline occupations as a researcher, disk jockey and free-lance writer. He is an Adjunct Fellow with the Center For New Black Leadership, a national African-American advocacy group exploring entrepreneurial and free-market issues, and Third Millennium, an organization dedicated to multi-generational public policy issues.

Full disclosure: Robert is a longtime friend of mine, beginning with our time at St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. I recommended him as a speaker for this series because of his experience in both the political and the media spheres, which I felt would make him a compelling speaker on the extent to which those spheres intersect.

Robert did a really nice job of tracing the origins of the view held by both the Left and the Right that the mainstream media are hopelessly biased against them. He sees the media as being enmeshed in a credibility crisis, created in part by such outright abuses (my words, not Robert's) as the Jayson Blair case; the aggressive scrutiny of the mainstream media by the blogosphere; and the pressures fostered by the ever-shortening newscycle and an increasingly entertainment-oriented business model.

The session became particularly interesting when the speakers opened up for questions and discussion. What an energetic group of students. When I was in the MA program and took Executive Lectures, I was one of a small number of students who ever spoke. I don't think there's a student in this series who does not regularly engage the speakers. Today, the conversation spanned issues from digital photo retouching (Martha's head on a different body, OJ's complexion darkened to make him look more sinister) to speculation as to the future impact of communication technology on our culture (New tribalism? A Digital Dark Ages? Or maybe the seeds of a rediscovery of discourse?) Gary Radford sees the crisis described by Robert and Steve as evidence of the "postmodern condition".

WSJ - "The Numbers Guy"

2005-03-17T21:59:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal 's The Numbers Guy column has an interesting discussion of the "Truth" antismoking ads:

Is the 'Truth' Campaign
Being Truthful in Its Stats?
By CARL BIALIK
March 18, 2005

The "Truth" antismoking television ads are edgy and attention-grabbing. Showing young people rebelling against big tobacco companies, they stand out from more polite public-service spots and have received critical acclaim. But do they prevent teenagers from smoking?

The group behind the ads, the American Legacy Foundation, says it is responsible for 300,000 fewer youth smokers, citing a recent study. If true, that would be a significant achievement for the organization, which is funded with money from the settlement between states and tobacco companies.

The American Legacy Foundation paid for the research that came up with the 300,000 number -- a point that much press coverage has failed to emphasize or even mention. And the news couldn't have come at a better time for the group: It is looking for new funding now that it has received what may be its last payment from the settlement, and it is fighting tobacco-industry lawsuits aimed at shutting it down. In an interview, Cheryl Healton, president and chief executive of the Washington-based organization, said of the figure, "We will use it anywhere and everywhere" -- including in court defenses, to seek more funding, and possibly even in a future ad touting the "Truth" campaign's effectiveness. The group was created following the tobacco settlements, and also funds other antismoking campaigns.

****

This particular column--like all of Bialik's columns--does a really nice job of laying out the sorts of considerations that must be kept in mind when reading about "the latest study" on any topic.

Words, words, words

2005-03-15T22:25:00.000-05:00

The longer I'm in the corporate world and the higher I climb in the hierarchy, the more I'm seeing this impatience with words, sentences, written narrative of any kind. I asked a colleague recently to provide "a few sentences" on a subject in which he is quite knowledgeable. The next day, I received from him an e-mail containing five bullet points (entirely empty of context) and the following in the subject field: "I find writing sentences to be so fifth grade." Another colleague expresses frustration with those of us who work with words--the time spent getting the words right, the shades of meaning that elude (or at least fail to interest) him.

Is it a coincidence, then, that the longer I'm in the corporate world and the higher I climb in the hierarchy, the less anyone seems to understand each other or to be capable of the sort of collaboration and cooperation we insist upon from fifth graders?

Wittgenstein

2005-03-15T05:28:00.000-05:00

Have not been able to track down the actual Wittgenstein quote I mangled in my previous post. I'm sure I'm not making it up, but I'm equally sure I haven't captured it. In the meantime:

"Of what we cannot speak we must be silent"

Wittgenstein, Tractatus, final sentence.

Corporate Reputation - "Learning to Play to Many Audiences"

2005-03-14T06:05:00.000-05:00

Ron Alsop's book--The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation--Chapter 3, p. 38:

"First of all, it is critical to determine precisely who your stakeholders are and play to them in different ways at different times."

Let's unpack this:

1. Determine precisely who your stakeholders are. This is unquestionably essential. And can be more easily said than done. Anyone who has a stake in your organization can help or hurt it in many ways.

2. Play to them in different ways at different times. This, to my mind, is the difference between having a solid reputation based on a record of behavior and "managing" your reputation. While trying to please all of the people all of the time is impossible, the appearance of talking out of both sides of your mouth is sure to kill you. There will be times when the interests of your stakeholders are in conflict: stockholders and consumers, consumers and employees, you name it. "Reputation" (as contrasted with "image") consists in being known for doing difficult things and owning them...clearly communicating to all stakeholders why you're doing what you're doing and showing them why doing so is ultimately in the interest of all. A short-term hurt can mean a long-term help...or an action that will cause trouble down the road may be essential for survival, and if we work together we can remediate these difficulties. This is not easy.

Alsop acknowledges this difficulty and the danger of sending "competing signals" (p. 40), but his solution is to "prioritize stakeholders by importance" (p. 41)."This pyramid will vary by company and industry, and, for multinational companies, the most significant stakeholders may not be the same in all countries."

This sounds self-evident, and herein lies the rub--in the era of the Internet and 24-hour news, "managing reputation" across diverse stakeholder groups almost inevitably will lead to a perception of hypocrisy. Principled management of behavior may cost you the support of some stakeholders (maybe even important ones, for a time); but--if all else is equal--it should lead to a strong reputation for the long term.

Reputation...reputation management....marketing...brand...

What was it Wittgenstein said? Something like: "Why we use this word rather than that word or some other word is an interesting question."

Daniel Okrent

2005-03-12T08:41:00.000-05:00

From Editor & Publisher

Daniel Okrent's Next Stop: A Harvard Fellowship
By Joe Strupp
Published: March 10, 2005 updated March 11, 10:30 AM ET

NEW YORK -- As The New York Times remains mum on who will succeed Public Editor Daniel Okrent when his contract ends May 31, Okrent's next stop is a bit clearer: a fellowship at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on The Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Here's the link:

www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000836081

Given the circumstances under which the Times appointed its first "public editor" (readers' ombudsman)--a direct response to the Jayson Blair mess--it will be very interesting to see who replaces Okrent.

Michael Jackson's PJs

2005-03-11T07:09:00.000-05:00

Everyone knows about Michael Jackson arriving late to court in his PJs.

Does anyone know what his alleged victim testified on the same day?

This guy plays the media like a harp.

What do we learn from this event? Annoying the judge is less important than "controlling the message." The court of public opinion matters more than the court of law. Clearly, Martha knows this as well.

Google Toolbar/Search Engine Hegemony

2005-03-10T05:18:00.000-05:00

Walt Mossberg's column in today's Wall Street Journal (Google Toolbar Inserts Links in Others' Sites, And That's a Bad Idea March 10, 2005; Page B1):

"A new feature of the company's popular Google Toolbar for the Internet Explorer browser actually adds links right into the body of any Web page. The links lead to Google's own map site or to other sites Google selects.

Google notes that this feature, called "AutoLink," makes it easier for users to look up certain information. It also is strongly reminiscent of a Microsoft gambit of a few years back in which the software giant planned to program Internet Explorer to automatically add its own links to others' Web sites. Microsoft was forced to drop its "Smart Tags" feature after Web site owners and others complained.

The Google feature is more benign than Microsoft's for several reasons. Still, the way it is being implemented is a bad idea. If it takes hold, it would start the Web down a slippery slope where no owner of a Web site could ever be sure that readers had a chance to view its pages in the way they were composed."

The feature is part of a beta, or test, version of the third edition of Google's popular toolbar, which installs itself as a part of Internet Explorer and is used by millions of people.

I have to agree with Mossberg's conclusion:

"I take a back seat to nobody in favoring user convenience, but, as with most things in life, every principle must be balanced against others. In this case, that balancing principle is the right of Web publishers to control the content and appearance of their own sites. Users wouldn't benefit if the Web became a sea of uncertainty, where anybody could alter every Web page."

The power of the search engine (and the fact that Web Darwinism virtually guarantees that only one or two players--those best able to deliver "eyeballs" to advertisers) is being captured and harnessed by advertisers. The day will certainly come when ordinary users have to pay premium prices for what they used to get for free--the ability to browse the web for information based on its relevance to them, not the ability of commercial entities to "optimize" their sites for Google.

I'm not outraged by this. It's capitalism. But I won't cooperate with it by putting such a toolbar on my screen.

Who will come along and provide a Web Tivo that screens out and isolates commercial messages so the Web searcher can read or skip them according to their desire?

Question for future posts: Capitalism and commercialism--are they inextricably linked? Or can we have the virtues of capitalism (the unfettered exchange of value for value between seller and buyer) without the vices of commercialisms (every surface an advertisement)?

Corporate Reputation/PR - Semantics

2005-03-09T07:31:00.000-05:00

One benefit of "Corporate Reputation" vs "Public Relations" is that, semantically, it puts the emphasis on a result (reputation), rather than on an activity (relations, whatever that is). This suggests CR is strategic, while PR (and Marketing, Advertising, etc) is more tactical. All of these "communication practices" could fall under the strategic umbrella of "reputation management."

"Reputation Management" puts the focus back on an activity, hence on tactics--measurement and management.

Does "reputation" mean something different when talking about a person's reputation versus that of a company or organization? Does a person of good reputation (the kind that doesn't crack under scrutiny) "manage" his reputation? Or does he, rather, manage his behavior in line with a certain code of conduct that ultimately leads to a strong reputation?

These are the discussions you won't hear or have in the "real" world. Or, if you do, their impact will be extremely limited. "Distinctions without a difference." "Noble goals."

Blog Stuff

2005-03-09T06:09:00.000-05:00

Damn! Conked out early last night and missed the Nightline segment on blogging. Anyway, here's the promo I received on it:

IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM, BLOG 'EM
March 8, 2005

Got something to say? Got access to the Internet? You're one
step away from being a blogger. And these days, bloggers are
having an affect on politics, news, on everything, really. And
blogs are changing the way we do news. There's no doubt about
it.

I check several blogs a day. Some on politics, some on
technology and some journal blogs written by my friends. It's
become part of my daily routine, like reading the paper in the
morning.

So what are blogs? Turns out that although 8 million have
created blogs, 62 percent of Americans who use the Internet
don't know what a blog is. That's according to the Pew Internet &
American Life Project. And in an age where blogs are
fundamentally changing the nature of news, we thought we'd tell
you the story about the beast of blogging.

In case you're part of that 62 percent, blogs are online journals.
They are places on the Internet where anyone can have a voice
about, well, just about anything. If that definition seems vague,
that's because the nature and rules of blogging are being defined
more and more every day.

Blogs have been credited with bringing attention to news that the
mainstream media (called by bloggers "MSM") is slow to report,
or would otherwise ignore. Think of the cases of Sen. Trent Lott,
CBS' Dan Rather, CNN's Eason Jordan, among many others. But
blogs don't only bring attention to comments made by those in
the spotlight; they can also affect your privacy. How?

Well consider this. You're at a party and a blogger overhears
your conversation with someone. That person then writes about
your conversation, using your name, in his blog. Well, anytime
your name is searched on the Internet, that blog will appear with
your comments made at that party. Is that fair? The blogger
doesn't even have to identify him or herself. Or his sources.

Not yet anyway. A California judge is considering a lawsuit
brought by Apple Computer against three bloggers who have
published information on unreleased Apple products. The
bloggers refuse to disclose the identity of their sources (who are
likely Apple employees) and are asking for the same legal
protection as journalists. Under the California Shield Law,
journalists don't have to reveal their sources. Do the same laws,
rules, codes of conduct of journalists apply to bloggers? Not yet.
Should they?

Tonight, correspondent John Donvan will tell the story about a
high school teacher whose blog led to political change in her
state. Tonight's piece is a fascinating one. Turns out that as John
and producer Elissa Rubin were conducting interviews with
bloggers, they were being blogged. The bloggers had some
interesting opinions, to say the least.

And as this program airs (and this e-mail is read by viewers),
there's no doubt that bloggers will blog about it.

We hope you'll tune in, along with the bloggers.

Zena Barakat & the "Nightline" Staff
ABC News Washington Bureau

Chat with "Nightline" guests and find articles, transcripts and
video excerpts on our Web site at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/

Here, too, is an AP story that appears on the Nightline site:

White House Admits First Blogger to Briefing

Corporate Reputation (Part 2)

2005-03-08T05:55:00.000-05:00

In the previous post, I expressed a "vague disquiet" over the notion of reputation as something that needs to be "managed." It's beginning to seem to me that "reputation management" may simply be the new word for "public relations"--arising only because PR has become inextricably bound up with the notion of spin, manipulation (kind of the way "PR" replaced the once-respectable term of "propaganda.")

Language may be the foundation of our reality, but there must be more to it than simply changing the words we use. If "reputation management" is just PR with a more stylish haircut, then we've gotten nowhere.

Questions for Alsop:

How does "reputation" differ from "brand"?
Is "reputation management" substantively different from PR or just a different emphasis?

I'll keep track of these questions as I finish reading his book.

Corporate Reputation

2005-03-07T06:01:00.000-05:00

Reading Ron Alsop's The 18 Immutable Laws of Corporate Reputation. As good as Charlie Young said so far, nothing really to argue with...except this vague disquiet over reputation being something to be managed. Seems to me that once you begin managing your reputation, it becomes something more like "brand"--a self-conscious construct detached from any notion of reality. The fact that CEOs need to be talked into being concerned about their reputation and that of their company--that ROI and impact on cost of capital must be invoked to justify concern for reputation--seems a sad commentary. Is reputation a deliberate construct? Or is it the result of attention to standards of behavior? Is it an artificial armor or the thick, shiny coat of a healthy animal? In individuals, it seems to me, a strong reputation has more to do with what they do or don't do in private that contributes to strength of character that naturally manifests itself in public. Enron and Anderson had strong reputations until they fell. What made their reputations fall was the fact that they were built on sand.

I agree with Alsop that reputation must be measured. I also agree that the tie to business objectives must be made because, otherwise, reputation will be perceived by many CEOs as "fluff." What I worry about is the idea that this state of affairs is "immutable." I'm reminded of the saying of (I believe) Groucho Marx on sincerity. It went something like: "The most important thing is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made."

Language - Some Interesting Articles

2005-03-06T20:28:00.000-05:00

A couple of interesting articles in today's New York Times.

Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.?
by Elizabeth Van Ness.

"At a time when street gangs warn informers with DVD productions about the fate of "snitches" and both terrorists and their adversaries routinely communicate in elaborately staged videos, it is not altogether surprising that film school - promoted as a shot at an entertainment industry job - is beginning to attract those who believe that cinema isn't so much a profession as the professional language of the future." (bolding mine)

This idea of cinema as the "professional language of the future" rings some very scary bells for me--primarily because it rings so true. Does cinema (basically, emotionally charged images and sound)trump the written word (something linear, lasting, staying put and subjecting itself to reasoned analysis)? Yes, yes, film can be run over and over again and analyzed, but that is not the way it normally is used. It lacks the speed bumps inherent in writing. Film synthesizes; writing can synthesize--I'm thinking of fiction and poetry, but also persuasive, agenda-driven rhetoric--but it also can and should analyze. Images and music seduce in ways only the best creative writing can aspire to.

The War of the Words: A Dispatch From the Front Lines
by "public editor" (ombudsman) Daniel Okrent.

Okrent's column is relevant in this context. It is on the linguistic landmines inherent in news reporting, the difficulty in deciding when to use words like "terrorist" or "insurgent"; "reform"; genital "mutilation" (vs. "cutting"--would you refer to male circumcision as "mutilation"?); "media watchdogs" vs. "pressure groups."

If written language is so full of subtleties that lend themselves to agenda-driven manipulation, how much moreso cinema?

Daniel Okrent's blog

Discipline or Job Description?

2005-03-04T06:11:00.000-05:00

In a well-functioning organization, would there be a need for a "corporate communications professional" (as opposed to directors of PR, Marketing, Advertising, etc., reporting into the CEO or COO)? Phrased another way, is the title "Corporate Communications Director" a convenient catchall for a diversity of specific tactical functions? Is this person some kind of magical generalist who can "make things happen" using tools his "non-communications" colleagues don't understand? Or is there some unifying element, called "communication" that must be understood and harnessed in order to achieve success.

I'm betting that most who read these questions believe they have THE answer and that it is obvious. But I'd also be willing to bet that a serious discussion of this subject would prove the topic to be far richer and more complex than it appears on the face of it. This is one for Gary Radford and "Intro to Corp Comm".

Assorted Stuff - Staying on Track

2005-03-03T03:20:00.000-05:00

If 2x2 isn't enough for you, how about trying 10 x 10? As described on its About page:

"10x10™ ('ten by ten') is an interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the time. The result is an often moving, sometimes shocking, occasionally frivolous, but always fitting snapshot of our world. Every hour, 10x10 collects the 100 words and pictures that matter most on a global scale, and presents them as a single image, taken to encapsulate that moment in time. Over the course of days, months, and years, 10x10 leaves a trail of these hourly statements which, stitched together side by side, form a continuous patchwork tapestry of human life."

Also, while I'm at it, let me throw out a plug for Green Marketing. The firm's founder, Jacqueline Ottman, has been a speaker at the Schering Plough Executive Lectures
at FDU. Not only does she use her Marketing powers for good instead of evil, but she does so in a way that's totally cognizant of business realities. That, at least, is my humble opinion.

I want to get back to my line of thought on whether "communication"--properly understood--is ever truly "strategic" and whether what I'll cumbersomely call "strategic communication practices" (PR, Marketing, Advertising, Investor Relations, Branding, Reputation Management, etc.) have anything to do with communication at all. This is going to require diving into theory and into my own history...something I'm not prepared to do at 3:30 a.m., with deadlines from my "real job" beckoning. I'm writing this right now to keep myself on some kind of track, as well as to maintain (okay, "establish") the habit of sitting down to blog at least once in every 24-hour period. Oh, also, so I don't lose sight of this thought...I also want to write about what interests me most: the way in which (I believe) these strategic communication practices are affecting the way we think (or don't think) about communication. This actually will require more theory than I have at the moment, but I think it is THE issue. The reality constructed during our work hours defines our reality after hours (unless you're one of the fortunate few who manage to turn that around)...a big part of that is the way in which work structures our time, but a bigger and more subtle force is the way in which it structures our language habits and, thereby, our thought patterns.

I'm already way out beyond my headlights.

PowerPoint & the 2 x 2 Matrix

2005-03-02T06:00:00.000-05:00

In the March issue of Strategy + Business, Michael Schrage reviews The Power of the 2 x 2 Matrix: Using 2 x 2 Thinking to Solve Business Problems and Make Better Decisions, by Alex Lowy and Phil Hood, and Edward Tufte's The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. He also excerpts some interviews from Sociable Media, the blog of PPT defender Cliff Atkinson.

The whole PPT pro/con-fest has been done to death (most recently in my masters thesis), so I'll let it pass. The ubiquitous 2 x 2 matrix, however, managed to escape my radar screen until reading Schrage's review. You know what I'm talking about: a box subdivided into four quadrants. I'm going to have to buy the book, in spite of Schrage's caveat that the best part is the foreward by James Gilmore and Joseph Pine. "In a few hundred words, their ode to the 2x2 captures the essence of its appeal better than the 300+ pages that follow."

Highlights of Schrage's article:

"Yet the persistent presence of 2x2s as conceptual frameworks remains oddly dissatisfying. For example, why 2x2? You would think a 3x3 grid might have greater business appeal. For one thing, the tic-tac-toe layout is both familiar and easy to draw. Intriguingly, it offers something important that the 2x2 can't: a center.... That leap from four quadrants to nine squares offers..obvious opportunities for more nuanced categorization."

He plants the seed for the answer to "why 2x2?" earlier in the article:

"Leaders don't win arguments; they win commitment and support".

So, later, it makes perfect sense when he writes:

"The harsh corporate Darwinism of competitive rhetoric has ensured the survival of the 2x2 as the fittest way to frame a business concept. Maybe the 3x3's additional dimension simply demands too much additional cognitive complexity.... Perhaps the intrinsic dichotomy of two axes of opposites appeals to the minds of 2x2 creators and consumers in some mysterious way that psychologists will eventually discover."

It's Strategic--But Is It Communication?

2005-02-27T16:05:00.000-05:00

Another great Executive Lecture on Saturday at FDU. Dr. Gary Gumpert and Dr. Susan Drucker, partners in the firm Communication Landscapers, and Dr. Paul Power, Vice-President for Research at CBS Enterprises/King World Productions. A lot to digest and distill. The series is going beautifully, with a nice mix of academics, journalists, and corporate types. The students seem thoroughly engaged.

Which brings me back to where I left off my last post--what does the academic stuff (particularly the non-quantitative, more philosophical exploration) offer to the corporate practitioner? That's the real issue, isn't it? Does the critical academic perspective offer anything to the person "doing" corporate communications? What--if anything--does the strategic approach of the practitioner offer to academia? Should an MA program in corporate and organizational communication be a vocational program in how to write better press releases, memos, and marketing plans? Is there value in seeking to understand the social and philosophical underpinnings of our notions of communication? Does theorizing about communication (something "everybody" understands) amount to empty navel gazing?

When I was a student in the MA program and was trying, along with several other students, to persuade Dr. Radford to develop a Phd. program in corporate communication, he said something that crystallized the issue for me: "Corporate communication isn't a discipline; it's a job description." At the time, I thought this was just academic snobbery. It took a while of stewing over this statement for me to realize that it actually was a pretty elegant expression of the problem I've been struggling with throughout my career. The effects-driven, process-based model that pretty much defines corporate communication practice today places understanding communication--what it is and what its broader, non-strategic ramifications are--pretty low on the practitioner's priority list--"noble goals," as one of my colleagues says when he wants to dismiss something as irrelevant. Dr. Radford's statement turns out to be a restatement of my perennial gripe that executives "don't want to communicate; they want to appear to have communicated."

This is going to take more than one post to unpack. Suffice it to say for right now that when you step back from what we normally call "corporate communication" what you're really talking about are public relations, marketing, advertising, reputation management, crisis management...and probably several more discrete functions ("job descriptions") that can be defined in terms of processes and effects. They are strategic and tactical in nature.

What I've come to question is whether and to what extent these functions have anything to do with communication.

The Box (Part 2)

2005-02-24T21:28:00.000-05:00

So, what is this "box" we're all supposed to think "outside of"? Is this just a cute way of saying "be creative", "be original"?

If we really wanted people to be creative or original in their thoughts or actions, we would create environments (this goes for the corporate world, as well as the larger social and economic sphere) that don't punish creativity or originality. The fact of the matter is, we want people to be just creative enough and just original enough to capture and hold our attention. We want them to do little things really well, things that don't require us to step back and crane our necks to appreciate them. We want them to surprise, entertain, and amuse us by reframing what we already know.

So, are the people who ask us to "think outside the box" being disingenuous? I can't say for sure, but I doubt it. They're as tired of living "inside the box" as anyone else. What they don't "get" is that the box is all there is. "Thinking outside the box" is the adult version of the child's question, "What was there before the beginning of the universe?" The question should be unasked. There was no thing and no there and no before (since "before" presumes the existence of time, which is coextensive with the universe).

The "box" is our language, the sum total of all the discursive structures that enable us to perceive (or construct, depending on your perspective) reality.

This is all metaphysics, philosophy....what does it have to do with corporate communications?

Next post.

The Box

2005-02-24T04:59:00.000-05:00

"What's the most `outside the box' work you've ever done for a client?" my colleague asked the account representative who was hoping to do business with us.

The rep--an articulate young woman who, during the course of several phone calls and the current face-to-face meeting had impressed me as professional and knowledgeable--was brought to an uncomfortable halt. She thought for a moment, then gave a few examples that were not "outside-the-box" by any of our standards (including, it was painfully clear, her own), and then deftly managed to move the conversation to more comfortable ground. But the damage was done.

Later, my colleagues and I all had a smug chuckle over this person's inability to come up with even one truly "outside-the-box" example of her firm's work. In this single exchange, whatever credibility she might have built up was tarred by this failure. Clearly, she and her firm were hopelessly stuck inside "the box".

It took me a walk down to the cafeteria and half a cup of coffee to realize that the rep had been tripped up by the equivalent of "What's your greatest weakness?"--the job interview question with no inherently good answer, but one that you must have an answer to in your hip pocket; because, if you don't, you're presumed to have betrayed a deep character flaw: lack of introspection and honesty about your own shortcomings. We all know the trick--be prepared to either:

a) describe a weakness that is actually a strength taken to excess, or
b) acknowledge a weakness that is common to many people and describe how you've overcome it.

"Inside the box" is the worst thing you can be in business today. And if you ask the interviewer to say exactly what she means by "outside the box", you're only digging the hole deeper. This is because "outside-the-box" people "get it"--whatever "it" is...

How many more ways could the question have been asked? "What's the most creative or original work you've done?" "Tell me about a time you had to persuade a client to do something risky and it paid off." But these questions would have invited the conversation to continue.

The "outside-the-box" question is a conversation stopper because to answer it honestly would require a discussion of what the box is, what's inside and what's outside, and why outside is better than inside. Do I care if an idea is inside or outside this box? No, I care if it works...if it measurably advances my objective. But having a defensible answer to the question is the price of admission. Like "your greatest weakness", the question presumes to gauge the candidate's ability to think on her feet but really only tests the ability to anticipate the question and construct the answer in advance. It's like one of those standardized tests that test not one's knowledge but one's facility at taking tests.

The question also involves a presumption on the part of the questioner: that she would instantly recognize an "outside-the-box" proposal as being both "outside the box" and relevant to the problem at hand. After all, recommending that the CEO dress up in a chicken suit and molest cats certainly would be "outside the box"--but I can't imagine what business purpose it would serve. Is this merely lack of imagination on my part? Am I, like our poor account rep, hopelessly "inside the box"?

Or are we really looking for people just to peek outside the box? Maybe lift one of those flaps and create a window that lets us know what's going on outside but enables us--like the innocent children we are--to pretend the box is really a rocketship on its way to parts of the universe unknown?

Getting Started

2005-02-22T23:12:00.000-05:00

This is my first post to my new blog.

I hope this new medium will help me get my thoughts in order about this field I've devoted 20 years of my life to, as well as provide a useful forum for others who are interested in communication theory, corporate and organizational communication, journalism and media studies. Maybe this is the beginning of a doctoral dissertation--or maybe not.

So as not to commit professional suicide, I am going to steer clear of direct references to my current or any of my former employers. This is more easily said than done, given my subject; however, given my involvement on the board of advisors for the FDU MA program in corporate and organizational communication, my membership in the IABC, and my voracious and eclectic reading, I don't think I'll soon run out of things to blog about.