Feb 20 07
The Age of Candor and Accountability
By Renn Vara
Among my many jobs, I teach corporate leaders how to talk with the press. Recently, I’ve had to change my training focus.
Instead of preparing leaders for the traditional media interview with a newspaper, radio or television reporter, I’ve had to focus on the tactics and pervasiveness of bloggers, podcasters, and vidcasters. These are the folks who’ve declared themselves “journalists” and built audiences that consume their opinion as news.
Bloggers are everywhere. They rarely have credentials or pre-announce their agendas. They can be the guy who walks up to you at a conference and engages you in casual conversation or be the one who sends you an innocent email. Within minutes you find your words flying all over the internet.
Up until recently, I had looked at bloggers as irresponsible and unaccountable. But then I heard a speech by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. He explained how empowering the end user raises expectations of all society. It creates an age of candor and accountability.
Eric Schmidt sees a future where everyone is transparent. Where everything we say or do - or everything that is said about us - is findable in print, in audio and even video. As an example, he talks about snapping someone’s picture with a cell phone and immediately getting all types of background on the person just from the visual.
It’s frightening to think that everything said when you were young and stupid would be available to the whole world. No doubt that’s an issue that we’ll grapple with for years to come. But as Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has said for years, “There is no privacy so get use to it.”
But how should business deal with this transparency? The benefit to the end user is evident. They will have more information to make more intelligent decisions. For those businesses with good products and ethical behavior, there is nothing to fear.
And what does this mean to you and me as business people? Many of us spend tons of money writing and re-writing press releases, producing carefully edited videos, and sculpting our messages. We often run our words by legal departments for extra care.
Well, here’s a suggestion for you. Instead of fighting them, join them. Start your own blog, encourage your employees to create social networks to engage customers, peers, and each other. Create your own narrative in print, audio and video that’s based on candor and truth. Jump in. And convince your company to jump in as well.
That way when a blogger says something about your company, your products and services, or your ethics, the end user can also find out what you have to say. Who knows, you might be able to beat the blogger to the punch and say what you need to say to his audience before he does.
Remember, as Eric Schmidt says, this is the age of the end user. Be a part of the evolution, not a target for the blogger.
If you’re interested in some great examples of effective corporate blogs check out Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog at http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/ and NetApp co-founder Dave Hitz’s blog at http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/.
What I love about these is not only are they great “straight from the horse’s mouth” communications, but the voice and vision that comes through is so personal. It’s a far cry from the image of the stuffed shirt executive sitting in his massive office, poring over his stock options.
Great suggestions. I join in supporting these leaders communication efforts. The future is now. Thanks for posting.