Blogs and Twitter and transparency, oh my
by Miki SaxonFor years I’ve pushed my clients on the importance of communicating bad news along with the good and in the summer of 2006 I wrote a post about it.
Convincing executives that sharing bad news is as necessary as sharing good is similar to discussing global warming. Most agree that something needs to be done, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into action.
What’s forcing them to act is Web 2.0 and a multi-generational group of web-savvy folks with a belief in transparency and a willingness to spend their time promoting it using blogs and Twitter.
“Elon Musk, chief executive of the electric-car company Tesla Motors in San Carlos, Calif., said that he had no choice other than to blog about the Oct. 15 layoffs at the closely watched company…[since] Valleywag, a Silicon Valley gossip blog owned by Gawker Media, had already published the news, and it was being picked up by traditional media reporters. “We had to say something to prevent articles being written that were not accurate.”"
That’s it in a nutshell.
Much of the transparency trend started with activists who created websites about companies where people could comment, make suggestions and vent their frustrations; now it’s pushed into the tech startups of Silicon Valley, but laggards in all industries are being dragged kicking and screaming into the new reality.
“Every industry has Web sites that cover its companies and eagerly publish rumors, from the Starbucks Gossip blog to DealBreaker for the financial industry and BlueOvalNews.com for Ford Motor. Web sites like Glassdoor.com and JobSchmob.com also encourage workers to vent about their bosses.
Larger companies need to learn that lesson, too, said Andy Sernovitz, chief executive of the Blog Council, which helps big companies use social media. “There are hold-out companies that still wish there was traditional P.R. control of the message, but that day is long over.”"
The only thing a company can do that’s worse than silence is to lie or fudge the truth.
Many years ago a rumor started at a Siemens facility in Arizona that the company was going to move to a new location about 70 miles away. The management hotly denied it and many of the engineers who they relocated there trusted them and bought homes. About nine months later the company did indeed move and most of those people lost money when they had to sell their homes to keep their jobs.
Lies aren’t smart, but this one was particularly stupid and unnecessary; the story outlasted the executives who did it and tainted their recruiting efforts for years.
The moral is simple—tell the truth, without spin, and tell if first.
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