Writing Boots

This week, Writing Boots have been marching boots, as we trudged day by day through memories of last March, April, May and June.

Now here to process all that, is the only man who possibly could—the Reverend Jim Ignatowski—look him up, kids—who inhabited my soul (and hair) one Tuesday morning late last April, I think.

(Monday) June 1

What leaders are saying, and how they’re sounding. Last Thursday, it seemed remarkable when U.S. Bank CEO Andy Cecere issued an all-employee email on “Why George Floyd mattered—to us all.” Between then and now, most of Cecere’s major bank CEO colleagues and a seeming majority of other CEOs have issued statements or written memos. 

June 2

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg showed as much emotion as I’ve ever seen a CEO show in his message to employees yesterday on George Floyd, via Twitter live stream. What he said was articulate; his willingness to bare a broken heart to 130,000 employees was remarkable.

It has already been a long week for exec comms pros serving leaders already punch-drunk from coronavirus, now further disoriented by the George Floyd aftermath. “Watching today play out with my clients,” summed up one corporate communication consultant yesterday, “is like watching a bucket of fish that just got tossed into the middle of traffic.” Over the weekend, a speechwriter for the head of a major American institution sent a note to fellow speechwriters: “It’s 10:13 PM on a Saturday, and I’m about to go under for the third time on a draft statement about George Floyd and the riots.” The organization doesn’t want to take a stance on Floyd’s death, but does want to express compassion for affected stakeholders. “I assume many of you are engaged in a version of this same folly,” the speechwriters said. To which another speechwriter replied, “At my most cynical, I can feel like I’m paid for two services: Coming up with a way to say nothing about something or something about nothing. Not easy and work that feels small in these moments.”

But one speechwriter shared a relatively compelling letter she wrote for her leader, and the experience of writing it: 

“This was a hard letter to write this morning because I kept self-censoring. I finally got fed up and decided to write the letter I thought the [leader] should write; the letter that I thought he had somewhere inside himself. I figured he could dial it back or scrap it all together in favor of something lukewarm or milquetoast. I was surprised (and pleased) when he only had some minor changes. He’s not one to get out in front of issues or take much risk. I was gratified to see him willing to take a stand. It was less about him liking these particular words and more that he was willing to open up and plant a stake in the ground about this.

“I think this was therapeutic for me to write as well.”

June 3

For CEOs and their communication people, “statement fatigue” has given way to something close to statement stupefaction. An executive communication director for a major American institution wrote to me yesterday:

“It’s amazing that we now have stacking communication imperatives, which raise so many questions: Do I connect pandemic and the murder/societal unrest, or treat them separately? Do I make an internal statement to staff or also an external one to all? Do I connect the sentiment to our work, even if only tangentially related, or will that seem like a shameless pivot? How much empathy is too much and too little? Should I address the issue of protesting vs. rioting? How important is it to check in with my Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Team (answer: VERY important). 

“One of the things we’re applying is the WHY test. Asking not ‘why not,’ but “why do?’ and seeing how well we can articulate the answer. This helps us make the right decisions (with meaningful goals in mind) and sets us up form framing those messages appropriately so we’re not simply band-wagoning or succumbing to organizational peer pressure. Not being able to articulate a meaningful answer to ‘why should we message this?’ can be very illuminating.

“One of the most challenging things for me is impressing on my colleagues that brevity is as important a value as timeliness and content inclusion. Too often, we try to fix by adding, when the actual fix is subtraction. Adding is about thinking ‘what can we say?’ Subtraction comes when you ask ‘What does my audience most want and need to hear?’ A constant mantra in our world.”

June 5

Edelman CEO Richard Edelman said in March that the world’s biggest PR firm wouldn’t lay off employees. This week Edelman laid off almost 400 people—nearly seven percent of its 6,000-employee workforce, according to PRWeek. In an interview with PRWeek UK editor Danny Rogers, Edelman described the decision as “gut-wrenching,” and said his assumptions were based on the firm’s ability to retain its people after 9/11 and also after the 2008 financial crisis. “Danny, we really did everything we could to maintain staff levels but sadly the playbook of 2001 and 2008 didn’t apply here.” Hit hardest by fee reductions from stricken clients in hospitality, aviation, automotive and energy, the firm may not be finished laying people off yet. “We’ll review the situation at Christmas,” Edelman told Rogers.

June 9

“Times have changed” in terms of the scope of CEO communications, Cisco chief Chuck Robbins says today, on a podcast with Fortune. He’s reading books like White Fragility, and having conversations about race issues with employees. “Running a company, the most important asset you have are your people,” Robbins says. “In order to create an environment where you want the best talent to be, there is an expectation that you will talk about these issues.”

June 16

General Motors CEO Mary Barra continues to talk about her plan to make GM “the most inclusive company in the world.” In a Fortune interview out today, Barra said she expects to have filled out the company Inclusion Advisory Board that she chairs by the end of June. Describing herself as an action-oriented engineer, Barra goes on to say that the key to culture change is trust—which comes from communication. “I think trust is at the center of everything,” she told Fortune. “A lot of it starts with communication. It’s hard for someone to trust you when they don’t know what you’re doing or why you’re doing it.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife Patty Quillin donated $120 million to the United Negro College Fund, and to historically black schools Spelman College and Morehouse College,The New York Times reported yesterday. “I think white people in our nation need to accept that it’s a collective responsibility,” Hastings said of the record donation. George Floyd’s killing and its aftermath were “the straw that broke the camel’s back, I think, for the size of the donation,” he added, saying he hoped that the donation would lead other wealthy individuals to give to HBCUs: “Generally, white capital flows to predominantly white institutions, perpetuating capital isolation.” Hastings is worth $5.3 billion, the Times piece noted.

June 19

Amazon employees are to spend this Juneteenth in reflection, per a memo earlier this week by CEO Jeff Bezos, according to CNBC: 

“Over the past few weeks, the [leadership team] and I have spent a lot of time listening to customers and employees and thinking about how recent events in our country have laid bare the systemic racism and injustices that oppress Black individuals and communities. 

“This Friday, June 19, is Juneteenth, the oldest-known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the U.S. I’m cancelling all of my meetings on Friday, and I encourage all of you to do the same if you can. We’re providing a range of online learning opportunities for employees throughout the day. 

“Please take some time to reflect, learn, and support each other. Slavery ended a long time ago, but racism didn’t.  —Jeff”

And for our own Juneteenth reflection: Last October we collaborated on the first Black Speechwriters Symposium, at Howard University in D.C. The panel of six speechwriters—a large percentage of the fulltime African American speechwriters in this very white field—told the Howard undergrads in attendance that they should consider speechwriting careers because being a speechwriter gives you a chance, as one panelist put it, to “sit with people of power and shape what they say … to be the power behind the pen.” As another speechwriter put it, “It’s not just writing for somebody. You’re being put on the shoulders of a giant.” I hope you’ll read the rest here and reflect on what you can do help bring African American leadership communicators into our small but powerful sphere of influence.

June 30

“Our battle against COVID-19 is far from over, and our top priority remains the health and safety of our employees, customers and communities we serve,” said Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, speaking as chairman of the Business Roundtable on the release of its second-quarter report Monday, according to CNBC. Most CEOs expect the business impact to linger through 2021 and almost a third expect it to persist beyond then, according to the report. 

Reader, whatever you took from this look back, I hope you took heart that you and I looked a lot of madness square in the face, and did some useful work in the clutch. And I hope you, like me, insist on remembering this time, the best we can—to steel ourselves for the next time, God forbid. Tomorrow I’ll have a Friday Happy Hour Video from this strange trip. Meanwhile, here’s the song I sang all year long.

After March and April 2020, leaders wondered how things could get worse. They got their answer, in May.

May 4

“There are no sacred cows,” said incoming United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby during an earnings call Friday, according to Yahoo Finance. … Kirby added: “While we don’t have any plans to close hubs, when you say everything is on the table, we mean everything. If demand remains significantly diminished on October 1, we simply won’t be able to endure this crisis as a company without implementing some of the more difficult and painful actions.”

May 6

“Survival does not look great for us. In fact it does not look great for the entire arts sector,” Adam Phillipson, CEO of the Count Basie Center for the Arts, told CNBC yesterday. Calling for more federal help for arts organizations, Phillipson said, “We tried to build our runway as long as we can, but unless there’s going to be some sort of a reinvestment in the entire arts sector, you’re going to see theaters and not-for-profit organizations closing left and right.”

May 7

“Days like this are brutal,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in announcing 3,700 job cuts yesterday, according to Forbes. “I am truly sorry that we are doing this, just as I know we have to do this.” Khosrowshahi is waiving his base salary for the rest of 2020; he said he would give a further update in two weeks and implied that these layoffs might not be the last.

Analysis: Airbnb founder & CEO Brian Chesky was widely lauded for his layoff memo to employees on Tuesday. Here’s why. (1) Near the top of his letter to employees, in the crystal-clear language that characterized the letter, Chesky quickly delivered the news that 25% of Airbnb’s workforce, 1,900 people, would be let go. (2) In more detail than we’ve come to expect from such announcements, he detailed the decision-making processes and principles by which the layoff was conducted. (3) He explained the company’s smaller, sharper strategy and the rationale behind its revision. (4) He covered severance, healthcare, job-search support and immediate next steps. (5) And he concluded with words that sounded more humanly heartfelt than corporately calculated. “I have a deep feeling of love for all of you. … To those of you staying, one of the most important ways we can honor those who are leaving is for them to know that their contributions mattered, and that they will always be part of Airbnb’s story. I am confident their work will live on, just like this mission will live on. To those leaving Airbnb, I am truly sorry. Please know this is not your fault. The world will never stop seeking the qualities and talents that you brought to Airbnb … that helped make Airbnb. I want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing them with us.”

May 11

Drug company CEOs are warning that finding a COVID-19 vaccine is one thing, but manufacturing enough is another. “We will all be supply constrained for quite some time, meaning we won’t be able to make as many product as will be required to vaccinate everyone on the planet,” Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC Friday. If the firm’s vaccine works, Bancel expects it to be able to manufacture 1 billion doses a year; there are 7.6 billion people on the planet.

May 12

How are corporate speechwriters and exec comms pros faring during coronavirus? By and large, they’re super busy, super anxious and ultimately confident about the future of leadership communication, whose organizational status 87% of exec comms pros think will be unchanged or actually increased by the coronavirus crisis. Read the full results of the Professional Speechwriters Association’s “Speechwriters Speak” survey: “Speechwriting, and Coronavirus: What Do You Think, How Do You Feel, What Do You Need?”

May 20

By year’s end, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai expects most employees to be back in the office some of the time—but still at home most of the time, according to CNBC. By bringing in 10% to 15% of workers into the office at any time, the firm will be able to get “60% of our employees in once a week, or something like that,” Pichai said. Noting that productivity is down in some parts of the company, Pichai also expressed uncertainty about how some kinds of work will play out remotely—brainstorming next year’s products, for instance. So he’s studying the issue closely. “But coming out of it all, do we all learn and have more flexibility in how we think about this? I think so, yeah. That’s how I would bet.”

Notre Dame this week became the first major university to announce its intention to bring students back to campus next fall, according to The New York Times. President John Jenkins likened the operation to “assembling a small city of people from many parts of the nation and the world, who may bring with them pathogens to which they have been exposed”—which is why the university is starting two weeks early, to get the semester finished by Thanksgiving, avoiding the risks inherent in sending students home for break. Of the return-to-campus plan, Notre Dame spokesman Paul Browne said, “If there were another outbreak, all of this is subject to change. At this point, we’re confident, but we remain flexible.”

May 21

Cancer Treatment Centers of America CEO Pat Basu is warning of a “shadow curve”—a spike in non-coronavirus illnesses not diagnosed or treated during the lockdown, according to Fox News. People are putting off screenings and other checkups, through which doctors routinely find cancers and other illnesses. “That, to me, is a major concern,” Basu said, picturing a study three years from now where researchers count as part of the coronavirus toll deaths that resulted from undiagnosed conditions. “We need to prevent that study in 2023 from being written. We need to stop that tidal wave from causing absolute destruction.”

(Thursday) May 28

“Why George Floyd mattered—to us all,” is the subject line of an all-employee email sent yesterday by U.S. Bank CEO Andy Cecere. The bank is headquartered in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed by police on Monday. “As many of you know, I tend to be a private person,” Cecere begins. “I try to lead by doing what’s best for the bank, and I typically don’t share my personal thoughts or opinions unless necessary. It’s unusual for a CEO, but it’s where I’m most comfortable. I’m not comfortable today. I’m disturbed by the death of George Floyd, who died in police custody on Monday night—suffocating as a police officer kneeled on his neck for more than five minutes as people begged for someone to help him. I’m trying to find the right words to tell all our entire team, especially people of color, that their lives matter.” You may read the whole letter at ProRhetoric.com, where I put it in the context of a larger trend, accelerated by coronavirus, of CEOs weighing in on social issues.

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Tomorrow, join us in June 2020. Be ready to hit the ground running.