Yesterday Shel Holtz posted a video that was played at the Council of Public Relations’ recent “Critical Issues Forum.” Its title was, “What is the most dangerous idea in PR today?”
The ideas amount to: the Internet is going to change PR and a pile of clips isn’t the end-all, be-all.
Ooh, real scary. I’m going as one of these ideas for Halloween!
You want a dangerous idea? Here’s a dangerous idea that I call “The Subversive 60 Percent”:
I believe a responsible communicator in an average organization spends only 40 percent of the time doing the chores he or she is assigned to do, and 60 percent doing what he or she knows needs to be done, even though management, and in many cases including the vice president of corporate communication, doesn’t have the foggiest.
Most of that 60 percent will appear to management, if management notices it at all, like unnecessary thoroughness and deck-chair rearrangement.
But another portion of “The Subversive 60” will actually run counter to the organization’s strategy. Though all communication activities must of course be portrayed as being strategically aligned win-wins, sometimes you just go ahead and run the goddamn story even though you know it might spark a counterproductive uproar. You put the clueless CFO in front of a hostile employee crowd because he needs a wake-up call. You let the platitudinous CEO letter go out like that, because that’s how the old turd talks. You do communications that bind your constituencies together as communities, whether or not it binds them to your organization.
How do you justify such active and passive subversion? Simple: Your employees—or customers, or investors—have a right to know the truth … about you’re your organization's strengths and weaknesses, about your competition, about your organization’s effect on the marketplace and the environment. And you, as the communicator, are in a unique position to deliver that truth.
Although your contractual duty is to help your employer further whatever combination of foolishness, benevolence, wisdom and greed its leaders concoct, your larger obligation is to the society in which your employer does business. You’re a human being first and an employee second.
Protect your job—but first, protect your conscience, even if it means quietly and cleverly going against your employer’s will.
The most dangerous thing about this idea is that it’s not an idea; it's a practice: You’re already doing it to one extent or another, and you have been, your whole career.
(You don’t like that dangerous idea? Well what dangerous idea do you like?)
Actually, I DO like your dangerous idea, but I’ll still contribute a couple of my own:
I like the idea that when you (my internal client) tell me that we NEED a news release on “XYZ” project to go out “ASAP” that you will then REVIEW said release when I drop everything to write it immediately, instead of shoving it to the bottom of the pile of flotsam and jetsam littering your big important desk, and THEN come to me a week later (after pointedly ignoring my 12 polite reminders) and ask: “Why isn’t that ‘press’ release out yet?”
I like the idea that, having hired me (as an experienced communications professional) to counsel and advise the business on how to most effectively communicate the right things to our various “audiences” you will actually LISTEN to at least a few of the recommendations I give you, instead of spending hours and hours coming up with bullshit excuses for why these recommendations can’t be implemented.
And, finally, I like the incredibly dangerous idea that the management teams of most corporate organizations might suddenly recognize that employees, customers and other business partners are not stupid, and that these groups care about and want to know what’s really going on around here. And that having recognized this fact, (which the rest of us have known forever) they will start allowing communicators to talk to these constituencies with straight, honest, useful information rather than bland, sugary pap.
Not that I’m bitter, or anything!
Actually, I DO like your dangerous idea, but I’ll still contribute a couple of my own:
I like the idea that when you (my internal client) tell me that we NEED a news release on “XYZ” project to go out “ASAP” that you will then REVIEW said release when I drop everything to write it immediately, instead of shoving it to the bottom of the pile of flotsam and jetsam littering your big important desk, and THEN come to me a week later (after pointedly ignoring my 12 polite reminders) and ask: “Why isn’t that ‘press’ release out yet?”
I like the idea that, having hired me (as an experienced communications professional) to counsel and advise the business on how to most effectively communicate the right things to our various “audiences” you will actually LISTEN to at least a few of the recommendations I give you, instead of spending hours and hours coming up with bullshit excuses for why these recommendations can’t be implemented.
And, finally, I like the incredibly dangerous idea that the management teams of most corporate organizations might suddenly recognize that employees, customers and other business partners are not stupid, and that these groups care about and want to know what’s really going on around here. And that having recognized this fact, (which the rest of us have known forever) they will start allowing communicators to talk to these constituencies with straight, honest, useful information rather than bland, sugary pap.
Not that I’m bitter, or anything
P.S. Sorry for the double post – I SWEAR! It didn’t post the first time.
David, how are we all supposed to keep being subversive if you go around telling the world that we’re being subversive. You’re right, but keep a lid on it, man!
Makes me wonder, where is the line between being proactively subversive (e.g you deliberately and consciously “let the platitudinous CEO letter go out like that, because that’s how the old turd talks.”) and doing it because you just don’t have the strength to fight anymore? And do your motives matter if the result is the same?
Great ideas, Kristen, great point Reuben (sorry to blow your cover) … and great question, Ellen.
I think the things we choose to blow off citing tiredness are often more strategically chosen than we even acknowledge to ourselves. One point I didn’t make in this is that we often don’t admit to ourselves how defiant we really are. We fancy ourselves on being good soldiers, not Bill Ayers, and we live in a corporate world where doing “what we’re hired to do” is often valued above all else.
But we can’t help ourselves. We know what’s right, what matters, and what doesn’t. (It’s usually pretty friggin’ obvious.) And we very rarely do EXACTLY as we’re told; and we very often do stuff that we’ve never been told to do.
… Then what’s behind the communicator’s smile? What does he mean when he agrees to something with a quick nod?
When someone adds “return realizations” to his work, does he smile and nod and think: “You freakin’ idiot. I’m changing it back, and you won’t remember anyway.”
When an executive refuses to prepare for a meeting with employees, what does the communicator’s smile mean? Does it mean: “At some point in this meeting, you’re going to wish you knew an answer; you will wish you were prepared. And I won’t have to say I told you so.”
It makes me wonder what it means when an executive smiles. It makes me wonder what it means when they nod in agreement.
Interesting someone like you writes about being “subversive” and undecent to others when so many people we’ve run across can tell a unique “David Murray stabbed you in the back too?” story!
Physician, communicate to thyself!
Jerry, I don’t think I know you, but if you think you’ve been wronged by me, I hope you’ll elaborate in an e-mail (my address is in my ABOUT page), or here if you’d prefer.