Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Do you ever ‘Murray the cake’?

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At the wedding reception of Steve and Cindy Crescenzo, I stood beside the wedding cake, deep into the bottomless glass of champers and telling an animated story. Someone rushed up and pointed out that there was white icing on my black suit coat. And pants. Lots of it.

"Goddamnit, you Murray'd the cake!" Steve bellowed and we all screamed with laughter, because the Crescenzos like funny stories more than they like cake.

And also, because I Murray everything.

I Murray salad bars, I Murray dinner tables, I Murray people's laps. (During a business flight I spilled a glass of gin in Steve's lap—twice.)

At a business dinner, I once absentmindedly ordered a $180 Kobe beef steak, and when the guy sitting next to me kiddingly told me it looked awfully good, I stabbed a $30 medallion with my fork and generously slapped it on his plate. He was a vegetarian. He was not amused.

I wish drinking was always the culprit, but it in fact is rarely the culprit. I'm actually less likely to Murray things when I'm drinking, because I'm less awkward and dorky when I'm drinking.

Last week, at the outset of my visit to my big client, McMurry, I carefully quizzed my client/boss about the names of two business heads who had interviewed me two years ago. In case I ran into them, I wanted to get their names right.

Stan, I remembered. Who was the other? Fred, my boss said. Right! Fred!

That was on Tuesday. On Friday afternoon—miraculously, I was an hour away from escaping Phoenix without having Murrayed anything major—I see one of those big guys coming up the stairs.

I don't know if he remembered who I was, but I leaped at him.

"Fred, it's fantastic to see you again!"

"It's great to see you too," he said. "And I'm Stan!"

Yep. I even Murrayed McMurry.

I'm a goofball, but I know I'm not alone, because I have seen a corporate CEO give a confident speech with his fly down.

What's your most embarrassing business moment?

Let's start a collection for businesspeople like us who are long on enthusiasm and short on grace:

Onward & Awkward.

He’s a ‘quant guy’ but when it comes to communication, he goes with his gut

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Henkel Consumer Goods' CEO Brad Casper put the lie to the tiresome truism that the only language executives understand is numbers.

During his appearance at the Building and Protecting Reputation 2010 conference last week, a communicator asked him how he measures the success of his strenuous communications efforts.

The question made him look weary.

"I know what gets measured gets done, and all that," he said. "But we're fast-moving. … for the most part, it's qualitative. I'm a quant guy, but qualitative gives me a better feel."

Communicators: I know some executives want numbers. If you like numbers, go to work for those execs. But if you don't, then look for a guy like Casper. They're out there, in larger numbers than Katie Paine would have you think.

HR jargon: chilly but refreshing

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Heard a new term at a conference session last week by Henkel Consumer Goods CEO Brad Casper. He was talking about strides the company has made in employee retention and he used a term I've never heard before.

He said Henkel had significantly reduced its rate of "regretted turnover."

Of course it makes perfect sense to delineate between overall turnover, some of which is a healthy exodus of malcontents and mopes, and only a percentage of which is truly damaging.

The term is probably old hat in HR circles, but it was a new one on me.