Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

There is no such thing as a “business guy”

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Now that the Colorado shootings are behind us and the presidential candidates are starting to think it's okay to go back to being dicks again …

So much imbecilic talk surrounds Mitt Romney's candidacy at the moment that it obscures the emptiness at the center.

The salient question isn't whether or not Romney is an "outsourcer," or what year he officially resigned as CEO of Bain Capital, or how well his accountants have used the Byzantine tax code to protected Romney's hundreds of millions.

The question to ask a fellow who is saying he knows how to "create jobs" because he is a business person is: What is a "business person"?

Is a business person an entrepreneur, who built a company from whole cloth? Gosh, I hope not. Usually those people are monomaniacs, so singularly focused on their own singular corporate creation and their hated competitors that they don't know their own children's names. Are these the folks you'd trust to create tolerable jobs across infinite industries in the context of a global economy?

Or is a business person a big-company CEO? Well, a CEO of what kind of big company? A big bank wouldn't hire a retailer's CEO, and an oil company wouldn't hire the boss of a Silicon Valley company. In the rare cases when companies have found a leader outside their industry, the results have usually been disastrous. (See Bob Nardelli.) That's because CEOs worth having aren't just experts in some amorphous thing called "business"; they're experts on the economics of specific industries, with well-developed instincts about a particular marketplace. But nobody understands the economics of every industry, or of most industries, in a way that allows them to "create jobs" across an unfathomably large economy.

I've admired lots of people in business: hard-charging publishers, cool-headed CEOs, analytical types and gut-feel guys. In fact, I've admired most of the business people I've known—some for their intelligence, others for their courage and all for the energy it takes to stand in the middle of an often treacherous triangle of customers and investors and employees. One thing about people who deal with all that every day: They don't spout a lot of bullshit that they can't back up.

And let me tell you one thing for damn sure: Nobody I've ever known in business, Republican or Democrat, ever would say that their status as a "business person" meant that a nation of 311,000,000 people should trust them to turn their economy around.

People who run companies have built-in biases, against regulation and for low corporate tax rates. They also have a lot of faith in themselves—if you give me more freedom to operate, I'll make my company bigger and better.

But a person who wants you to have that kind of faith in his ability to build a whole economy based on his necessarily limited business experience—well, that's somebody who hopes to take advantage of your ignorance or your wishful thinking or both.

I should probably hold this item for Halloween, but what the hell

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A 50-year-old communicator I know has been out of work for more than a year.

This is a high-profile guy who directed internal communication at a number of Fortune 100 companies and also worked at a big-name consultancy. He spoke at industry conferences and wrote articles and even a book for communication trade publishers.

After dozens of fruitless interviews, he's tired of hearing the mantra: "You're just not the right fit for the team." (He's never sure what it means, though he's had plenty of time to develop some theories.)

So he and his wife bought a bar and grill in a local strip mall, and they take it over this week.

He's not the only blue chip employee communication pro I know who's under- or unemployed despite a solid resume and a 150-plus LinkedIn connections.

He's sorry to be throwing away more than two decades of communication experience.

"But I'm too old to sit around," he says.

And, much too young.

Cheers, mate. May your customers treat you better than the communication business and the economy have.

Baby Boomers cling desperately to bad communication jobs

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I asked it more than a year ago, and I'll ask it again: "Where are the 'tight job market' assholes now?"

For most of the 2000s we had to put up with recruiters, HR consultants and others who justified their existence in good times by chattering
incessantly about a "tight skilled labor market" that's independent of
the economy, that has everything to do with the retiring Baby Boomers and the the Generation Y baby bust.

Well, the Boomers can't afford to retire even if they wanted to—and they do want to, because those who have jobs are miserable in them. And I'm talking about the kinds of talented, super well-networked communication execs who I deal with as a conference organizer and communication publisher.

These people used to have the pick of the best jobs. Some of their misery can be chalked up to the fact that all aspects of business are just less fun in a bad economy.

But much of what I'm hearing sounds like they have bosses with boots on their throats. They're harried and confused, scared and, to one extent or another, humiliated.

And so I ask again: Where are the tight job market assholes now?

And: Can anybody tell me you're having a good time at work these days?

I'll jump, I swear I will!