All posts by Mary Yolanda Trigiani

Experience: professional services, boards, strategy, accounting, consulting, investment management, banking, technology. Ethic: urgency, efficiency, candor, humor, spirit.
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Players: Constructing and communicating the bailout — tips for the typical executive

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I think what we have here is failure to communicate.

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Meaning that Mr Bernanke and Mr Paulson are not used to having to explain their rationale nor are they used to being questioned.  Understood.  However, they are doing business with a whole new lender — the American taxpayer — so they need to both accept the fact that they must communicate on the audience's terms and recognize this might require an adjustment.

"Regular" executives face this on a regular basis. 

First, always think about what your audience needs, not just what you want.  For example, if you're getting ready to deliver a speech, the first thing to consider is the audience.  Why is that audience there?  What are the various constituencies in that audience, and what do they want to know or hear from you?  In this situation, it's critical that you deliver a message — built around your perspective and expertise — that either answers a question they have or tells them something they can use.

Second, consult the experts but stick to what you know.  Another example.  This morning, on CNBC, economist Diane Swonk was remarkably unconscious of the general audience for the bailout message when she said that some senators' questions were stupid and defended Secretary Paulson by asserting that he is not used to answering questions.  I'm sure Bernanke and Paulson are walking into this with a sense of duty — which is why, when you're listening to wonks like Swonk, take their perspective for what it's worth.  When you seek the opinions of others in your organization when constructing a message — as you should — make sure to use it to complete your message, not dominate it.  Sometimes you'll get an observation that isn't as inappropriate as what Swonk shared today — but that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep it in perspective, either.  Think for yourself.

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Players: Observations on the bailout

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This morning, as I work, I listen to the Senate hearings on the bailout, I check Twitter commentary, I look at a few blogs.  Here's what I think We the People must consider when we put the parameters around the $700 billion bailout.

  1. My experience in providing client service to investment banker types — people with investment bank backgrounds — is that they look out for Number One in ways that most of us would never imagine.  Investment bankers do not follow rules, whether we're talking business practices or good manners.  Investment bankers are animals.  As a group, the only thing that keeps them in line is a big stick.  Congress MUST put strict parameters around these guys we are putting in charge of the $700 billion.  And we MUST go after the executive compensation packages
  2. How did we respond to the Enron mess?  By neutering the accounting profession.  That, folks, was a bone that Wall Street and its cronies in Washington threw to the American public.  And it was a predictor that this mess would happen to us.  The destruction of Arthur Andersen was a major sign that these guys are all about finding a scapegoat to take the hit for their own sloppy, self-serving business practices.  Not changing the way they did business — not learning from the Enron debacle — not interested in hearing from those with expertise that they don't have but that is germane to their activities.  Now, we are left with no watchdogs, either in the private sector or the public, to tell us when the cronies have concocted a risk-laden, byzantine set of financial instruments.  It is unconscionable that not one person in a leadership position in industry, government or academia did not look at this maze and tell us what they're telling us now:  that this confluence of financial instruments was not nor ever was sustainable.
  3. The reason I turned on CNBC in the first place this morning was to wait for a segment on a client that was taped three weeks ago.  Instead, my attention, by necessity, had to be diverted to the dirty job of fixing a problem created by an elite few — most of whom have never invented anything or bought and sold anything you could hold in your hands.  Elitists who never had a summer job on a farm or in a factory, who, with their fancy pedigrees, dictate to the rest of us what is success.  This mess is not only something we must clean up, it is sucking the air out of one of the stars of the American way:  real business, based on real relationships and transactions.  Let's get the mess cleaned up and let's make sure it doesn't deplete us or distract us professionally or emotionally.

Email, call, SHOUT at your representatives in Washington.  Yes, we want transparency.  But we want punishment.  Consequences for bad actions, whether they were intentional or not.  Do we let people off a murder charge just because they didn't intend to do it?  No.  The deviant brains who mixed this cocktail of financial instruments need to go to Man Jail.  Their property confiscated.  Their cash appropriated to the bailout.  I want heads to roll.

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Good social media blogs

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Trying to keep up with how to use social media to market your company can be a job in itself.  Here are some people who make it easier for you.

Hubspot

Social Media Today

Chris Brogan

Andrew Chen

Twitter Handbook

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Airlines: Turn your employees into brand managers

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I flew USAirways last month and had something of an unsettling experience.  Suffice it to say that there was a gate agent in Charlotte with a Hitler complex on a power trip.  Not a good combination.

I have a long, long relationship with USAirways, dating back to when I was a kid and it was called Piedmont.  It's pretty much the only airline that has flown consistently into eastern Tennessee, which is where I have to go when visiting Big Stone Gap, Virginia.  And in my experience, USAirways people have always been at the top of the industry in terms of customer service.

Why is this of any consequence in a blog about brands? 

Right now, each and every airline has a huge opportunity in front of it — the opportunity to make itself seem to be the most vigilant, courteous, professional, customer-loving entity in the air.  Because the airlines have had to cut back the amenities, more than ever they must compete on price, schedules and service.  Which means that their brands will be either polished or tarnished by employee behavior.  For the next two years, the primary point of differentiation between airlines will be employee demeanor.

Like my mother always said when we got less than an A in deportment, your conduct is the easiest thing to do right.  Along these lines, some suggestions for how USAirways — and every other airline — can help their people turn service into a recognizable competitive advantage.

1.  Make sure the people you put on the front lines of customer interaction are equipped to handle it — in terms of exposing criminals as well as dealing with a challenge.  I'm not likely to take someone seriously who is either doing standup [American has one of those in Chicago] or has tailored his uniform to gangsta style.  Come up with a test to expose the employees most likely to lose it with passengers.
2.  Edit the content you share with passengers.  Transparency doesn't mean over-communication, it means precise communication.  Besides telling passengers that a screw is loose on the pilot's flight panel, take the time to explain why you shave 15 minutes off the boarding time and must rush them onto the plane.
3.  Make sure that all your people send the same message, whether it's about what type of carryon is permitted on what type of flight equipment or how happy they are to have us as customers.  Consistency in messages and their deployment is critical to good branding — especially in a service business.
4.  Teach your gate agents to think of their jobs as relationship managers, not cargo movers or g-men.
5.  Remind your gate agents that any negative behavior on their part most likely will fall on the flight attendants, which will then fall on an entire planeload of people.
6.  You have a captive audience in the gate area.  Remind people of the rules — example, why a rolling carryon cannot go on a particular plane — and enforce them across the board.  jetBlue is excellent at this — authoritative without  being abusive.
7.  When you say you're sorry, mean it.  USAirways does this very well.  And I don't mean free vouchers here.

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Cuil. Too cool for words?

Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb wrote a post last night about the big coverage of Cuil, thought and/or hoped by many to be the Google killer.

The MacManus post muses about the coverage of the new search engine and the major criticism that followed its debut.  A lot of expectations mismanaged.  So MacManus cites the echo chamber and the hyperbole that stokes it.

But let’s not blame the PR people, people.  Yes, I find much of the language, elitist and cozy, too much to bear.  But somebody’s swallowing it.  And it’s not just the TechCrunches and the Valleywags.  It’s our highly trained, self-proclaimed highly professional mainstream media.

Here are the suggestions I just shared in a comment to MacManus’s post.  Let’s start stripping away the hype.  Ultimately, it’s the best thing for all concerned.

Lots of insightful comments on your interesting post.  This is not a criticism of Cuil, either.  Time will tell.

I do have comments to the press, bloggers, all the new media types “covering” startups, Silicon Valley, tech money:

1  You are part of the echo chamber.  Think before you write.  Choose your words carefully and wisely.

2  Talk with the potential enemies as well as the pals and coterie of the founders and the VCs.

3  Recognize that not everyone tells the truth.

4  If you don’t understand the technology, find someone neutral who does.  Neutral = doesn’t have an ax to grind.

5  In comparing products, rely on your own instincts and that of a true expert to unearth key points of differentiation between products and services.  Don’t just reprint what you’re being fed.

6  Start looking for the real stories of Silicon Valley.  Yes, you’re busy.  But when you take on the responsibility of distilling facts for others, you take on the responsibility to dig.  If you don’t have the work ethic for this role, find something else to do.  We’re sick of the hyperbole.  The real stories of Silicon Valley are not that far beneath the superficial surface on which you skate.

This is coming to you from someone who helps to craft and tell the stories of startups and corporations that are in this for the joy as well as the payoff — and who wouldn’t dream of yanking your chains.  Wake up.