Tag Archives: Trigiani

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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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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.

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Is Yelp a business, community service or not for profit? Paging Comrade Lenin.

Calley Nye wrote today about Yelp and its impact on companies reviewed there.  Yelp presents itself as a place where the community can gather to share its experiences with businesses — and Yelp likes to invoke conversation as a core concept.  The site is gaining in popularity, and negative reviews can break a business, particularly a restaurant.  So businesses are forming alternate sites to combat the effect. 

Why don’t these businesses just bring the argument or discussion to Yelp?  Because Yelp won’t let them.  Yelp does not permit businesses to respond one way or the other to a review.  This is a shame, because the young company is leaving valuable conversation on the table.  And missing the point of social media.  

Or at least that’s how a lot of people see it.  I’m starting to notice a devilish little trend among startups that seek to change the world.  They reap the benefits of a capitalistic structure without contributing to it.  In this case, Yelp could be helping to evangelize the importance of companies listening to and actually talking with customers — and Yelp could be setting itself up as the nexus of the interaction. 

Instead, the company is kidding itself — or trying to kid us — into thinking it is leveling the playing field by going after nasty business owners and putting more power into the hands of the “community.”  That businesses are not part of the community! 

Wait a minute.

Is Yelp a business?  And if so,  because Yelp’s CEO [a business term] created a loyalty hierarchy consisting of community, consumers and businesses, as articulated to none other than THE NEW YORK TIMES, into which category does Yelp fall?  Finally, by whose universal standard are Yelp-reviewed businesses measured?  If the answer is the community’s, then who decides the community?  Or are we going to check with Comrade Lenin via seance?

I love it when a startup presents itself as anti-establishment as it indulges in the third oldest profession to make money.  That would be advertising.

Anyway, I find it hard to believe that Yelp’s mission is either noble or democratic.  At least, not any more than any other business trying to launch, make money and do business ethically.  So let’s use Yelp for what it is — a repository of reviews we can use for information but for nothing more.  And let’s not be used by it.