OwerPointpay also abused by execs of Icrosoftmay

I don't know whether solace or outrage is the proper response to a speech I saw last week by a Microsft VP who will go nameless.

I won't even reveal the subject of the speech, other than to say that it was informative enough and the speaker was dynamic enough.

Enough, at least, to overcome the arrogant and provincial attitude of the speaker who tossed in a dozen casual references to all the "really smart people" who work at Microsoft. He did so in a way--and with a frequency--that betrayed the collective Microsoft corporate attitude that your company is brimming with dummies.

But the speech was not good enough to distract me or anyone else in the audience from one of the worst PowerPoint presentations in memory.

As the people around me began to grumble妖oesn't Microsoft make PowerPoint?悠 wrote in my notes, "Monday blog: Microsoft doesn't know how to use PowerPoint either."

My only question was, what to feel about this smug little discovery.

Solace: The Microsoft boss made the same sorts of mistakes everybody else does: Ridiculous amounts of unreadable copy on ridiculous numbers of slides. Absurdly complex graphics delivered by terribly distracting bells and whistles. All resulting in an audience that spent an hour squinting confusedly at the screen while the dynamic exec charged almost irrelevantly around beneath and beside it.

Outrage: Isn't there somebody inside Microsoft用erhaps the boss of those "really smart people" who come up with a new and improved version of PowerPoint every year謡ho knows or cares one whit about how the program helps and hinders communication? Maybe Microsoft isn't motivated to have that really smart PowerPoint boss share his or her really smart wisdom with the rest of us dummies. But at the very least, somebody ought to train Microsoft executives to handle their own software at least a little better than the rest of us.

No?

CEO columns through time: no changes in platitudes

From an essay I edited yesterday for Ragan's Journal of Employee Communication Management, Canada Post employee communication director Barbara Leimsner writes,

"CEO columns often have the following attributes: they use corporate jargon or technical language, are impersonal, stuffy, express no emotion, repeat formulaic messages, and use 'we/they'" paternalistic language."

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

But Leimnser is right, of course. CEO columns are almost universally bad.

On a Frontier Airlines flight recently, I got bored and opened the in-flight magazine, Wild Blue Yonder. I came across the CEO's letter. Unlike most CEO passengers, who wouldn't read such an obvious puff piece if they were stranded with it on a desert island, I stopped for a look.

You see, I'm something of an aficionado of CEO columns. I delight in reading bad ones葉he challenges! the opportunities! the synergies! the strategies!預nd I hope eternally to come across an interesting one.

Reading the Potter piece, I thought maybe I had found my Holy Grail: "Tired of the traditional airline cheerleader letter," the introduction irreverently began, "Frontier's president and CEO, Jeff Potter, decided that Frontier's passengers would rather read about questions, ideas, or concepts that were of interest to them. As a result, in each issue of WILD Blue Yonder magazine, Potter addresses a passenger's question about the airline or industry."

Holy mackerel! Here we go! Two-way communication! Honest answers to real questions everyone wants to ask an airline CEO. Questions like:

� "Is it hard to take a day off or rest when you know that millions of pounds of your airplanes and jet fuel and passengers are hurtling around the country at all times?"

� "You're not ever, ever, ever, ever, ever allow people to use cell phones during flights, right?"

� "Do you actually fly coach? And if so, why?"

Nope. The question concerns the airline's tagline: "What does 'a whole different animal' mean? Is it just a catchy tagline?'"

As much as I tried to imagine a passenger hitting the flight attendant call button to ask an asinine question like that, I couldn't fathom it. Clearly, the question was made up by the writer to pitch to himself in order to tee up some platitudes. Which he or she does. Potter's so-called answer to this so-called question includes the following bromides:

� "And it's our goal to be different預nd better擁n the service we provide you, our guests."

� "But the real stars at Frontier are the employees �."

� "They are committed to fulfilling our customer promise to be 'a whole different animal' and they are what sets us apart."

This CEO is a whole different animal, all right預 platitudipus, to be precise.

Question of the Week: Has anybody managed to consistently (or even inconsistently) write a CEO's letter that sings? If so, send it to me預nd tell me how you did it.

To lead off the same essay on kickstarting the creativity of a communication department that I quoted in my last post, Canada Post employee communication manager Barb Leimsner recalled that one of her first editors had a poster on her gray cubicle wall.

It read: "Thou Shalt Not Bore God."

A good thought to start the week.

As editor of Speechwriter's Newsletter, I talk to a lot of speechwriters.

I talk to happy speechwriters, grumpy speechwriters, idealistic speechwriters and bitter speechwriters.

I talk to speechwriters who have succeeded in making a good living in this game, and speechwriters who struggle to stay sane and make ends meet at the same time.

Over the years, I've come to the somewhat banal conclusion that thriving speechwriters aren't necessarily the best writers, researchers or business thinkers.

As in many another profession, I suppose, the most successful speechwriters are usually the ones most in control of the wide-range of emotions involved in the job. Today, I'm going to talk about emotions that hurt speechwriters. Friday, I'll talk about emotions that speechwriters should cultivate.

Worst things first: Unproductive emotions to have about your boss or your job:

• Fear. Like other animals, CEOs can smell fear. If they think you're afraid of them, they'll think you have reason to be afraid. For instance, maybe you're not all that marketable a speechwriter, and maybe they could find a better one on the open market. And you don't want this thought to cross a CEO's mind, lest it stop and take up permanent residence.

• Contempt. I've known executive communicators who have been fixated on the notion, probably true, that they are smarter than the executives they are writing for. Yeah? So what? While you and the CEO probably spent your college years drinking too much, what did you do during your sober moments? You didn't go to business school. You didn't join a fraternity. You didn't do summer internships and idiotic volunteer work in order to build your résumé to apply to grad school for business. Instead, you screwballed around writing poems in college or taking journalism classes. And you don't regret it for a moment. But did you expect that activity to lead to a $10 million dollar salary plus stock options?

• Jealousy. This comes from the slightly different fixation that some communicators have that they are as smart as the executives who are running the company. Whenever you're feeling jealous, think to yourself: Do I really want to be the CEO of a company (or the Senator)? Or do I just want people to clap at me for a change? If the former, drop your writing gig and get an MBA! If the latter, then do something worth clapping over. (Hint: Writing a corporate speech ain't it. Giving one effectively is.)

• Dead seriousness. A speechwriter should never write consistently for a boss or on a topic that he or she disagrees with fundamentally. But full and passionate agreement isn't a good idea, either. Some sense of separation is required, lest the speechwriter fail to do the fundamentally speechwriterly job of bringing a different perspective to the table.

• Love. I'm suspicious of speechwriters who paint their speakers to be the next Warren Buffett. In order for a speechwriter to clearly see a speaker's strengths and weaknesses clearly, and match those up with messages that fit the organization's strategy and the audience's interests alike, a certain detached cool is necessary.

Write speeches long enough, and you'll feel every one of these emotions. The key is—and this doesn't jibe with the pop-psychology of the moment—is controlling, managing, even hiding these feelings. And, more to the point, replacing them with the feelings that help you do your job.

I'll share those on Friday. If, of course, I feel like it.

On Wednesday, I talked about speechwriters' need to keep a lid on natural feelings about their boss and their job that may be perfectly natural but, I argued, are also unproductive.

Today, I'm going to talk about good feelings to have庸eelings that should be nurtured (and even faked!):

� Pity. A speechwriter who feels a little sorry for the CEO庸or workaholism, lack of a literary imagination, a life lived from meeting to meeting擁s a speechwriter who can talk straight to the boss. Since they don't normally aspire to be the boss, a speechwriter can and should talk to the CEO man (or woman)-to woman (or man). All honest relationships include areas of sympathy. So should yours, with the CEO.

� Admiration. If you can't admire the CEO as a family person, as a leader, or as a communicator, than at least sit back and marvel that the bastard must be a pretty damned good engineer to have climbed so high with so few skills. Find something to admire in your speaker that you have to admit: you could never do yourself.

� A connection between your company's work and your soul. If you died today and the minister who had to conduct the service asked your spouse why you happened to work in the pharmaceutical industry, could your spouse say anything more than, "It was a living"? Look for the barest spiritual link between your work as a speechwriter and what you consider to be the meaning of your life. It will help you through the lean times.

� Arrogance. Not over your colleagues or over your speaker, but over all other speechwriters. You don't have to think you're the best at everything, but every successful speechwriter I've known has fancied him- or herself as the best speaker-interviewer, writer-for-the-ear, or researcher, or organizational politics player in the speechwriting world. They can't all be right; they can't all be the greatest. But thinking they're great is more than half the battle.

� Humility. For all the arrogance required to write great speeches, great humility is simultaneously required to feel okay as a speechwriter. One must feel that one is doing one's small part預nd one must feel okay with having done so. Ted Sorenson must feel that, in order to sleep at night預nd he's the best-known speechwriter this side of that braggart Peggy Noonan (who, if she does sleep at night, probably does so upside down).

Speechwriters, what are your common feelings about your work葉he ones you allow yourself, the ones you encourage, and the ones you do your best to banish.

What's the value of a CEO's speech? How would you answer if your job depended on it?

Freelance speechwriter and Ragan speaker Ron McCall called me the other day to ask what I knew, if anything, about how to analyze the cost-benefit of a speech.

I didn't want to tell him the editor of Speechwriter's Newsletter had no more idea than his Springer Spaniel about how to quantify the value of a speech.

So I e-mailed him my declaration of ignorance. "Don't feel left out. Nobody else has an idea either," said the Southern Gentleman.

And then McCall shared with me his thinking on the subject. I share it with you, in hopes you'll have some input.

Ron McCall, on how to calculate the ROI on a corporate speech:

I know the cost of a typical speech to be about $100,000 (expense details include cost of labor for CEO, writing and approval staff, dedicated travel for the Chief, care and feeding on the road, etc. etc.). What I'm trying to estimate is the return on that 100K investment.

The American Marketing Association estimates the typical sales call to cost $275. We've already determined that CEOs speak in public, by and large, for one reason, and that's to sell the public on brand equity and corporate reputation. (I mean, seriously, how many times have we heard a CEO say, "Get me in front of customers!")

OK. CEOs are not in Administration, but in Sales & Marketing. So, let's say a CEO speaks to an audience of 200. The cost recovery of the talk would be 275 X 200 = $55,000. But if we've done our jobs right, the CEO would not be speaking to purchasing managers, i.e. the typical sales call, but to peers, other CEOs or opinion leaders, who carry a much higher value. What value? Don't know yet, but a recent article in USA Today estimated that the total compensation package for a CEO is $14M/year or $2375/hour based on a 16-hour day. So, we can estimate that an audience of peers (200 of them) has invested a collective $475,000 to hear your CEO talk for 20 minutes, with Q&A, round it up to one hour.

So, the monetary cost recovery range of the typical CEO talk (20 minutes, plus Q&A) is from $55,000 on the low end to $475,000 at the high end.

Now, if your CEO says, "I want to get out about 15 times next year," you can recognize that he's say, "I want to invest about a million five in my engagements next year." (100K X 15).

But what if he followed it up with saying, "And I want a return on capital (prime) plus 5%, same as I'm challenging my other operations to deliver."

Gulp!

That means you'd have to come up with a return of 5.75 (prime) + 5 (or almost 11%) or $165,000 on your Communications Plan and return $1,665,000 to the General Fund. Or get fired!

Would it not make sense to avoid the $55,000-type engagements (55,000 X 15 = 825,000, which means you get to meet Donald in the Boardroom) for a better option of high-value audiences, i.e. $475,000 X 15 = $7,125,000, which means you've earned amnesty and cannot be voted off the island for turning 1.5M into $7.1M!

Fodder for an episode of Ripley's Believe it or Not? Not really. More and more CEOs are demanding an ROI, or at least a justification for spending their time (a valuable corporate resource) on oral communications.

That's why I'm raising the issue.

Ron and I預nd my dog Slim謡ould love to get your thoughts.

A poem to blow up to poster-size and frame
and hang on your cubicle wall

Lately I'm reading Slouching Toward Nirvana, new collection of poems by the super-accessible poet (means: you can understand his poems the first time through, as if anybody is going to bother reading anything twice in this day and age) Charles Bukowski.

In one poem, Bukowski defends himself and all writers against all lovers and corporate communication vice presidents who would interrupt our writing us to ask if we want to go to a Cubs game this afternoon or if we won't mind sitting in on another fucking bullshit strategy meeting:

NEVER INTERRUPT A WRITER AT WORK

most simply don't understand that writing is
done
at a certain time and in a certain
place.
we work just like other professional people
like
dentists
doctors
butchers
lawyers
fry cooks
policemen
actors
trapeze artists
waiters, taxi drivers, airline pilots, insurance salesmen,
bond bailsmen, auto
mechanics and sundry
others.

we need our quiet time to do what we are supposed
to do.
it's as simple and profound and
necessary as
that.

and you're absolutely right
if you think I'm bitching
about you
about this.

Copyright 2005, CCCO, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Why do so few people comment on my blog?

"I like your blog. But why do so few people comment on it?"

"I like your hat. But why are you so durned ugly?"

As a journalist who has been covering the organizational communication beat for more than a dozen years, you'd think I'd have a better handle on what issues engage speechwriters and others sufficiently to make them respond publicly to at least answer the most frequently asked question I get from friends, family and colleagues about my blog.

But I don't. Not really.

At first, when I noticed a dearth of responses謡hich rankled me especially in light of the many remarks my close personal pal and arch professional enemy Steve Crescenzo gets on his blog on the main Ragan page悠 attributed this to a lack of traffic.

Not so, says Ragan Web honcho Brett Spearing, who reports that Speechwriter's Slant hundreds of unique visitors every week. "They may be unique," I grumped, "but most of 'em have one thing in common: They're mute."

I know some things. I'm not surprised, however, that an item about placing two spaces after a period generated more comments than a dozen purposely provocative items on communication in politics. It's easier and usually more fun to talk about small things than large things. That's why there are more "sports bars" than "book bars."

I guess at other possibilities: I'm too dogmatic and people don't feel there's room to respond. That could be, but on that one, I've got to plead the Popeye defense: I yam what I yam.

I worry that maybe speechwriters are just conditioned to maintain a low public profile, and that, while they'll ham it up over a highball at a Speechwriter's Conference cocktail party, they're just not going to stick their necks out in a place where someone預nyone幼ould see.

In any event, though I'm interested in hearing anybody's insights as to why my comment totals are lower than I wish they were, I'm through speculating, and I'm through worrying.

I'm going to keep writing what amuses me as I've done in print for all these years, and hoping, as all writers do, that somewhere, somehow, some good is coming of it.

My mistake was thinking that writing could ever be any more certain or gratifying than that.

Organizational rhetoric on the ground level,
and the illusion of progress

When you spend your career teaching, writing and otherwise publicly yammering about a certain specific subject, you tend to believe that the world is making progress in that area, that the world can make progress in this area, that wisdom can spread.

You must believe it, lest you allow the notion creep up that you are wasting your life.

And then, one sunny Tuesday afternoon遥ou're in a good mood, having just been bucked up by the readers of your blog who say they like you and you mean something to them遥our wife comes home from work with a reminder that organizational communication is still every bit as bad, in some places預nd leaders still just as ignorant and dictatorial預s before your ancestors sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.

The reminder comes in the form of a one-paragraph memo, written to your wife, a Chicago school teacher, from her principal. The memo concerns an annual talent show that your wife has voluntarily put on for every one of the six years she's worked at the school and on which she has already this year, spent three months of after-school time rehearsing with K-8 kids, several hundred dollars of your family's personal money and a great deal more time planning.

Here is what that memo says:

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we will not be having a talent show. A series of events have transpired and a talent show at this point is out of the question. Thank you for the time and effort you already put into this. Please refrain from keeping any students after school to practice: and notify their parents of this administrative decision. Further, since there will not be a talent show, there is no need to have a fundraiser to offset the cost of it. Thank you for your continued support and commitment to the students.

The memo leaves you with no answers.

On the flip side, thank God communications stupidity continues …

If people stopped making fools of themselves in their efforts to communicate, how would writers like us manage to continue to feel superior and smug?

A Milwaukee correspondent sent us this beauty, from the 10:00 local news:

"The spokesperson was discussing an incident involving an armed citizen who was squaring off against a police officer. The spokesperson said that the citizen 'had target acquisition' on the officers. In other words, he aimed his gun at them."

Everyone: Chortle!