Crescenzo Communications has a new employee!

This brings our head count to 3, now. Those of you who read this blog know that my other employee is my six-year-old son, Zach, who is the vice president of Human Resources.

By the way, Zach just switched us to a fully automated HR system. Since he doesn’t have his own computer, his system is fairly simple. If I want to talk to him about HR or anything else work related, I write him a note about it and put it in a coffee can in his bedroom. He checks the can, as far as I can tell, about once every three weeks.

Sort of like the systems other big companies use, but more low-tech.

Anyway, our new employee is my new wife, Cindy. Cindy has worked for us part-time for the last couple of years, doing various administrative odds and ends. Now she’s coming on full-time to run the entire company.

Those of you who know me know that I’m not much of a numbers guy. And I’m not much of a businessman. And I’m not real organized. And I’m not much in the area of client relations. And I'm no marketer. And I’m not much of a planner.

Really, when you get right down to it, I’m not much of anything, other than a writer and a speaker and an employee communications consultant . . . and it wouldn’t be hard to find people who would argue that I’m not that good at some of those things, either.

Anyway, Cindy used to be the director of marketing at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and the director of development for the Chicago League of Theaters. Working for the arts is fun, but it takes its toll on your soul . . . so she decided to make the move to corporate America.

She’s going to be doing everything I don’t do: she has already (gasp) put a budget together; she’s putting in filing systems and invoicing systems and an accounting system and all kinds of other systems.

So far, I have to say, she has been an enormous pain in the ass.

Tuesday was Cindy’s first day, and it was a disaster. Here’s a breakdown:

7:30 a.m. The alarm goes off, and I start the business day by hitting the snooze alarm. Seventeen times.

8:47 a.m. I finally get up. Unbeknownst to me, Cindy has been up since 6:45 a.m., learning how to do Quickbooks and sorting through the shoebox full of receipts that serves as my tax return system.

8:51 a.m. I tell Cindy that as of January 1, 2006, due to a policy change at Crescenzo Communications, the official employee orientation program now involves sex in the shower. She closes the door to her office.

9:07 a.m. With my hand sore from knocking on the door, I finally give up on the “orientation = sex in the shower” argument, and answer some e-mails.

10:15 a.m. “Time for lunch,” I say to Cindy. “It’s 10 in the morning,” she says. “El Jardin’s opens at 10:30,” I say. “If we walk, we can get there just as they open.” I know this, because I have done it 765 times in the past five years. I may not have any other business systems, but when it comes to lunch, my systems kick ass. “I have work to do,” Cindy says. I’m beginning to think that Cindy has what’s known in the corporate world as “an attitude problem,” and “might not be a good fit” for the “Crescenzo Corporate Culture.”

11:00 a.m. Cindy shows me the new expense sheet system, which will involve me actually filing my receipts right after a trip, so that we can be reimbursed more quickly by the client. My old system was to turn in the expenses whenever the ATM machine stopped giving me money. Her system seems like a pain in the ass. I contemplate firing her.

11:30 a.m. Cindy says she needs to meet. Finally! Orientation! But alas . . . she wants to go over the proposed budget, and wants me to give her an estimate of my monthly income. Jesus, talk about a verbal cold shower.

12:00 a.m. Cindy is now working on putting together a business plan, which she plans on taking to a bank to see if we can get a business line of credit loan. “It will help with cash flow,” she tells me. “What’s cash flow?” I ask her. “Please leave my office,” she says.

12:10 p.m. I go to the branch office, El Jardin’s, for lunch. Cindy stays behind to work. I start practicing what I’m going to say when I fire her. She’s just not Crescenzo Communications material, I’m afraid.

3:30 p.m. Back from lunch! Three margaritas has me REALLY feeling like some orientation now. Some SERIOUS orientation. But Cindy is nowhere to be found. Slacker! Just the excuse I need to ditch her, I think to myself, settling into bed with my iPod.

4:15 p.m. Cindy wakes me up. She has been to the bank, the office supply store, and Best Buy, to buy some things that will network our computers together. I decide it’s not good a good idea to fire someone when you’re groggy from your nap, so she gets a reprieve.

5:00 p.m. “Quitting time,” I tell Cindy. “Should we go get a cocktail?” “Not yet,” she says. "I’ve got about another hour here.” Some quick calculations in my head tell me that on her first day, Cindy put in more hours than I do in typical work week, if I’m not on the road. She’s really going to knock the hell out of the culture if she's not stopped. She has to go. I just put a note in Zach’s coffee can, asking him the best way to do it. It’s going to be dicey, because Zach likes Cindy. But personal feelings can’t get in the way of business, right?

I’ll keep you updated out here as to what happens. Meanwhile, if anyone out there needs a super competent, smart, charming, expert marketer and fundraiser who knows a lot about things like surveys and focus groups, I know just the person.

I've always liked going to Texas to do seminars.

Even though I've only been to three cities there (Dallas, Houston, and Austin), and only really spent time in one of them (Austin), I've always liked the crowds. Texans are bigger than life. They're not afraid to mix it up. And underneath all that Lone Star swagger, they're really nice.

But a big part of the reason I like going to Texas so much is that I'm an honorary Texan.

Granted, I bestowed that honor on myself, at about 1 in the morning, sitting in a blues bar in Austin, while drinking tequila. "Damn," I said to myself. "This is a cool place to be. You are now officially an honorary Texan."

So, when Ragan came to me and asked if I wanted to extend the two-day Master Class seminar series, and asked for my input on cities, I immediately said Dallas. I would have said Austin, but Dallas is bigger.

So that's where we're going, on January 30 and 31. Although we made the decision to go to Dallas at the last minute, with less than a month to market it, we already have 22 people signed up. After Dallas, we're also going to Toronto on February 16 and 17, and back to Chicago on March 22 and 23.

If you missed the Master Class the first time around, please check out the Ragan web site, and sign up for one of those cities. It's a fun seminar, with tons of good stuff.

And, to my fellow Texans, sign up already, will you? Sonya? Can you bring your bunch to big D? Let's get a fun group together, and make the session at the bar after day one something to remember . . .

A communicator friend of mine has an interesting problem . . . and I’m thinking some of the brains out here might have some advice.

Here’s the situation:

She works for a service-oriented company in the southern United States. Some recent research done by an outside company revealed that her organization’s customers were less than thrilled with the service they were getting.

So, predictably, the company reacted. They created a “Customer First” philosophy/strategy, and are now building both internal and external communication campaigns around it.

No problem, right? I mean, dozens of companies have a “Customers Come First” or “The Customer is Always Right,” philosophy, right?

Personally, though, I’ve never agreed with the concept. I think it’s a tad dangerous to start ranking your different audiences or stakeholders. If customers are always first, who’s second? Who’s third? Do employees come before shareholders? Where do your distributors fit in? What about the Board of Directors, or your lobbyists and legislators?

Anyway, this company is rolling out a huge “Customer First” campaign, and my editor friend is already hearing some negative feedback.

“I keep hearing people say, ‘The name of the campaign ought to be Customers First, Employees Last, because that’s the truth of the matter,’” she told me.

Ouch. See what I mean about ranking groups?

Well, my friend wanted to do what I think any good communicator would want to do—and address the problem.

And, by lucky coincidence, she is about to launch a brand-new online publication, and wants to make a splash with the launch.

So, her first-ever lead story carried this headline:

“Does ‘Customers First’ mean ‘Employees Last’?

The story would then answer employee questions, explain the campaign, and otherwise try to answer the very important question posed in the headline.

Brilliant!

But . . . no.

“It got killed,” she told me. “The higher ups didn’t want to deal with it.”

Double ouch. It’s the old, “If we pretend it’s not there, maybe it will go away,” argument, coupled with the “It’s probably just a few bad apples that feel that way anyway,” justification. A deadly combination, if you ask me.

So now my friend finds herself in a tough spot. She’s going to launch this brand-new publication, with no acknowledgement whatsoever of this cancer that’s eating at the culture. How much credibility do you think she’s going to have?

Anybody have any advice for her? Mine was simple: Do some guerilla research, in a hurry. Some focus groups, maybe a Survey Monkey quick hitting survey . . . anything that will give you ammunition to bring to management that this is a real problem, and that it should be dragged out in the open and dealt with.

But that takes time and money. Or at least time. And she doesn’t have much of that these days. She’s under the gun to get this publication out. So she may have to fight the battle without any research.

Anybody have any ideas on how she could proceed?

Crescenzo Communications is proud to announce a new line of consulting services!

I got the idea during an e-mail exchange I had with a client earlier today. We were trying to set up a conference call, and I asked if she could do it this Friday.

She said she couldn’t, because she had to go to a mandatory, all-day meeting on a very boring topic. She was dreading the meeting.

“I may cheat and have [my colleague] call my cell phone with an emergency. Is that bad?” she wrote.

Bad? I wrote back. Bad? It is pure genius.

And it gave me an idea for a new line of services that I could provide. If you hire me, I will get you out of any corporate or organizational function you don’t want to be at. HR meetings, anything to do with lawyers, diversity training sessions, financial meetings with accountants . . . . you’ll never have to go to one of these meetings again.

After all, as a consultant, you pay me lots of money, right? So if I call with an emergency, you better drop everything you’re doing and get back to me.

Then, we can chat for a while about food and wine and the Cubs and Paris, while the rest of the poor slobs have to sit through the meeting and assign each other more work.

I figure I’ll offer different tiers of service.

For the most basic level, I just provide you with cutting-edge tools and best practices for getting out of meetings. For example, there’s a trick shop around the corner from my house that sells little capsules filled with what looks like blood.

I’ll send you some of those, you pop a couple in your mouth, and 20 minutes into the meeting you chomp down on the capsules and let the "blood" dribble down your chin and all over your chest (you can’t do it right away; it will look suspicious. That is the kind of consulting advice I bring to the table). Once the blood starts flowing, you just have to get up and stagger out of the room, mumbling something about a cerebral hemorrhage.

Of course, this should probably be a one-time-only tactic. Otherwise, people may get wise. But I have a lot of these kinds of tactics . . . I just can’t share them all here, otherwise nobody will hire me. But just to tease you, one of my best tactics involves a balloon filled with urine and a pin.

For the next level of service, you get me personally. I will actually call your cell phone, send a message to your Blackberry, beep you, and have them page you over your inter-office intercom. The message over the intercom will be simple but effective;

“Mr. Jones, Mr. Crescenzo the high-priced consultant is on the phone. He says, and I quote, ‘It’s all falling apart. The entire campaign is about to go in the toilet. We need to meet immediately or lose thousands of dollars.’ Please drop whatever you’re doing and call him back immediately.”

Of course, the key to this strategy will be the sequence of messages. First, I’ll call your cell. You will have “accidentally” left it on . . . and will act very irritated by the call. Then your blackberry thingie will beep (those things do beep, don’t they?). Again, you will show even more irritation. Then your pager will go off. At this point, people will notice. They may even ask you if you need to leave for a minute.

You will say no. “It appears I have a fire to put out, but I think it must wait,” you will say. “What we are doing here in this room is too important to cut short.”

Everyone will respect you for taking the meeting seriously. But then we will cut in with that inter-office intercom page, and they will beg you to go take care of business. You, of course, will never go back.

For our top-tier clients, we get really creative. Some of the things we will offer at that level:

* We will hire homeless people to sneak into your office complex and pull the fire alarm, so the entire building has to evacuate.

* We will page the other people in the meeting with fake emergency messages about their cars being on fire and other stuff like that (we will not actually set their cars on fire . . . not at this level of service, anyway.). That way, they have to leave. And when they do, you can act really irritated and say things like, “Hey, I busted my ass to clear this time on my calendar; I honestly don’t know when I’ll have the chance to meet again.” Of course, you will never have the time to meet again, and it will be the other person’s fault.

* We will fabricate an entire false Outlook Calendar for you, filled with important meetings with the high-priced consultant, so that nobody can even think about booking a meeting with you.

This last example is the sort of service that sets Crescenzo Communications apart, I think, from the other consultants. Any consultant can get you out of a meeting once it starts. It takes proactive, strategic thinking to help you avoid getting invited to the meeting in the first place. And that’s what Crescenzo Communications is all about: proactive, strategic, cutting-edge, world-class, empowered, paradigm-shifting thinking.

If you’re interested in these or any other services, please contact my COO, Cindy, at 773-472-1629. Thank you.

Is it my imagination, or are CEO columns—and maybe CEO communication in general—getting a whole hell of a lot better all of a sudden?

I’d like to think I’m right . . . but it may just be wishful thinking on my part.

See, when I started in this business 15 years ago, my main job, as an assistant editor at Ragan Report, was to go through employee publications. And the one thing most of them had in common was some kind of “Executive Letter,” or CEO column.

Actually, the one thing most of them had in common was a lousy “Executive Letter,” or CEO column.

They were all so similar, and so bad, that I thought there was a secret company out there that had cornered the market on writing CEO columns, and was secretly churning out generic columns for companies all over the world.

I imagined it working like this:

A communicator would call the company, and the conversation would go something like this:

Frazzled Communicator: Hi, I work for XYZ Corporation in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Our monthly publication, Vision, is about to go to press, and I still don’t have the CEO column written yet. He won’t return any of my calls, and his admin just called to tell me to stop bothering him. The same thing happened last month, but I was able to fill the space with a picture of the CEO handing over one of those big oversized checks to a local charity. But I don’t have any pictures like that this month. I’m screwed.

CEO Columns-R-Us: Well, we can certainly help. Do you have a topic in mind?

Frazzled Communicator: Uh . . . no. Not really.”

CEO Columns-R-Us: No problem. We’ve got a bunch of standards you can choose from. Let’s see here . . . have you written about Synergy lately?

Frazzled Communicator: Yes, we did that in January. And in March. And again in June. Synergy’s real big around here. We’ve also written about Empowerment and Global Competition recently, so those are out, too.

CEO Columns-R-Us: No problemo. We’ve got a whole list here. What about World Class Service?

Frazzled Communicator: Did it for the Holiday issue. We compared our service to that of Santa Clause, and talked about how the elves are Santa’s greatest assets, and without them, he couldn’t deliver on his global commitments to customers. We tied it into the Employee Opinion Survey.

CEO Columns-R-Us: Nice. Very nice. Let’s see . . . when was the last time you did a sports analogy? You know, a ‘there is no I in Team’ sort of thing that talks about how a chain is only as good as its weakest link? Maybe tie it into the Olympics?

Frazzled Communicator: Did it last August.

CEO Columns-R-Us: Okay. What about a ‘Customer is The Boss’ column?

Frazzled Communicator: Last July.

CEO Columns-R-Us: Okay, give me a minute. I’ve got to go into the older files. Hey! What about Diversity, with a capital D?

Frazzled Communicator: We haven’t done that one in almost two years!

CEO Columns-R-Us: Bingo! Let’s hit this son of a bitch again, then. You got a pen?

Frazzled Communicator: Yep. Fire away.

CEO Columns-R-Us: Okay, here’s your head: “ABC Corp. Values Diversity.”

Frazzled Communicator: I like it . . .but our company is XYZ, not ABC.

CEO Columns-R-Us: Whatever. Just get “Values Diversity” in there, okay? Now, for your lead, we’ve got several options. We can put you into a nice little melting pot metaphor for the standard price . . . but if you want to pay a little extra, we’ve got a whole new thing we’re doing. It’s a multiple metaphor lead that involves a fruit bowl, an orchestra, and a tossed salad. It costs a little more, but it’s really cutting-edge stuff.

Frazzled Communicator: I guess we should go whole hog, huh? Let’s do it! Give me the big boy.

CEO Columns-R-Us: Now you’re talking! And I’ll tell you what. With the multiple metaphor lead, I’m even going to throw in a free “Diversity is a business initiative that makes financial sense for this organization” nut graph, and a bonus quote from your CEO on how the more diverse your workforce is, the better equipped you’ll be to deal with the diverse marketplace. How does that sound?

Frazzled Communicator: Terrific! I’m so glad I called!

And so on. I imagined that this secret firm would provide you with everything you need for your CEO column—right down to the fake signature at the bottom. If your CEO wasn't very photogenic, or didn’t want his picture taken, CEO Columns-R-Us could even provide you with a mug-shot photo of a pudgy white guy in a suit with a serious look on his face, to put in the upper left-hand corner of the page.

But . . . not anymore. It may be my imagination, but I think CEO Columns-R-Us may be going out of business. I’m seeing more and more CEO columns—both in print and online—that are willing to deal with real issues. I’m seeing CEOs tackle bad news head-on. I’ve actually seen a couple of CEO blogs that are conversational—rather than “corporate”—in tone.

I’m seeing more and more CEOs willing to answer real questions from employees. I’m seeing CEO columns that work harder to tie the big picture down to individual employees.

In short, I’m seeing some damn good CEO communications lately. But I want to ask you: Are you experiencing the same thing?

See, I worry because so much of what I see is sent to me by communicators. And people tend to send stuff that they are proud of. So there’s a chance I may be only seeing the best of the best.

So let me put the question to you: Are YOUR CEO communications getting any better? Or are you still just churning out the corporate boilerplate? Are the old dinosaurs dying and being replaced by young guns who understand the power of communications?

If you’re doing something great, I’d love to see it. You can even e-mail me privately at steve@crescenzocommunications.com. Maybe if I get enough good samples, I can put together a little book and post it to the blog.

So let me know!

For those of you who are sensitive to harsh, unprofessional language, please stop reading now.

FUCK GOOGLE.

I just heard on NPR a couple of minutes ago that Google—whose corporate mantra is, “Don’t do evil”—is agreeing to blatant censorship in order to operate in China.

“Internet search giant Google Inc will block politically sensitive terms on its new China site, bowing to conditions set by Beijing in return for access to the world's number-two internet market,” is how one web site put it.

Google is using the old, “Hey, everybody else is doing it so why can’t we” argument, according to the site.

“Home-grown giants like Sohu.com Inc and Baidu.com Inc, along with China sites operated by Yahoo Inc and Microsoft, all routinely block searches on politically sensitive terms such as the Falun Gong spiritual movement and Taiwan independence,” says the site.

Oh, then it must be okay. Assholes. Here’s the quote from one of the head Google assholes:

"In order to operate from China, we have removed some content from the search results available on Google.cn in response to local law, regulation or policy," Andrew McLaughlin, Google's senior policy counsel, said in a statement.

They have removed “some content” in order to comply with “local law, regulation or policy.” What a bunch of lawyer horseshit that is. And the horseshit continues to come tumbling out of this lawyer’s mouth:

"While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission,” he says.

So they would rather that people get a whitewashed, incomplete, inaccurate, censored, pro-China version of world news and history than no information at all? Bullshit.

And besides, Yahoo is already there! They can already get all the information not related to China that they need!

I'd hate to see what Google would have done had they wanted to get into the German market, circa 1939. I can see the asshole lawyer statement in my mind's eye:

"While removing information on the Nazi Party's persecution of Jews, cripples, homosexuals, gypsies, and anybody else who doesn't fit the Aryan Race profile doesn't jibe with Google's 'do no evil' corporate policy, the opportunity to bring tons of porn to people in Germany is one that Google cannot, in good conscience, pass up."

This nonsense that some filtered, censored information is better than no information at all is nothing more than a cover-up for what really matters to Google: cash.

I think I’d have more respect for Google—not much, but a bit more—if they would just come out and tell the truth:

“Hey, China has 111 million internet users. We will do anything in our power to get to that market. They don’t want to talk about Tibet? Fine with us! What has Tibet ever done for us, anyway? They don’t want to talk about Tiananmen Square? Hey, never happened! What tanks? As long as we can slap millions of banner ads on whatever content they do approve, we’re cool with that. "

It’s ironic that this story comes out three days after Parade magazine’s annual list of the worst dictators in the world.

And guess who made number six on the list?

That’s right . . . Hu Jintao, the asshole who runs China. Here’s the quote from the magazine:

“Although some Chinese have taken advantage of economic liberalization to become rich, up to 150 million Chinese live on $1 a day or less in this nation with no minimum wage. Between 250,000 and 300,000 political dissidents are held in “reeducation-through-labor” camps without trial.

Less than 5% of criminal trials include witnesses, and the conviction rate is 99.7%. There are no privately owned TV or radio stations. The government opens and censors mail and monitors phone calls, faxes, e-mails and text messages. In preparation for the 2008 Olympics, at least 400,000 residents of Beijing have been forcibly evicted from their homes.”

But at least the couple of hundred Chinese people who aren't starving to death can now use Google!!

Don’t do evil my big hairless ass.

I'm writing this from the Dallas airport!

The reason I use an exclamation point is that I am always THRILLED when my wireless stuff actually works. It happens about one out of every 100 times I try it.

I just finished a wonderfully fun seminar in Dallas. Forty people, all with a good sense of humor, great interaction . . . it was terrific, even if I do have to say so myself.

And a great networking session in the bar, too. As usual, lots of good horror stories that I'll share out here in the next couple of days.

The best story came from one woman who works for an executive who insists on using a PowerPoint slide that features some kind of bell curve or chart or something, that looks like a huge boob. And, to make matters worse, there is a big dot on the chart, right where the nipple on the boob would be.

"I call it the Nipple Slide," she told us. "And he won't stop using it."

That's excellent. From there, the conversation drifted into what a pig Oprah is, whether or not Steadman is a homosexual, the fact that some women actually buy and use FAKE nipples . . . and all sorts of other neat stuff.

This is the kind of professional development that you miss out on when you don't come to one of my seminars!!

Which leads me to my next question: What the hell is the matter with Canadians?

Every time I speak in Toronto, or talk to people from Toronto, they complain that Ragan never sends any seminars up there. Which is true. We don't . . . even though Toronto has the largest IABC chapter in North America.

So this time, I convinced Mark Ragan to include Toronto on the list of cities when we decided to extend the Master Class Seminar.

I thought, based on all the feedback I've gotten from Torontonians on how much they want us up there, that we'd get fifty or sixty people.

We have 15. Where the hell are all the people who e-mail me and corner me at conferences to yell at me for never coming to Toronto? It's a really good seminar . . . lots of fun, great case studies . . .and Toronto is a great drinking city.

So I put the question to my northern neighbors: Where the hell are you?