The Articulate CEO

Are We Over Being Over-Connected?

The backlash against 24-hour connectivity is gathering pace around the world amid concerns that the lines between work-life and personal life are becoming more and more blurred.

Workers who find themselves answering work emails on their smartphones after the end of their shifts in Brazil can now qualify for overtime under a new law. The new legislation was approved by President Dilma Rousseff last month and basically says company emails to workers are equivalent to orders given directly to the employee.

Brazil is one country that is well and truly over-connected. Brazil has a population of 195 million people but the number of mobile subscribers exceeded 210.5 million in August last year, according to the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel).

Subscriptions were growing at about 3 million a month, mostly from internet-enabled phones. There were more than 25 million internet-enabled mobile phones in the country last year.

Labor attorneys told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper the new law makes it possible for workers answering emails after hours to ask for overtime pay. I'm not sure how successful such a request would be but it is probably only a matter of time before we see it tested in the courts.

This issue of over-connectivity has now started to pop up in several corners of the world.

In May, Chicago policeman Jeffrey Allen filed a class action suit against the city, asking for unpaid overtime compensation. He argues his connection means the city of Chicago owes him lots of overtime. His attorney Paul Geiger says it's a simple case.

"What we are saying is he's using this mobile device at the behest of the Police Department very routinely and very often off duty and not being compensated for all the time spent on the device doing the city's work," Geiger says.

The city gave Allen a BlackBerry when he worked in a unit determining which assets of criminals police could seize. Susan Prince, an attorney with Business and Legal Resources, says the deciding factor in this dispute is likely to be the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs wage and overtime provisions for American workers.

"Basically, it comes down to whether an employee is exempt or non-exempt," she says. "Exempt employees, they make the same salaries no matter how many hours they work during a week, so using a BlackBerry from home at night is not an overtime issue for them. But when you're dealing with non-exempt employees, they have to be paid for all the time they work."

It is a case that will be watched very carefully in the US and around the world. Regardless of the outcome we are already seeing an impact. In December, German carmaker Volkswagen agreed with labour representatives to switch off Blackberry emails after hours. The move came after French IT company Atos announced plans to eliminate company internal emails by 2013.

German telco Deutsche Telekom and consumer goods maker Henkel have also introduced measures to curb after-hours emails to reduce the pressure on workers to be always on call.

Are we truly over over-connectedness or is this a convenient way to excuse our own mobile addiction... after all we can always switch off can't we?

 

 

A CEO Who Is Anything But Grounded

On the 29th of October, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce announced that he was grounding all the aircraft in his airline in a bid to bring a protracted dispute with numerous unions representing Qantas workers to a head. The dispute had resulted in ongoing industrial action that was costing the airline millions of dollars a day and despite so-called ongoing negotiations neither party seemed capable of moving towards a resolution. So the day after the AGM the shock announcement is made that the airline has effectively shut up shop and left some 60,000 passengers around the world stranded.

Alan Joyce claims this was necessary as the unions were 'trashing the brand' and the damage to the airlines reputation had to be stopped but this is disinegenuous at best. Not because the unions were not damaging the brand but because Alan Joyce and his board had effectively overseen the devaluing of the brand ever since his tenure began. In the past twelve months alone Qantas has seen its share price tank by more than 40% - considerably more than rivals like Singapore Airlines so you can't just blame the markets. A reputation that used to see Qantas regularly ranked No. 1 for safety and service has fallen away to such an extent that the airline is lucky to crack most people's top ten. Frequent Flyers (of which I am one) rate Qantas well behind airlines such as Emirates, Etihad, Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Cathay Pacific, Air New Zealand, JAL, Lufthansa and Qatar.

Despite this appalling record the Remuneration Committee of the Qantas Board recommended a salary increase for Alan Joyce approaching $2 million! All this at a time of declining profitability, share price, reputation, service standards and customer satisfaction. What is worse is that it was approved at a feisty AGM the day before the airline announces it is grounding all its aircraft.

I do not pretend to know the in's and out's of Qantas's business nor am I making judgments as to who is right or wrong with regard to the ongoing industrial disputes. However, the sheer stupidity from a public relations and moral point of view of undertaking these kinds of actions in these kinds of circumstances beggars belief. When a Board and CEO behave in this manner it destroys their credibility. Once and for all people, you cannot claim you need to restructure to save costs while at the same time significantly increasing costs through bumping up executive salaries. You cannot claim that you need to improve performance while continually rewarding executives for non-performance in terms of key measures like share price and customer satisfaction. You cannot claim to be negotiating in good faith when you use tactics to blindside your workers and your customers. As a CEO you cannot claim credit for anything good that occurs without taking responsibility for anything bad.

Ask yourself a question... for relations to become this strained and incendiary between a CEO and his workforce just how incompetent does that CEO have to be? Alan Joyce may have done fantastic things for Qantas behind the scenes but none of it is visible to any of us. From a public relations point of view he is an unmitigated failure and in the modern world of social media and a 24 hour news cycle that should be enough to get any CEO fired.

 

The Three Little Pigs in a World Gone Mad!

Remember the childhood story “The Three Little Pigs”? A classic tale complete with animals, action, and some life lessons about not taking the easiest route that, despite variations over the years, has always retained its core story. At least it had up until now.

Apparently a new version of the story is now appearing in US classrooms. In this new version, the wolf has a sudden heart attack while trying to blow down the third little pig’s adobe house. The three little pigs rush to his aid, save him, and while trying to flee from him once recovered, realize that the whole “huff and puff and blow your house down” thing was a simple “lack of communication”: the wolf actually wanted to move in with the pigs and was testing each house’s structural integrity.

The story also includes issues around housing shortages as well as houses made of recycled newspaper and aluminum and the wolf turns out to be a vegetarian. What the hell is going on?

Here are a couple of exerpts for you to judge for yourself...

Facebook - The Communication Tool That Can't Communicate

Why is it that every major Facebook change seems to also be a major public relations disaster? With Mark Zuckerberg, the darling of mass media, considered some sort of business guru, you would think that there would be a little more thought that goes into the company's approach to privacy, major user interface changes, and how those are communicated to the very people those changes affect.

When it comes to innovative ways to enhance or expand the Facebook experience, Mark Zuckerberg and team seem to be well ahead of the curve. But when it comes to communicating what it’s doing, Facebook seems to stuck in the stone age.

Admittedly, they do a good job getting news and information to members of the press and blogosphere who can share details of announcements to broader audiences but why isn’t anyone at Facebook talking to the members themselves? Why doesn’t anyone at Facebook ever send an e-mail to inform members about problems and how they are being fixed? Why doesn’t anyone at Facebook write up some guidelines on how to address changes to things like privacy settings? Why doesn’t anyone at Facebook post an alert on members walls to let them know that something important needs their attention?

Instead, what seems to occur is that you have to rely on your 'friends' to post information about any problems or changes and, inevitably, some of that information will be incorrect or incomplete. That makes for a very frustrating experience

Too often, Facebook fail to provide documentation on how to use new features and turn everything on by default without notice. The company posts something on its fan site and assume that every member will see it. It needs to treat its members with a lot more respect. It should be sending each of its members a link to information - either in their walls or in their inboxes - so they can easily find it and, more importantly, so that they get the correct information.

I am not a user, but the fact is that Facebook is a communications platform and the changes that are made to their interface immediately and drastically affect millions of people - people that don't have a choice in those changes. That kind of impact requires complete and deliberate transparency when communicating with your customers not the 'guess-what-we-just-did' approach Facebook appear to favour.

Proof The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

We all like to complain about bureaucracy and the stupidity that is often inherent in it but in doing so we often leave ourselves open to claims of paranoia or grumpyness. Unfortunately our complaints are usually of a very personal nature and sometimes difficult to quantify or replicate for other people. It is only natural, therefore, that some of those complaints might be treated with a degree of scepticism or a suspicion that we are exagerating. Anyone who has found themselves in such a position will be excited to know I have found proof that the stupidity of our bureaucracies is actually far in excess of anything we could have possibly imagined.

Exhibit A:

I mean, come on... death isn't punishment enough? It needs to be augmented with a $200 fine because death isn't enough of a deterrent for recidivist offenders? What kind of idiot thinks that this sign is necessary or that this policy is sensible? If the sign is to believed it means that not only will you be killed if you touch the wires but your estate will also be pursued by the Newcastle Tramway Authority to recoup the outstanding fine.

Exhibit B:

Am I the only one who can see that there would be no need for such a warning if we didn't have the warning sign? Of course not! You can all see it too but apparently the moron responsible for this couldn't. To erect a warning sign warning against the inherent dangers of the warning sign itself is a very special kind of stupid. This is not someone born with some sort of mental difficiency - this is someone working at it on a daily basis.

Exhibit C:

In the same spirit as the previous sign I guess but again you have to wonder who thought this was a reasonable use of council funds. Once again, without the sign the problem doesn't actually exist. With the sign the problem not only exists but the sign is itself the likely cause of the problem by conveniently identifying itself as a viable target.

Masterchef Imitates Life

There are two reasons to watch reality T.V. - one is to regale with laughter at how little of it resembles reality in any form and the other is to cringe during the bits that are all too real. As a general rule the bits that are all too real are those where the contestants or protagonists are put under pressure and respond in very human ways. Masterchef Australia is a master of puting its contestants under pressure and their response is eerily similar to the way many corporates and their executives respond when they are put under pressure. In short, everyone stops thinking, makes really bad decisions and then blames those decisions on either unforseen factors or a failure to take something into account. The truth is that when pressure is brought to bear far too many people just panic, latch on to the first possible solution they can think of and then try to rationalise the process later.

The Masterchef contestants are ostensibly in a cooking competition but hardly anyone is ever knocked out for poor cooking. What gets them everytime is poor decision-making. For example, the challenge is to cook for 200 people on a farm using an open fire and a contestant decides to attempt gnocchi. When was the last time you had gnocchi at a BBQ? The challenge is to create a low salt, low carb burger so a contestant adds a sprinkle of salt to the burger to enhance flavour. Why would you add an ingredient you have been asked to avoid? The challenge is to produce a sweet dish in 30 minutes so a contestant decides to poach a pear which will take 30-40 minutes to cook properly. Why would you choose a dish that takes longer than the time available? The answer to all these questions is they did so because they didn't think at all and the examples of this in the corporate world make Masterchef look like a cooking competition.

For example, Coca Cola were feeling some competitive pressure from rival Pepsi and, even though they were still the market leader by quite some distance, decided to abandon everyones favourite Cola recipe and bring New Coke to the market. The result? Unmitigated disaster.

We all know companies that have made people redundant only to discover no one else could do their job and have to re-hire them as consultants to train someone else. We all know of businesses renown for their innovation and creativity only to themselves be blindsided by someone elses innovation and creativity. We all know smart, rational people who have succumbed to the dumbest, most irrational behaviour.

What is most concerning is that in Masterchef, as in life, the contestants usually know they are making a mistake but persist anyway. It is the most frightening example of the triumph of hope over experience... and the less recognised, but more common, triumph of experience over reality.

 

'Freedom' of Speech - The Devil is in the Detail

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed by almost every country, guarantees freedom of expression. That basically means Freedom of Speech is a principle that pretty much everyone agrees with and yet debate rages over whether or not such freedom of expression should be allowed. Like so many debates in the modern world though the debate is centred on the application rather than the principle because when everyone agrees with a proposition chances are it is either enormously profound or totally meaningless. Freedom of speech is a case in point.

 

Where should freedom of speech begin and end? The debate is not in the concept but in the detail because even the covenant limits the scope of this right. Restrictions are possible for the respect of the rights or reputations of others as well as for the protection of national security, public order, public health or morals.

 

So it is easy to be for free speech in principle. It is far less obvious what this will mean in practice.

Even the straightforward exceptions are not so straightforward anymore. Take the oft-quoted example that nobody should have the right to cause a mass panic by crying ''fire'' in a packed theatre. Makes sense in a packed theatre but the Internet creates problems with even that rule. What is a virtual packed theatre? Would Wikileaks yelling ‘radiation leak’ online constitute the same thing for example?

 

What about the less obvious cases?

 

There are numerous cases where it is not so clear to determine where the balance should lie between the protection of free speech and the protection of other rights. Take advertising, for example. Free speech does not only apply to political opinions but to commercial ones as well. Nevertheless, we would probably agree that advertising aimed at young children needs limits.

 

That's fair enough. But what about advertising to adults? In opinion polls, most people say they are personally never conned by advertising. However, the very same people also believe that others regularly fall for misleading ads and therefore strict regulations were necessary. Many countries have banned advertising of products that have health consequences such as tobacco and alcohol. Where do we start and where do we stop?

 

It's the same story with political speech. In some countries there are limitations on political opinions. In parts of Europe Holocaust denial is illegal. In Turkey a ''denigration of the Turkish nation'' can land you in jail. Burning the flag is a valid protest in some countries and a hanging offence in others.

 

You would think that we could only support such restrictions on free speech if we believed that society could not handle it. However, in a society in which we all regularly have to make myriad decisions, why should we not also be able to decide how to respond to unpleasant or objectionable statements? Instead of banning them, why not choose to ignore or ridicule them? When it comes to freedom of speech the law often goes out of its way to prove itself an ass.

 

Realistically, freedom of speech cannot be limitless. Yet instead of relying on laws, perhaps we should trust common sense and civil society. Perhaps we should rely on weight of opinion rather than fear one opinion. Perhaps it’s too late.

Article on The Punch: The Stupid People: They Are Legion And Dangerous

"These are Cipolla’s laws of stupidity:

1. Always and inevitably each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

2. The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.

3. A person is stupid if they cause damage to another person or group of people without experiencing personal gain, or even worse causing damage to themselves in the process.

4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people; they constantly forget that at any time anywhere, and in any circumstance, dealing with or associating themselves with stupid individuals invariably constitutes a costly error.

5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person there is."

Read my latest article published in The Punch

 

 

 

Special Episode: Podcast - Federal Election Review (Gillard Vs Abbott: who is the better communicator and why?)

Special Episode

In the wash-up of last Saturday’s Federal election and the resulting hung Parliament, we dissect the performance of both leaders pre and post election - Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Liberal Party's Tony Abbott.

How could Julia Gillard do better in a communications sense? (She needs to lighten up and "remove the polish").

Tony Abbott – what should he now do to improve his performance? (He needs to "tighten up"and be more considered).

If you have any feedback, questions or topics you would like me to cover please email me at [email protected].

To listen to The Articulate CEO podcast:

1) Click here to listen now

2) Subscribe via iTunes

It's All Kevin's Fault

Australia has recently seen the appointment of its first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the accompanying hysteria that always seems to go with such events. 

Reactions have ranged from concern over weighty issues such as hairstyle and dress sense, to euphoria over the triumph of 'girl power', to disdain over how someone who is both 'Godless' (she is atheist) and 'childless' can possibly understand average Australians (whomever they are). While amusing, the one thing all such reactions have in common so far is how stupid and irrelevant they all are.

What is much more interesting is how Julia came to power and the communication strategy she is adopting in her attempts to win an upcoming election.

A (very) brief background

First, for those of you unfamiliar with Australian politics, a quick update: the former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, led the Labour Party to victory in 2007. He ousted the long serving Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard, not only from Government but also his electoral seat. It would be fair to call that a spectacular political victory. Kev was unbelievably popular - mainly because the electorate were too dopey to work out what a knob he was. At his side was the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

Flash forward three years and the public are heartily sick of Kev and his complete inability to talk sensibly to anyone. His popularity has fallen through the floor and several policy initiatives have either failed or are in the process of failing. At his side is the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.

The Labour Government start to panic. They sense a very real possibility of being tossed out of office after only one term and a political coup is launched with the caucus voting to remove Kevin from office and install a new Prime Minister in the form of Julia Gillard (conveniently standing beside him at the time).

First female PM

The Australian public go nuts for Julia and congratulate themselves on having elected a female Prime Minister for the first time in their history (except they didn't) and Julia sets about communicating her vision to the Australian public which pretty much goes like this:

"The Government has lost its way. We are grateful for the service of Kevin Rudd but we have heard the great Australian public and recognise that new leadership and new approach is required. We are sorry we lost our way but that was largely Kevin's fault and we will now put things right."

She moves quickly to appease the mining industry by giving them pretty much what they wanted on a tax issue (one of those policies that was failing) and back flips on a number of other policy areas. She can do this because she isn't Kevin Rudd so what would have been seen as a back flip for him is simply common sense flexibility for her. Kevin is the beginning and the end of the problem for Julia which is why there are no cabinet changes when she takes over - clearly no one else is to blame.

A justification for change

On the surface it looks smart to blame Kevin for everything but there is an underlying problem with this approach and it's this: Julia was the Deputy Prime Minister. The 'Government's Way' was her way and many of the failed policies were her policies and in some cases ones she had direct control over.

She will probably win the next election - largely thanks to an opposition leader whose social policy  views would not have been out of place in the Stone Age. But there is an underlying cynicism and disingenuousness that may well come back to bite her.

The only real justification for the change in Prime Minister is for a political party to maintain power at all costs. There will come a time when the Australian public are less enamoured of the romantic idealism of a female Prime Minister, when her popularity may sharply decline, when her colleagues who elevated her to power will start to panic and waiting in the wings will be a Deputy Prime Minister ... standing right beside her.

Image thanks to ABC News: Damien Larkins