Envirocomm

Communication Without 'Gatekeepers'
June 9, 2012

Fences are down, gates are irrelevant. Google and Facebook and Apple and Amazon, pads and phones and clouds — the endless chatter and the ease of leaks — have changed the lives of corporate gatekeepers.

The founder of Amazon.com told columnist Tom Friedman, "I see the elimination of gatekeepers everywhere."

CEO Jeff Bezos was referring to cloud computing where anyone anywhere can for a small fee go through Amazon's open portals to sell things, get a job, start a company or self-publish.

But it's another gate flung open to reposition corporate communications as one of many voices reporting, tweeting, tweaking and twisting business news and views.

Vapor views increase the transparency ante (nobody forgets that the fuse for Wall Street's investor explosion was touched off by a leak of analyst research about Lehman) in corporate gate-minding of news released to meet regulatory requirements.

Do empowered stakeholders mean the powering down of public relations? If everybody knows, or can know, virtually everything about every public company all the time, where does that put the corporate communicator?

Asked by the New York Times' Corner Office writer what leadership lessons he's learned, Chris Barin, head of the IT cloud company, Appirio, said look first to company employees.

"(Transparency) is a huge part of our culture," he said, "and what I think makes a company and team really thrive and work."

The reference was specifically related to negative information, such as cutbacks, certainly the most sensitive and personal matter in any organizational culture, but his point was broader: "You should never surprise an employee."

This CEO's view, shared by more and more company leaders who see the light of intrusive openness, is that everybody in the company needs to know as much about everything as humanly possible, and to get in on the action.

That was essentially what Sam Palmisano tackled when he took over as IBM's chief years ago. He let thousands of employees have a say in what the company ought to be doing to keep pace with, and drive, change.

Today, with gates vaporized, CCOs must work within a new reality to create and manage the flow of information to sustain the trust-based deal between company leaders and stakeholders.

CEOs like Barbin understand that the starting condition for success is in-house openness, to insure that employees are well informed. To paraphrase Harold Burson, to most outsiders, the company employee is the true expert. He or she needs to be prepared — and, at best, able to advocate — in the unfenced social conversations.

As for the CCO, the best re-powering mantra, entering the cloudy, crowded new reality, is: EKE!— Everybody Knows Everything! Or at least they think they do.

E. Bruce Harrison, June 9, 2012

    Bruce Harrison is an adjunct professor in the master's program at
    Georgetown University, Washington, DC. He and Judith Muhlberger teach
    courses in leadership communications and corporate crisis communications.

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