Saturday, August 05, 2006

With Blogs, F500 CEOs prefer to hide behind their PR and Legal Armies


Great article from last week's New York Times on how, despite the exploding popularity of Blogs, only 1 Fortune 500 CEO currently runs his own blog: Jonathan Schwartz of Sun. Most CEOs prefer to hide behind an army of PR people and lawyers to sift through every comma and word used in a speech or release.

In our recent research on what drives breakout performance, one of the key factors we identified was "Projecting Authentic Leadership." Basically, we define this as being seen by all throughout your organization as someone who can be related to. "Is Jonathan Schwartz a guy I could sit down and have a casual discussion with over a cup of coffee?"

Carly Fiorina would have likely failed the "cup of coffee" test for a lot of HP employees. How do NOT come across as "authentic?" Certainly, by distancing yourself from your employees. In the spirit of "managing risk" and "adhering to Sarbanes-Oxley requirements," too many CEOs today choose to take up opportunities like blogs to really connect with their people and get them more aligned in the same direction.

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