Transparency and Leadership

 April 1, 2011 – Palo Alto, CA – The Churchill Club held a breakfast event discussing the topic of leadership in the age of transparency. The event featured Gail Becker of Edelman, Peter Blackmore of ShoreTel, Gary Bloom of eMeter, John Hamm of VSP Capital, Anthony Wood of Roku and was moderated by Charlene Li of Altimeter. The panel discussion took on the subject of trust in leadership in both politics and business, and the impact of regulation and technology on the transparency of the leadership role. The Edelman Trust Survey showed a large jump (19% gain) in the trust and credibility of CEOs over the results a few years back.

The discussion started with the panel agreeing that CEOs have not really improved. There are the same number of good folks and the same number of companies self-destructing and blowing up as before, however the effort to keep things under wraps is much more difficult, so the bad tendencies are being discovered and exposed earlier while the circle of damage and extent of the mis-behavior is much more contained. The comparison is also from the late 2008/early 2009 time frame when there was overall, daily and widespread distrust of companies and institutions as a result of the financial crisis and widespread fiscal mismanagement that took place on a global basis.

The area of transparency was discussed under the context of social networking, email, instant messaging, twitter, SOX, and generalized corporate communication. One of the discussion points was that messaging has changed inside companies. The message given to the employees and managers has to be the same as what is given outside to the world, as the electronic backplane of the internet make for instant collaboration of the discussion and more importantly, posting and discussion of discrepancies.

The discussion was that this challenges the ideas of privacy and protection of intellectual property as everything gets out, however, it actually requires those in charge to think and understand about what they are going to say and to whom. The assumption is that there is very little private information in a multi-person forum anymore. Most CEOs have found out that communication has to clear and consistent with the context around the statements, otherwise it will come back at you. The role of the CEO has now shifted to also including being the Chief Communication Officer (CCO), and the message has to be clear, concise and consistant, otherwise the speed of communication and review will kill the credibility of the message.

The use of electronic messaging has also increased the need for in-person contact. When all the messaging comes electronically and from multiple sources, the shareholders, customers & employees actually loose trust in the message until it is confirmed in person by someone willing to own the statements. The rules for communication have changed, but the task is still clear – transparency of the context for a statement and honesty about actions are still the drivers of trust.

PC