This week I selected the academic article titled “CEO Communication”
by Greg Crowther. In the article
Crowther discusses the importance of effective communication skills a CEOs’ and
leaders. This coincided well with this
week’s reading “The Strategic Communication Imperative,” in which Argenti
observed that “companies most likely to recognize the strategic communication
imperative are those in which the CEO has an inherent understanding of how
communication can be a differentiator for a business and thus can drive
strategy” (Argenti, 2005, p. 84).
Among the points Crowther makes is that the leader must stay
in the “credibility zone” and failure to do so can lead to serious trouble (Crowther,
2003, p. 34). In this week’s reading,
we learned how Cendant had overstated its financials by hundreds of millions of
dollars causing a serious credibility issue (Argenti, 2005). In order to get back its credibility, the CEO
“established the mantra, “Tell the truth.
Tell it all. Tell it now””
(Argenti, 2005, p. 86). Here, the CEO
stressed the importance of communicating in order to get Cendant back on its
feet.
In Crowther (2003), the author using a case study to
demonstrate how a new CEO and leader should communicate effectively. Here, the CEO had only been with the company
for about a month and had to announce financial troubles (Crowther, 2003). In order to appease employees and outsiders and
not cause too much alarm, he communicated his message in multiple mediums, such
as in-person, print, etc. (Crowther, 2003).
The new CEO conveyed the bad news, but did his best to assure everyone
that the company was willing to work harder and take corrective measures
(Crowther, 2003).
This coincides with the reading in Argenti, where the former
CEO of the New York Times stated “”You almost can’t communicate a message
frequently enough, particularly to the employees”” (Argenti, 2005, p. 87). Again,
the message here is that it is important for CEO to communicate all news, good
and bad. Just as we expect people in our
life to be honest with us, why should we expect less from our business leaders?
References:
Argenti, P., Howell, R., Beck, K.
(2005) The
Strategic Communication Imperative, MIT Sloan
Management Review, 46 #3, pp. 83-89 (full article)
Crowther, G.
(2003, October). CEO communication. Communication
World, 20(6), 34-37.
Joshua,
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion top executives always have something to hide, even if they say they are telling all and telling it now.....I still think that they still reserve some things to themselves to chaos in their organizations. I guess I have a negative view of executives because of I tend to believe that they are driven by egos and self preservation that they really do not care about the rest of the employees. After reading Eisenberg's article on ambiguity I am more convinced that organizations now days us ambiguity as their communication strategy. What do you think? Or would you just say that I just have a negative view of top executives? :) -Xio
Very interesting Joshua. Eisenberg (1984)talks about how stategic ambiguity can be used to promote unified diveristy among organizational constituents. Do you think this is a strategy that CEOs can employ in order to "stay in the credibility zone"? If so, might this strategy be more effective for dealing with certain types, and less effective for others?
ReplyDeleteXiomara,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment. You are right to be skeptical of what many executives say. It is true that many are driven by ego. But, not all are. I think that the trend is toward more clarity in the business world. This is particularly true after the 2008 debacle on Wall Street. But, I guess only time will tell if I am correct. Or, if it will last. Unfortunately, it takes an event like Enron or Worldcom to get promising legislation.
Dr. Gould,
ReplyDeleteThe questions you pose certainly raise important questions. The use of ambiguity is indeed a valuable tool. We see politicians use ambiguity everyday to appeal to virtually every constitute out there. In fact, I can remember my first week in law school being told that ambiguity was my friend. In fact, attorneys often write the law to be just that, ambiguous.
But, I still believe that CEO's and business leaders ought to be more clear and less ambiguous. I can appreciate the argument put forth in Eisenberg (1984). Organizations and leaders certainly can use ambiguity to appeal to many viewpoints (Eisenberg, 1984). By creating multiple layers, it can give business executives excuses as to why they were not aware of something, or may even allow them a deniability defense (Eisenberg, 1984). While I do not deny that ambiguity can be effective, I think that at the very least, CEO's and companies leaders out to be clear with it comes to ethical issues like financial statements.