Edelman and the Walmart Fiasco

The headline of the story says: Edelman Has Been Through Enough at the Webpro news. If you remember Edleman has been managing the paid Walmart blogs without disclosing the fact.

Now the author of the Webpro story goes to defend Edleman by giving this analogy:

Edelman has more than 2,200 employees in 46 offices worldwide, along with some 15 specialty practices. While I don't know the dynamics of the company, I have worked for two global human resources consulting firms (William M. Mercer, which is still around, and Alexander & Alexander Consulting Group, now part of Aon Consulting). In both instances the culture was determined more by the local office leadership than the corporate leadership.

Hmm, now if the local leadership is so imporant are the local leaders also remembered in the same manner when praise is due? There is an increasing tendency to put this argument when things go bad with a company that it is a local issue and the CEO or the top management is not really responsible but it is some 25 year old. So then what exactly they are responsible for and for which they draw that paycheck? The article goes on to say:

As for Steve Rubel falling on his sword over the fake blogs episode, the uninformed thinking behind this is confounding. Steve works for one of those 15 specialty practices. That practice was not called into the WalMart account; he had nothing to do with the account or the blogs. Nobody is obliged to run their blogging plans by Steve for approval. He is not responsible for embedding an understanding of social media in every Edelman employee; he is responsible for meeting client expectations on those engagements in which his practice's input is sought. If Steve worked on the WalMart account and recommended this approach, I'd sing a different tune. But his practice was not involved nor should he be held responsible for actions taken outside the scope of his influence.

See? As soon as it is a mistake it is no longer top management's responsibility.

When we make mistakes!

I was reading this interesting article by David H Freedman in Inc.com about how blogs can be useful in tackling mistkes made by a company employees. It makes a very interesting read.

I'm a licensed pilot, and I once managed to land a small plane on the wrong strip at a small airport. I could have gotten in pretty big trouble for it, so you might have thought my best move would have been to keep my mouth shut and hope the FAA wouldn't find out. But I couldn't wait to report my screwup to the government. I wish I could say it was because I'm such a conscientious fellow. But the truth is, I fessed up fast because the U.S. government rewards pilots for quickly owning up to their mistakes, agreeing to waive punitive action if they report themselves. In fact, most pilots carry the self-reporting form with them in their flight kit, just in case.

He extends the idea to how blogs can help in keeping track of the mistakes a company as a collective makes.

But I'm proposing something else: a blog that encourages employees and managers to tell their peers what they themselves have done wrong. It's an easy step that could quickly effect a large, positive change in your corporate culture.

Such blogs are rare. But they do exist. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for example, has set up a system in which medical residents electronically log their mistakes or any other problems they see so the hospital can analyze the errors and look for fixes. It's more of a database than a blog, but any resident can post to it without fear of recrimination. (The residents identify themselves on their reports, but are only publicly named if they're getting credit for coming up with a solution to a problem.)

Manjunath Case: Where Will It Go?

Was reading this news about the Manjunath case. I wish it would come to a speedy and just trial. However, the news does not look particulalry enouraging at the moment.

Friday turned out to be a damp squib for the Manjunath Shanmugham murder trial as the prosecution failed to produce its two witnesses as per plan.

Both the witnesses set to depose before the District Judge, SMA Abidi, were policemen dealing with the case. The next date for hearing has been fixed for November 7 and 8.
The prosecution wanted to present inspector Pramesh Kumar Shukla, the Investigating Officer (IO) of the case and sub-inspector CP Gautam, who is dealing with the crime of harbouring the criminals involved in the case (Section 212 of IPC).

The district government counsel, Lakhimpur Kheri, Chandra Mohan Singh told TOI, "Both PK Shukla and CP Gautam expressed their inability to depose before the court on October 6 as they have been posted on election duty for the forthcoming local body elections.

Keeping in mind the local body elections, both the prosecution and the defence requested the court to give the next date after the polls get over. The polling process will be completed by November 3.

China wants the Real Name of the Bloggers

Now China is trying to come up with a law that says you will have to blog with your real name only. Times of India says:

The Internet Society of China has recommended to the government that bloggers be required to use their real names when they register blogs, state media said on Monday, in the latest attempt to regulate free-wheeling Web content.

The society, which is affiliated with the ministry of information industry, said no decision had been made but that a "real name system" was inevitable.

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardise and develop its blog industry"" the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general Huang Chengqing as saying.

"We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said. China has already imposed some controls on Internet chatter about politically sensitive subjects.

Infosys is talking about hiring

The last two posts on the Infosys official blog has been about candidates behaving unprofessionally in appearing for the interviews or accepting offers (because they have multiple options). The latest post (in parts) goes like this:

Some readers have pointed out that employers need to be equally professional in their relationships with employees. I agree. When the tables are turned, employers in the past have been known to treat their employees with little regard. Having seen two close friends go through lay-offs, I can attest to the callousness (deliberate or otherwise) that can be involved when the situation is not handled correctly.

However, none of this negates the fact that employees are now hitting back, collectively as it were. No longer loyal, willing to switch at the “drop of a hat”, and unwilling to keep commitments, talent has now firmly entered the realm of unprofessionalism. I have had multiple cases where after accepting an offer in writing, prospective employees have not informed the company that they will not be joining after all. These days you can be sure that you have actually filled an open position only when the employee shows up on Day 1. (Emphasis mine)

Employees may do this temporarily, when the market is good, the rest of the time employers do it big time. Well, an anecdote can be matched by an anecdote. I can give you the other side of the story.

An employer wooed me with perfect behavior till I accepted the offer in writing. As soon as I accepted it, their behavior changed like anything (I had negotiated for a two month waiting time before joining, I was to visit Ladakh). Of course, I started looking for another job when they started throwing tantrums and got it. When I wanted to communicate this to them, it was so difficult to get hold of the relevant person on the line till I told them I am calling to say I won't join.

And guess what, I work in academics, people who teach the students how to become professionals!

But what struck me as most glaring is this talk about loyalty in the post. I thought companies only want networks and temporary alliances in the flat world as predicted by Charles Handy in his 'The Empty Raincoat' way back in 1994.

Using colourful examples and analogies, the book offers a framework for the future of work and life in general. For organisations and individuals one of the first steps to change is the realisation that business and personal security is not about land and buildings, but about knowledge. Handy argues that the "means of production" in the future will be owned by the workers because it will be based on their intelligence and know how - a difficult thing to gauge in financial terms alone. Handy makes the analogy that where in the past an organisation was like a castle, it will become more like a condominium: "an association of temporary residents gathered together for their mutual convenience". It will be like a "virtual corporation" with a collection of permanent and temporary project groups existing more in a computer than in a set of shared offices. Work structures will be more about developing networks than honouring hierarchies and accepting responsibility not just blindly fulfilling core duties.

If you like reading about corporate America ...

Here is a blog maintained by Michelle Leder called footnoted.org. Interesting posts all around with the latest about timesharing about the corporate jet at GE. All the interesting stuff that they leave out of the management text books.

Earlier this week, General Electric (GE) filed this 8-K which seems to have further tweaked the corporate jet policy for top executives. As the filing notes, it entered into a time-share agreement with Vice Chairman Lloyd Trotter that requires him to pay for actual expenses of each specific flight to the maximum extent permitted under Federal Aviation Administration rules, which expenses include and are limited to: (a) fuel, oil, lubricants and other additives; (b) travel expenses of the crew, including food, lodging and ground transportation; (c) hangar and tie down costs away from the aircraft’s base of operation; (d) insurance obtained for the specific flight; (e) landing fees, airport taxes and similar assessments; (f) customs, foreign permit and similar fees directly related to the flight; (g) in-flight food and beverages; (h) passenger ground transportation; (i) flight planning and weather contract services; and (j) an additional charge equal to one hundred percent (100%) of the expenses listed in clause (a) above.

Video Resume that Got Leaked!

A student of Yale sent a video resume to UBS and it somehow got picked up on the internet. According to NYT.

Mr. Vayner’s curious celebrity came after an 11-page cover letter and résumé as well as an elaborate video that he had submitted to the Swiss bank giant UBS showed up on two blogs, and then quickly spread on the Internet. The clip, staged to look like a job interview, is spliced with shots of Mr. Vayner lifting weights and ballroom dancing and has him spouting Zen-like inspirational messages.

The video clip flooded e-mail inboxes across Wall Street and eventually appeared on the video-sharing site YouTube.

Blogs brimmed with commentary, much of it mocking, about Mr. Vayner and his feats. Television programs and newspapers then picked up the Web’s latest viral sensation.

Wal-Mart Can't Blog it Right

Update: I wrote about this late night in India on my obscure blog and I get a hiy from Edelman PR on this post. Wow, if this is not a coincidence, they track the blogs fast!

Looks like Wal-Mart paid Jim and Laura for writing postitive things on their blog Wal-Marting Across America. The topmost post sounds so defensive!

Business Week has two excellent stories on this episode.

From Story 1

Every Wal-Mart employee that Laura and Jim run into, from store clerks to photogenic executives, absolutely loves to work at the store. Sound like a great Wal-Mart publicity campaign? Anyone familiar with Wal-Mart and its reputation for being quite stingy with wages and benefits will roll their eyes at such a rosy picture. In fact, some critics are so skeptical that they wonder whether Jim and Laura are real or whether they were concocted at the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

"Wal-Mart has hired fake people," says Jonathan Rees, a labor historian and associate professor at Colorado State University at Pueblo, who has also worked as a staff researcher at the AFL-CIO. In a blog posting for the Web site The Writing On the Wal, Reese published an open letter to Laura and Jim challenging them to reveal themselves and asking who paid for their RV and gas.

From Story 2

It all started last month, when a folksy blog called Wal-Marting Across America was set up. The site featured the musings of a couple known only as Jim and Laura as they drove cross country in an RV, and included regular interviews with Wal-Mart workers, who were dependably happy about the company and their working conditions. BusinessWeek.com wrote the first exposé about the blog. The story shot down speculation that Jim and Laura weren't real people, identifying the woman as Laura St. Claire, a freelance writer and an employee at the U.S. Treasury department. But it also disclosed that Wal-Mart was paying plenty for the couple's support, including money for renting the RV, gas, and fees for writing the blog ...

And here is the post from Jonathan Rees's Blog

Dear “Jim” and “Laura:”

Please prove to me that you exist. I realize that’s a rude way to start out an e-mail, but you see I notice your blog Wal-Marting Across America is sponsored by Working Families for Wal-Mart (which is where I found the link to it). Working Families for Wal-Mart is, I hope you know, sponsored by Wal-Mart and run by the Edelman public relations firm out of Washington, D.C. So I hope you understand why I’m cynical. Your trip is being made possible by the company you are describing. This may explain why your blog, like every other Edelman blog, is not enabled to accept comments.

France is Blogging!

According to this International Herald Tribune article the French people are blogging and blogging with a passion.

Already famed for angry labor strikes and philosophical debates in smoke-filled cafés, the French have now brought these passions online to become some of the world's most intensive bloggers.

The French distinguish themselves, both statistically and anecdotally, ahead of Germans, Britons and even Americans in their obsession with blogs, the personal and public journals of the Internet age.

Just why the French have embraced blogs more than most is anyone's guess, but explanations range from technical to historical and cultural.

Sixty percent of French Internet users visited a blog in May, ahead of Britain with 40 percent and little more than a third in the United States, according to Comscore, an Internet ratings service.

Likewise, French bloggers spent more than an hour in June visiting France's top-rated blog site, far ahead of the 12 minutes spent by Americans doing the same and less than 3 minutes for Germans, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

More than three million Internet users, or more than 12 percent of those online in France, have created a blog, according a study released in June by the ratings agency Médiamétrie.

"You cannot be elected president of France without a blog," said Benjamin Griveaux, director of Web strategy for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former finance minister who in 2004 was among the first politicians to start a blog. "Blogs have not replaced traditional media, but they are absolutely necessary for every politician."

Some even harbor a faint hope that flourishing online discussions might curb the French population's penchant for taking to the streets in protest.

"With so many blogs, I'm hoping for fewer protests and strikes in Paris this fall," said Loïc Le Meur, a pioneer French blogger and European managing director of the blog-hosting company Six Apart. "If people can express themselves online, then maybe they don't need to block the streets."

French blogs stands out in other measurable ways. They are noticeably longer, more critical, more negative, more egocentric and more provocative than their U.S. counterparts, said Laurent Florès ...

Now What are Your Customers Saying?

Air Slovakia has been in news for being bought over by British businessmen of Indian origin. BBC News reports:

Harjinder Singh Sidhu, who lives in the UK and is a British passport holder, bought Air Slovakia, a small privately owned airline based in the capital, Bratislava last week, it has emerged.

However what really caught my attention was that when it came to reporting customer perception, BBC picked up opinions expressed online:

Airline passenger websites do not report a very happy experience of travelling on Air Slovakia so far.

"My advice would be not to travel on Air Slovakia, very poor service, very cramped, not enough leg room, staff rude, food poor.. Air Slovakia leave you stranded and offer you no help," complains a passenger on one website.

Another passenger wrote: "The air stewardesses grasp of English was very poor and they had no concept of any other languages like Punjabi or Hindi which was very unusual considering all the passengers were of Asian origin."

Mr Singh admits that there are "service issues with passenger satisfaction" that need to be addressed.

GM FastLane Blog: I Was Wondering about the Comments

I read GM's FastLane Blog now and then. There was a post by Ed Welburn, GM Vice President, Global Design about H3 (Hummer) production facility in South Africa. Now all I know about Hummer is that McDonald's was facing flak from consumers when they gave it out as a toy with Happy Meals. And there I read it is supposed to be a gas guzzler.

So I was writing a cooment on the GM post, thinking probably it will never go through moderation. But they did let it go.

Similarly, there are a lot more comments on McDonald's official blog regarding the Hummer issue (linked above). Now I had seen this post standing for a long time with 6 comments in a particular sequence. Now there are 24 replies (many very critical) and again it is heartening to see that they too let it past moderation.

McDonald's Obesity Post

Catherine Adams, from McDonald's attended an Obesity conference and is not happy about what she got to hear about McDonald's.

I recently participated in an interesting meeting of the International Association for the Study of Obesity (IASO). The meeting brought together representatives from academia, independent research organizations, government health agencies, non-governmental organizations, and industry groups to talk about research related to obesity. As a scientist, nutritionist, and leader of McDonald's worldwide nutrition programs, it was an important opportunity for me to listen and learn.

Some of what I heard troubled me. McDonald's was mentioned repeatedly--and not in positive ways. For awhile, I tried to count the references, but eventually I gave up. I realized two important things:

- The health professionals were using McDonald's to represent not only the whole fast food industry, but sometimes the entire food industry. For them, McDonald's was a shorthand term for any and all food consumption they considered unhealthful.

- Many of them seemed not to know what our restaurants actually serve today or what we are doing to be part of the solution.

Clearly, we've got to do a better job of telling our story. What we have to share is far too much for any blog entry, so I may come back to the topic, especially if your comments show interest.

Now, if I was someone highup in a firm that became synonymous with unhealthy food, I would have taken it up as a wakeup call!

You Blog on the Telstra Corporate Blog Honestly, You are Fired!

This may have happened to Tom Reynolds at Telstra in Australia. He wrote an entry on the corporate blog of Telstra advocating openness in corporate communications.

1. Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.

I’m not really a products guy. Trying to get me to tell the truth about what’s best and what’s not isn’t really going to work - I have no idea because really I’m a facilitator. I work out whom and what can help a business/customer and then I go and do it.

But it can be frustrating. News flash! I get bounced too! Sometimes I am on my third “hand ball” before I get the person I want. I’m not ignorant - I know who and what, but sometimes departments here have allowed a culture of “duck and cover” to rule them. Personally I think the new idea of “One Click, One Touch, One Telstra” is fine- in theory, but there will need to be more than just a fancy jingo and a series of cool new ads. We need to look at what we rate as important and make it happen.

One of the issues that constantly comes up is product knowledge. Products and features are increasing exponentially while internal knowledge grows at a slower rate. Despite an understandable desire on the part of customers to have their issue solved by the first person to answer their call, it is impossible to be across every product and every feature and every problem that said items might have. (If you do have such knowledge- you are ready for account/project management- not frontline staff work!) Sometimes staff members try to do too much to avoid hand balling a customer and make a situation worse rather than passing the customer on to the right area. What I would like to see is the Customer Service staff, when stumped by an issue, pass the customer on but stay on the line with them. This will serve two purposes: it will show that they are not just hand balling it for “lazy” reasons and by listening in; they will expand their knowledge and make sure people go to the right department next time.

And then we get to hear (unconfirmed and likely to remain so?) that he got fired over this post.

Tom Reynolds rang me this morning to tell me he was available to work on some TPN projects over the next couple of weeks as he’d been sacked from Telstra this morning. Co-incidentally, Tom wrote this blog post only two days ago quoting Robert Scoble’s Corporate Weblog Manifesto and saying from now on he was going to be more open and honest in his blogging.

The story is now at the front page of News.com.au.

Sun Microsystems Wants to Disclose Financial Information through Blogs

I saw this interesting piece of news in Baltimore Sun. Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwarth has asked the SEC in th US to let significant financial information be disclosed through blogs.

Jonathan I. Schwartz, avid blogger and chief executive of Sun Microsystems Inc., has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to allow companies to disclose significant financial information through blogs.

With a growing number of major companies now publishing corporate blogs, or online diaries, and an SEC chairman with a penchant for technological innovation, Schwartz is making the case for blogs - including his on the Sun Miscrosystems Web site - as a way to expand investors' access to information.

The SEC position is that current regulations do allow for blogs, such as news releases, regulatory filings, Web sites and Webcasts, to be used to disseminate companies' financial information, provided a particular blog reaches a broad audience.

Would You Like to Know What is Written about you on the Net?

We bloggers are sometimes accused of devoting too much time checking who is linking to us or what is being said about us (if and when something comes up, that is). But I think many companies are also at it. At least Marriott is trying:

For example, this spring Marriott International began an ambitious program to reach bloggers. Its efforts included asking bloggers to speak to its corporate communications team, inviting them on press trips and offering them news in advance of print media.

"A lot of business travelers are getting their information from blogs," said John Wolf, a Marriott spokesman. "We wanted to have a better understanding of blogs."

Marriott assigned an employee to monitor the blogosphere and generate daily reports on what bloggers were writing about the company. It also began pitching bloggers on Marriott-themed postings, recently offering bloggers exclusive information about a plan to put airline check-in stations in its lobbies.

But I wonder if this Hotel is aware what its customers are saying (I am not providing links deliberately):

We wish to inform you of a completely unsatisfactory experience we had … in India, during a three-week tour of the country. We made our reservations months in advance paid fully for our room and had a voucher in hand that proof of our reservation. When we arrived at the hotel we were told that our reservation had been canceled. On their own, the hotel had booked us into another hotel … We were lied to about our reservation, treated very shabbily, no apologies were given to us and we were expected to simply go away quietly. Later we learned that it is not unusual for the hotel to double book rooms and then bump people at the hotel's discretion without any advance warning. In fact, we observed another couple getting the same treatment by the hotel staff while our concerns were being dismissed and our luggage had been relegated to the sidewalk outside the hotein an effort to hasten our departure.”

It pays to monitor the web for the feedback!