October 17, 2007 10:05 am : Comments 001
People who know us know that I couldn’t ask for a better partner than Jackie; we’re complete opposites, which is apparently a very good thing. We go back now more than 10 years – a lifetime in this business – and have had our fair share of celebrations and setbacks. Fortunately, there have been far, far fewer of the latter! Like all partnerships, we’ve had our share of tense moments, but we always manage to quickly work through them and keep the business on track. There is no one in business I trust more.
Jackie also is a very gifted editor. I have never encountered anyone who could massage copy with the skill and deftness as she can, not even during my earlier years as a professional journalist. She can make words sing off the page, as they say. Jackie, never afraid to rein in my passion when warranted, has saved me from embarrassment on more occasions than I care to admit. Her record on this score is almost impeccable: she has only let me down once.
The year was 2001. While on a visit to San Francisco, I came across an issue of SF Weekly that featured three women striking a Charlie’s Angels pose on the cover. It turns out they were tech sector headhunters. Their big secret to finding potential job candidates? If memory serves, they would go partying wherever dot-commers liked to hang out. The story irked me because it celebrated these women as industry leaders, when I viewed them as the embodiment of the ills dragging the sector down. I found the article sufficiently outrageous that on my return flight home, I drafted a letter to the editor.
As always, I asked Jackie to review the letter before sending it. She cleared it with nary a punctuation change, a highly unusual event. I recall she was annoyed with me at the time, although I don’t remember over what issue. So I sent the letter.
Admittedly, the letter was a tad too passionate. Although Jackie vehemently denies it, I believe that she made a cold, calculated decision to let me hang that one time, figuring not much harm could come from me sounding a little over the top to readers of a free alternative weekly in San Francisco.
But this is the Internet age, and if you google my name and SF Weekly, that letter shows up in all its glory, as does the editor’s snarky introduction to it: “Choose one: This reader (that would be me) recently had a bad experience with A) a pretty woman, B) a job recruiter, C) A and B.”
I’m painfully reminded of this bombastic letter every time I’m in San Francisco. Thanks to Google, it will no doubt haunt me forever. Or at least until I get my payback. Hmmm…
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October 9, 2007 12:21 pm : Comments 002
As I am out in rural northern California, I had my breakfast yesterday with a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle instead of the usual New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Wow, did this story chase the sleep from my eyes.
Few things are more dangerous than a journalist blinded by preconceived notions, especially when that reporter has made it his or her mission to prove a company guilty of some wrongdoing. Calls are made, subjects interviewed, records requested… and some semblance of the originally intended story written, filled with innuendo and rumor when supporting facts are disappointingly missing. Much ado is made about, as it turns out, nothing. In journalistic circles, it’s known as not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.
The front page of yesterday’s Chronicle had such a story of dubious distinction. Under the headline “Even Google Suffers Users’ Gripes,” the paper informed its readers of “the discontent Google’s growing legion of users have voiced” to the Federal Trade Commission. “Aggrieved, annoyed and occasionally misguided, users have lodged hundreds of complaints (emphasis mine) about everything from Google overcharging for advertising to returning pornographic Web sites when users search for their own names.”
The Chronicle’s information is based on a review of anti-Google consumer complaints filed with the FTC; the paper gained access to the information via “open records requests” that were made against the “backdrop” of a “larger federal review of Google’s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick, following concerns that the deal will create a monopoly and harm consumers.”
Sounds like a legitimate enough story idea, right? Well, despite what the negative headline implies, there were, relatively speaking, a very small number of complaints lodged against Google when you consider how many people use their services every day. Readers who took the time to continue reading the story’s jump inside the paper learned that the hundreds of complaints against Google were filed over a 30-month period: 74 in 2005, 133 in 2006, and 176 in the first six months of this year. That’s right – a whopping 383 complaints during this time. To be fair, the Chronicle admits that these numbers are “a small sliver of consumers, considering that in August, Google had 128.5 million U.S. users” and, later in the story, that “only a handful of complaints took aim at Google’s proposed merger with DoubleClick or the information Google collects about its users.”
But talk about making mountains out of molehills! Despite all the qualifiers, the Chronicle still deemed this non-story worthy of page one treatment – and above the fold no less. Ironically, the story ran on a day that Google’s stock closed above $600 for the first time. The company is based in Mountain View, which is just beyond the Chronicle’s backyard.
When you read trite stories like this one, is it really any wonder that local newspapers, including the Chronicle, have suffered a major erosion of readership? The Internet, an easy scapegoat, is usually blamed for what ails the print news industry. That makes sense. Whereas people once turned to their local broadcast outlets to learn details about breaking news, they can now go online and access that information from a broad and geographically diverse range of sources.
But is blaming the Internet a cop-out? To some extent, yes, as there is another elephant in the newsroom that should not be ignored. Sadly, budget-conscious publishers are showing the door at an alarming rate to experienced editors and reporters who are subsequently replaced by neophytes who are not yet ready to fill their shoes – and their stories reflect it. While I’m not trying to suggest that that may be the reason for the unimpressive Chronicle story, the reality is that upstart print reporters, especially on the business beat, are all too frequently thrust into editorial positions before developing the journalistic depth, financial sophistication, and business acumen necessary to write compelling stories. The sad truth is that daily newspapers are rapidly losing readers because increasingly they are publishing stories that just are not worth reading.
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September 5, 2007 1:17 pm : Comments 000
I have a love/hate relationship with human resources people at big corporations. While their advisory role can be – and should be – as critical to a company’s well-being as, say, that of its attorneys and accountants, my personal experience has not been so… productive. How can I put this? HR people frustrate me. A lot.
I know, I know… when human resources people pushed back, it probably meant they were saving me from myself. And, to be fair, I know that there are lots of exceptional, appreciated human resources professionals out there who are making significant impacts on the cultures and bottom lines of their organizations. Unfortunately for me, I’ve only had the pleasure of crossing paths with one of them in my entire career (and he was a client so I pretty much had to like him).
HR-speak is akin to PR spin. It’s filled with empty catchphrases, trendy buzzwords, and legal counsel-approved language that mollifies executive leadership and mortifies the rank-and-file who see right through it. I’m still aghast at the response an internal Human resources executive once gave me when I complained about the unimpressive job candidates she was sending me: “You know, Eric, your standards are just a little too high.”
Needless to say, I perked up when I read that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shares my critical view of HR folks. According to a fascinating article in the current issue of BusinessWeek by Michelle Conlin and Jay Greene, Microsoft was suffering a serious brain drain two years ago. But instead of hiring a traditional HR executive to turn things around, Ballmer gave the HR reins to Lisa Brummel, a popular and experienced product manager that he moved over from the Home & Retail Division. Ms. Brummel has achieved considerable success in the two years she’s held the top spot, no doubt because she refused to follow “the usual HR script.”
Some examples:
- Brummel refused to benchmark “best practices” at other companies, much less impose them on Microsoft employees. “Before you go running off campus, you should know what’s going on on campus.”
- She quickly established a reputation as a “no-B.S., jargon-allergic, truth-teller” when she admitted to reading a popular and highly critical Microsoft blog written by an anonymous employee.
- She eliminated the bell curve in annual employee performance evaluations.
The BusinessWeek article is a great read for anyone desperate to have their faith restored in the potential of the human resources function. On the flip side, anonymous Microsoft employee blogger “Mini-Microsoft” suggests that BusinessWeek is a tad too generous in its praise of Brummel and her efforts. [Tough crowd – HR really is a thankless function!]
Still, Conlin and Greene deserve kudos for reporting on the untraditional approach and its impact to date. The bottom line is that Brummel seems to be staunching the company’s employee hemorrhage… at least for now (all bets are off if she takes the towels away again).
Now if only Brummel could do something about Microsoft’s ghastly “Your potential. Our passion.” tagline.
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