Jonathan Schwartz never ceases to amaze me in his blog. He's approachable, likable, and puts a face on Sun that makes me want to buy their stuff (a comment many ppl make in the blog on a regular basis). In the same way Jobs's little kid excitement makes you want to go buy the new Apple gadget in a rush of childish enthusiasm, Jonathan makes you feel like dealing with Sun will be an amicable, "friends sitting over coffee at the local coffee shop" deal. He's looking out for you, and he's going to explain Sun's decisions in customer-centric terms. He gives blogging a lot of credit in Sun's turnaround, but it's not just the blogging that does it. Lots of big companies have exec bloggers. Yup you know what I'm saying. Enough said.
So this post: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/good_bad_and_brave is an excellent example of a CEO stepping off the podium and engaging the blogosphere. What does he say in this post? Well.... from the post:
"And before you send me the email, yes, I saw the entry written by Matt Mullenweg - and all I can say is... I'm really sorry, Matt. That's not the way Startup Essentials is supposed to work. We screwed up, and you're completely right to suggest if that's the norm, we should kiss goodbye our aspirations of reestablishing our business in the startup community.
If there's anything I can do to win a second chance, I'd like to know. I appreciate your first sentence. "
Sun has a campaign to engage startups and basically, they treated this gentleman VERY poorly. He blogged about it, and Schwartz addressed it in his blog, apoplogized, and one will assume, made it right. One would also assume, whoever dropped the ball in the program will also be fixing their ball dropping issues. Boy I know I'd be shaking in my boots if the CEO had to take one on the chin bc I did a potential customer wrong.
The repliers to this post LOVE what Jonathan said. LOVE it. While they still hold Sun responsible for taking care of their customers, Sun gets a lot of credit for stepping up to the plate and admitting a mistake. The attitude is: "no harm, no foul, just fix it and you're fine." Honesty and trust go a LONG way in any relationship, even business relationships. Yah, I know, hard to believe, but yet... true.
Here's a few comments:
"This blog amazed me enough to want to reply, to communicate, and that's the first step in making me a customer. "
"Thanks for listening to the blogosphere, and thank you for taking time to respond. So many other business leaders could do more of that...."
"A CEO who blogs is rare. A CEO who publicly admits a mistake is priceless."
The rest of the replies are chock full of advice and insight. Some of it very usable for marketing departments, some it not. But all of it showing engaged customers and potential customers.
And that is priceless.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
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3 comments:
I think every boss/leader/supervisor should have a blog. Not only can you present a more personal side to yourself, you also open yourself up to others in so many ways. When leaders blog, their subordinates know what their boss thinks about, what he or she does, and they have an access point to him or her (particularly if the leader is remotely located, this is huge).
Agreed... but so many leaders have blogs that are basically press releases. Where. they. sound. like. robots. The point of a blog (or one of them) is to let your hair down a bit - more "hanging out with your peers" than "standing on a podium delivering a keynote." I think that distinction is lost on a lot of corporate marketing departments and the exec bloggers they suppport. Boring/stiff/super-edited blogs don't really add anything to the conversation. And perhaps... just perhaps... the takeaway to the blogosphere is that those companies are stiff and unimaginative and inflexible...
There was a study last year (if I get some time I'll look it up) that showed that companies have a certain amount of credibility in their bank. If they quickly and openly address problems, their credibility bank is intact when they run into a real crisis. If they're bankrupt, if they consistently blame or deflect, then a real crisis can cripple them. This is what happened to Ford when the Explorers were shown to be so dangerous. The public had very little trust in them, and Ford's statements were meaningless.
The same holds true for individuals. We see this in sports all the time. "My bad." It's much better to say you screwed up--for one thing, it can deflate anyone who's wound up for a rant.
On the subject of executive blogs...I think it's a great idea. We're trying to get our VP to do it. He's new, and it would be wonderful to do what Tom is suggesting and give people some access in that way. Unfortunately, his current schedule means that we'd have to write it, which I don't think is the point. :-).
We ran into a bit of a problem when our information security folks posted some "opinion" pieces, though. The security folks hold real power, and many of their readers were not able to separate them from their office and their power. Their opinions were interpreted as authoritative statements. There was no concept of peer. This could have been the fault of the medium. It was posted as an article on the site and the conversation took place in a separate e-mail list. I want it to be a blog at some point (it's on the mile-long wish list).
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