This is just to interesting to pass up. So the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, has been on all the network interview shows lately. You can watch a clip of him on the Charlie Rose show below.
Now on the one hand I applaud Goldman for communicating. Yet at the same time, Lloyd, my lord man, who is prepping you for these interviews?
First, branding yourself 'market makers' is ludicrous when the markets have destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth, when people have delayed their retirements and people have lost their homes or seen the value of their homes crash.
This is a perfect example of how knowing your audience is critical. What Blankfein is saying makes sense and for those that understand the equity market they won't have an issue with the interviews he's given. But in terms of the general public, ouch, he comes across as an ivory tower philosopher trying to get the peasants to understand the importance of Schrodinger's cat.
Like it or not, Goldman is hated by the public (who are not their customers mind you). When you are hated by the public you basically have two options. You either ignore them and carry on with your business or you take the time not to explain to them why they are wrong in hating you but rather spend the time explaining how you understand how, from their perspective, they would be angry.
Blankfein is not doing this in any of the interviews he is giving. When he was on CNN's GPS, Fareek Zakaria basically put the ball on the tee for Blankfein to hit it, and Blankfein swung and missed. When asked if he understood why average American's are upset he rambled on about something that I can't even remember, but his answer showed no appreciation for what common folks were going through.
In fact, he took the time to talk about his own past growing up in poverty and how he felt it made him a stronger person.... and actually said that when he looked back the stresses of poverty were good things.
Argh - foot in mouth. I know what he was trying to say... but it came off as "I don't know why poor people complain. I was poor and it was good for me." Not what you want to be saying when the previous question asked of you was "Do you think it's excessive to make $68M a year?"
Blankfein could learn something from GM, whose recent commercial does exactly what I'm talking about. The very first thing they do is acknowledge that they understand how people feel. I don't think the commercial is as good as it could be, but at least they did the bare minimum and let their audience know that GM realizes it lost the good will of many of their customers. How can you rebuild good will if you don't first acknowledge you lost or damaged it?
Humility is essential to controlling a crisis. Gm gets it (mostly). Toyota got it (mostly). Goldman Sachs, unfortunately, doesn't get it. Which is too bad, because Goldman is a great company and all-in-all didn't do anything that all the financial companies weren't doing (and I won't go on a diatribe about the government's role in the collapse of the housing sector that started all this - which one could argue was the real villain, not the banks per se).
Below are examples of GM and Toyota - Goldman could learn something from their responses to their respective crises. Acknowledge people's views (even if you don't share them yourself), apologize for your direct or indirect role in a crisis, and then articulate what you are going to do so that it doesn't happen again. In essence appear human!
It boggles my mind to see CEO's go out there and try to 'sway the public' to their view during a crisis. I mean, I get why they do it - because they are trying to show strength so that their stock doesn't sink - but it has the opposite effect. It looks like hubris, not humility. And if you exhibit hubris after a crisis... that indirectly is telling investors that you haven't learned anything and you're likely to make the same mistakes all over again.
Now on the one hand I applaud Goldman for communicating. Yet at the same time, Lloyd, my lord man, who is prepping you for these interviews?
First, branding yourself 'market makers' is ludicrous when the markets have destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth, when people have delayed their retirements and people have lost their homes or seen the value of their homes crash.
This is a perfect example of how knowing your audience is critical. What Blankfein is saying makes sense and for those that understand the equity market they won't have an issue with the interviews he's given. But in terms of the general public, ouch, he comes across as an ivory tower philosopher trying to get the peasants to understand the importance of Schrodinger's cat.
Like it or not, Goldman is hated by the public (who are not their customers mind you). When you are hated by the public you basically have two options. You either ignore them and carry on with your business or you take the time not to explain to them why they are wrong in hating you but rather spend the time explaining how you understand how, from their perspective, they would be angry.
Blankfein is not doing this in any of the interviews he is giving. When he was on CNN's GPS, Fareek Zakaria basically put the ball on the tee for Blankfein to hit it, and Blankfein swung and missed. When asked if he understood why average American's are upset he rambled on about something that I can't even remember, but his answer showed no appreciation for what common folks were going through.
In fact, he took the time to talk about his own past growing up in poverty and how he felt it made him a stronger person.... and actually said that when he looked back the stresses of poverty were good things.
Argh - foot in mouth. I know what he was trying to say... but it came off as "I don't know why poor people complain. I was poor and it was good for me." Not what you want to be saying when the previous question asked of you was "Do you think it's excessive to make $68M a year?"
Blankfein could learn something from GM, whose recent commercial does exactly what I'm talking about. The very first thing they do is acknowledge that they understand how people feel. I don't think the commercial is as good as it could be, but at least they did the bare minimum and let their audience know that GM realizes it lost the good will of many of their customers. How can you rebuild good will if you don't first acknowledge you lost or damaged it?
Humility is essential to controlling a crisis. Gm gets it (mostly). Toyota got it (mostly). Goldman Sachs, unfortunately, doesn't get it. Which is too bad, because Goldman is a great company and all-in-all didn't do anything that all the financial companies weren't doing (and I won't go on a diatribe about the government's role in the collapse of the housing sector that started all this - which one could argue was the real villain, not the banks per se).
Below are examples of GM and Toyota - Goldman could learn something from their responses to their respective crises. Acknowledge people's views (even if you don't share them yourself), apologize for your direct or indirect role in a crisis, and then articulate what you are going to do so that it doesn't happen again. In essence appear human!
It boggles my mind to see CEO's go out there and try to 'sway the public' to their view during a crisis. I mean, I get why they do it - because they are trying to show strength so that their stock doesn't sink - but it has the opposite effect. It looks like hubris, not humility. And if you exhibit hubris after a crisis... that indirectly is telling investors that you haven't learned anything and you're likely to make the same mistakes all over again.
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