Hey great communicators! Don’t lie. Don’t defraud your investors, your customers, the press, federal regulators. Don’t lie so egregiously over so many years that the SEC comes after you.
I’ve been in Silicon Valley for more than twenty years. Have I been in media interviews with CEOs who said things like “We are working with all the major auto companies” when I knew that our sales team had had maybe a few conversations with one of them? Sure. Every PR person has.
Have I counseled spokespersons not to answer questions that have not been asked? Absolutely. For example, a reporter calls and says, “Is there a problem with your software’s performance?” and we say, “No, it meets industry standards. We’ll send you the latest independent benchmarks.” And then my spokesperson and I get off the phone immensely relieved that the reporter did not ask about the security flaw we discovered that morning.
Public relations isn’t about creating a beautiful mirage that’s built on nothing. It’s about building and protecting the reputation of a company and its leadership. That’s why every professional PR person knows when a statement made in exuberance by a CEO needs to be quietly corrected before it appears in print. We have all made those phone calls.
Sometimes a passionate founder can’t help saying something that’s about to be true. But the hijinks that Theranos engaged in take magical thinking to the level of sociopathy.
Here’s what Jina Choi, the S.E.C.’s San Francisco office director said. “The Theranos story is an important lesson for Silicon Valley. Innovators who seek to revolutionize and disrupt an industry must tell investors the truth about what their technology can do today, not just what they hope it might do someday.”
Crises of all kinds can hit companies. But a huge lie is an entirely self-created crisis. There is no crisis more easy to avoid, and no crisis that can destroy a company more quickly. The smart PR professionals know that when a company does face an ugly truth, proactively announcing it and the plan to correct it is the only way forward. It takes a ton of courage for a CEO to face the truth, but that’s what leadership is about. It is not about going around everywhere in a black turtleneck.
Your business must scale, and you must scale with it. Great communicators create the change they want to see in the world. poseycorp helps innovators build powerful messages and the skill to deliver them so they can break through the noise and be heard! Click here to receive pragmatic communications advice in your inbox every month. poseycorp’s next Ask Me Anything About Communications is Friday, April 6th at 9 am PDT. This month, we’re talking all about Crisis Communications with co-host Paul Wilke, founder of Upright Position Communications. Click here to register!
