Welcome back to Communication Breakdown, a new podcast from the Observatory on Corporate
Reputation. Thanks for joining us. I'm Steve Dowling in Silicon Valley.
And I'm Craig Carroll in New York City. Each week Steve and I take a look at strategies
companies are using to shape headlines and sometimes save their skins.
It's the post game show for PR pros. This week, staring down an anti-diversity bully.
It's been well over a month since our last episode on the broad-based retreat from corporate
diversity initiatives. That was in the wake of targets capitulation to internet provocateur
Robby Starbuck. And the same week Costco shareholders voted overwhelmingly to support
diversity efforts. Since then, it's been a tale of two retailers who took very different
paths and some customers seem to be voting with their feet. The trade publication retail
brew and other industry watchers reported shift in traffic and in market share from target
to Costco. While correlation may not be causation, Target's foot traffic fell for six consecutive
weeks following their DEI reversal. While visits to Costco were up in February.
Elsewhere on the diversity front AT&T became the latest Fortune 50 company to buckle under
pressure from Robby Starbuck, dialing back diversity training and notably cutting off funding
to pride events and even a suicide hotline at RAN in partnership with the Trevor Project.
And like most other Starbuck targets, they let him break the news and of course take a victory
lap.
"I have a great announcement. They are no longer going to have a Chief Diversity Officer
at AT&T. In addition to that good news, I have even better news. There are no more DEI
trainings from this day forward at AT&T across the entire company. And one more exclusive
for you guys that I'm very happy to bring you, there will no longer be pronoun pins. That
is right. They are cancelling their pronoun pins. That is no longer going to be something
that employees have in their style guide."
A really stuck it to them on those pronoun pins.
Robert Starbuck Newsom, then swung through New York for audiences with Bloomberg and Wall
Street Journal. One of the key takeaways, a new threat to companies who simply renamed
diversity programs to belonging or some other word that just doesn't begin with the E or
I.
Starbuck told Bloomberg these companies are still in this crosshairs. Steve, we've been seeing
the same strategy play out at AT&T in some 20 other companies since last summer. A piece
Robbie with easy gives like pronoun pins and maybe some other changes already in the works.
Let him take credit to his followers into a short cycle press and watch as he moves onto
his next target. But have we learned anything from his recent press or that may give us better
insights into how we can guide companies moving forward?
Yeah, we're learning more definitely about what companies are dealing with here. And Robbie
Starbuck is pretty transparent in his methods. He's showing us his cards. I watched his interviews
with the Wall Street Journal and on Wall Street Week, which is produced by Bloomberg.
And at first I was really frustrated that they gave him a platform because a lot of what
he says is really vague, hand wavy and in a lot of cases just unsupported by the facts.
But then as I watched, I was really glad they had him on because he just laid out this entire
playbook and we can learn a lot. And his credit, Alan Murray at the Wall Street Journal challenged
Starbuck in front of an audience of CFOs and it did not go well for Robbie Starbuck.
My takeaways were his position hinges on a few assumptions that he presents as facts.
First is that all diversity programs are just virtue signaling, just their just PR in
Robbie Starbuck's world. There's no business case for diversity. Yeah.
Also, he told Bloomberg that more than half the country finds DEI to testable. Well, that's
just not supported by the data we've seen. And then importantly, I think, and telling
him, he claims that DEI is somehow inclusive of everyone but Christians. And he says his
researchers could not find one employee resource group for Christians at all the largest corporations
in America. Well, that's not true or they just didn't look very hard. So everything seems
to come down to this overly simplistic framing of zero sum left versus right where anything
other than pure capitalism is socialism and communism. So if I were Robbie Starbuck's
PR manager, I would not be thrilled with the media tour he did last week in New York because
on the plus side, he got in front of a lot of smart, influential people and got a platform
to share his ideas. But on the downside, he got a platform to share his ideas and showed
pretty clearly that they don't hold up to scrutiny at all. So Robbie Starbuck is enjoying
his 15 minutes of fame, but Robbie Starbuck, I think is also out over his skis, at least
when he has to face any scrutiny at all.
I thought it was very interesting the way he, I want to call it a heads a little bit, right?
So he referred to, you know, the road of hell is paid with good intentions. So he's trying
to play a little bit into DEI being a good intention. He also talked a little bit about
DEI strategy and how it looks differently in practice. And then of course, it gave, you
know, the real strategy behind his argument. But you know, Robbie Starbuck wants to make
DEI sound like it's a failed experiment. Something has started with good intentions, but one
off the rails. But here's the problem. Intent isn't what matters, outcomes or what matter.
And the company that actually measure outcomes know that diversity isn't a PR stunt. It's
a competitive advantage. And you know, so if the road of hell is paid with good intentions,
the road to relevance is paved with fear driven retreats.
Fair point. I was struck in that interview the way. And this is, you know, he's not the
only one who does this, but just dropping statement as though it were fact. And I thought that
Alan did a really good job challenging him in the places where where he really needed
to the the craziest one for me was this idea that the executive class as he calls it CFOs
and CEOs have veered left and that they vote Democrat more often than Republican clearly
was working off his talking point and not aware of the audience here. Yeah, it was just
that it just is another one of these sort of outlandish things that comes back to everything
as you find with as we see him making these pronouncements on Twitter. We don't see anybody
pushing back on him. And when you have, you know, an actual journalist pushing back on him,
he can't really cite facts to defend anything. Yeah, I'll look out just go and say it. He
calls CFOs a bunch of liberals, right? Yeah, that somehow that top leadership in the four
to five hundred companies have veered left over the past 20 years. I just that just doesn't
resonate with the day to day experience in the conversations that I'm having given so
many companies are on board with with Trump's business direction there aside from the tariffs,
right? That the tariffs are pretty bad. But for the most part, I think they were anticipating
a favorable business environment moving into into Trump's second term here. Yeah, he
doesn't have a lot of facts, a lot of actual facts. And there's a lot of this we're investigating
or we're not we're going to reveal something or we were going to reveal something, but the
company made changes. So it's kind of a shell game with him, but it's and it's unfortunate
to see companies, you know, giving into this over generalization and then conflating of issues
and then that leads to fear mongering and intimidation. And I think when dealing with
a Robbie Starbucks, the tactics are really important, really important for me. This was a very interesting
moment to hear Starbucks talk to an audience of chief financial officers. It, you know, I,
I mean, I don't know how much attention and how much opportunity that we should be giving
in because it does further legitimize this cause. But I think on the other hand, as communicators,
we have to be aware of what's out there in the environment. And you're not going to
be able to respond unless you are aware of what his, what his positions are and what his
arguments are. So, you know, it might be outlandish. He might not have any data, but I think
all of us still need to be aware of what his point of view is. Yeah. And his followers
may not care, but the problem is that companies who are capitulating to him and then letting
him tell the story for them, they are essentially broadening his platform and giving him a
greater audience, I think. I mean, you can look at this approach that AT&T and other companies
took and that most of the companies who deal with them have been taking. And it's hard to
argue that things have generally gone as well as can be expected for them. The, the cycles
are short and then he moves on to the next company. Targets and outlier, I think, but they're,
they're still dealing with it. I suspect McDonald's feels it could have gone better for them.
But by and large companies, they take a modest PR hit and then they move on. That's one
way to define success in this situation, but I don't think it feels very good. It's convenient
and it's pragmatic, but it's not a win. Yeah. Well, you know, part of it is that embarrassment
is just a bait, right? Part of his power is what comes from what happens next. You know,
viral post turns into shareholder backlash or government scrutiny or internal panic.
The companies that survive aren't the ones that, you know, who react fascists are the
ones that refuse to play this game. So I'd say, Starbac doesn't need the truth. He just
needs traction, a single post or an opportunity for airplay turns into, you know, a headline.
And then a headline turns into some segment on cable news and then suddenly routine HR policies,
national controversy. So the more companies, he panics, the bigger the firestorm gets.
Yeah. And companies, I think, are in these situations giving him traction. Like in, in
isolation, company by company, they're giving him what he wants or some version of what he
wants. They're letting him tell the story and then they're moving on for individual companies.
That's your definition of success. That's fine. But in the broader context, he's getting more
traction and he's now, now he's getting access to, you know, Bloomberg's editorial team and
not that they're necessarily buying it. But I think they are, to your earlier point, they
are giving him this legitimacy and he's also got real momentum. So if we go back to the
more commonly taken approach, it's based on the assumption that the issue will actually
go away. And maybe it does. But, you know, Costco stood up to the shareholder proposal and
was lauded for that. Next thing, you know, there's CEO got a letter from these 19 state attorneys
general, all of them Republican saying maybe their policies are illegal. And Robbie Starbac
is already talking about revisiting some of the companies in his trophy case because he
just realized they still support diversity. So if Robbie Starbac has to come back at you,
well, you may be your extra woke or something worse. And I don't know what the penalty is
going to be then. So it's working for these companies in the short term because he moves
on. But I feel like in the long term, if they're not taking a stand, if they're not making
a contribution, really, to an effort to define this, I don't want to call it a debate,
and to define this issue, I worry that he just gets more and more momentum and it's going
to come back on these companies and probably many others.
Here's the real problem. If Robbie Starbac does come back, you know, you're not just a company
with the E.I. policies anymore. You're a company that lied about them now the attack escalates.
Right? The company's playing defense right now need to realize that this is not a one-time
game. You know, the goal posts are going to move. The definitions are going to change
in the fight, doesn't it? Just because you changed words or you said that you have changed
your policies. And what point does getting out of the line of fire become an illusion? If
you're on a list once, you're really never off it. And so I think the question is not just
how do we survive this round, but it's how do we prevent the next one?
I agree. And we are seeing companies who have to deal with this over a long period of
time, even after making moves to appease them. I think one thing that went largely unnoticed
was at the end of last month, end of February, deer and company, you know, the John Deere
equipment maker. They were one of the first to make changes last year or last summer under
pressure from Robbie Starbac. But in February, their shareholders rejected a shareholder
proposal from the National Legal and Policy Center. Those are the same folks who brought
the shareholder proposal at Costco. And just like Costco, deer shareholders crushed them
like 98.7% voted no, right? So two things. First, Robbie Starbac, you know, they gave into
him, but they still faced more pressure from the right. And I found it interesting. You
read the deer proxy, which mentions diversity, by the way, over 30 times. They're pretty clear.
And it's a good proxy, I think, from a comms perspective, I would encourage people to read
it. They talk about diversity 31 times. They use the word never just once. And that's
an align I came across and it reads the existence of diversity quotas and pronoun identification
have never been and are not company policy. That's the Robbie Starbac hangover nine, ten
months later. Those are claims that he was making about John Deere in his video on Twitter.
And I think they're still trying to shake it. But he put out his video first and they've
been playing catch up, even though they apparently gave him what he wanted on diversity.
But they really gave him was what he's ultimately after, which is credit for punishing, you
know, a hundred billion dollar company for being to woke and they're still dealing with
it. Yeah. Based on everything that you've seen and you're, you know, you've certainly been
in the driving seat before, how would you respond here? What, like, what are some ways that
you would recommend that that company's respond here? Yeah. I think it's again about tactics
and you need to gain a tactical advantage over this guy because that's where he is exercising
this intimidation and fear mongering. So the first thing I would do is control his access.
Yeah. Keep him at arm's length, keep the engagement really selective and proportional to I think
he's out there talking about meetings with CEOs. I find it hard to believe that anybody
would put this guy in front of their CEO or that he could hold his own in a meeting like
that after what we saw. So people are already probably already doing this, but I would be
limiting his access to any executive. Make the guy file a shareholder proposal or whatever.
Make him do the work, make him write it down. I've never seen Robbie Starbuck write an op-ed
or anything longer than a social media post. Maybe I've missed it, but bottom line force
him into your process, not the other way around. And when whoever is dealing with him, you've
got to be in information collecting mode. If he's got a list, he's not shy about these things.
He wants to get something out of you. So let him tell you what he wants to change. I would
not offer him a single thing beyond that. That's that's step one. Yeah. Yeah. I would say I
mean, I don't know how many I don't think any companies have done that, but it's very clear
that that needs to be rule number one. Don't grant anyone on one time with this CEO or executive
meetings. I would almost say, you know, I'm not sure how much you'd want to engage with
him on social media if he reaches out to you on LinkedIn. No, zero. You follow your process,
right? He's got a follow structure process there. So I like the fact that you're laying that
out very clearly. Yeah. It has to be the same as anyone else, right? They need to be directed
to legal or investor relations, but not to executives. Yeah. So once you know what he wants
or what's you understand, like what is on his list, I think the next thing is to overwhelm
him with your response, except ideally it's not a response because you front run him and he
says he's going to expose you on Tuesday. I go out on Monday or Sunday night and burn him.
Like no heads up. You write a blog post or choose your platform, whatever. I would not do it
on Twitter or any other social media platform. Maybe LinkedIn. I don't know, but it's you
get your message out and be very clear and use your language. But you maybe even explain
how this guy operates, like which programs he finds objectionable. What are you complained
about? And then you explain it, demystify it, use plain English, make it ordinary, right?
Own it and defend it where it deserves to be defended. And yet maybe you're going to
make changes or maybe there are changes that were already in the works as we've heard more
than once from companies in this saga. He's going to embarrass you because some of your
employees were pronoun pins. You get out ahead of that because it will all sound as petty
as it is if you frame it the right way. Yeah. Speaking of frame, my thought is we should
actually back up and look at a different frame. I think part of it is that we know how much
time, energy and attention that he's already taken from companies and a lot of companies
are talking about their various responses here. But it set it up in a way that we are engaging
with him when really we need to be about our business. And this is one of the things that
we do in the process of carrying out our business. We listen to our stakeholders, we listen
to voices that are out there. But as we've just said, right, we should lay out a process
of, okay, here's how if you want to engage us. If you have a question, if you want to discuss
something with us, here's our process laid out. Here's the channels there. But about
responding the day before the night before, I'm not sure if I'm there yet. I think simply
being focused on where your businesses and what your priorities are, the more important
part is making sure that you have your story laid out and that he's not controlling it. And
so my turn is if everything is about getting out the day before, we're still responding
too much to him instead of giving him too much control or too much agency. Yeah, but I
really do think the tactics are important here because you as the comms lead as the executive
team, whatever you need to remember that you are the experts on your business. And so you
are empowered to define this, this issue. And I think, you know, some of the things that
he's, he's considering wins, it would seem a lot less impactful if a company were announcing
them and framing them. And you know, it could be as simple as, you know, we came at this with
his words, good intentions and nobody's perfect. So we're dialing a couple of things back, but
we still believe in diversity for all the right reasons. Our hearts are in the right place.
We're not discriminating against anybody. You need to separate fact from fiction and then
draw a bright line. Robbie Starbuck is asking us to do things that would weaken our business.
Our employees know this in that process of him asking us to do things that are weakening
our business. That based on you already having a list. I mean, if you've already explained
him what the process is and he's written it, is this your day before response? Is that
already hinging on the fact that you've asked him to write things down? Whether he's written
things down or not, he's, I don't think he is writing things down. If we're looking at
the way he has, he's, he's been dealing with these companies. He's apparently getting
phone calls at some level because he's getting the memo and he's, he's taking the victory
lap on things that he asked for. At least that's what he's saying. This comes back to this
point of like, they're letting an outsider tell the story and position these changes that
they're making with the companies can be doing that and it will go much better for them.
These are the things that we are changing. These are the things that we are not changing
and here's why. I mean, one of the ways that he gets away with naming and shaming companies
in their policies is he's the only one with the information. He's the one who gets the
memo. So this is why I focus on the tactics on this. It seems so much more mysterious,
more scandalous because he's supposedly, you know, gotten inside to fight the wokeness
or whatever. If you could say the same thing about the changes as a company, it can seem
really boring. It's like, it's like, you know, when you build up the courage to complain
about something and then once you do, you realize it seems kind of silly now that I'm saying
out loud, right? It's kind of it's kind of the approach. So, you know, I think that's key
is that it's got to be not reactive. It's got a sound like this is so boring. It's a routine.
It's a it's a non issue, but we're just going to get it all out there. There's one other
aspect going back to his talk with Alan Murray and the CFOs that he played into and he
was referring to something he said it was off the record, but it's interesting that he
mentioned Jamie Dimon's name. So I don't know if he's referring to Chase or some other
CEOs there, but he said that when he engaged CEOs and of course I don't think he's engaging
him directly, okay? But somehow one of the points that he was making was that CEOs seemed
to be unaware of the DEI practices that were going on inside of their companies. And
for me, true or not, that I think is one of the flags here that any senior leadership
team, you want to keep them away from an argument like that in the stage of misinformation
and disinformation. That's where he so's division and confusion because no senior leadership
team and certainly no chief comms officer wants to have the word out that their senior
leadership team is unaware or that you are unaware and you've not brought those issues
to your senior leadership team. Yeah, I think there's two things going on there. First is
he actually the one who is exposing these sort of fringe efforts to a shocked CEO, I doubt
it. But are there programs that have gone a little too far afield? Are there was a
camera with Jamie Dimon's quote, but it was something like the silly stuff or things
that maybe were again well intentioned, but didn't work out the way we expected. Like
I think that a company positioning the same thing that Robbie Starbuck is he's going
to make it sensational. A company can say, yeah, nobody's perfect. So we're dialing
a couple of things back, but it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be a capitulation
or concession. It doesn't have to be a name and shame situation. But would you acknowledge
when any of his claims have any substance at all? I mean, if you want to concede that
something wasn't the silver bullet that you had hoped it would be, I think that you conceding
that is is going to take a, you know, is going to take an arrow out of his quiver, you know,
you put out a memo, memos are boring. Like it, it, it, it, it sets the tone and Robbie Starbuck's
only real weapon is embarrassment, the threat of embarrassment. And to embarrass you, he
has to make things sound sinister. But if you get out ahead of him, you get first mover
advantage, you frame the issues. And this is one of those situations where you can use
transparency as a weapon. And for those things that were on the fringe, that whether your CEO
did or didn't know, like you had an initiative that was maybe over the top or didn't produce
results, just own it. And then, you know, it's like PS, maybe the pronoun pins weren't super
popular. Anyway, just take the weapon out of his hand, I say.
That's certainly important. You got to take the weapon out of his hand. You got to disarm
him. The concern for me is finding some way that we can make the entire engagement look very
boring, very routine and not tit for tat where he's accusing us of something and then we're
responding with, okay, we either agree with you or you're wrong and not turning into a,
you know, to a conversation where he's controlling the narrative part of regaining control.
Here's staying in the position of business as usual. This is how we engage our stakeholders.
This is how we engage our voices.
No, I agree with you there. And I think that's why in this scenario anyway, which is just,
as soon as I get extrapolating the pattern that he's established with other companies, if
you've engaged with him, you've decided to get ahead of it, you're making a definitive
statement about this. I think you need to make sure that that statement in whatever form
it comes, the statement has got to be comprehensive. It's got to be transparent and then it's got
to be over. Shut the door. Conversation over. We're going back to work, serving our customers
which we do and we understand how to do better than, you know, these critics. And if anybody
has questions, we just answered them. Like you have something that is, I feel like Costco
did that, you know, with an economy of words and their strategy worked. They made a statement
and they said nothing more and the shareholder proposal went down to defeats.
As communication leaders, you know, our job isn't just to manage the external narrative.
It's to make sure that our executives are not blindsided. So your CEO, your CFO should
never be in a position where they're saying, holy poo, like, I like, I didn't know this
was happening. If they're learning about DEI policies or missteps or even just confusion
from Robbie Starbuck before they're hearing it from your own team, to me, that's a failure
of internal communication. You don't want your leadership reacting to a controversy they
didn't see coming. And to me, that's when companies make rush decisions that get defensive
or worse, they seed control of the narrative entirely. So, you know, you say, get ahead of
it. That's sort of important. Getting ahead of it is also auditing your programs, identifying
what your block, what your weak spots are, making sure that your senior leadership team
knows what's happening at all levels so that they're never caught saying, wait, what? We
did what? So finding out from an activist instead of you, you've already lost your
block control of the story anyway.
For sure. And I've got to believe that we're now, what, nine months into this saga, I've
got to believe that there are, you know, leaders, probably at every company with a diversity
program that are looking at this going like, well, this company got, you know, raked over
the coals for supposedly, you know, making employees sign, all I pledges or whatever, or
you know, things that sound, you know, you know, a little over the top, or do we have
pro, do we have pronoun pins? Is how's that going over? I got to believe that people have
a good handle on things that are working and are not working because, you know, there's
a lot of, how much you can pass up, right? I mean, you know, part of this strategy supposed
to be big picture, you're not caught up on all the, the details here.
But we keep hearing from companies after they make these changes. And I mean, these are
things that sort of get out there publicly. Well, this change was already in the works
or we've already been looking at this stuff. So I again, saying that proactively is so much
better than then sort of using it as an explanation after the fact, well, no, I know it sounds bad
that we, you know, changed all of our diverse or eliminated diversity training or whatever,
but we were already going to do that. Like if you were to get out there proactively and
explain it, I don't think we're telling people anything really radically new. I think it's
just, it's hard right now to look at this pattern and go, ah, number one, I don't want to be
next on the Robbie Starbucks list. And there's this, here's this tried and true thing where
we just, you know, let him do his thing and then it really doesn't resonate too far beyond
his audience. But that's again, as we said earlier, like that's so far, but, you know, this
is, this is, you know, the appeasement and bullies and we see how these things play out.
I suspect they're going to be back for more. And in some cases where, you know, we may
already be seeing that. I would think it of a hybrid approach, right? So when you first
hear from Robbie Starbucks, part of it is, you've got to find out, okay, what, what is the
after here? What, you know, if he's teasing a vague expose, they can go first internally
and get his answers on paper, right? And once this argument is out there, then you can
respond strategically, not, not emotionally. Certainly you got to act fast when the narrative
is gaining momentum, but there's also a question of, okay, well, if he's saying he's getting
his sources internally, right? Maybe somebody else has already got a piece of the story here.
I don't know. How do you handle that? I mean, how do you, are you worried about like cutting
off leaks or things? Well, I think that's, I think one of the issues here is we got to think
about, okay, he's, he's whether true or not, he has, well, I'm going to say it has to
be true, right? He's set up various channels on his own website for employees of companies
to expose practices of their, of their companies or to question practices there. Yeah. And again,
the, the value in that for him, the newsworthiness, the sensational part of that is when he's the
one who's telling the story first and therefore it feels like he's exposed something is, you
know, do you have something benign that someone doesn't know about that doesn't necessarily
mean it's newsworthy. So it is, there's a lot of this is in the setup. I think yes to your question,
leaks are frustrating, disgruntled employees. Of course, nobody wants disgruntled employees.
You want to keep them happy. So I think when you see complaints going out to external voices,
I got to believe that there was some effort at some level for people to resolve that internally.
Maybe not, maybe in this, in and if you, if you believe probably Starbucks people are so silently
feel or they're feeling silenced because of these diversity pressures. And again, this is
an issue that we, you know, have been dealing with now at one level or another for five years,
internally and externally in big companies. So I've got to believe that companies can get
a handle on what's working and what's not. And, you know, there should be forums inside
of companies for people to express things that they're concerned about, how you are, if you
are dealing with them, you know, satisfactorily or not, I think that's kind of on you. And there
are going to be some things that, you know, you're not going to be able to make everybody
happy all of the time. But I think that gets, that gets back to this sort of umbrella, you
know, argument here, which is, do we try to appease a narrow audience and sort of tell
them one thing in one way while sort of either directly or with a wink, letting everybody
else know, like, we're not really changing anything. That's a really difficult position to
be a problem. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, out with it, I say.
For me, I think out of all this, it's really important that we pack way up here. I mean,
everything over the past six months is, it's still, no matter how much we say, you've
got to find a way to take control of the narrative. I got to say, I haven't seen enough examples
of what that looks like in practice. And I think part of it is that we're so focused
on beating Robbie Starbucks as opposed to just doing our business, if you will.
Well, I think that, yeah, I understand what you're saying, but the problem with this gets
back to my point about tactics being important here because he's not coming at this issue
constructively. His, I think, a lot of his expectations are unreasonable, certainly at the
most basic level in that they are, they run counter to, I must say, it's universal, but
the very broadly accepted fact that diversity has been, it has business benefits. And so he's
not engaging at a level where you're going to win on, on reason, right? If you want to
get out of this pattern of just sort of like taking your beating and then moving on to the
next person, again, it just doesn't feel good to me. And reputationally, my gut says it's
not a positive over the long term. I think that you have to understand how to deal with
someone who comes out, you like that. And for me, it comes down to tactics.
Yeah, no, that's great. Part of what I'm thinking here is what's a strategy or lens that we
can look at that's going to help us and help companies that are facing is moving forward.
And I'm wondering if giving them that much attention by being the focus of the discussion
is already setting him up to win. So here's a way I'm thinking about it is that beating
him is maybe not the right frame, no matter what it's always going to keep companies
in a reactive state, not proactive. It's going to turn the issue into a battle and not
a business decision or a series of business decisions. Your habits and routines and what
you're all about. And I think it's going to create more unintended consequences. So part
of that is certainly no matter what, we've got to be owning the story and shaping our own
narrative. And part of that is staying true to your purpose, staying true to what it is
that you're trying to accomplish, meeting the needs of your stakeholders. It means building
a resilient internal culture. If employees understand why a company has certain policies,
they're less likely to feel blindsided and to leak internal information to external critics.
So internal line is a much better defense than a PR strategy is I think.
Yeah, it doesn't feel good to say we're going to beat somebody. But I think it's how do
you define success for yourself and how is he defining success for himself? And I think
you look at it and you got to go, I don't care how he defines success because how we define
success is being to your point, being true to our purpose, being true to our values as
a company, operating with integrity and not creating more work for ourselves by allowing
two contradictory storylines to exist out there that at some point, like I think dear,
somewhere down the line, we feel like we have to continue to put effort into reconciling
these two messages that people maybe continue to hear. So I think it comes down to some
pretty basic concepts and the one that stands out the most for me is tell your own story.
You have a right to tell your own story. You tell your own story when you release a new
product, you tell your own story when you name it. In every other instance, I think the
PR instinct is to say we are going to be the ones who tell the story. And this is one
where we are breaking our own rules and we have to ask ourselves why?
So you know, there is a saying that we judge others by their actions but ourselves by our
intentions. That is human nature. And in corporate DEI, that is exactly where companies are
finding themselves getting in trouble. Then once diversity initiatives are the best of
intentions, but you know, employees, customers and critics don't always experience the intent,
they experience the impact. So if your leadership team assumes we meant well is enough, well,
they are missing the point. You know, you don't get credit for what you hope would happen.
You are accountable for what actually happens. And if you are not paying attention to that
reality, somebody else, whether it is an employee and activist or politician is going to
point it out for you. And that point is when you are reacting instead of leading. So I would
say here is the challenge. We got to stop judging our programs by intent and start measuring
them by outcomes. Companies put DEI programs in place for the best intentions, but that is
how it determines success. What matters is how those programs actually function in the real
world. And sometimes there is an inverted consequences. You know, a policy that is designed
to promote inclusion might unintentionally create resentment. A training program meant
to foster understanding might, alienate employees instead. And if you don't know how these programs
are actually playing out on the ground, then you are leaving yourself vulnerable, not just
the critics like Robbie Starbuck, but to internal discontent and external scrutiny.
Yeah. And I think what a storyteller, what a communications professional can do for a company
is link the outcomes with those intentions. And you do that when the outcomes are as you
intended and you do that when the outcomes are not as you intended and you take responsibility
for those things. But you can't do any of that if you are not telling your own story.
Craig, a great conversation this week. Really appreciate all the thought and we wish the
best of luck for whoever is next on Robbie Starbuck's hit list. We will be watching. That's our
show for this week. We want to thank Shawn P Neal and the people forward network for making
our podcast possible. If you like to tell us what you think, we would love to hear from
you. Our email address is podcast@ocrnetwork.com. Communication breakdown is a production of
the observatory on corporate reputation. I'm Steve Dowling.
And I'm Craig Carroll. Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.
#corporatereputation #diversity #RobbieStarbuck #Target #Costco #corporatecommunication #DEI #publicrelations #corporatestrategy