At the first World Conference of the Professional Speechwriters Association in May, the notion surfaced of a "speechwriter's code of ethics." The notion struck me as both intellectually intriguing, and a promising concept for an article in The Onion.
I was put in mind of the idea yesterday, when I read writer Amy Westervelt's public vow to stop writing "content" for companies, in part because "I’m tired of making rich, white dudes seem more thoughtful than they are. Yeah, I said it."
Westervelt decries the "usual 'let them eat cake' attitude corporate types have toward creative types in general ('I know! Why don’t we hire a journalist to write this think-piece? They’re all desperate for cash, they’d be happy to take this on for way less than we pay anyone else.')"
She continues:
It’s not that I don’t see the value in executives writing about their perspectives and their work. I’ve worked with plenty of really smart CEOs (that’s why I took these gigs in the first place), and their take on things is interesting and well worth a read, especially in business publications. I’d just prefer to see them writing more of it themselves (okay maybe with some help—let’s face it, not everyone can string sentences together convincingly), and sticking to their own areas of expertise. ... These pieces should flow naturally as an outgrowth of a person’s experience and expertise, they should not be a whole additional job for either the executive or, as is the case now, the person they hire to impersonate them. The trouble really begins when marketing departments and PR firms push CEOS for a blog post a week—that’s something no CEO worth his or her corner office has time for, nor should they—and when they get sucked into thinking they need to philosophize on topics well outside their purview.
In theory, she's right. As a writer and just as a citizen, it's bad to live in a media marketplace where underpaid (and under-experienced) writers are inventing brilliant messages for CEOs in compliance with a command that a speechwriter once called, "Write down my ideas as if I had them."
But the reality is, we don't live in such a world. Yet. (Do we?) In the world I live in, anyway, CEOs are frustratingly reluctant pundits who don't hire starving journalists to write their speeches, op/eds and blog posts, but who use speechwriters to do so. When CEOs give the speechwriters access to their calendars and to their minds, they wind up looking as interesting in public as they are in person, and slightly more polished. When they shut their speechwriter out, they wind up spouting platitudes that no one listens to.
What they definitely don't do is mouth compelling or influential ideas conceived by writers out of whole cloth.
I understand Westervelt's decision to "never again pen a 'thought leadership' piece or a corporate blog post." I appreciate the freedom she feels by declaring that she'll "refuse to have even one more conversation in which I explain to a publicist or CEO why I will not connect them with editors I know, or why it would be impossible for their 'contributed content' to appear in The New Yorker. I can’t take it anymore."
Good for Westervelt.
But just because CEOs are often dopey about media and thoughtless about communication ... well, that doesn't mean they don't deserve communication counsel. It means they deserve better, and more assertive counsel. That will come not from journalists taking a content gig to make a buck, but from people—among them ex-journalists—who have given themselves over much more fully to the task of making good leadership communication.
"Maybe if we all jump off the 'content' bandwagon," Westervelt concludes a bit pollyannaishly, "maybe CEOs and their publicists will stop worrying about establishing themselves as thought leaders in the media, and actually be thought leaders. You know, in their actual industries, writing one or two really thoughtful, great pieces per year."
Well, that would be totally awesome. But it's probably not going to happen. And if it does, it won't be because one or many struggling journalists stopped ghostwriting for CEOs.
No, an improvement in leadership communication will happen when a few serious speechwriters begin having honest conversations with their CEOs, about thought leadership, which—Wetervelt's right—you don't farm out to a freelancer. —DM
(This post originally appeared on Vital Speeches.)
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2 comments:
You had me with most of what you wrote, until you got to the part about "white dudes." I too have written content (as well as having worked for and/or alongside of) for high-echelon business people. Newsflash: the day of the "white CEO" is coming to an end, because women and blacks are moving into those positions. And many of them are every bit as pompous, arrogant, very disrespectful and frankly, not that smart as their white counterparts. Also, reality check: historically, the vast, overwhelming majority of men never reach any type of position of power in their lives. See "Self Made Man" by Norah Vincent (yes, a book about men written by a woman who had the guts to be honest) and The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell. Eye opening.
REVISION: You had me with most of what you wrote, until you got to the part about "white dudes." I too have written content (as well as having worked for and/or alongside of) for high-echelon business people. Newsflash: the day of the "white CEO" is coming to an end, because women and blacks are moving into those positions. I support their right to be in those positions as much as the next person. And guess what? Many of them are every bit as pompous, arrogant, very disrespectful and frankly, not that smart as as you make their white counterparts out to be. Also, reality check: historically, the vast, overwhelming majority of men never reach any type of position of power in their lives. See "Self Made Man" by Norah Vincent (yes, a book about men written by a woman who had the guts to be honest) and The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell. Eye opening.
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