Power_ Why Some People Have Itand Others Don't - Jeffrey Pfeffer [69]
When Chinchilla organized the first meeting for women human resource managers in 2001, she invited reporters to attend and interview the women there. A full-page article resulted. She recruited a former journalist and writer, Consuelo Leon, to come to IESE for a doctorate and to work in Chinchilla’s research center with her. Leon now provides help with writing and research and also tacit knowledge of the media landscape. And Nuria makes herself open to doing interviews with journalists and building relationships with them: “I am doing my interviews mostly by phone in the car, in my office, from home. Every time, every hour. I am managing my time and providing a good service to the person who wants to have an interview. So this is why the television and radios and newspapers are happy with me, and then they come back. And also, because they know that I have data and this is what they want.”14
There is no doubt that it is easier to get media attention once you are in power. Once in a very senior leadership role, you can hire the ghost writers to help you get your favorable story out and you can put your company’s marketing muscle behind such efforts, which makes magazines and book publishers much more interested in the project. And by so doing, you can take control of your image, burnishing the positive aspects and ignoring anything negative. So you can read automobile executive Lee Iacocca’s autobiography, one of the first big selling stories by a corporate CEO,15 but never learn about his disinterest in issues of auto safety or see much about his role in the design and marketing of the Ford Pinto, a car with a gas tank engineered in such a way that it would explode and catch fire if hit from behind.16 You can read Al Dunlap’s autobiography and never learn that this former CEO of Scott Paper and Sunbeam perpetrated massive accounting fraud.17 As John Byrne wrote, Dunlap was lionized in the business press until his fall from grace, and his “celebrity was based less on achievement than his eager willingness to say and do the offensive and the outrageous” as a way of playing to the media.18 Byrne should know about how to hurt or help a CEO build his image, as his book with General Electric’s chief executive Jack Welch took someone known more for downsizing—remember the nickname “Neutron Jack”—and turned him into a business hero,19 even though there is evidence that GE polluted the Hudson River, engaged in massive price fixing, and never was quite as financially successful as it appeared.20
As the cases of Marcelo and Nuria Chinchilla illustrate, it is possible and desirable to have a media image–building strategy even at the beginning of your career. Consider getting public relations help early on. Reach out to the media and academics who write cases and articles, and write your own articles or blogs that enhance your visibility.
Marketing expert Keith Ferrazzi recommends writing articles because it helps you clarify your thinking. It does that, but writing can also be a way to build visibility and create an image, helping you find a good job. Karen, whom we discussed in chapter 5, worked at a venture capital company in San Francisco in the early days of blogging. Inevitably, there were discussions in the firm about whether someone should write a blog. What was the company’s public relations strategy? People were busy with their deals and their board commitments. Karen loved writing and so she began a blog. It was successful, and soon she was being asked to be an occasional guest columnist on other blogs. One day she was approached by a head-hunter about moving to a new, senior role in strategy at a large Internet company in another city. As Karen told me, when people are going to meet you, they Google you, and in her case, they could read her musings, which gave her credibility. Her future boss had only a 15-minute interview with her. He told her that they had read her blog, could see how she thought, felt there was a great fit, so basically she had been hired through her blog and because