So a friend emails two hours ago and asks, "have you seen this?" It was in reference to the New York Times op-ed by former Goldman Sachs vice president Greg Smith (btw: Goldman has 10,000 other employees holding the same title.) The little shot heard round the media world didn't quite register with my friend who by every admission is a technology guy.Then yesterday a Tweet trends towards a great tongue-in-cheek summary http://allthingsd.com/20120315/ceo-thompson-tells-yahoos-real-change-is-coming-its-exclusive-internal-memo-time/ of an internal memo sent out by the new Yahoo CEO warning that "big change is coming." It's a relative safe statement to say that not only is that message scary, but that every Yahoo saw it and digested the content from multiple POVs. A few folks in Silicon Valley probably saw the memo, too (facetious.)
What's the point here? Anything resembling news with conflict travels at the speed of light and more of it is coming quickly to replace whatever happened this week. Both the Goldman and Yahoo examples point to many things, but here's the rub from a corporate leadership POV: Stay proactive, act fast and be transparent even when every corporate control or trait you've been taught instructs otherwise. Anything put into writing is fair game in the Internet age. Embrace this truth or forever run scared at your peril. Audiences are selective, critical and ready to pounce on anything that's perceived as fake bake, scary or out of line with pedestrian values. Based on what passes as popular leadership these days, can you blame them?
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