Au revoir to Canada

February 28th, 2010 / 1:00 pm

In a few hours my family and I leave Canada to re-join the 2.8 million our our fellow citizens overseas. We do so with mixed feelings, the nature of which I would like to express in this blog post.

I couldn’t be prouder to be Canadian, especially right now with my country’s class-act performance as a host and as a contender in the Olympic Games. This video narrated by Tom Brokaw and broadcast by NBC heralds a lot of Canadian virtues that are famous here but unknown elsewhere. What brought a smile to my face was this article in The Wall Street Journal: Canada group makes medals its business. The idea that such a determined and dynamic group of Canadians should unite around a high-impact initiative centred on competing with the world and winning is a refreshing tonic to what can tend to be the lassitude of our national efforts against those of other countries in other fields of endeavour.

Look at the hollowing-out of multinational Canadian enterprise. How many famous Canadian companies are known and respected around the world? You can count them on one hand, and still have fingers left over. It is telling that a country so big and blessed with resources should punch so below its weight in global business. Contrast our experience to that of the South Koreans, who with a small territory and scant resources transformed one of the world’s poorest countries over 50 years into a global economic powerhouse with corporations such as Hyundai, Kia, LG, and Samsung proud international champions.

As a people, we travel well and there is a vast network of Canadians around the world in leading positions across diverse fields. But if Canadians are going overseas to work, it seems more often than not that it is for the companies of other countries. If we want to be complacent about the future and live an easy life off our natural bounty and leave the ownership of our economy to others, we seem to be on the right track.

People at home have a mixed reaction to the overseas Canadian. While there is a widespread respect for Canadians who gain global experience, in some quarters there is a vague resentment for different reasons.

Yet if you ask people in my own public relations industry if they would want to gain international credentials, in my experience Canadians tend more than their American counterparts to answer in the affirmative. In general, we Canadians certainly don’t lack confidence in our global suitability, what with past tourism slogans such as “The world needs more Canada.”

One thing is for sure: Canada needs more of the world in terms of immigration to keep its population growing. If there’s an irony I’ve noticed, it’s how a country with such incredible multiculturalism and nearly one in five of its citizens foreign-born, overseas we don’t do nearly enough to leverage our human resources for Canadian interests (because, again, there are so few world-scale Canadian organizations).

In many ways, Canada is arguably the world’s first ‘post-modern’ nation and I am happy that the Olympics have helped to showcase our strengths. Perhaps with the boost to our national confidence of these games, more of the hard work, the valuing of education, the attitude of being the best we can be will infuse us with a greater ambition to succeed and the will to win.

Every day, I will miss the good humour, free spirit, considerable creativity and restless intelligence of the people of Canada. I will not miss the frequent failure to think big, the sense of entitlement to prosperity, the petty regional parochialism, and delusions about our place in the world which give us comfort but don’t help us secure our global interests (even though we have every ability to achieve them).

I love Canada more than ever having been abroad, maybe a bit like how the Apollo 8 astronauts came to appreciate the Earth’s fragility when they saw it from space for the first time.

I’m really going to miss my family and friends, but thank goodness for broadband penetration and the ubiquity of telecommunications networks. I just wish we could experience the fresh air and wide open spaces of Canada using Skype.

Categories: culture
comments(4) Tags: canada, culture

Two weeks into a great PR job

February 16th, 2010 / 7:00 am

The expression ‘drinking from the fire hose’ seems an apt one for my first two weeks as the new CEO of Burson-Marsteller in Asia-Pacific. In starting a new job in the information and networking business that is modern PR, the amount of data one needs to instantly absorb and the extent of relationships that must be suddenly forged is fantastic. It’s a pity we humans don’t come pre-equipped with pattern recognition software hard-wired into our brains.

My first day was spent in our firm’s Washington, DC office, which is a research-rich public relations and public affairs powerhouse. Given my lifelong passion for politics, I felt really alive there, like I was in a campaign headquarters with election day looming just around the corner. What I especially noticed is the ubiquity of bright and talented young people working in senior positions alongside profoundly experienced colossi of the PR and research worlds. In a way, the place had the meritocratic feel of Star Trek, where the best and brightest have well earned the top spots on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Then I proceeded to New York, where the B-M office has all the hustle and bustle that one expects of a Big Apple operation. Its substantial quality atmosphere is a distinguishing characteristic, evidenced in the apparent confidence of people who know that they are at the top of their game. The history and gravitas of the firm are unmistakable and I found the NY folks friendly, focused and unusually dedicated to their clients and colleagues. Many of them were kind enough to come and hear me provide a presentation in tandem with the showing of this superb TED video that plots the future trajectory of Asia’s economic rise. On my last day, I shot this video with the delightful Rose Gordon of PR Week.

Following that, it was on to Singapore aboard SQ-21, the world’s longest non-stop flight. As a Canadian who a few days earlier had been shivering in Toronto’s bracing -20 weather, I found Singapore’s +30 degrees an extreme antidote to the winter. The warmth of the welcome I received was commensurate with with the equatorial heat. Our office in Singapore is bursting at the seams owing to rapid growth, and having met many of the staff, I can understand why space will continue to be at a premium.

A few days later, I discovered much the same in our fast-growing Hong Kong office, where I learned first-hand about the massive bench strength B-M offers in public affairs and corporate communications. What I didn’t know beforehand is the top talent and growing business of the firm in the area of brand marketing. I also noticed here, as elsewhere in the region, the fact that while my new firm excels at telling the stories of world multinationals in Asia, it also champions Asian multinationals communicating their stories with the world.

Actually, compared to what I was expecting and to my past experience (having competed staunchly against B-M for years), I found that my new consultancy:

is considerably larger than what I had been told and also faster growing
excels at doing all kinds of great digital work that clients count on every day
offers an above average consistency of quality service across practices and geographies
has a far more sophisticated program focused on large multinational clients than I’ve ever seen before
consists of generally happy people who seem to feel that the journey is just as important as the destination
offers advanced financial systems and a well developed human resources infrastructure competently run with a sincere interest in employees’ lives
invests heavily in serious evidence-based intellectual capital that’s actually applied to the task of devising client communications programs (rather than just agency marketing)

B-M is not perfect and there are certainly areas for development in my turf (foremost among them is spreading the word more about the under-appreciated positives above), but these are the stand-out characteristics that I noticed.

Now that I’m into my third week (four if you include the days I spent personally responding to 778 congratulatory e-mails after my announcement went out), I feel confident in saying that B-M in Asia:

will always aim at setting a new PR standard with a relentless focus on achieving certainty of positive business outcomes delivered through client-centric consulting excellence
will be driven by an ambition to be the best we can be through continuous improvement to maintain our premier position

Yes, you can tell that I am now advocating my new company’s point of view, and more likely to emphasize that our glass is half-full. One of the things I have respected most about B-M over the years is that it didn’t need to call itself a thought leader to actually be one. But this is no time for complacency about our offer. These days, the competition is out there self-heralding its attributes more aggressively than ever, so I feel we need to underline where we are strong and growing with an evidence-based confidence that I am told by our veteran players has always been at the core of B-M’s corporate character.

I’m a greenhorn in the company with lots to learn (and no doubt many mistakes to make), but these are some of the the experiences I’ve gained during these early weeks. I’m so busy now that maintaining this blog will be hard, but I’ll try and keep at it.

Categories: Burson-Marsteller, blog
comments(2) Tags: b-m, culture, PR

Apology PR: Asia’s latest export to the world?

January 15th, 2010 / 4:00 pm

When I moved from North America to North Asia in 2002, South Korea was roiled by the horrible death of two young school girls who were run over by a U.S. military vehicle (gruesome pictures of which were posted online). Afterward there were mass anti-U.S. demonstrations around the American Embassy in Seoul, located right next door to the Edelman office where I then worked. Feelings against America were running so high, I made a point of wearing my Toronto Maple Leafs hockey jersey when I went to the office, wading through what at times was an angry mob.

One reason why the anti-American passion was running so high? What some felt was the slow speed of the apology for the deaths from President Bush, pouring fuel on the cultural fire in a part of the world where a timely and appropriate apology is de rigeur.

Compared to the West — and especially to America, where I lived for several years — one of the first things I noticed living in Asia is how rapidly and frequently apologies are offered across a wide range of circumstances. At first, this seemed too quaint and maybe excessively ‘weak.’ Why apologize for something that’s not proven to be your fault? That was my attitude then. But over time, I came to believe that the generous Asian approach to apology ensures more harmonious and friendly relationships between people, contributing to civility in society and helping prevent angry public outbursts that one sees more often in Western societies.

Indeed, I increasingly found my own culture’s approach to apology callous and calculating; a tactic of last resort if there’s no other way out of a situation. I had reflected on this issue before, because in my role as a PR consultant to clients experiencing crisis situations, I have repeatedly fought battles with lawyers who always seem to insist that there should never be an apology if a company does something wrong, lest there be legal liability as a result.

All too often, the lawyers win the ‘apology war’, but it’s a pity because simply saying that harm has occurred and showing that you feel bad or sad about what’s happened evidences human empathy and does not constitute an admission of guilt. The Asians certainly appreciate that, and because the lawyers do not reign so supreme in their societies, PR people don’t need to ‘induce’ public apologies that are already a natural cultural response.

Thus, for example, the reflexive bowing at Japanese news conferences if ‘mistakes have been made,’ which even if sometimes reluctant and slow to happen — often a problem with foreign companies in Japan such as Schindler — is such a humble admission that public acceptance usually follows and the media is likely to move on to something else. Indeed, the media ‘pile on’ that happens to organizations or people who have erred often seems like society’s way of extracting an expected apology.

Does that thinking sound familiar? It should, because during recent years — and I have noticed this change since I returned to North America — the spectacle of public apology has become far more frequent in Western countries. There certainly have been many media stories about this tendency lately and the whole area of ‘apology communications’ has become very trendy in PR circles. In an age when so many people fashion themselves as ‘PR experts,’ the apology as the fast way to ‘get the media off your back’ if something bad has happened is now a commonplace theme.

Look at what happened to Tiger Woods when his apology was slow and selective, rather than speedy and seemingly sincere.

On both sides of the Pacific these days, if you are slow to apologize, then people are less likely to trust the sincerity of the apology when it finally does come. Just ask Mark McGwire or any of the executives bowing at Japanese news conferences who are especially sorry that they got caught doing something wrong (which in many cases they could have sincerely admitted much earlier had they been proactively transparent…).

Early in my PR career, I learned about the ‘CAP formula’ for crisis communications. Show Compassion, take Action, provide Perspective. Nowadays, in Asia and worldwide, I think it has really become the CAAP formula: Compassion, Apology, Action, and Perspective. There are even websites now that specialize in apology techniques.

For so many years, there has been this cultural condescension towards Asia; this sense that Western communications are always more advanced and thus American and European PR methods have been widely imported and adapted. In the area of apology communications, the reverse is true and I think the export of Asian apology sensibility is likely a change for the better.

[If you are interested in the apology element of professional communications, check out this excellent article by my former Hill & Knowlton colleague Boyd Neil. If you can read Korean, one of the top Asian thought leaders in this space with significant material online is the brilliant Hoh Kim, my successor at Edelman Korea who is now doing his PhD thesis in this area at KAIST].

Categories: blog, crisis communications
comments(3) Tags: apology communications, asia, civilization, culture