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TRANSCRIPT:

DOUG: It’s a real honor for me to speak with Roger on this, as he’s someone who is able to set the standard of being among the youngest people ever in public relations to be a legend. So, thanks so much for being with us.  

ROGER: Thank you so much, Doug. It’s an honor to be with you, and I’m looking forward to our conversation.  

DOUG: Great so how can organizations get alignment across the whole organization regarding the company’s positions on these issues that are sort of becoming controversial in our current society?  

ROGER: Well, that’s a really great question because, you know, employees are getting more and more vocal about wanting the company to speak out on every issue that comes along. And there are oftentimes strong disagreements between people within your own employee population, not to mention all your other stakeholders. So, there’s a lot of pressure on companies to take stands. And I really think that many companies have now, after having experimented with that for a while, gotten closer to the right idea, which is not to be forced to take a stand on every issue that comes along, but rather to think carefully and strategically about who we are as a company, what we believe in, what are our values, what’s our strategy? Most importantly, what is the value that we are trying to create in the world for whom? And I hope the answer to that is not just enrich our shareholders by selling lots of stuff but rather create value for people that make society work better. And if you have a strong mission, purpose, and set of values that you believe in, it’s some work, but you can get your stakeholders, starting with your employees to understand those values, principles, and strategy. You have to authentically work toward achieving those things with everything that you do or it won’t resonate, but if you if you can demonstrate to people that these are real and you care about it, people tend to come along and want to be a part of an organization that they can believe in, one where they think that their point of view is listened to, and they have an impact on helping the organization achieve its goals and values. And it’s a lot of work, but if a partnership between the CCO, and the CEO, and across the C-suite, really importantly, to make sure that you don’t just have the words on the wall, but you actually have a commitment to doing stuff, you can get alignment across the organization.  

DOUG: What might be a couple of early steps? In addition, you mentioned there’s got to be alignment between the CCO, the CEO, the key players at the organization first. What are some steps that people, that organizations should take early on to sort of get going on that process?  

ROGER: When you’re aligning yourself around the strategy, the mission, purpose, value, strategy, business model, all those things, it’s really critically important that you not just do it in a small room with a couple of key executives. I mean, I’ve seen instances where the CCO and the CEO decided, oh, we’re going to do this. They announce it to everybody else, and the whole organization is not bought in, even though the CEO says it. That’s not a guarantee that the whole organization is going to be bought in. And one of the things that I learned through my work at Aetna on this was that we built a council for organizational effectiveness, and our CEO, Jack Rowe, required that either the head of the function, all the staff and line functions, either the head of the function or a direct report to the head, serve on that council. And over time we had rotating memberships so that it wasn’t the same small group of people. but that way you had every single organization or, you know, function within the organization with skin in the game because they had a seat at the table and not everybody agreed on everything. Of course, we had to work things out, but over time, your voice mattered, and you had an opportunity to have some influence and people are much, much more bought in. What I’m getting to hear is the really critical thing is to have leadership buy in across the organization and to have leaders committed to doing the right thing and saying the right thing and in alignment with each other.  

DOUG: Yeah. one of the challenges a number of organizations faces, how ESG and DEI have been redefined and creating this backlash against them when some of the elements of those programs just seem to make a lot of common sense for organizations. but the branding is poor. What should companies be doing in the face of this backlash?  

ROGER: Yeah, as you know, as your question suggests, become a huge issue and very difficult challenge for many companies. And there’s some really great research that was done by maslansky + partners, which they brought to Page. And we did some research with maslansky on top of that, with our members asking them how they reacted to it. And what the research found is that and this is sort of intuitive once you start to understand it, but when you first did it, it was really critically important to understand that acronyms like DEI and ESG are really easy to demonize, because people don’t know what those things are. And their research showed that only about 10% of the people can actually tell you what those things are. They just know they’re bad because they’ve heard that, oh, that’s the elites, those people are trying to make us do stuff that we don’t want to have to do. And by the way most recent Edelman Trust Barometer. Research shows that 60% of people around the world have a sense of grievance, that it plays out in a feeling that business and government serve a select few. They’re out for their own selves, and it’s easy if you’re a politician, or a media person, or a social influencer, to take an acronym like DEI or ESG and say, people are making us do this. So, the maslansky research asked people, well, if a responsible business took an action to help the environment or help its community or give opportunities to people to serve. “Oh, I’m for that. I just hate DEI and ESG. I’m against those things.” But if you use the right kind of language and you’re really specific, you eliminate the jargon, you eliminate the acronyms, and you say as a responsible business, we are strengthening our business and delivering financial results by investing in energy sources that will be more reliable for the future or reducing plastic waste that’s harming wildlife. If you say what you’re doing in a language that people should understand, they’re much more likely to say “yes, I agree with that.” In fact, just one more point, the Edelman Trust Barometer research shows that the people with the highest sense of grievance, interestingly enough, are more likely to say that business is not doing enough to address issues like climate change and discrimination. So, they want business to actually take responsible action. They don’t want them to do DEI or ESG, but as a responsible business, we want to give people opportunities to work for our company because it makes us a stronger company. Oh yeah, I’m for that.  

DOUG: Sounds like I’ve been advocating a rebranding whether I have standing to do so, it’s a question which I understand, but even just call it like Smart Workforce 2035 or something, that becomes much harder to target because this stuff isn’t changing, just the willingness to talk about it is changing. And so, a question that comes up is, can companies inoculate themselves to reduce risk of these kinds of attacks that can be damaging for business and damaging to the corporate culture?  

ROGER: I think a lot of companies are moving away from the acronyms and trying to use language that makes more sense. There is, I think, a second wave of attacks against some of that language. Equity, for example, is a form that has been attacked. Johnny Temple talked about that at the Page conference. Changing the language that you use, getting away from the acronyms, focusing in on a few key things that are key and central to who you are as a company and not taking a position on every single issue that comes along. You’ll get some criticism for that, frankly. I mean, some of your employers might say, well, you shouldn’t be speaking out on this and you’ve got to be willing to say, look, we can’t take a position on every issue. I understand how strongly you feel about it, but we’re focused here and here’s why.  

DOUG: And ideally, those issues would relate to the work that’s being done, your work team, your staff, etc. So, we also live in an environment where there might be what many companies, organizations perceive as disinformation or unfair attacks. So, are there steps organizations should be taking in advance in case they are targeted? In a way, that’s a story that really breaks into the news cycle. We’ve seen that happen with law firms, with universities, but are there steps other organizations should be taking to prepare if something like this happens to them?  

ROGER: So, if you are prepared for that, what would that look like? Well, it would look like that. You’ve got a crisis planning committee. You’ve got to bring the key people together to make decisions. You’ve got to be willing to admit when you’re wrong. Sometimes you do make mistakes and being willing to apologize and say how we’re going to move forward differently is always a good strategy, but when you’re in the right and you’re doing the right thing, and it’s one of these kind of, you know, ideological attacks from one side or the other, you’ve got to be willing to stand by your principles. Find allies who are willing to speak up for you, and possibly even take action if you need to, through your trade associations or other kinds of organizations. That could even ultimately be legal responses. Benefits are taking away government contracts, that sort of thing. You’ve got to be willing to look at all that.  

DOUG: You’ve been speaking of the importance for organizations to sort of have a core where they can resist, if I should say, employee demands that they engage on every issue, but that’s great to have that core, but how do they deal with it? What’s some best practice in dealing with those demands so employees feel heard on these issues? But at the same time, you can be comfortable, and they’ll be willing to accept your decision because that can be super challenging.  

ROGER: Many companies now have a council that’s been put together for how they try to anticipate issues, but sometimes they just have to react to them when they come out of nowhere. And it’s really important to be able to bring the right people together to look at how this particular issue aligns with the company’s purpose and values. One of the things that was said to me recently by a colleague, which I thought was really, really smart, it was actually Perry Yeatman who’s now at Save the Children, but she was the CCO at Kraft and another number of other companies recently. She said. “We always look at weighing in on the issues that are big to us and we’re big to the issue.” What did she mean by that? She meant that it’s in our wheelhouse, in the sense that this is an issue where we can have some influence and where we can make a difference, and if that’s the case, then we’re going to weigh in, but if it’s, you know, yet another policy issue that we may have strong personal views about as leaders, but we can’t weigh in and fight every single battle and employee can and should, not always, but can and should understand that if you’re consistent and you stick to your principles.  

DOUG: Yeah, and I think that’s part of why we’ve seen an increase in the importance of internal communication. And from where we sit, doing media strategy and executing campaigns with leaders at organizations. The external communication is almost more trusted when you share it internally than what you’re just sharing internally. So. that’s an extra value that we’ve been advising clients and seeing a lot of them take on where they can share that they’re out there in the public fighting for their organization and have their backs of their employees and speaking them up as well. Any final thoughts as we wrap up this really interesting conversation? 

ROGER: It’s really important to be willing to have the internal conversations and debates and give people an opportunity to be heard and to feel that the leadership cares about how they feel and is willing to listen to that. That doesn’t mean that you’re then going to go out and take a public stance on the issue, but you are willing to have the conversation inside where people have legitimate concerns that need to be heard and addressed.  

DOUG: That’s an important distinction. Thanks so much for your time. And you know all that you’ve meant to the industry. And it’s so clear why you’re so well respected and well thought of. A very thoughtful conversation.  

ROGER: Well, thank you, Doug, I really appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation with you. And thank you for all of that.