Page 270 - Executive Warfare

EXECUTIVE W ARF ARE

ers to engage in “radical transparency”and communicate in an uncensored
fashion online. But there is a difference between being fashionable and
being smart. Obviously, there are many
fantastic ways to use the Web for busi-
ness, including offering detailed product
UNLESS YOU WANT
information and interactive customer
TO SPEND A GOOD
service, even interactive marketing that
PORTION OF YOUR
harnesses the creativity of your cus-
LIFE IN
DEPOSITIONS, I tomers to sell your products. But, unless
DON’T SEE LETTING you want to spend a good portion of
FLY IN A COMPANY your life in depositions, I don’t see let-
BLOG AS A VERY ting fly in a company blog as a very
SMART MOVE FOR smart move for rising executives.
RISING Thompson is right about one thing,
EXECUTIVES. though, when he writes, “Google is not
a search engine. Google is a reputation-
management system.... Online, your
rep is quantifiable, findable, and totally unavoidable.” I’d only add that it
can be ruined in an instant.
Any embarrassment you allow to be captured in electronic form can
spread like a virus and linger forever. So, when in doubt, don’t do any-
thing in front of the world’s Google users that you wouldn’t do in front
of your organization’s CEO and board.

A NEW WORLD FOR EXECUTIVES—
TOUGH BUT NOT INHUMAN
The new world I have just described is more analytical, more numbers-
focused, more aggressive, more skeptical, and more unforgiving than ever
before. You have to be effective in this world to make it to the top—but
the real stand-out candidates will be the amateur psychologists, the
humanists, and the humorists.

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