Page 221 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

212 AFTER THE SPEECH AND MANAGING THE MEDIA
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Once you learn the rules and the moves, you can play the game. The
more you play the game, the better you get. The better you get, the
more fun you have. The more fun you have, the more likely you are to
be successful at whatever you do.
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But as I said in the beginning, we have given ourselves over to
the wonders of media technology. We have been utterly seduced by
our BlackBerry phones (I am a Crackberry addict myself), e- mailing,
texting, Tweeting, blogging, surfing YouTube, plus interacting with

hundreds of new and ingenious handheld apps—all the sexy magic
of social media and beyond—often at the expense of our own profes-
sional and corporate futures. In a sense, we have thrown in our lot
with all the dazzling toys at our disposal.
But I think we may be betting on the wrong horse. The fortu-
nate few who see this rapid cultural change as an opportunity, and
recognize that the articulate executive is becoming ever more rare,
can break out of the social media loop and position themselves as
leaders—while their peers and competitors are lost in the daily dis-
tractions of technological innovation. In other words, they can make
of themselves prized commodities.
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Bottom line: Social media aptitude and BlackBerry expertise will
never take the place of two people taking face-to-face or one person
talking to a thousand. Interacting live, in real time one-on-one,
eyeball-to-eyeball, and pressing the flesh will trump text

messaging and e-mails every time.
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This is how the product gets sold and the deal gets done. This is
why the investor reaches for the checkbook, the troops outperform