Page 67 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

58 CREATING THE PERFECT PRESENTATION

Way back in the early 1980s, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca
went to Washington in a last-ditch effort to try to keep his company
alive. Chrysler was threatened with bankruptcy, and Iacocca needed
a lot of money fast. In the senate committee room where he was
scheduled to present his case, he was accompanied by a battery of
lawyers and what looked like a prepared text about three inches
thick. The lawyers swarmed around Iacocca, but he brushed them
aside and then shoved the fat text aside, too. He sat down behind the
microphones, faced the senators, and said something like:
Gents, the situation is very simple. I’ve got 100,000 people who
could be out of work in Michigan next week. Now, you can
write them a check. We call that welfare, and these workers can
go on the public dole. The taxpayer—your constituents—
can pay for it.
[Pause here—you can be sure he’s got their attention.]
Or you can write me that check, and I’ll put these people back
to work. We’ll build the best cars in America, and we’ll do it in
just three years. Then I will personally pay back the money—
with interest.
And you can take that to the bank!

The senators practically threw the money at Iacocca. A meeting that
was scheduled to take half a day was over in twenty minutes. Iacocca
got his money, the Chrysler Corporation had a new lease on life, and
a lot of people kept their jobs. The government later got its money
back on schedule with interest as promised, and everyone came out
a winner.
You could argue that the only reason Chrysler exists today—the
only reason you can still buy a Jeep Cherokee—is that its chairman
had the good sense to go to Washington not sounding like a
businessman.
The paradox here is that a businessman should not sound like a
businessman. A chemical engineer should not sound like a chemical
engineer. A lawyer should certainly not sound like a lawyer—and