In the News–Leadership & Strategy
Trump CEO Brain Trust Huddles as Corporate America Splits
Justin Sink and Matt Townsend, Bloomberg | Quint, February 3, 2017
President Donald Trump has needled Mary Barra at General Motors Co. He’s troubled Doug McMillon at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and gone after Boeing Co., once headed by Jim McNerney. Those business leaders, and about a dozen others, sat down on Friday with Trump to talk trade, regulation and more.
In his first two weeks as president, Trump has rewritten the Washington playbook for corporate America, as he has for U.S. allies. In the process, he has opened rifts between companies over how to approach matters ranging from taxes to immigration and revealed the first cracks in companies’ tentative embrace of him, drawing criticism from some of the chief executives who were in the room Friday morning.
The meeting is the latest in a series of White House events designed to allow Trump to solicit feedback from business leaders — and burnish his image as a can-do businessman ready to strike deals. The events usually start with pictures and video clips to feed the news cycle and then a closed meeting with the president and top aides.
After the photo ops is when it gets interesting, of course, and it could be up to Blackstone’s Schwarzman to keep things in order, said Davia Temin, founder of the crisis-management company Temin & Co. in New York. If he’s allowed to be in charge, he should run it like a board meeting, with vigorous but respectful debate.
“One model is a high degree of professionalism and politeness, even while being tough and entrenched in your questioning,” she said. But “some boards are different — some boards you have knock-down, drag-outs.” […read more]
Crisis of the Week: Qualcomm Chips Away at South Korea Probe
Ben DiPietro, The Wall Street Journal’s Risk & Compliance Journal, January 9, 2017
Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. takes crisis center stage this week after a regulator in South Korea said it would fine the company $853 million for alleged antitrust violations related to its patent-licensing business.
Qualcomm denounced the decision by the Korea Fair Trade Commission, calling it “inconsistent with the facts and the law” and vowing to appeal. “For decades, Qualcomm has worked hand in hand with Korean companies to foster the growth of the wireless Internet,” the company said in a statement. “Qualcomm’s technology and its business model have helped those companies grow into global leaders in the wireless industry. This decision ignores that win-win relationship.”
The experts evaluate how well the company is handling this crisis.
Davia Temin, chief executive, Temin and Co.: “Qualcomm’s press release response to the ruling of the Korea Fair Trade Commission threaded the needle very well. It is cogent, nuanced, well-stated and argued, and persuasive without being overly aggressive or over-wrought. The communication had a number of goals: to respond to the markets and investment community, to put Korea on public notice that it will appeal and begin to frame the elements of that appeal while trying to not antagonize the Korean government or the court, since Qualcomm is relying on the court’s favorable hearing of the appeal.
“Qualcomm is facing a severe threat to its business model worldwide with this ruling, and in answering it appears to be setting its defensive arguments for many countries to come. Given the importance of a nuanced response, Qualcomm could not offer up a marketing or PR-like overstatement; it needed a clear but lawyerly response, delivered by its general counsel–and that is exactly what it provided. The right person is quoted, and Don Rosenberg’s pull-out quote is effective.
“Will it win the day? Yet to tell, but the response is thoughtful, strategic and understatedly persuasive. [The company has not] answered questions from the media…but it will have to answer questions from analysts on its next earnings call, and the media will be listening in, so they will need to be consistent and additive as this story unfolds.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Tackling Disruption and Convergence in 2017
Tony Chapelle, Agenda, January 9, 2017
The Center for Board Matters at accounting and management consulting firm EY has identified six main priorities that corporate boards are likely to focus upon in 2017. However, one of those topics, dealing with disruption and convergence, is perhaps the most vexing of problems boards will deal with this year, so Agenda has called on a group of experts to address this challenge. We asked one director and a handful of corporate governance experts to distill and offer advice on how boards can help their managers develop and implement competitive and effective strategies while the world bombards them with disruption and convergence.
Davia Temin, CEO of strategy and communications consulting firm Temin and Company, says boards need to pay attention to the evolution of convergence.
For example, almost all corporations have had departments or silos that traditionally focused on cyber security and risk management. They’ve also had traditional marketing departments. But now, the ability of a law firm or an online retailer to send and receive information securely has itself become a marketing issue. If clients don’t have assurances that a company has certifications or other indications of top-notch Internet protection, they may not use a company’s services or products.
More broadly, Temin says, with mainstream news and social media converging, it’s going to be important for boards to ensure that regular news is clearly differentiated from simple opinion.
In order for directors to get out in front of disruption scenarios, she says, “the board really needs to assure that the company strategy factors in all possible disruptions that they know of right now when it comes to products, to the business environment, to the business model and to consumer audiences.” […read more]
Four Years of Living Dangerously: CEOs Brace for the Trump Era
Matt Townsend, Bloomberg Technology, December 19, 2016
As president-elect, Donald Trump is pro-business and a champion of corporate tax cuts. And anti-free trade and a big-company bully.
That’s a disorienting mix for chief executive officers trying to suss out whether Trump in the White House will be a blessing or bad luck. Planning ahead’s no easy task when the next commander in chief is a guy with a hair-trigger Twitter finger who touts policies that could both help and hurt U.S. companies.
“It will be a fascinating experience to see how things that have worked inside global organizations translate to the political arena,” said Davia Temin, founder of the crisis-management company Temin & Co.
For all that, the victim of a Twitter pounce must be careful, she said. “Never start a press war with someone who can outgun you.” […read more]
Donald Trump just tweeted about you — what do you do?
Cory Schouten, CBS MoneyWatch, December 9, 2016
A high-profile dustup this week between Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg and President-elect Donald Trump has left corporate board members and CEOs on edge.
Shortly after news emerged that Muilenburg had questioned Trump’s stance on trade in a speech in Chicago, the president-elect fired back with tweets threatening to cancel the company’s contract to build two new Air Force One jets. Boeing’s stock fell but eventually recovered after the CEO and Mr. Trump made nice on a phone call. (Boeing also pledged $1 million toward the inauguration festivities.)
The exchange was a cautionary tale for business leaders who are accustomed to a certain way of interacting with political leaders, said Davia B. Temin, president and CEO of a boutique management consultancy focusing on crisis and reputation management.
Temin, who advises several industrial, biotech and financial firms, including Fortune 500 companies, talked with CBS MoneyWatch about the implications of the Trump-Muilenburg exchange. […read more]
Forging Thought Leadership into a Titanium-Strong Marketing Tool
Dean Rotbart, Monday Morning Radio, March 23, 2015
This week on Monday Morning Radio, Davia Temin tells listeners how to forge thought leadership and reputation management into titanium-strong marketing tools – both for yourself, and for your company or products.
Davia is interviewed by Dean Rotbart, co-host of Business Unconventional, the one-hour radio newsmagazine that aired weekly on News/Talk 710 KNUS AM in Denver. […read more]
To listen to the full article, click below.
To download the podcast from iTunes, Click Here.
Crisis of the Week: Delta Grounded After Computer Crash
Ben DiPietro, The Wall Street Journal’s Risk & Compliance Journal, August 22, 2016
Delta Air Lines finds itself in the crisis spotlight following a power failure that led to a crash of its computer network that prompted the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights on the first day alone, with around 1,000 more flights canceled on the second and third days of the event.
The company’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, apologized in a video statement and took full responsibility for the system meltdown, saying in a second video statement the snafu was a one-time event started by a power outage and a small fire. The company provided updates, offered travelers $200 vouchers, waived flight-change fees and put hundreds of fliers up in hotels.
Using the statements made by the airline and the comments of Mr. Bastian, the experts evaluate how well Delta handled this crisis.
“Delta did not improve its reputation for trustworthiness with its early statements about its recent computer system crash causing thousands of cancelled flights,” says Davia Temin. “Delta appeared to be more worried about minimizing its damage first, only [later] acknowledging the full severity of the situation–during which time social media was ablaze with customer rage and protest.” […read more]
Should Boards Foster Customer-Centricity?
Tony Chapelle, Agenda, June 13, 2016
Many corporate executives and board directors advocate the benefits of the corporate organizational structure known as customer centricity. Rather than organizing a business into product or regional units, about 30% of Fortune 500 companies have set themselves up according to customer segments.
Recently, panelists at the global conference for the WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation discussed the concepts of centricity, customer satisfaction, marketing, loyalty and retention.
Davia Temin, a strategy and reputation consultant and CEO of Temin and Company in New York, says there aren’t many alternatives to being customer-centric in the long run. “It used to be that whether you [just] paid lip service to customer service was between you and the customer,” she says. “But today, when someone walks out of your store and has a bad experience, they can go to Twitter, Facebook or Yik Yak. So the board’s governance muscles have to get strengthened around the customer service experience because it’s a reputational opportunity, but also risk.” […read more]
The trust question: Can Barclays Bank rebuild the brand?
Barbara Kimmel, The FCPA Blog, March 17, 2016
Jes Staley is the newly appointed American CEO of the beleaguered British Barclays Bank. He recently said, “I do believe that trust is returning to our institution. But we will never rest, we are never done. We have to focus on building that trust every day.”
We asked our Trust Alliance members to weigh in on the steps Barclays new American CEO should take to build trust and ethics.
Davia Temin, a leading reputation and crisis response consultant, said, “Rebuilding trust in financial institutions is a complex algorithm that can test the skills of the best financial engineering ‘rocket scientist.’ Far from simply making a pronouncement of one’s intent (although that can be the first step), the organization needs to first deconstruct all the elements that went into building trust in their particular firm in the first place, analyze all the things that went wrong, and then construct a plan to overcorrect the breaches. Because simply fixing them will not rebuild trust, it will only, maybe, stop the erosion. But this is seriously hard work.” […read more]
Crisis of the Week: OSI Fights Back In China
Ben DiPietro, The Wall Street Journal’s Risk & Compliance Journal, February 8, 2016
Food processor OSI Group is this week’s crisis candidate, as it has taken an aggressive stance to fight a court ruling in China finding the company sold “inferior products” to fast-food chains. U.S.-based OSI called the ruling inconsistent and said the charges against it were part of a “smear campaign” by the Chinese authorities. OSI, by going public with its criticism of the Chinese justice system, is going against the norm for how western companies solve disputes in China.
Using only the statements made by OSI since the verdict was announced, the crisis experts evaluated the decision to challenge the government publicly—is it one they would have advised the company to take? Did the company’s response strike the right tone? If not, how could it have been better? What are the next steps you would advise the company to take?
Says Davia Temin, “While there are some crisis counselors who believe that an organization’s first response in crisis should always be to fight back, that is not my belief. I believe response needs to be based on the circumstance. In this one, OSI has shown it will no longer be backed into a corner, docilely. It is doing the right thing, and in the right way.” […read more]
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