In the News–Leadership & Strategy
Axel Springer plans to force disclosure of employee relationships after Bild scandal
Erika Solomon, Olaf Storbeck, Kaye Wiggins and Anna Nicolaou, Financial Times, November 8, 2021
German publishing giant Axel Springer plans to require its nearly 16,000 employees to disclose sexual relationships between managers and subordinates, in the wake of a scandal that led to the ousting of the editor of its flagship newspaper Bild.
Chief executive Mathias Döpfner, facing questions over his handling of the incident, wants to impose such rules for the first time in the media group’s 75-year history.
But the plan has been met with scepticism from the company’s powerful worker representatives in Germany. It also stops short of prohibiting the company’s most powerful executives from pursuing relationships with junior staff.
***
In the US, the Me Too debate has fundamentally changed employers’ attitudes. There is increasingly a zero tolerance for relationships between senior bosses and subordinates, said Davia Temin, who runs a crisis-management company in New York.
“The world is changing,” she said. “What is acceptable is changing, abuse of power and the concept of that is changing.”
At a growing number of US companies, top executives now had clauses in their contracts saying there can be no relationship whatsoever with more junior colleagues, said Jennifer Kennedy Park, a partner at Cleary Gottlieb, who has written about “anti-fraternisation” policies.
“At the most senior level, the argument about consent becomes the hardest to judge because the person at the top of the organisation has power over everyone,” she added. […read more]
What Mark Zuckerberg Got Wrong In His 1300-Word Facebook Memo
Jena McGregor, Forbes, October 7, 2021
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg finally weighed in on the escalating crisis at the social media giant on Tuesday with a lengthy missive that downplayed risks and hit the wrong note with people on and off the platform, doubling down on his defense of the company.
The memo followed stunning whistleblower testimony, a series of damaging media reports and one of the longest outages of the platform in its history on Monday, when a falling stock price prompted Zuckerberg to temporarily drop on the Forbes 400 list before rebounding.
Communications advisers criticized Zuckerberg’s more than 1,300-word memo to employees for being too long, defensive and out of tune with the emotionally charged debate playing out over the social media platform’s role in society. The memo launched with a technical term about the outage, lobbed a series of rhetorical questions and defended Instagram’s impact on teenage girls’ mental health.
***
For many people, Facebook has become so emotional – and its impact on society, democracy and mental health so personal – that a response that doesn’t take that tone is lacking, advisers said.
Especially during the pandemic, said Davia Temin, the founder of a reputation and management consulting firm, Facebook has become a tool to which many people are emotionally connected after so much time at home alone.
But in the response, “he’s missing that emotional quotient, and he’s missing it by a mile,” she said. (Temin is also a contributor to Forbes.)
“As a CEO you have to appreciate points of view that are not your own. You may be convinced with every cell of your body they may be wrong but nonetheless you have to take it into consideration and you have to respond to it.” […read more]
Texas based Match, Bumble react to new anti-abortion law
Isa Soares, CNN’s Quest Means Business, September 3, 2021
In an interview with CNN’s Isa Soares about business’s reaction to Texas’ new anti-Choice law, Davia Temin discusses how many companies are waiting to see the reaction of the public before taking a stand.
“Do not underestimate the power of employees….and of customers and of stake holders, shareholders, to affect the positions that corporations will take.”
“There’s a ‘Fanatical Group of Worshippers’ in Your Stock. What’s Next?”
Lindsay Frost, Agenda, June 28, 2021
AMC Entertainment Holdings CEO Adam Aron has been actively embracing on Twitter, YouTube and other platforms a new trove of investors who propelled the company’s stock price up more than 300% in the past month. The latest Reddit-driven phenomenon has companies reconsidering how to communicate with these investors and encourage them to stick around — especially for those companies that could use the investment to pay off debt and invest in innovations.
The so-called meme stock frenzy, which has led to a deluge of retail investors pouring into AMC, GameStop, Clover Health and the GEO Group, is a hotly debated topic on Wall Street, but for boards overseeing companies that suddenly have an influx of retail investors, sources say it’s important to nail down the right messaging, consider incentivizing these investors and use the cash wisely.
“This brave new world of all of these Internet platforms and every person having their own voice has the power to whipsaw pretty much everything we thought we knew, and that extends to the fundamental value of stock,” says Davia Temin, president and CEO of risk consulting firm Temin & Co. “The wise board, and certainly the wise company, has to understand what is going on and figure out the way to communicate to all parties in a way that engenders trust.” […read more]
Red Corporation, Blue Corporation? Corporate political speech becomes a board issue
April Hall, Directors & Boards, 2021 Second Quarter
After the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, many companies announced that they would halt political contributions, either permanently or for a defined period. Some discontinuations involved a particular political party, some individual legislators and some were complete stops on all contributions.
In the age of “cancel culture,” when social media can circulate calls for boycotts to millions of people in minutes, some companies have begun to act quickly, with either their words or their wallets, to distance themselves from political controversy But there are other companies that have leaned in to a variety of public political positions. This raises the question: Are some companies becoming recognized as “blue” (Democrat-supporting) or “red” (Republican-supporting), or even “purple”? And are such associations good for a company, its shareholders and its stakeholders?
***
Crisis communications consultant Davia Temin says she often encourages her client companies to take apolitical stands.
During political or social upheaval, sometimes “corporations have to become the adults in the room,” Temin says. Corporations need to maintain some neutrality, “but it’s the difference between making sure that as a corporation you have a purpose and if you’re true to purpose.”
However, she doesn’t usually advise being outwardly political. She says there is a difference between having a “political point of view” and speaking out about a “behavior,” like systemic racism.
“I still think strict political lines are not the way to go,” Temin says.
She also doesn’t support the legal idea behind the Supreme Court’s landmark 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which said the free speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting corporations’ independent expenditures for political communications. The decision has been popularly associated with the notion of “corporate personhood.”
“Corporations are not people,” Temin says. “They are conglomerations of people, and they need big tents for their clients, employees and other stakeholders.
“That is different than having a sole political point of view.” […read more]
In Trump Era’s End, an Uneasy Reckoning for Corporate America
Jeff Green, Bloomberg, January 7, 2021
Corporate America is parting with its CEO president — carefully.
Four years after Donald Trump swept into the White House, cowing executives and shaking markets with tweet storms and tantrums, corporations that applauded when he cut taxes and red tape are struggling to come to grips with the havoc that’s now followed.
After Trump incited a mob of loyalists to storm the Capitol Wednesday, prominent business figures swiftly condemned the violence — without mentioning the president by name. Only one major business group, the National Association of Manufacturers, singled him out. Even as the Trump administration comes to its chaotic end, with calls for the president to be immediately removed from office, the business world is stepping delicately.
When Trump arrived in Washington, he could sway a company with a tweet. Now Facebook has suspended his account, possibly for the duration of his presidency, while Twitter put him on a 12-hour ban and warned it could take more permanent steps. Shopify, the Canadian company behind many e-commerce sites, said Thursday that it had closed two online stores that sell red MAGA hats and other Trump paraphernalia.
“That’s how quickly the worm turns,” said Davia Temin, founder of New York City crisis consultancy Temin and Co. “One needs to make a distinction between Trump the president, who you may or may not have made any comments about over the last four years, and the sedition, the attack on the Capitol that happened yesterday afternoon.” […read more]
In face of coronavirus, bankers apply lessons from natural disasters
John Engen, American Banker, April 29, 2020
It can be “very dangerous to extrapolate success in one smaller crisis” to a global pandemic, said Davia Temin, chief executive of crisis management consultant Temin and Company.
Katrina roared in with fury, leaving millions of people homeless and without electricity, then left. Banking was done on card tables with paper IOUs, but at least life still went on elsewhere and the path ahead was somewhat clear. It was, in many ways, a unifying experience.
COVID-19’s descent was more like a slow, rolling wave, creeping in stealthily from a distance. The physical infrastructure is fine, but the sense of uncertainty and isolation from social distancing promises no short-term exit.
“The situations are totally different,” Temin said. “You might have an idea about how to approach things, but generally God and the devil are in the details, and those details are never the same,” she said. “If you make a misstep, it could be difficult to disentangle yourself from those decisions.” […read more]
It’s time to face the ‘new normal.’ Here’s how we can begin
Caroline Fairchild, LinkedIn’s Working Together, April 15, 2020
On the night of March 11, Anna Maria Chávez made an urgent call to her CEO. Chávez, who was the chief growth officer of the National Council on Aging, was watching President Trump announce to the nation that travel from the United States to Europe would be suspended. She told her CEO that the council needed to move its nearly 100-person team to remote work, and they needed to do it now. The next morning, no one on the non-profit’s staff was in the office.
Chavez’s quick reaction didn’t come out of nowhere. It was a skill she developed while working as a policy advisor to the Arizona National Guard early on in her career. And that quick thinking is exactly what crisis expert Davia Temin says every leader — and every worker, really — needs to embrace right now.
Whether you’re the CEO of a large organization or an employee who is part of a smaller team, it’s likely that your job looks very different right now. As we settle into this new normal, the quicker you can get out of denial that your industry, career and role have changed, the better off you’ll be.
“The first thing we do is that we say this can’t be happening or it won’t be that bad or no one will notice and it is just a cascade of denial,” Temin said. “The longer you wait in denial, the worse it gets where you can’t put in fixes anymore.” […read more]
‘Sometimes the Crisis Makes the Leader’: Andrew Cuomo and Five Lessons on Leadership
Kathryn Dill and Te-Ping Chen, The Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2020
The nation is watching how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is handling the coronavirus outbreak, and it likes what it sees. Here’s how five crisis communications experts rate and react to his leadership style.
What America needs now is a field general, says Davia Temin, head of Temin & Co., a crisis-management and reputation consulting firm.
Someone who gives you facts, statistics, someone with a thoughtful, no-holds-barred, unvarnished approach. I’m not sure that Cuomo makes a perfect peacetime general, but he’s exactly what we need in a wartime general. He’s informed, his sleeves are rolled up, he’s walking the talk. He’s not abrogating the 6-foot rule just because he’s president or prime minister.
His brother’s situation has totally humanized him. It’s both intimate storytelling and authoritative, and that’s a very hard line to walk. I’m not sure I’d want to work for him—the pressure would be unholy—but he’s taking responsibility. He’s personally been trying to get ventilators, you get a feeling this is a guy in it up to his eyeballs.
In this kind of crisis, dysfunction kills. He has engaged our trust very quickly, and we need it more than we ever have, really. […read more]
A Death at Jefferies Highlights Urgency of C-Suite Backup Plans
Jeff Green, Bloomberg Quint, March 29, 2020
Like all aspects of society, the rules of the C-suite are being rewritten under the pressure of a deadly pandemic. Professionals who help companies ensure leadership continuity say the coronavirus crisis has added a new urgency to their work. Some say clients are mulling whether to further isolate key executives; other clients have made private jets a given for top leaders who still travel; some have scattered top lieutenants across the globe as an added precaution. At least one is poised to hire a new chief executive officer largely by video interviews.
“Just as the virus cascades deeper into a population, so now too does your succession plan have to cascade into the population, into the hierarchy,” said Davia Temin, founder of New York crisis consultancy Temin & Co. And while bosses like JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon — a cancer survivor who just had emergency heart surgery — have a good plan in place, today’s coronavirus crisis means “you have to think of the succession to the succession.” […read more]
More News Articles