Don't Blame the Weatherman Because it Rained on Your Parade

I remember the late great George Carlin had a great bit on corporate success and failure. I don't recall the exact words but it was along the lines of, "Do you ever notice that we succeed and you fail?" As we all know success is the child of many parents and failure is an orphan. I think this was on perfect display at the press conference held by Steve Jobs on Friday. I would call this part press conference, part explanation, part near child-like tantrum.

Steve Jobs is well known for having a large ego and a short fuse. In that respect he is like a number of CEO's. He, and Apple of course though it's getting harder to separate the two, have been on a tremendous hot streak. Between the iPod, iPhone and iPad he has been raised to a level few non-deities ever see. Unfortunately, like a lot of diva's, the start to believe their own press clippings and really do believe that they are just an amazing and completely important person.

He made an astonishing mistake in my opinion by laying blame for this not at his own feet, nor his engineers but at everyone outside of Apple especially the media. We heard that this problem was well known within the industry and other carriers had the same problems and no one commented on them. Then he ripped into the news media for what he determined was taking a minor flaw and blowing it out of proportion. As we clearly can see, Jobs is totally tone deaf to keep his customers happy and in the long run that can't be good for Apple the organization.

In a great many respects Steve Jobs is certainly a genius. In others he is a dinosaur whose extinction time may fast be approaching. We saw that he has no interest in working with the media and that he will settle for nothing less than fawning coverage of himself, his company and his products. We also saw his ugly side when, for once, he wasn't calling the shots and showing everyone how great his products were. This is not someone who likes criticism and thinks he can control what is being said about his company without the benefit of mutually beneficial media relations. I watched him on stage and said "thank God I am not in his PR department."

In some respects he is like a lot of CEO types I have met down the line. I always remember one CEO who was interviewing me to head his PR operation. He told me before asking any questions that reporters only want creative stories so how would I pitch his company. I told him, very politely of course, that I disagreed and that the media wants to write for their audiences. I further explained that a PR strategy should target outlets his customers were likely to be influenced. I had to hold back my eyes from rolling when he looked at me and said, "reporters and customers put together don't equal half an idiot."

Needless to say I decided then to not take the job but I did enjoy the chance to try and tell a CEO how wrong he was. Of course there was no changing his mind and I could tell how furious he was that anyone dared question him. So in typical imperious fashion he cut the interview short and they hired someone within the company who wouldn't make any waves.

The lessons learned from all of this is that no company is solely about the CEO no matter how brilliant he or she is. A strategy revolving around that will eventually lead to the organizations failure. Also, it is terrible communications practice to blame the media for your own short comings. Yes the media loves to kick someone when they are down but, often, most wounds are self inflicted. Lastly, as communications people, we are responsible for protecting the company's brand and reputation and that is much more valuable that any CEO and his or her ego.