4 posts tagged “transparency”

The weeks after the US presidential election have been interesting.
   First, certain Republicans wanted to make Gov. Sarah Palin the fall girl of their campaign. They failed. Bill O’Reilly tore in to her pretty quickly but faced a backlash from Republicans who saw the Governor as a heroine of their cause. Sen. John McCain took an entire week to respond, by which time it was “safe” for him to have done so, when the political meter had swung to Gov. Palin’s favour. We have Joe the Plumber now coming out and saying that he wasn’t that impressed with the Senator, but he was impressed by his running-mate.
   Then, we have a shrewd President-elect who has sought to distance himself from the radical elements, the corruption in the Illinois governor’s office, kept in touch with American people via YouTube, and attempted to go forth with a transparent transition process.
   I am not going to get into politics deeply here. My point is that the behaviour of the two candidates speaks volumes toward the way they brand themselves, their notions of leadership and their motives.
   I do not feel then-Sen. Obama’s campaign was the most transparent. There were questions to be answered, as I have stated on this blog. Vagueness is not a way to earn votes—but history has always shown that a campaign on change after years of one president in office works: Clinton 1992, Blair 1997 and Clark 1999 are good examples.
   I did feel Sen. McCain attempted to be more candid. I was unimpressed, however, by points he flip-flopped on—when first faced with the mortgage crisis, his first words were in fact about letting laissez-faire economics have their way. Within weeks he spoke of nationalizing mortgages.
   So much for the maverick who took a position.
   Now elected, President-elect Obama has done right by his YouTube addresses, understanding that he needs to set a vision as well as a strategy and getting people on the ground early. This is not a cynical exercise in PR. Any leader knows that the most effective way to get an organization moving—and in this case a country—is to get stake-holders in on the act early, rather than impose a strategy on to them. I have said the same in any branding job for our clients.
   Sen. McCain’s failure to defend his running-mate rates down there alongside Al Gore’s failure to endorse Sen. Joe Lieberman, as tradition might have suggested he should have done, going for Gov. Howard Dean instead. Gov. Palin was fine at defending herself ultimately, but not before more damage was done to the Republican Party.
   Whether one agrees with his Cabinet choices, Barack Obama’s moves in his transition have been pretty good, and among the most open I have witnessed since I began watching American presidential campaigns. He is using the playbook of modern communications to ensure that the office of the President will continue to deserve respect. While in some respects he has gone against the ‘Change’ cry of his campaign by rewarding Clinton-era loyalists for the Cabinet positions announced so far, it’s another shrewd move to ensure stability from his party. With enough in place, let’s hope that he can get on with the real serious issues.
   Am I going to give Barack Obama five out of five? No. I still hold some concerns over his ideas. But those who questioned his experience—as those who questioned Gov. Palin’s—might be revising their thoughts today. For the most part, these transitional weeks have been well played by Illinois’ rising star.

[Cross-posted] If you follow my ramblings, even when they don’t make sense, you know I had my knives out for the ANZ National Bank here in New Zealand for what I think is questionable practice. So it was interesting to meet a few people tonight who are employees of the bank, one of whom was very staunch about defending her workplace against my charges about, well, bank charges.
   Humble pie time first: Sir John Anderson left the bank as a director 18 months ago, so the criticisms I put at him were unfair. I apologize to Sir John.
   Tonight, I don’t know whether I should be applauding the ANZ for brainwashing its younger staff so effectively or whether I should be congratulating myself for closing the overwhelming majority of accounts held there, given that there are people who do not give a damn about the customer.
   While people should defend their positions, they should also be open to hearing others’ viewpoints. Respectfully. The customer is right. Not so, it seems, at the ANZ.
   ‘The bank must make a profit, so it should make it from the mass customer base,’ I was told. ‘How would you do it?’
   I answered, ‘Through investing, as you did years ago before charging us.’
   She argued the usual points of the bank providing a service, before I confronted her with some basic logic that I have stated here before.
   A deposit to the bank is, after all, my loan to the bank. When the bank loans to me, can I charge it a “Jack privilege fee”?
   Around this point I was asked if we could change the subject.
   There are several conclusions we can draw. First, an executive at the ANZ bank, a fairly high-up one, is not open to hearing from her customers. She has her own world, where she has been conveniently conned into thinking the monetarist solution is the only one, when history tell us it isn’t—and that the bank’s cutting of costs over the last 20 years should actually make it more efficient.
   Another member of the staff, a little older but I understand a little more junior, put forward her theory which made a bit more sense, about how mortgages no longer funded the bank’s costs as effectively. She did not know for sure.
   But this shows just how bad the ANZ brand is. Different answers from different people—but the higher up you go, the less they care.
   Front-line staff, as I discussed earlier, cannot offer a credible explanation about bank fees that any customer who has been there for 20 or more years can fathom. Fact: people do have memories.
   And it seems that it is accepted as gospel that customers are to be taken from even at a higher level, no questions asked.
   How well ANZ has managed to blind its staff.
   A good brand is one that listens to consumers about their concerns—and actually levels with internal and external audiences about its policies.
   This experience confirms that the ANZ cannot level to either executives or front-line branch personnel, which means consumers are too far down the food chain for it to reach.
   This Australian-owned bank has been profiting very well from everyday New Zealanders over the last few years, too.
   But I cannot see that continue.
   Any brand expert will tell you that for all the financial analyses that a client shrouds itself in, the minute the brand falters, the effects on the bottom line will be felt.
   One of the symptoms is what I describe above: one based around the hope that people simply do not remember how they behaved before they began cutting their services and putting up charges.
   It is a failure to be transparent and to tell the truth to those consumers—and it only takes one who is aged over 30 to be able to remember the good ol’ days versus what I consider to be the unethical treatment that is metered out today.
   Just as I said a few months ago, the TSB Bank seems to be the only choice New Zealanders have, and at least the profits don’t make their way over to Sydney.
   It was my ‘prerogative’, said the executive, for me to do as I wished with my money, if I had gone to the TSB.
   No attempt to get it back—no promises to look into things. Even others have offered that to keep me on as a customer. Higher up, I guess, no one really cares. A lost customer isn’t important.
   Even if the lost customer is a stubborn bastard with a big mouth.
   If the ANZ wishes, I am happy to run a seminar for them to inform them of the niceties of listening to their customers. Unsurprisingly, I understand tonight that its profits are heading south this year.
   This problem won’t be fixed with advertising, rebranding or PR.
   It might be fixed by giving customers what they want and pursuing something other than short-term profit, which is exactly the message the ANZ has been sending me year after year.
   Because if banks aren’t looking at the long term, then what heck are we entrusting a penny to them?

I love it. Dr Jay Parkinson of Brooklyn, NY, has gone online with his practice:

http://www.inter-actions.biz/blog/2007/10/is_there_a_doctor_in_the_house.html

That means you can reach him via electronic means and he will do diagnoses accordingly, even after hours for emergencies.
   Now, I would love to see lawyers do this. Even an e-court. Parties or their attorneys feed in their evidence to a site with limited fields and a judge decides. No emotion, no BS. The decision comes swiftly. Any mitigating factors can be fed in, but lawyers would be encouraged to write everything briefly. They would be unable to hide extra charges. And if they think anything’s been missed, then the process could go to appeal before a live court.
   It would lower the price of getting justice because the system would no longer need to support a live District Court, and appeals would be at the current price of the original claim. It would also make things faster.
   Best of all, the legal profession, branded as shysters even in Shakespeare’s day, would appear more transparent. It would start going up the ladder in people’s minds.
   I would love to see a country like Singapore, or even New Zealand, give this sort of thing a shot. Singapore prides itself on e-governmental processes and this would be an ultimate test. New Zealand’s system is far too entrenched but I’d love to see a party adopt this idea.
   It’s far too radical for Labour, and certainly would be gobbledegook for National.
   Greens? United Future? The Alliance?

070521 Farewell to Good Morning

Jack Yan

No more Good Morning for yours truly. As some of you know from the private posts here at Vox, I felt that things haven’t been right with the show for some time. I probably stayed a lot longer than I wished, primarily because I had a pretty good rapport with my co-presenters. 
   Those of you who’ll choose to listen to my little voice post at left will get filled in on the nitty-gritty—which has not been denied or disputed by TVNZ. And I do have a photographic memory that is better than most people’s.
   At the beginning, I agreed to go on the show to promote my work, and my right to do this was taken away gradually. The interesting thing is that Good Morning never managed to contribute to my profile: I had a lot more press coverage before I was on the show. Now free of Good Morning, I have noticed things such as invitations to speak and other public appearances have increased domestically.
   Good Morning, with hindsight, never fulfilled my motivations—and actually caused the opposite. The invasions into my privacy—the subject of written complaints and telephone conversations by me—were, at the end of the day, inappropriate and dealt with unfairly.
   I stressed to the producer, Sally-anne Kerr, in my request to have my contract terminated, that I did not hold her personally accountable. I believe she had had her hands tied by those further up the food chain.
   However, there is no hard and fast rule that says that if you appear on TV, you open yourself up to public inquiry. As I said at the beginning of this month, I am no Judy Bailey (even if some people took that the wrong way). I’m just a regular bloke who did between eight and seventeen minutes of live TV a week, on a show that even I did not watch, except in review situations.
   I thank those who read the private posts for their support and their vows to never watch Good Morning again!
   You will likely see me or one of the team on C4 in New Zealand next month anyway, while Lucire’s US editor Summer Rayne Oakes continues her media exposure. Stefan Engeseth recently was on TV in Göteborg. So we are continuing to be out there, doing things that are far more relevant to the work that we are trying to do at Jack Yan & Associates. Good Morning, sadly, was very incompatible with that: it came to symbolize the trivial in my life, and even the annoying.
   Perhaps unlike Judy Bailey and other people who are actually known by the general public, I don’t want the gig back—so please don’t take my posting as anything but fuelled by my usual desire to share with readers. Except it is regulated by me—not through prodding. Most of you came to my blogs through my real work, not through TV, but I did feel I owed some explanation to those who did come via the show.
   And for those who came via my work, I have always advocated transparency in organizations.