Comments on: A CEO Apologizes Publicly. Is PR Changing?

By: Drew Meyers

Drew Meyers — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:59:45 +0000

Humility goes a long way in my book.

Thanks for the comments everyone. I’m sure this is a topic I’ll continue to cover every now and then.

By: Michael Price

Michael Price — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:23:53 +0000

Ah, humility. It had to be baked up and force fed to me as young business man. Over the years I’ve had a few instances in which honest humility went a long way. Years ago as the CEO of an ISP there were a couple of instances in which I had to e-mail several thousand people and apologize for mistakes. The flood of “hey don’t worry about it, thanks for being honest about it, my last ISP just lied to us and blamed it on the phone company” e-mails made me glad that I took the time to be phlegmatic* in how I approached a given situation. Great post Drew!

(if you read other RE blogs you will realize this is said with “tongue firmly in cheek”)

By: Megan

Megan — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 20:39:35 +0000

When I worked at Zopa our CEO at the time went onto the forum to make a public post. No public relationships firm behind it… just a candid response to an upset membership as a result of the introduction of fees. It calmed things down immensely.

I think this will become increasingly common, most prominently with startups.

Strong leaders know how to respond well.

By: Norm Fisher

Norm Fisher — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 15:54:18 +0000

Good post, and who doesn’t appreciate humility? The guy could have rattled off countless excuses but he wouldn’t have had a chance to make the impression he made with Matt in any other way. I agree. Watch for more of this.