We had the lawyers saying we’re not required to do it. The engineer saying, “Yeah, we can fix it. I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.” And there was an asking for a recommendation and I ultimately, forcefully argued for a buy-back that we needed to get the vehicles off the road…but basically, this was headed toward a situation that the brand would not live through if something awful happened. And to the company’s credit, they ultimately went along with it, and we purchased all those vehicles at a cost of $150 million and destroyed them.

I think they have to be framed in a business context that to solely address [the issue] from a social or ethical perspective without also framing the business issues makes it more difficult to win over a room full of business people. That would be my biggest recommendation, and also this is more of an ongoing challenge for senior communications people: really pick and choose your battles…There are plenty of communications executives that cry wolf every time there’s an issue…usually there’s only a small number of issues that truly tarnish the brand or create real ethical problems for a company.

He [CEO] said “Walk with me.” We walked down to the chief marketing officer’s office, actually we ran into him in the hallway. And he said, “[Page Society member’s name] has concerns about this. What do you think? How much do we have invested?” I think at that time we had already spent about $15 million, and we probably had a $50 million spend planned on it, so it was a lot of money. And he [CMO] said, “This is how much we have in.” He [CEO] said, “[Page member’s name] are you telling us that this is the right decision?” And I said, “Yep.” He in one second after that pulled the product. “Get it out of the store.” And we totally walked away from a substantial piece of business and lost a lot of money on the deal, but it was morally the right thing to do. In an organization that is steeped in doing the right thing, sometimes you just have to make sure that you build your case for why it’s the right thing and management will buy into it.

I also think a lot of public relations people get into our profession because hey, we don’t love math. They don’t like business. They do not want to crunch numbers. We are the “people people,” right. If you are working especially in a corporate or business setting, you have got to understand those business drivers. It is important for you to find somebody who can give you a basic education or at least somebody you can go and ask questions of, because a lot of ethical decisions are made for monetary reasons and not for the right ones.

One of the best things I did—well, two pieces of advice, one that is buried in the other. One is get as smart as you can about business, and how businesses are run, so that you can understand how decisions are made and the tradeoffs that a CEO might have to make in making some of these ethical decisions. And the second is for me, I went back and got an MBA to take care of number one. Within my MBA, I took an ethics course that was fascinating and it gives you a way of thinking about some of these things that is enlightening and in some ways makes you more perplexed, because one ethical issues aren’t black and white. There are tradeoffs and it is who gets the greater good?

You don’t want to be predictable that you’re always going to say no. You want to be that person they come to for a discussion about here’s what we’re thinking. Pick holes in it if you can. So I always try not to be—I try to avoid that early stage where I was knee-jerking everything and no one was listening to me to being hey, this is someone who’s going to give a thoughtful discussion. Before we walk out of the room, we’re going to have a good discussion about what’s possible and what we shouldn’t do, so that’s positioning.

If I were to say looking at someone who’s coming up in the field… start small. Maybe you can’t get the visibility of the top people right off the bat. But find someone within your department within your operational area or someone slightly higher than you, and start building a level of trust. Then the word will start moving upward and people will start—the phone calls if you will—will start. They will start calling and hey, we’re having a meeting on such and such a topic and we’d like for you to be a part of the discussion…Not everybody is going to report immediately to the top guy, so start at the level of comfort, start at the level of accessibility and just stick with it. (Neill and Drumwright 2012)

I would go into meetings where I wasn’t necessarily invited, and I’d say, “I’m really curious about how you’re organized in the legal department, and could you kind of give me the ideas, so that if and when I ever needed to tap anyone I don’t blindly just call you and if you happen to be out of town or a meeting”…Oh, my god, the chief legal officer loves that. First of all, they’re shocked and confused at first because no one’s ever done it. But then, “better idea, come to my staff meeting and then in turn, you tell me how you’re organized in your function.” And it opened all kind of doors—the trusting relationships…And you became this is an unusual PR person that actually cared about what we do.

I would call and say, “Hey, after the staff meeting do you want to have coffee?” And next thing I know I’m moving up the food chain to the level of significance within the organization. And then they start bouncing ideas off you.

I’ll never forget one case. This was after I reached the management level, and the CEO…relied on my advice and counsel. And the business runners, and even though they may never have worked with PR, they’re calling me for coffee and they’re telling me what’s on their minds and then when I’m meeting with the CEO during my weekly meeting, I was like, so and so is concerned about this. He said, “He never told me that.” I said, “He’s afraid to. He’s afraid you’re not going to like the idea.” He said, “It’s not a bad idea.” And I said, “I don’t think so either.” And he said…“Why isn’t he telling me that?” I said, “No one wants to speak truth to power”…so I got these guys talking to each other.

What I used to do is do audits every single year of senior executives around the world: people stationed in Asia, legal executives and our CIO [Chief Information Officer], and really try and understand exactly what they were trying to accomplish, what is their strategy, what are their hurt barriers or challenges that they face and what role could communications play in being a problem solver, a solutions partner with them.

And if you can add value at both a macro-level, and what I mean macro is the whole corporation, and also add value at a micro-level or vertical level, which would be HR, legal, finance or ops [operations], then that to me is how you gain a seat at the table to be able to actively influence events and have some leverage with your point of view, because they trust you, they’ve seen you produce. They’ve seen the results. They know you’re there to add value and they respect you, so you have to earn this over time both based on your conduct, being very empathetic to their business requirements and also I think being diplomatic in that you’ve got to know…how far to push and when to back off, but also using fact based arguments not just opinions, but facts, surveys, hard data, if you will, to back up your claim.

It’s amazing how many people want to just get up in the morning, come to work, show up at 8, go home at 5. The best conversations you’re going to have are after 5 o’clock…if you’re not there at 7 in the morning, 7:30, you’re not going to have those private conversations with the CEO…if that’s what you want, you can’t have it. The work ethic issue is probably one of the biggest things that people have to realize will affect them and their abilities.

One of the young people when the check came, we all divvied it up and paid separately. But then he reached over and grabbed the overall check and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like this, because this is as good as cash on your expense report.” And so I was creeped out and I also was very young at the time. But fast forward a year, and I get promoted and then somebody comes to me and tells me that this is somebody they want me to interview for a job in my department.

I probably should have said (a) I just want you know how this looks, and I really think that you need to think twice before doing it, because (1) it’s wrong, and (2) you just signaled to a large group of maybe impressionable people that this is acceptable, and it’s not. And so in hindsight, I would have addressed the issue when it happened.

You go to a social thing, but you’re there for business, you’re there to either get an account or meet somebody or you’re trying to get a job. I said, “I walk around with a glass of soda and a lime for the first hour and half. Everybody thinks it’s vodka, but it’s not.” And I’m able to do my business. If I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t probably do it as well if I’d had a couple of drinks. So I say, “Schmooze, but don’t booze.” (Neill and Drumwright 2012)

Even though they had stated employee values in place, nobody adhered to them, and they didn’t have a robust checks and balance…They had outsourced that to some 800 hotline that you could report, but there was little or no follow-up. (Neill and Drumwright 2012)

So much of it has to do with the moral standing and practices of the company that you work for…there are companies that I probably wouldn’t want to work for. You’re pretty much putting your job on the line every day. (Neill and Drumwright 2012)

Even though I’ve been in the business a long time, I’m accredited, I’m a Fellow…none of that, none of my academic credentials, none of my awards, my reputation, all of that was gone very, very quickly. Because I represented somebody who obviously, in retrospect, different lie, different story, every single day. The takeaway is that you have to be even more conscious of when people, when you meet them, are they telling you the truth? What is their real objective in terms of having public relations representation?

One of the essences of leadership is it’s not a function of position. It’s not a function of titles. Again my counsel to young professionals is don’t wait until you’re promoted or promoted twice to feel like you can assume the mantel of leadership. Leadership is situational and corporations today need people to step into that role…they need to understand that generally the people who are willing to speak truth are the ones in my view that rise the fastest. And the other thing is…to operate with integrity and to know your craft and to know the facts. And if you can present your case in a strong fact-based way, people will listen to you.

They were very much talking about operations-oriented things and other business issues that seemed real foreign to us. We didn’t feel like we had total permission to contribute in that area and nothing could have been further from the truth. We came out of that meeting and then we went to another one. And we looked at each other and we said we have got to do something different. They did not bring us in, so that we sit there quietly and don’t contribute. They don’t need us, if we can’t contribute.

We literally studied up on other aspects of the business and we knew what that agenda was well in advance, and we worked on different agenda points in terms of getting a better understanding of the things that they were talking about, so that we could have a point of view to contribute. And that’s kind of hard, but a really important lesson…But finding your voice appropriately, not being a know-it-all certainly, but being informed and providing a point of view.

In my performance review that year, my boss called that out and applauded me and said you had definitely nothing to gain. It was completely outside of your path. It was a fantastic recommendation, and because we were too inside our own boxes to see that there was lots of other options and we need to be addressing the needs of our entire management team and we weren’t... You came up with a solution…That was a big lesson for me too. I didn’t get a real pat on the back at the time, but then three months later in my performance review it was called out as showing leadership and being aware and thoughtful.

You have to surround yourself with diversity of thought, because one of our most important roles is to be traveling in so many different circles and understanding so many different perspectives that we could actually give good counsel. What I find in the financial industry often is people are living in a bubble. And it’s the PR counsel’s role to remind the senior executives that their perspective is in a certain bubble, and it does not match the perspective of every stakeholder audience. So I think traveling different circles, like immersing yourself in different perspectives, voraciously reading…I always tell people—try to be as diverse in your thought and understanding as possible, understand different perspectives.

It didn’t take me very long to be educated by our European colleagues to recognize that just because it’s legal doesn’t mean we as a company don’t have a moral obligation…because we’re in the business of saving lives…I mean that for us was at the core of ultimately our point of view here. And I was looking at it from too U.S. centric perspective at the very beginning. Once I shed that view, and that requires hearing other points of view, whether it’s your own internal colleagues or the broad employee base or external folks, but once you take in that perspective I think you can bring a much more grounded, values-based approach to your decision making and implementation.