Quote of the Quarter(ly earnings) – Carl Bask of Autodesk cuts out the BS
- Posted by Ephraim Cohen on April 17th, 2009 filed in Corporate Communications, Issues Management, Leadership Positioning, Reputation Management
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If a CEO does not have a reputation for bottom line honesty, then he or she doesn’t have a reputation needed to be CEO. As Carl Bask, CEO of Autodesk, shows, a sprinkle of humor on a platter of cynicism maybe the fastest route to a reputation for bottom line honesty (just read the articles about his quarterly call). His reputation will pay off with a higher level of trust when Autodesk starts reporting better news.
In a recent earnings call with Wall Street analysts, Mr. Bass was reporting a lousy last quarter for the last year and a murky, at best, outlook globally. When an analyst, fishing hard for good news, asked what regions were immune to the global slump, Mr. Bass made it clear he would not try to spin bad news into good:
Well, I think Antarctica has been relatively immune, maybe Greenland, as well, although not Iceland, as we all found out.
Enough said.
(note: I first picked up on this in Fred Hickey’s High-Tech Report and you can get the full background from Barron’s).
