Seat at the Table

On a recent call with Wall Street analysts, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz dropped the f-bomb while talking about the frustration of getting things done at Yahoo.

There were engineers in almost every country, and way too many product people. We had one product management person for every three engineers,We had a lot of people telling engineers what to do but nobody fucking doing anything. Excuse me. I knew that would slip out one of these times. (click here for the audio)

Her honest approach to communications (talking the way she talks, not the way someone trained her to talk) seems to simply reflect her approach to business – no one doubts her sincerity and seriousness because she’s honest to a f***ing fault about getting things done.  Here’s a good outline of her style at GigaOm.

I’m one of the (few? many?) public relations professionals cheering on this style of communications.  While it’s often not appropriate, it is how people (including executives) talk in the real world and that needs to always be kept in mind.   When an executive doesn’t use their natural language style but instead gets caught up in PR speak (yes, I said it), audiences detect and that affects the trust factor.  People are more likely to believe someone they can relate to and people easily related to people who talk like they do.  

So have I actually told an executive it’s OK to curse?  Actually, yes (ping me as I’d rather not call out that executive…but they took my advice and it f***ing worked).   While executives should stay on message, they should also communicate messages in their natural, honest style.  And if that f***ing means dropping a lot of f***cking f-bombs, then f***cking do it.  You’re more likely to be believed.  And from what I’ve seen, no one doubts that Carol is seriously focused on fixing broken things f***cking fast.

You can find more examples of Bartz’s “real world communications” style at Alley Insider here.