Joe Honick, GMA International Ltd (2/17):
No surprise here simply because folks like him have found there is no real punishment for such behavior, and they could not care less.
Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (2/17):
As I've said here before, Goldman's every public statement drips with arrogance. To succeed in PR, you have to really want to, and Goldman doesn't seem to want to, or even care. Goldman's defenders say their only job is to make money for clients, and that's what they do best, but if they bet against their own clients, how is that a defensible argument?
Ron Levy (2/18):
Bill Huey says they drip with arrogance but you NEED a lot of self-confidence--maybe even some arrogance--before you can cut a human being open to do heart surgery, make confident proposals about billions and billions of dollars, or persuasively answer famous critics who've said you stink.
The critics are often no better than we are, neither smarter nor more correct. Many self-righteous accusers are better at finding fault with others than with themselves, plus better at making accusations than at doing more productive work.
Our mothers, God bless them, were conditioned by our childhood helplessness to believe they know more than we do--and some mothers still believe they know better than we do how we should run our lives and our businesses. The "I know better" attitude induced by parenting can make some people imagine they know better than not only their children but unrelated adults.
The commandment is to honor our fathers and our mothers but there's no proscription on being blunt in ansering criticism of others who are unfair or even stupid. If we only say, as some lawyers do, that an accusation is "unfounded," that may leave many people thinking that if we were really innocent, we'd have answered more forcefully.
So sometimes we should say not "unfounded" but "Bullshit!" A beauty of our saying that critics have been arrogantly one-sided is that the public can see for itself what's true: as we point out, the critis didn't level with the public and tell both sides!
Bill Huey, Strategic Communications, Atlanta (2/18):
Well, Ron, if you think arrogance walks hand in hand with competence, check out yesterday's Olympic skating results, where the modest, unassuming American beat the preening Russian peacock by 1.31 points. Arrogance is arrogance, and when your ass is on the line the way Goldman's is, it's a very poor PR strategy.
Ron Levy (2/19):
It it better to employ the justifiably arrogant than those whose humility is abundantly deserved.
|