Month: April 2016

I’m taking a vacation from blogging for a week or so.  I’ll be back by mid-April.

A company under pressure has enough of a hard time.  A company whose employees are mouthing off in social media about its impending demise has a PR crisis.  That is the situation facing Nest, the smart thermostat business.  An engineer or someone posing as one, has written a scathing commentary on the future of the company and is claiming it is on a deathwatch. Of course, everyone inside Nest has read the message by now as well as tens of thousands outside the company, including competitors.  It is up to Nest to respond — and quickly — before the negative spin gets out of hand.  The longer the statement remains uncontested, the more people will come to believe that something is wrong internally and the “engineer’s” words will ring true.  The company can’t stop employees from commenting anonymously, but it can be more transparent about its business and appeal to employees to stick together.  If it is facing tough times, it ought to say so and provide its plan for weathering the storm. Silence is deadly.

Tesla, the electric auto company, has a history of over-promising and under-delivering.  Its excuses are for events the company knew or should have known, such as the difficulty of getting parts.  The question now is how long the public is going to let the company get away with its lack of performance before it abandons the vehicle and goes elsewhere.  Tesla has 300,000 back orders for its newest, $35,000 machine, but if it can’t produce its current model reliably, how is it going to pump out that many vehicles with efficiency?  Tesla is still a bit of a “wannabe” car company.  It wants to join the majors but it doesn’t have the industrial knowledge to make the transition.  By that, I mean making tens of thousands of cars with the fit, finish and promised power of its advertising.  Detroit still has an advantage because it makes millions of vehicles to Tesla’s thousands.  Tesla needs to close the credibility gap quickly, but hasn’t shown progress to date. It is becoming a PR crisis.

Navy Seals are grappling with their image of quiet professionalism in the wake of waves of publicity by present and former members.  It seems anyone and anything with the label Seal can be exploited for profit.  This is upsetting to many members of the Seal community who pride themselves on getting a job done without shouting about it from the rooftops.  Unfortunately, there are few ways that the Navy can control former Seals, but it can harness active members through nondisclosure orders.  The challenge the Navy has is that the public is fascinated by these extraordinary individuals and teams.  They have been tested and trained to the highest level of proficiency and they have derring-do that sends them into seemingly impossible situations time and again.  It is that level of spirit and readiness that the public wants to know more about.  One can understand the threat to the Navy and the Seals when individuals start taking precedence over the team, for coordinated action is at the heart of their success and not the actions of any one member.  Eventually, the rampant publicity will die away but in the meantime, the Navy has to deal with the flack.

Power corrupts when it is not checked.  Absolute power is dangerous to the public as well as the state.  That is why this person’s pursuit of total control is harmful to China.  He has stopped listening to the people and pursued a one-way relationship with the media fawning over his decisions and too frightened to criticize.  This is decidedly unhealthy in a country that was ravaged by the last dictator — Mao Tse Tung.  One wonders how the people have allowed Xi to get away with collecting the reins of absolute power.  There should be demonstrations in the streets protesting it, but there aren’t.  Now that he has total control, the outside world can only watch what he will do with it and hope he doesn’t ruin the country as a result.  The precedence is not hopeful.

The media are having a field day pointing out inaccuracies, lies and distortions coming from the mouth of Donald Trump.  Here is yet another area in which he has bent the truth.  The man is addicted to debt and careful to arrange matters so he isn’t personally on the hook for it if his projects go belly-up.  Call it smart business or ethically challenged but neither shows much hope for tackling the US debt should he win the presidency.  Trump has given business a bad name.  The only saving grace is that he is so outrageous, business leaders oppose him along with most middle of the road citizens.  That he has won at all is the result of anger over the stagnant condition of the country.  People vote for him, dishonest as he is, because they detest real politicians who have been unable to help them.  They are tired of promises and want jobs that move them solidly into the middle class instead of its lower reaches and poverty.  But, there is no real good way to put Americans back to work.  The world is in a slump.  Even the paragon of growth — China — is struggling.  Workers blame trade agreements for their loss of jobs, but they would have lost them anyway as companies moved to parts of the world with lower cost labor.  There is no good answer for the stagnation, so Donald Trump can portray himself as a savior when he clearly isn’t and voters have bought his argument.