Jeff Bezos scored a big win on his day-long visit to the Washington Post this week, brilliantly playing against his image as a guy who’s been shy around reporters his entire career. His visit holds lessons for every chief executive.
The recent visit to the Washington Post by Mr. Bezos, who takes over as owner of the beleaguered media group later this year, was a chance to meet the staff, answer questions and quiet some anxieties while nurturing others, in a healthy way. After a day of meetings and greetings, the hard-bitten Post staff was thoroughly wooed, wowed and won over.
Here some lessons every chief executive can learn from Mr. Bezos about making executive visits like this successful:
1. Spend time with “influentials.” Every organization has people who set the tone for others to follow. Win their support and you’re halfway home. Mr. Bezos had a private lunch with Bob Woodward, who later gushed about Mr. Bezos’s “strong, even intense, optimism about the future of The Post.”
2. Linger. This was no CEO drive-by. Mr. Bezos spent a full day at the Post. Everyone felt like they had a chance to see him and hear about his plans.
3. Toss the script. Most executive visits and town hall meetings are tightly choreographed affairs, with carefully worded scripts and pre-screened questions. People can smell that kind of fakery right away. Mr. Bezos might have had a few notes, but that’s about it.
4. Open up. Live updates from the town hall gathering were posted on twitter, Facebook and other social sites for all the world to see. It reinforced the sense of openness and candor that Mr. Bezos has cultivated where the Post is concerned, and it gave him another opportunity to project his message to a broad audience. Just look at all the favorable press coverage he got.
That’s in sharp contrast with Tim Armstrong’s recent town hall meeting, where he fired one of his staffers on the spot for having the temerity to tweet part of Armstrong’s remarks.
Most public companies frown on social media in these events because they believe it could create a regulatory headache. But the Post didn’t file anything with the Securities and Exchange Commission after Mr. Bezos made his remarks. The lawyers must have decided either that he didn’t say anything material or that the widespread social media attention was sufficient disclosure to the public.
5. Be yourself. Jeff Bezos was being, well, Jeff Bezos – quirky, quotable, honest to an almost shocking degree. It must have been riveting. To anyone accustomed to a tightly controlled executive spouting happy-speak it was a big departure. Mr. Bezos was unafraid to let his passion come through.