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The Enormous Power of Thank You

Thank, Applaud, Congratulate, Recognize,
or Honor One Person Every Day.
Just Do It.

Each Recipient Will Remember You
and What You Did For Them and For Others.

Why Do This?

If you are one of the many waiting around for the spontaneous recognition for the good things you have done for others and maybe larger groups, the wait could be longer. Only a handful of us, a very tiny number will experience these magical events in their lives. If you want people to remember you, there are some powerful realities:

Remember others first.
Take some time every day to find people you know you need to thank and do it.
As you develop this habit, you will find that each recipient of your gratitude will remember you, what you did for them, and perhaps what you did for others, then tell you and tell others.
My personal belief is that every supervisor, senior manager, and leader has an obligation to look for others who do outstanding things, and then take the trouble to personally recognize their accomplishments. These powerful communications often have lifelong impact. Recipients gain what so many of us would like to have, happiness.
Do things that are memorable, that you know are special or above and beyond the call of duty. Sometimes you have to force people to remember you.
Bottom line: Being remembered is a very intentional personal behavior. No thank you, no gratitude, no memory…no happiness.

Remember, Thank You are the two most powerful words in any culture, any language, and any relationship. Be specific about what you are thanking for will make those two words more powerful, memorable, and actionable.

An Introduction to the Power of Thank You

The first thank you note that came my way occurred shortly after the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) published a couple of my short essays in 1974. The notes came from people I didn’t even know, Chester Burger and Rob8ert Dillionsnider of New York City, for example. Just brief short notes on special thank you stationery they had which said essentially, “Dear Jim, liked your piece, especially A, B, and C. You need to write more about these things. Thank you, sincerely.”

In almost every month of my career from those days to these, I receive thank you notes from people.

Two powerful experiences really illustrate the power of recognizing what you like about how other people have helped you. That read them, enjoy them, and use the lessons they teach.

Handkerchief warning, have some tissues ready as you read these two articles.

The Power of a Note, My First Lesson – A Personal Story

I was 26 years old and a junior manager in a Minneapolis retail music store. The way they went about teaching management was to put junior managers in charge of something real. One of my first “real” management jobs was to oversee the stereo components department in the company’s downtown store. I had a pretty tough, old-fashioned supervisor who had only a few requirements for my first month as manager: conduct a sales meeting on Tuesdays at 7:30 AM, present a new selling idea to the group of five, and write at least one complimentary note to a sales staff member during the month. More than one note was encouraged.

One day, one of the long-time salesmen passed away. It wasn’t my fault. My manager came down and asked me to go through his desk to make sure there was nothing embarrassing to him or the company. The family was coming in to spend some time in the department where the salesman had spent most of his working life.

I went through his desk, an old-fashioned World War II surplus desk with deep drawers. In the back there was a big box of papers; I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but I soon noticed that everything inside the box was in chronological order, with the youngest documents first. As I was trying to figure out what it was all about, I noticed that on every piece of paper, going back more than 30 years, there was a handwritten note from somebody making a nice comment about this gentleman’s work.

There were even several notes from more than 30 years ago, from the company’s founder. Some were just scribbles, “Great job with the Wilsons, we couldn’t crack them, you sold them”, “Thanks”, “You really did a great job resolving the concerns of the Olsons, they kept the merchandise after all. Nice going.” Then it struck me that he had likely saved every positive piece of paper he received. There, on top, was my recent handwritten compliment. I kind of teared up.

When the family came, I put the box on the top of his desk, and his family members began going through it and talking about how many of these notes they knew about. Seems he talked about them at the dinner table whenever he got one. As I think back over that dramatic day, in the context of my career, something I could have done a lot more would have been to consistently and constantly thank people, compliment people, and to congratulate people. The lesson and perhaps the moral is if you want to be remembered, remember others.

The Mark Eklund Story, “All the Good Things”
By Helen P. Mrosla
Courtesy of Reader’s Digest, Copyright © 1991,
Reprinted with Permission of Trusted Media Brands, Inc., Copyright © 2020

He was in the first third-grade class I taught at Saint Mary’s School in Morris, Minn. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance but had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischievousness delightful.

Mark talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving – “Thank you for correcting me, Sister!” I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.

One morning my patience was growing thin when Mark talked once too often, and then I made a novice teacher’s mistake. I looked at Mark and said, If you say one more word, I am going to tape your mouth shut!” It wasn’t ten seconds later when Chuck blurted out, “Mark is talking again.” I hadn’t asked any of the students to help me watch Mark, but since I had stated the punishment in front of the class, I had to act on it.

I remember the scene as if it had occurred this morning. I walked to my desk, very deliberately opened my drawer and took out a roll of masking tape. Without saying a word, I proceeded to Mark’s desk, tore off two pieces of tape and made a big X with them over his mouth. I then returned to the front of the room. As I glanced at Mark to see how he was doing, he winked at me. That did it! I started laughing. The class cheered as I walked back to Mark’s desk, removed the tape, and shrugged my shoulders. His first words were, “Thank you for correcting me, Sister.”

At the end of the year, I was asked to teach junior-high math. The years flew by, and before I knew it Mark was in my classroom again. He was more handsome than ever and just as polite. Since he had to listen carefully to my instruction in the “new math,” he did not talk as much in ninth grade as he had in third. One Friday, things just didn’t feel right. We had worked hard on a new concept all week, and I sensed that the students were frowning, frustrated with themselves and edgy with one another.

I had to stop this crankiness before it got out of hand. So I asked them to list the names of the other students in the room on two sheets of paper, leaving a space between each name. Then I told them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their classmates and write it down. It took the remainder of the class period to finish their assignment, and as the students left the room, each one handed me the papers. Charlie smiled. Mark said, “Thank you for teaching me, Sister. Have a good weekend.” That Saturday, I wrote down the name of each student on a separate sheet of paper, and I listed what everyone else had said about that individual.

On Monday I gave each student his or her list Before long, entire class was smiling. Really?” I heard whispered. “I never knew that meant anything to anyone!” I didn’t know others liked me so much.” No one ever mentioned those papers in class again. I never knew if they discussed them after class or with their parents, but it didn’t matter. The exercise had accomplished its purpose. The students were happy with themselves and one another again.

That group of students moved on. Several years later, after I returned from vacation, my parents met me at the airport. As we were driving home, Mother asked me the usual questions about the trip, the weather, my experiences in general. There was a lull in the conversation. Mother gave Dad a sideways glance and simply says, “Dad?” My father cleared his throat as he usually did before something important. “The Eklunds called last night,” he began “Really?” I said. “I haven’t heard from them in years. I wonder how Mark is.” Dad responded quietly. “Mark was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The funeral is tomorrow, and his parents would like it if you could attend.” To this day I can still point to the exact spot on I-494 where Dad told me about Mark.

I had never seen a serviceman in a military coffin before. Mark looked so handsome, so mature. All I could think at that moment was, “Mark, I would give all the masking tape in the world if only you would talk to me.” The church was packed with Mark’s friends Chuck’s sister sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Why did it have to rain on the day of the funeral? It was difficult enough at the graveside. The pastor said the usual prayers, and the bugler played taps. One by one those who loved Mark took a last walk by the coffin and sprinkled it with holy water. I was the last one to bless the coffin. As I stood there, one of the soldiers who acted as pallbearer came up to me. Were you Mark’s math teacher?” he asked. I nodded as I continued to stare at the coffin. “Mark talked about you a lot,” he said.

After the funeral, most of Mark’s former classmates headed to Chuck’s farmhouse for lunch. Mark’s mother and father were there, obviously waiting for me. “We want to show you something, his father said, taking a wallet out of his pocket. “They found this on Mark when he was killed. We thought you might recognize it.” Opening the billfold, he carefully removed two worn pieces of notebook paper that had obviously been taped, folded and refolded many times. I knew without looking that the papers were the ones on which I had listed all the good things each of Mark’s classmates had said about him. “Thank you so much for doing that,” Mark’s mother said. “As you can see, Mark treasured it.” Mark’s classmates started to gather around us.

Charlie smiled rather sheepishly and said, “I still have my list. I keep it in the top drawer of my desk at home.” Chuck’s wife said, “Chuck asked me to put his in our wedding album.””I have mine too,” Marilyn said. “It’s in my diary.” Then Vicki, another classmate, reached into her pocketbook, took out her wallet and showed her worn and frazzled list to the group. I carry this with me at all times,” Vicki said without batting an eyelash. “I think we all saved our lists.” That’s when I finally sat down and cried. I cried for Mark and for all his friends who would never see him again.

The density of people in society is so thick that we forget that life will end one day. And we don’t know when that one day will be. So please, tell the people you love and care for, that they are special and important. Tell them, before it is too late.

How to Write a Good Thank You Note

A one-sentence positive explanation of what specifically got your attention or triggered a productive thought or learning moment.
A general complimentary comment about the person you are writing to: Their generosity, their wisdom, their helpfulness.
A specific suggestion, request, or observation. (Something like, “I really like the part about your joining a small family agency, please write more about your experiences in the future.”)
Closing compliment. “You really are a contributor to our profession. Thank you.”
A useful close, i.e. “Hope to hear more from you”.
Sentimental close (if you really know the recipient). These are two of my favorites of all time, from Chester Burger, one of the very prominent practitioners of his day. A sincere and motivational closing: “With admiration and anticipation, Your Name,” or a more personal close for someone you know rather well, “With Respect and Affection, Your Name”.

Special note: The most powerful format is handwritten and of course, sent through the mail. Compliments sent through email are appreciated but have only a small percentage of impact compared to a personally signed note.

The best time to write a note like this is right now, you are likely to be at your most eloquent, important, and memorable at the moment of your inspiration and gratitude.

Thank, applaud, congratulate, recognize, or honor someone every day.

Be Remembered.

Be Happy.

Can I Share Some of Your Thank You Notes From Admirers?

In the coming months and years, I will be sharing thank you notes. I very much would like to publish communications like these that came to you and how they affected your life. Email them to jel@e911.com with the Subject Line “Powerful Thank You Notes”.

The Grand Crisis Response Strategy is READINESS

Five Crucial Time-Sensitive Readiness Steps
For Getting the Most Important Things Done
And describable
From the Start of a Crisis.

by James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus
America’s Crisis Guru®

The most reputationally challenging time in crisis is at the start and very early crisis moments. So little is known and is very sketchy. The slightest awkward silence, whatever the reason, causes ripples of questions and trouble throughout your response.

Stop thinking, talking, and describing crisis…think, talk, and describe READINESS.

If your readiness preparations follow a grand strategy including speaking from the start, the danger of unexplainable and questioned silences can be avoided. Unfolding event patterns teach you what actual future responses will be required. Choosing to remain silent, whatever the reason, once discovered, is frequently a fatal management career error.

Because you will require some time to understand exactly what is going on you can immediately implement a strategic five-step first communication management response. The goal is to launch your response narrative, and your first response action intentions within the first 60-120 minutes of the crisis incident, whatever the crisis happens to be. Link to Jim’s Wisdom #47

When you don’t (and you often can’t) exactly know what’s happening you can describe and discuss the strategic, and incremental response action steps to be taken, and those already underway.

The Grand Response Readiness Strategies:

Stop the production of victims. This is response goal #1. Continuous victim production and response mistakes are what drives media coverage, survivor and public interest, the emotionalization, the commentary and criticism from 1000 different sources focused on your reputation destruction.
Manage the victim dimension. This is what leaders and senior managers should be overseeing rather than hanging around and second-guessing the command center. Link to Concise Advice #21.
Calm and settle down employees and those directly affected. Communicate directly and frequently with employees, stakeholders, survivors, and those directly affected. Use frequent brief 50–150-word internal statements. These are more easily created, understood, approved, and released than news releases.
Notify those indirectly affected, those who will have a problem or have a problem now because you have a problem; regulators, licensing authorities, neighbors, partners, collaborators, key stakeholders, those who need to know and who should hear from you very promptly.
Manage the self-appointed, the self-anointed; the news media and the new media, those who opt in on their own, the critics, the bellyachers, the backbench bickerers, and the bloviators.
Your message and statement content is the same information you have provided internally a bit earlier.

This is the strategy management needs to help everyone affected inside and outside focus on what matters most and first. Far too many response plans have only legacy media public relations-driven tactics. Readiness for crisis communication response is a management responsibility driven by simple, sensible, constructive, positive, and clearly achievable communication techniques. Communication that begins externally always conflicts with what insiders know. It’s problematic.

Always remember, the technically perfect response appears to be flawed if there is a failure to promptly speak in the early going. Silence always implies doing nothing while victims are being created. There is no credible, believable, or acceptable explanation. The toxicity of silence is completely predictable and preventable.

Key Snap Readiness Wisdoms:

A crisis is defined as a:
- People-stopping, show-stopping, product-stopping.
- Reputation redefining events that create victims and/or explosive visibility. I’ve yet to find or see a more clear and concise crisis definition.
“Crisis Management” is a PR term invented to scare managers and leaders into funding communication and other crises related activities. Stop using it.
“Readiness” is a management term (from 9-11-01) that drives serious and often crucial activities that directly and promptly address serious problems.
All organizations have problems. That’s really what management primarily exists to remedy. Crises are extremely rare. Crises are always crucial problems that need to be prepared for.
Even the most technically perfect crisis response will be remembered badly, permanently if communication fails in the beginning. Regardless of the problem itself, the blame will fall on those that failed to communicate appropriately and strategically from the beginning.
Silence always implies doing nothing while victims are being created. There is no credible, believable, or acceptable explanation.
The toxicity of silence is completely predictable and preventable.
Silence, stalling, blame-shifting, and other diversion strategies, if discovered and revealed, are often fatal professional errors by those in charge, however competent they may be.

Mystery Meals for Strangers

There is a hamburger joint called Snuffy’s not far from where we lived in Edina, Minnesota, a real kids and family hangout. We enjoyed eating there because the place was a constant madhouse with happy kids and families.

Shortly after we returned to Minnesota from New York in January 2010, in between blizzards, we went to Snuffy’s, sat at our favorite table to enjoy the happy mayhem. We had our favorite meals and got ready to leave. When I asked for the check, the waitress said, “Your check has been paid.”

I asked what happened. She said, “A couple sitting two tables away paid for your meal.” I asked if there was a tip, and she said, “It was all taken care of.” One of Barbara’s habits when we ate at her favorite New York restaurant, Un Deux Trois (123 East 44^th Street, near Grand Central Station), was to sit near the windows where honeymooners and new New York visitors often sat. We would have one of these couples on either side of us. Barbara always asked one couple what they planned on having for dessert. The general response was, “We hadn’t thought about it yet.” So, Barbara suggested they try the profiteroles, one of her favorite desserts. It’s a puff pastry stuffed with whipped cream and usually placed over chocolate ice cream. It is pretty yummy.

Then she would walk over to the maître d’ and ask them to provide the couple next to us with appropriate servings of profiteroles, which we paid for on our way out. Then we would loiter around in the vicinity of the restaurant waiting to see the reaction of our recipients. They were always pleased, a little puzzled (it was New York after all), but ultimately gobbled up the dessert.

At that point, we would head to our train for the trip home.

The point is, this is a really cool, affordable thing you can do, makes you feel great, and even better because nobody knows who did this complete surprise.

We would go to Snuffy’s usually on Saturday afternoons or evenings. Often, we’d pick the largest family we could, then time it so we could pay their bill as we left the restaurant after paying our own.

Can’t think of a more fun pay-it-forward habit than this one. Recipients, like us, talk about it for years. So will those you surprise. Maybe the gesture spreads.

The Five Counterintuitive Effects of Explosive Visibility

Whenever a business interest, product, or person is suddenly forced into the limelight, a predictable set of counter-intuitive effects occurs. These effects can be prepared for, often pre-empted or mitigated. It doesn’t matter whether the limelight or public visibility is caused by positive or negative events. Managing sensational visibility depends on anticipation, planning, and counteraction:

Effect 1:

Inverse Credibility – Opinions of the lowest employee, neighbor, public official, or competitor will outrank the facts supplied by scientists, CEOs, acknowledged experts, and sometimes even Nobel Prize winners.

Victim values define who is credible in adverse situations.

Effect 2:

Inverse Intellectual Content – Complex, difficult-to-understand issues and nuances are reduced to abject simplicity.

The rule of the thirteen-year-old applies. If it can’t be explained so that your mother, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, or an average thirteen-year-old can easily understand it, it will be misunderstood, and misinterpreted, all of which will be your fault.

Effect 3:

Inverse Relationships – Those most negatively affected by your actions will have more power than common sense or the greatest positive majority. People you don’t respect will have great power over you and your decisions.

To paraphrase what Margaret Mead said early in this century, “Never underestimate the power of a handful of dedicated individuals (or victims) to change everyone else’s life.” Believe it.

Effect 4:

Inverse Compatibility – Getting to and staying at a table – no matter what – is crucial to controlling outcomes. Overcome your discontent, your distrust, and your disrespect for your opposition. Compatibility isn’t necessarily essential to winning. What’s essential is engagement with trust. Be in the discussion, in the fight, in the dispute, in the debate – positively – until the situation is resolved.

Effect 5:

Time vs. Healing – In high-profile disputes, discussions, and problems, time lags, delays, and unresponsiveness are always counterproductive. Silence is always perceived as doing nothing (Often an unrecoverable mistake and leadership killer). Delay is perceived as arrogance or incompetence; postponement is perceived as collusive; and a non-response is admission of guilt. Do it now; say it now; decide it now; ask it now. Act decisively; decide; control; survive; sometimes even win.

The lesson: Explosive visibility remains sensational as long as you allow it to.

Get permission to reproduce or quote. Contact the copyright holder, jel@e911.com.

PRSA BEPS in Davos in 2025?
Let’s Hope So.

As the 2024 Davos meeting in Switzerland closed, CNN did an in-person, on-air straw poll with a couple dozen global executives and other important people on the question of world society being prepared for AI issues.

CNN Straw Poll Results:

World society is dangerously ill-prepared for AI issues and events.
The vast majority were very optimistic about the potential for AI.
Crucial issues and questions were cited.

Clearly, AI will remain a big-time issue throughout the year and undoubtedly occupy a prominent position in the Davos discussions of 2025. The Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) newest publication, “The Ethical Use of AI for Public Relations Practitioners” could play an important role in helping world leaders sort out just how this technology is going to be utilized, managed, and in some cases survived. Ethical Use of AI Document

Many of the AI issues mentioned at Davos are reflected in PRSA’s Ethical Use document.

Some very specific concerns voiced by those attending Davos:

Retraining employees to accommodate AI, equality, ethics, the public good, possible global cooperation, security, the power of the technology itself. AI effect on productivity, polarization, and others.

These topics remain on the world’s AI discussion table.

PRSA’S Crucial Contribution

“The Ethical Use of AI for Public Relations Practitioners” breaks down three of the most crucial areas of ethical response options.

Adverse endpoints that arise from operational outcomes.
Examples of improper use of AI.
Guidance from an ethical perspective on proper AI use.

What’s Needed Between Now and Davos 2025

In my judgment, based on what I’ve heard and seen and now with the published results of Davos, it’s quite clear that industry leaders remain confused though enthusiastic, anxious, yet committed to maximizing what AI has to offer. They are however missing one critical component which needs developing: Fact-based recommendations and an operational and reputational risk assessment related to AI issues.

Proposed
Fact Based Recommendations
Based On
Operational, Reputational, Risk-Assessment, and Recovery Readiness

Draft
Table Of Contents for
Proposed Fact-Based Recommendations

The specific and attributed warnings, from the tech companies, in bold letters.
The dozen or so most disastrous, costly, and worst-case guesses all gathered together in a single exhibit to focus attention and fear as well as encourage risk recognition. (We do the Reputational Risk part.)
Warning signs, danger signals, and potential risks. How we might begin to recognize prevent, detect, deter, maybe deflect a disaster before it occurs
Data-based Recommendations for doable operational and reputational preventive readiness and post-adverse event response readiness.
Operational response readiness by scenario
Reputational response readiness by scenario
Organizational readiness structured around essential operational concerns. Help the bosses get ready to prepare their employees with response saavy.

My two cents: PRSA has earned a seat in the Davos AI discussion 2025

The Lexicon of Trust Building

The most serious ongoing challenge to building trust and ensuring positive relationships with customers, allies, colleagues, government, employees, and relatives is establishing trust. It is easier to recognize the patterns of those behaviors and attitudes that damage trust and bring credibility into question. Trust is a fragile magical substance like the lignin in trees, nature’s glue that holds the tree fiber together, Trust is what holds relationships together. Trust is the most fragile and vulnerable agent in a relationship.

Here is the Lexicon of Trust Building ingredients. The more you use, the greater the trust level.

Apology: The atomic energy of empathy. Apologies can stop bad things from starting and start to stop bad things. Even with extraordinary injury and harm, a prompt apology, taking responsibility for some egregious, injuring act or decision, tends to detoxify bad situations. I truly believe that apologies are always on time. However, experience shows that the earlier the apology, the more powerful its effect.
Candor: Truth with an attitude delivered right now. Truth plus the facts, truth plus some perspective, truth that reflects the value of other’s observations.
Credibility: Always conferred by others on those whose past behavior, track record, and accomplishments warrant it.
Empathy: Actions that speak louder than words ever can. (No PR needed)
Forgiveness: In those cases where someone has harmed you or those things you care about, often the hardest action to take is moving on and finding ways to help the perpetrator move on as well.
Integrity: Uncompromising adherence to a code of values by people, products, and companies, with the attributes of credibility, candor, sincerity, and truth.
Sympathy: The ongoing, often continuous, verbalization of regret, embarrassment, or personal humiliation, promptly conveyed, i.e., feeling truly sorry for someone who is experiencing pain, but stopping short of taking on the blame or the pain.
Trust: Generally, the absence of fear, the feeling of reliability. The knowledge that adverse situations, pain, or mistakes have less impact or can be pre-empted if a trusting relationship exists or can be built.
Add your own. Please.

Whenever there is or can be fear, uncertainty, or doubt, always move towards trust.

Winning When Everybody is Mad at You

These seven statements give an indication of my philosophy and strategic approach for winning:

Wage peace every day. Do something else when you will have war for sure. War produces casualties and victims, all of whom work to live long enough to destroy your best efforts. Reduce the production of critics at every opportunity.
Contention is the absence of agreement. Work for agreement, incrementally, every day.
Getting permission depends upon gaining public agreement and consent. Avoid and resist anything, anyone, or any decision, that delays, denies, disables, or damages the permission process.
Control testosterosis. Anger, irritation, frustration, confrontation cloud judgment, damage relationships, cause misunderstandings, and rarely accomplish anything good.
Recognize and leverage from the patterns of democracy, avoid political games and game players, all those people have different agendas from yours.
Work as directly as you can. Like most everything that matters in life, agreement is generally achieved, when the principals relentlessly commit to sit down face-to-face and directly work it out.
Success depends on communication, common sense, direct, prompt action, empathy, transparency and engagement. Explain to everyone as well as remind them of your communication and behavior intentions so they will know how to behave in return.

Winning depends on recognizing five realities:

Accomplishing your goals is going to take longer than ever imagined even to achieve significant milestones;
Success will defy financial management, more money will be spent for things one never imagined would happen, or be requested or required;
The stomach for all the lies, misunderstandings, deceptions, bad behaviors and misrepresentations, angry, frightened and powerless people, with a willing media, will create, and the outrageous motives they will ascribe to you, with all of your explanations, good work and intentions just bouncing off.
The staying power required because democracy is slow, sometimes silly, even stupid, sloppy, expensive, and endless.
Unlike financial transactions, chemical experiments, science, finance and engineering, public processes rarely have endpoints.

Some of this sounds incredibly pessimistic. But it’s really a description of how things are actually going to go. If democracy is one thing, it is a process. Those who propose, if they can stay the course, can expect to achieve less than they hoped, sometimes far less, but wind up with more than they need to achieve their objectives.

I love to be wrong. But I’m rarely surprised, I pretty much know what is going to happen and work preemptively and constructively to shorten the timelines and lower the barriers that are inevitable to succeed.

Stop with the Wandering Generalities, Please. Get Specific.

Wandering generalities are a plague on humanity. When in doubt, people hide behind bland, useless, and often misleading statements. Below I show three examples of these typical types of statements and how to make them meaningfully specific.

Wandering Generalities	Meaningfully Specific Translation
1. “We’re a great company.”	1. “We are a powerful company, leading three important business sectors, digitalization, transmission efficiency and end user acceptance.”
2. “Everybody loves our company.”	2. “We use three techniques every month to test our customer acceptance: direct contact with key users; short, direct questionnaires; and, seeking testimonials.”
3. “We’ve successfully dealt with this problem in the past.”	3. “We made three crucial improvements in this process starting four years ago: first, we significantly reduced defects; second, we began more careful education of our customers; and third, we introduced a monitoring program to catch defects earlier.”

Translate Generalities into Specificity

Rather than say:

Everyone…name them
Everybody…name them
They…say specifically who
That…say specifically what
Theirs…name or itemize them
Those…name or specifically identify what it is
It’s…Again identify what It’s is
Her…name her
His…name him

You get the idea.

Generalities are barriers to understanding and actually help people miss the importance of what you are trying to communicate.

More Generalities	Meaningfully Specific Translation
1. “Everything will be fine, we’ve been through this before.”	1. “We live by three success initiatives: start early; stay customer engaged; and follow up for results. These three initiatives will work to improve our accuracy, activity, and performance.”
2. “I’ve always enjoyed their work.”	2. “The strategy teams work is essential to our success. We need their accuracy, their persistence, and their intuitiveness.”
3. “They’ve always been a championship outfit.”	3. “Mary and Bill always show their leadership, their skill, and their consistent responsiveness.”
4. “This idea is very important.”	4. “Our success depends on three crucial ingredients: speed, accuracy, and choosing a limited number of targets.”

Also see Packing and Bundling.

Thousands of Human Starfish, The Story of an Extreme Decency

The Time Before:

Steve Harrison became a client of mine in 1995. From that first engagement and a number of others over the years, Steve and I became close friends, as did our wives, Barbara and Shirley. It would be fair to say that Steve became more or less a disciple of my kind of crisis management and other management and leadership recovery techniques. He was already known as Mr. Decency throughout his industry. Something that further deepened our relationship. In 2014, Steve and I decided to write a book on civility and decency. Something that has long since largely disappeared from American culture. There are still too few signs of these important cultural qualities returning anytime soon.

The Diagnosis:

In 2014, my wife of 50 years was diagnosed with bilateral ovarian cancer. That evening we had dinner with Steve and Shirley and among the topics of conversation was this new frightening development in Barbara’s life.

The First Call:

The next day, Steve and Shirley called together and talked to us briefly about what they learned the night before and offered to be helpful in any way that they could. For Barbara and I, this was the beginning of a long journey cumulating in her death from Alzheimer’s in August of 2019.

The Next 2,999 Calls:

Following that first phone call from Steve and Shirley, they called us nearly every single day from the time of Barbara’s diagnosis with cancer and the follow-up diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The number of phone calls from these two dear friends from that first conversation to a kind of final conversation in late 2019, the Harrisons had talked to us almost 3000 times. Stop a moment, take a breath, and realize what a totally amazing gift for a couple of human beings to do for another couple of human beings. Steve and I finished the book, “The Decency Code, The Leader’s Path to Building Integrity and Trust,” and it was published by McGraw Hill in 2021. We discussed another book project going forward, but nature intervened, and Steve passed away in July of 2021.

Steve’s Legacy Lives On:

I’ll never have the opportunity to repay this extraordinary decency. Shirley and I do keep in touch. And I write, quote, and talk about Steve whenever I can. He was such an extraordinary friend and his 2005 book, “The Manager’s Book of Decencies, How Small Gestures (he called them small decencies) Build Great Companies,” from McGraw Hill is a classic business book in the field of decency and civility.

Steve’s Life Metaphor:

Steve’s favorite story and the metaphor for his life was about a person searching for seashells on the seashore and coming across a starfish unlikely to survive being caught aground. Almost absent-mindedly the man picked up the starfish and tossed it back into the sea.

Human Starfish:

In the course of that starfish’s life, it will reproduce thousands of times and produce an extraordinary number of offsprings and generations. Steve’s company Lee Hect Harrison, which he and two colleagues founded in the late 1990’s, and later acquired by Adecco Inc., the world’s largest part-time work placement company, made Steve’s company now the LHH division of Adecco, the world’s largest outplacement firm. The purpose of the LHH division of Adecco is to help people intentionally unemployed by large businesses to learn new job-finding skills and other techniques to regain employment and return to productive lives. You might say his company has a way of returning human starfish to the working world by the thousands every year.

What an Amazing Legacy:

Decencies come in all sizes and shapes. This is the most extreme, miraculous, and wonderful decency for two people I’ve ever seen. Give it a try.

Maybe The Tech Industry Deserves a Platinum Anvil?

With Just three words . . . “Leave it alone,” the tech industry globally mobilized thousands of companies, organizations, individuals, and industries. Like an experienced parent who wants their child to do something, or not do something, but might have difficulty persuading them, they simply say, “Don’t do . . . you name it” and it becomes a do-or-die mission. So it has become for AI.

Are these tech people brilliant, or are they really that smart? We may never know. What we do know is that thousands have been mobilized, and millions or billions are being spent and all in the quest to figure something out with little or no help from the tech industries who started all of this. Clearly, the tech industries deserve a prize of some kind.

Never have so few words mobilized so many human beings and a colossal amount of cash for what appears far less fearsome than forecast.

Typically, in such a huge venture, something called an “Operational and reputational risk assessment and fact based recommendations” would have been prepared. In the case of AI, since no one had any facts to go on, everything kind of got made up in a huge fiction like activity. Which has yet to yield much except sporadic anecdotal success stories. And one large failure that of Donald Trump’s former attorney using AI to generate what turned out to be fake legal references for a motion he was proposing in federal court.

That’s because, of course, the tech industry does not intend to share additional information until it’s in their interest to do so. During the last year, I have attended a number of policy-level discussions (people who own, run, and make crucial decisions in the organizations) of AI and while organizations like PRSA were busy developing hypothetical situational responses based on zero facts and data, the tech companies were having a great success with “leave it alone.” Why spoil all the fun with facts?

In contrast, virtually every policy-level discussion I attended developed only a sketchy, fuzzy concept called things like, “Responsible AI.” The responsibilities were described in a list of words with little explanation: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Sometimes described as core principles without much additional explanation. It’s still impossible to know what guidance is truly needed. We’ll need a few surprises and disasters to begin developing useful information.

It’s probably time for all of us to get back to work on our regular jobs and regular activities and await the inevitable catastrophes the media has predicted, always aiming for the worst-case scenarios. Where are the truth tellers when you need them most?