Writing Boots

Breaking news: IABC reportedly lays off more than half its headquarters staff; members shocked

UPDATE: IABC's executive director Chris Sorek writes to clarify what he told me on the phone Friday: "On November 29, we notified 16 employees that they would be let go—10 immediately and six at the end of 1Q13. We are in process of posting openings for 11 new roles that will result in a net reduction of five staff in total by the end of 1Q13."

UPDATE: A phone conversation with IABC executive director Chris Sorek just now reveals that IABC yesterday laid off 10 members of the 32-person San Francisco headquarters staff. Five more people will be let go in the first quarter of next year. Others will be added, however, so the net loss of IABC staff will not be "more than half" as I first reported, but five people in all, according to Sorek. After all the realignment, the HQ staff will be 27. IABC's PR director Paige Wesley was among those let go.

Sorek seemed annoyed by the Sturm und Drang. "There's nothing shocking" about the layoffs, he said. "We're simply aligning our staff to our strategy, that's all." (Sorek described that strategy to me around the time that he took over the organization, in the summer.) Sorek said he needed some skill sets he didn't have, and the new organization will run much more efficiently.

Annoyed, and surprised. The IABC leaders with whom he has communicated with about the restucturing, "the reaction from people has been positive."

I'll keep an eye on the story. —DM

***

On Facebook, Lee Hornick, the conference chair for the International Association of Business Communicators, wrote at about 4:40 p.m. EST, "Just heard more than half the staff at IABC headquarters was let go. I am totally shocked."

"This is not the IABC way," he added. "I thought IABC was doing well."

Other IABC veterans chimed in, one indicating that prominent members had received an email yesterday from IABC's paid CEO Chris Sorek that said, "Realignment of the structure to more fully deliver on the strategy will require some staff changes. These will include a number of changes at the senior level as well as some support staff."

"Changes and layoffs are not synonyms, last I checked," said longtime member and IABC Fellow Shel Holtz. "Kinda embarrassing for a communications organization, wouldn't you say? Would any of us counsel our clients or companies in this way?"

"Is there something going wrong at IABC that is not being shared with the member?" asked IABC Fellow Tudor Williams. "If this is true—what business communication strategy would keep members ... in the dark on a Friday afternoon? This smells bad."

I'll attempt to get in touch with IABC headquarters this afternoon.

Friday Happy Hour Video: Best opening line of a song

"That old dust storm killed my baby, but it can't kill me, Lord, no it can't kill me."

What, you know a better one? Let's hear it.

A downside of working from home that people conveniently overlook

Your office job isn't interrupted by sounds of a dog throwing up in the other room. Is it?

Quick Google search removes last remaining value from planned cheap shot; blogger posts anyway

For months I've been casually collecting funny names from National Public Radio. You know, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Corey Flintoff, Sylvia Pogiolli, Kai Ryssdal and the like. This morning I did a little research, to make sure I had gotten them all.

Not only had I not—how could I have forgotten Deena Temple Raston and Audie Cornish?—but I hadn't known that a similarly obsessed couple had, in 2009, created a formula that would allow anyone to create their own nutty NPR name: "You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add the smallest foreign town you've ever visited."

For NPR, I'm Davird Monterosso.

Have you ever done it? (Admit it!)

Posted on Facebook or Tweeted a video or article that you didn't yourself bother to watch or read all the way through. Because you believed other people needed to see it.

God, I've got to find a way to use this one soon

The late historian Richard N. Current used to dismiss shabby scholarly work by saying, "What was new in it wasn't true and what was true in it wasn't new."

It's not words that bind communicators, it's responsibility

"By any definition today, David and I should not even be speaking to each other," former Monsanto speechwriter Glynn Young wrote last week on his Faith, Fiction, Friends blog. He was recommending the book I helped write—Tell My Sons, by Lt. Col. Mark Weber—and thought it a good time to talk about our friendship:

We sit on opposite sides of the great divide in American politics—he leans hard to the liberal side, and I don’t. He lives in Chicago, where the cemeteries used to vote but no longer have any need to. ...

But we are friends, and we respect each other, bound by a mutual love for words and well-written (and well-spoken) speeches. David taught me that liberals love their children just as much as conservatives do, that family is important, that doing good and fine work is what you do because who really wants to be known for anything else.

That David and I are friends proves that civility is still possible in America. Even if he has weird politics.

Glynn isn't the only conservative colleague who I respect, and assuming I'm not the only liberal he likes, allow me to suggest that what we're bonded by is not by our love for words or our love for our children—but by a shared appreciation of fairness and restraint. Of words not said.

I'm not sure what I wrote to convince Glynn that I "lean hard on the liberal side," and I bet he doesn't remember either. But I think what he likes about me—and what I like about him—is that he can rely on me, even in the heat of an election year, not to gas on humorlessly about binders full of women. As I can rely on him not to write 2,000 words about why President Obamais a creep because he uses a teleprompter.

In the middle of a media and social media orgy crowded with trash talkers and anger-addicts, manipulators and neanderthals of both genders, we consider one another responsible rhetoricians. Not above being provocateurs, not above pulling stunts. But responsible for what we say and do all the time and for all time. (Or at least for a week.)

In other words: Glynn and I want to be able to reach the end of our lives and look over everything we've ever written and, as long as we can remember the context in which we wrote it, stand proudly by it. Another speechwriter pal, Dan Conley, quotes Montaigne: "If I can, I will prevent my death from saying anything not first said by my life." Yeah, man. Heavy stuff.

That doesn't mean we always will feel proud of everything we ever wrote—or that we'll be right to feel proud. But it means that that's our intention, every time we sit down at the keyboard. (It's also why I'm pretty fucking stubborn in discussions that ensue in my Comments section. If I didn't believe it pretty strongly, I wouldn't have said it in the first place.)

I also know the opposite: I've had fights with people in print and online and in person where the object was to shoot to kill or maim. That's not communication. It's violence by words. And since it never actually does kill—but only makes disagreeable people even angrier—the people who inspire it should be avoided entirely.

Glynn Young likes me because I usually use words to communiate, or to try. I like him back for the same reason.

Glynn, correct me if I'm wrong.

Seen on Facebook ...

For some reason, some people replace their own profile picture with a photograph of their kids.

No one who understands the importance of not confusing your life with your kid's life would ever do this.

If you need me to explain the importance of keeping your life separate from your kid's life, I am happy to.

But you take the first step, by putting your own photograph in your profile page.

On leadership

I'm for it! Talking David Petraeus, on The Atlantic Online.

Thanksgiving Happy Hour Video: "Thanks for that on-the-sport report, Les"

Thanks to fellow Ohioan Bill Sledzik for reminding me ...