Edward M. Block
Williamsburg, Virginia
Arthur W. Page Society Annual Meeting
October 4, 1993

"Get Acquainted with the Ideas of Arthur W. Page"

To download a printable version of this speech, click here.

It's the custom on these annual occasions for the recipient of the Hall of Fame Award to offer some observations.

So I propose to spend a few minutes prattling on about the state of business today. Or, more accurately, the state business seems to be in.

And then, I want to close with an idea or two we might usefully lift from the legacy bequeathed to us by Arthur, W. Page.

As many of you know, I live in Key West, Florida,

My neighbors in Key West don't spend a lot of time worrying about what corporations - - or other powerful folks do.

We know from experience that when the folks up in Tallahassee (that's our state capitol) try to help us, things get in a muddle. And get worse.

Washington, D.C, is pretty much the same story. The folks up there used to help us - - but that was back in the FDR years. Now, we dont count. There are only 26 thousand of us here and we don't have a PAC. Even our representative in Congress lives north of Miami in Broward County and we're 150 miles south of Miami. We were gerrymandered, into a new district for reasons that remain a mystery.

The big name corporations we have in Key West are just small outposts. We don't know much about them, first hand, and there aren't many of them anyway. A few regional banks, with their automated teller machines. McDonald's. Avis. Ryder Trucks. Sears. That's about it.

We do read the papers, though. We get the Key West Citizen, the Miami Herald, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, We get the London Papers and a lot of foreign language papers. And we have a cable system with 50 channels. So it's not like we don't know what's going on in the world.

I read the business news in the papers and magazines and most of my friends do, too.

The news accounts give me the impression that big corporations are returning to their roots as robber barons. We read about law suits and counter-suits and big fines. We read about CEOs getting the hook. We are fascinated by all the plundering, which is called M and A. I gather that stands for Missteps and Agony, because whatever's left always seems to go broke. Then, there's the environment - - which corporations don't seem to like.

Something else strikes me too. There aren't many chief executives who are famous, except for their mind boggling bonuses. You get the impression that the big guys must spend a lot of time crunching numbers in their computers. Just about every day, it seems, they lop off another few hundred thousand employees, off load venerable old business units and brands, move jobs to low wage countries and thumb their noses at cities and towns that used to count on them. No wonder they prefer to be anonymous.

If you ask me, the big corporations are doing a great job of reinforcing what Americans have always thought about them. Tolerate them if you must. But keep an eye on the bastards.

As I said, we know what's going on in the business world. And we think it's a hoot that the big companies act like they can hide it from us. Do they think we don't know that AT&T phones are made in the Peoples Republic of China? That RCA TVs are made by a French company? That a lot of Chevys, Dodges and Fords are made in Japan? Give us a break!

We drive Japanese cars. We watch television on SONY's. We're an island in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico but we can't even afford our own local fish. We go to the super market and buy fish flown in from Asia, Central America and God knows where else.

We depend on tourists to keep our economy afloat. They used to be mostly from the U.S. east Coast or from Canada. Now, they come from all over Europe, Asia and South America.

Something has changed in the world and in the business world. Things aren't what they used to be, or even what they seem to be. We know that. We're an island but we're not an island. You know what I mean?

Well, that's a quick summary of what the folks are learning from the news down in Key West, the Lake Woebegon of the tropics.

Now, before you begin to hurl what remains of your desert to protest this no-nothing appraisal of what's going down with the power lunch crowd, let me briefly work the other side of these issues.

I'll be speaking for myself now.

All I ask is that you consider what I'll be saying against the backdrop of how the folks in Key West are taking in the news of what's going on in your world.

I am of the corporate world. I still have one foot in it.

You know and I know that the really urgent, really fundamental problems confronting business today derive from a period of transition that has been underway for a decade or more and will likely continue for a decade or more.

An epoch has ended. Another epoch has begun.

The industrial revolution has run its course, climaxed by the final surge that followed World War II.

Now, the post-industrial revolution is clearly discernable.

Agriculture no longer requires the labor of huge populations. The knowledge based businesses and the value added service businesses are in the ascendancy. The dominance of the metal benders is receding.

New technologies, most especially the electronics technologies, are advancing at a bewildering pace - - reinventing and remapping ages old concepts of how work is organized, performed, managed and measured.

Global competition is now a pervasive reality in the developed world. National economies are interlinked and, increasingly, interdependent. In the long run, no conceivable combination of protectionist trade policies will resist the inevitability of unfettered commerce.

Political ideologies and cultural traditions are yielding to rising expectations as cheap communications provide peoples everywhere a glimpse of the possibilities for a better life. The so-called Third World as yet remains at the margins of a post-industrial world, but in the sweep of history this circumstance will be - - and must be - - remedied.

Finally, it is self-evident -that cultural diversity will follow the paths of commerce, as has been true since the days of the trading caravans in the ancient world. Now, the pace will quicken. In the coming century, we shall have cause to be glad that the english language is the language of business because our colleagues, our customers and our investors will - - increasingly - - not look like us.

What may we reasonably conclude - - from our perspective in the corporate world - - from all this evidence that the world around us is undergoing a watershed change?

You know the answer as well as I do.

Your businesses are being changed by powerful forces unleashed by the disequilibrium of a transition from yesterday's world to tomorrow's world. Some of your companies may have had a part in provoking the change, but all of your companies are prisoners of the forces of change. Forces that cannot be reversed.

The downsizings, the cost cutting, the outsourcing, the search for new markets wherever they exist in the world, the scramble to adopt new technologies and introduce new methods - - that's all of a piece.

The simple truth is that virtually every large company today is reinventing itself as a matter of survival.

Yes, it's still true that the better mousetrap at the best price will always be the market leader. What's new, however, is that the one size mousetrap that fits all mice isn't good enough. What's new is that "the best price" means the best price in the world. And what's also new is that the best mouse trap in the world at the world's best price will have an exceedingly short life cycle before it becomes a commodity - - or before rodents are genetically reengineered to be lovable house pets.

When you add it all up, it's fair to say that no previous generation of management has faced so many challenges with so little certainty about what to do or how to get it done. Or, how long it will take.

It seems clear to me that the thicket of issues you have to work through to manage a transition from the old world and the old ways to the new world, of which I spoke earlier, is, in fact, a thicket of public relations issues.

Whatever your corporation's business plans and goals may be, you have to define them and explain them. You have to build understanding, build support, build commitment inside as well as outside the business with myriad publics. To my mind, the task of identifying the strategies required to reinvent a company may be the easiest part of your transition. And it's only the first part. Ensuring a harmonious transition - - gaining the public's permission - - to execute the strategies is likely to be the hardest part.

It seems to me that a lot of your employees are mad, scared and alienated, They're not too sure what you're trying to do or where you're trying to go. And they're beginning to suspect they don't fit into the plan, anyway.

It seems to me that a lot of your customers don't understand what you're trying to do. Mostly, they hear from you by way of TV commercials. And what they're getting from you on television is a hundred gross rating points a week of feel good images and computerized special effects and a barrage of discount deals that looks like a national going out of business sale.

It also seems to me you're increasingly getting caught between the parochial politics of national interests and the mandates of a multinational market place, When you show the flag; which flag is it? The Jolly Roger?

Even your best friends, your individual investors; are fleeing to the sanctuary of mutual funds. And the ones who can't - - the huge institutional investors - - are telling your managements and your boards of directors to shape up or ship out.

In short, it seems to me you've got some explaining to do. Your publics are pretty much out of the loop on such high concepts as reengineering, policy deployment and "genetic therapy."

For those of you who may be looking for a little help in explaining what's going on. I have a suggestion.

Get reacquainted with some of the ideas of Mr. Arthur W. Page. He had a real gift for getting his arms around complex and difficult business goals and cutting them down to a manageable size.

He did something else, too. He defined our role - - your role - - at management's table.

His life's work provides a pradical definition, a successful demonstration, of what the chief public relations officer of a corporation is supposed to do.

I have read reams of Mr. Page's writings. He was a writer. He left a trail. And in my time, I also worked for people who, in their time, had worked for him. So I know a lot about who he was and what he stood for.

I can sum up the essence of his legacy in about 50 words.

Arthur Page was a corporate insider who retained the perspectives and the sensibilities of an outsider. That's what he was paid to do. That's what he did.

Arthur Page exerted an enduring influence on the culture of his company. He did it by doing nothing more complicated than using old fashioned horse sense. He was not a "communicator." He was a problem solver.

Let me give you just five examples of how he worked his territory.

1. When he was offered the job of vice he told ths chief executive that he would take it only if it was a policy making position. Corporate policy. Not "communications" policy. He understood clearly from the outset that good public relations is a product of wise and timely policy.

2. He scoffed at the idea that public relations is the responsibility of a staff department. Or ever could be. He believed that public relations is the responsibility of all employees. Lots of companies today are paying lots of consultants to tell them about empowerment. Mr. Page didn't have - - and wouldn't have used - - such a fancy word. But he made it his business to make sure that everyone in the organization understood that practices and procedures are no substitute for common sense and common courtesy when you're dealing with customers or representing the business to the public.

3. He believed that it was uniquely his job to know what was on the public's mind at all times. He continuously undertook public opinion surveys to provide management with current knowledge of how customers and employees were appraising the company's performance in every relevant dimension. The results of these surveys were widely distributed to managers and employees throughout the business and they were used as a basis for corrective actions even at the local level. In this way, he did not have to play the role of hair shirt or resident guru. He simply gave his colleagues a management tool to manage public relations where it counts: at the human interface.

4. He believed that a company's personae should be consistently honest and forthcoming, reasonable, accessible and good humored. He taught generations of advertising managers, house organ editors, media relations managers and speech writers how to reflect these attributes in the product of their work.

5. He believed in explaining to consumers what the company was doing and what the company planned to do to improve phone service. He used lots of no-gimmick, paid advertising to do it. His objective was not image building. He called these advertisements "hostages to performance." He reasoned that if you put your promise in writing in the national media, the managers of the company and its subsidiaries would be stuck forever more with the task of making good. Whether they wanted to or not. He also wanted employees to understand that top management's goal was constant improvement, no ifs, ands or buts, and he reasoned that they would be more inclined to believe it if the company put it in writing in all the popular national magazines of the day.

This short list scarcely does justice to what Arthur Page stood for - - and stood up for:

But I truly believe the basic concepts that informed his actions are still valid. If there is anything at all remarkable about them, it is the fact that they are so utterly siniple and sensible.

He focused on policy. Get that right and most everything else falls into place.

He focused on making sure everyone in the organization understood the intent of the company's policies so that tens of thousands of managers and employees, on any given day, could use their own judgement to do the job right. And do the right thing.

He focused on making sure that top management at all times had a good read on what the outside world was thinking and feeling.

He adroitly used the communications tools available to him, in combination with conventional administrative processes, to make policy decisions stick. To make them real in the field, so to speak.

In the end, he so insinuated good public relations practices into the fabric of the business that good business practices and good public relations practices were one and the same. "PR" was not a thing apart.

Without ever explicitly saying so, he let the company's managers discover for themselves that communications is just another set of tools to help get their jobs done effectively and efficiently.

I also think it is significant that Mr. Page did not use the words "public relations" in his title. And the department he headed was never called the Public Relations Department. He simply called the outfit the Information Department -- the place where you worked as diligently to bring information in as you did to shovel it out.

In large measure, it seems to me that the most enduring lesson we can draw from the Page legacy is to understand how he defined his role.

He took the responsibility for ensuring that constituency relations remained an integral component of how management defined the responsibilities of managing - - from the top of the ladder, where the CEO sits, to the first level in the field, where the supervisors work at the interface with employees and customers.

In every business, the function of policy making occurs up and down the hierarchy every day, in small ways and large. Mr. Page had all the bases covered.

The other lesson we can take from him is that he never permitted himself to be characterized as the company's chief communications officer, although he most emphatically was. I am certain he would have viewed that role as much too limiting to his charter and much too much a handicap. In his view, the management task of building and sustaining effective constituency relationships embraced an enormous range of issues in every aspect of the business and he saw no virtue in being boxed in or boxed out.

As you know, it is tempting to over romanticize the contributions of historical figures. It is also too easy to dismiss them.

For example, it would be easy to say - - and not altogether inaccurate to say - - that Arthur Page lived in a bygone era in which the world moved at the pace of steamships and rail road trains. A world in which the business environment remained calm and stable relative to today's chaos.

I would remind you, however, that Mr. Page lived through his share of uncertainty and change.

He managed through the paralyzing stock market crashes and the great depression, when his company's earnings, if not its prospects, went underwater. Growth simply ceased. The concept we now call 'flex time" was introduced so that some employees could count on at least a partial pay check.

Next came the emergence of militant, aggressive trade unions in his industry.

Then came automated phone systems, displacing tens of thousands of traditional jobs and job locations,

Finally, World War II. The telephone industry turned its energies toward the war effort while the civilian phone system foundered - - caught between the surging demands of shifting populations and frantic economic activity, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, virtually no means and no resources to enlarge its capacity to keep up with demand.

And at the end of that epic war, it was Arthur Page who was summoned to Washington to fashion President Truman's sobering disclosure that the United States had entered the atomic age.

In retrospect, his world was not so stable after all. Indeed, it was Mr. Page who stayed the course.

Through all of those waves of shifting issues and shifting priorities, he never changed his philosophy, his guiding principles or his methods.

To my mind, his road map to success still looks like a pretty good path to foflow.

Arthur Page is an enduring role model.

And it remains my hope that the Arthur W. Page Society will succeed in its mission to make his legacy a living legacy for everyone who aspires to constructively influence the values, ideals and business practices of today's corporations.

Thank you.