As soon as he discovered that nothing had been said to the general employee population about the anthrax incident, he immediately told one of his editors to write up a short piece for the company intranet, to use the medical director's statement and to link the piece to the federal authorities' internet press release. In the meantime, the communication manager reviewed the videotape of the Quarterly Meeting to make certain not that the story would not misquote the medical director.
When the story was ready, he took it to his vice president and persuaded him to let it appear on the intranet. "If we ask permission, we'll be told to hold off," he had explained. His vice president agreed and the piece went on the intranet at about 12:30 p.m. that day (Friday).
At 2:30 p.m. that day, a five sentence e-mail announcement about the anthrax incident was issued by the senior vice present of human resources. At the same time, the vice president of communications received a telephone call from the senior vice president of human resources taking him to task for publishing the intranet story.
The HR executive declared that he, another executive vice president, the chairman, the chief executive officer and the medical director had met at 8 a.m. that morning to decide what to say about anthrax to the general employee population. They had adjourned that gathering, he said, to attend the quarterly Senior Management Meeting and subsequent reception. The group, he said, had reconvened their deliberations in the afternoon (to come up with the five sentence statement). The HR executive specifically chided The communication vice president for acting on his own instead of seeking the approval of other parties.
"If you had a discussion about internal communications this morning at 8 a.m., then I should have been there," the vice president of communication replied to the human resources executive.
Consultant's Opinion:
The Consultant can't say it better than the person who submitted this situation said it:
"This is a depressing story. It speaks volumes about this organization's senior management attitudes toward its employees. It demonstrates gross ignorance of the information age in which it operates and in which its employees live their lives. Sadder still, consider how many organizational executives it took to write a five-sentence statement and how long it took them to do it. And, just how "empowered" is the vice president of communications if he is not supposed to make a simple decision in his own area of responsibility?"
Amen.