Recent Blog Posts
-
The Times' Rorshach Geithner Story
Apr 27 20099:04am EDT -
Sinking Animal Spirits
Apr 27 20098:04am EDT -
Counter-cyclical Urban Policy
Apr 26 200910:04am EDT -
Be Your Own Counterfeiter
Apr 26 20099:04am EDT -
Being Tim Geithner
Apr 25 200912:04pm EDT -
Notes From a Press Conference Naif
Apr 25 20099:04am EDT -
What Good is the News?
Apr 25 20098:04am EDT -
Stressful Enough
Apr 24 20092:04pm EDT -
Not Regretting the Pound
Apr 24 20091:04pm EDT -
Introducing the New Ford Squeeze
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
Non-Economic Questions of the Day
Apr 24 20099:04am EDT -
The Stress Test Blind Alley
Apr 24 20098:04am EDT -
Happy Hour
Apr 23 20099:04pm EDT -
Recovery Without Rebalancing
Apr 23 20096:04pm EDT -
The Shape of Your Recession
Apr 23 20095:04pm EDT
Links
- Felix Salmon
- DealBreaker
- Ryan Avent: The Bellows
- The Epicurean Dealmaker
- Chris Anderson
- Ultimi Barbarorum
- MarketBeat
- Michelle Leder
- John Quiggin
- The Panelist
- Andrew Leonard
- Streetsblog
- Brad Setser
- Michael Mandel
- Financial Crookery
- Kash Mansori
- Dean Baker
- Calculated Risk
- Free Exchange
- Curbed
- Lance Knobel
- Econospeak
- Carbon Tax Center
- Overcoming Bias
- Mark Thoma
- Naked Capitalism
- Alphaville
- Barry Ritholtz
- Alexander Campbell
- The Bayesian Heresy
- Brad DeLong
- DealBook
- Greg Mankiw
- Deal Journal
- FP Passport
- Carl Bialik
- Marginal Revolution
- A Fistful of Euros
- Dan Gross
When CEOs Don't Meet Their Own Speechwriters
The CEO bubble, it would seem, is more impervious than even the most cynical of us might think. According to an anonymous speechwriter, these masters of the universe are inaccessible even to those who are paid to write their very thoughts:
A colleague of mine who had written about 50 speeches over 10 years for a boldfaced name-brand C.E.O. discovered this very painfully. Finally ushered in to meet the great man for the first time, she proudly found herself introduced as the scribe who had written a particular speech.
This really does beggar the imagination: someone writing 50 speeches for a man over the course of 10 years, and never meeting him once the entire time – not even at the very beginning, to get to know him. Of course, since both the author of this piece and the speechwriter in question are anonymous, it's hard to work out how much credibility to ascribe to the anecdote: is there any good reason why a speechwriter should himself remain anonymous, if he protects the identity of his clients?
But I asked a friend of mine who's done a fair amount of speechwriting for CEOs over the years, and he said that although it "sounds ridiculous, it is possible".
Which just goes to show how out-of-touch CEOs can be. If they don't even talk to their own speechwriters, how on earth do they keep in touch with developments in and around their own companies?
