hi all
Earlier, on various occassions, we have discussed about the arrogant attitude of some of the officials in the corporate communication departments towards the professional seniors and other vendors like PR Agencies.
Changing attitude
Last week, one of the top officials of a PR Agency called me to say how the attitude of one of his staff drastically changed, when the person moved to Corporate Communication Dept. of a well known company. When I sought the views of other senior professionals from other Agencies, they broadly endorsed this view. It appears to be a common phenomena nowadays.
One Senior Corpcom Official from Mumbai also endorsed this view broadly and he even commented with frustration, "What I can do Srinivasan? Many of them when they join assume that they have two horns on their head, because they are handling vendors".
At the same time, there are lot of exceptions also. Even the Corpcom Officials with good attitude feel that it has gone beyond their control. It is a disturbing trend for the PR/Communication profession.
We have even discussed in the past as to how such arrogant attitude and behaviour cannot help such persons in the long run professionally.
A personal experience
Last week, I also had a personal experience from a senior Corpcom Head of a big Company. This experience prompted me to write this mail.
This Company has some huge operations in Southern Tamilnadu. They are facing some crisis, due to various reasons. This company has the Head Quarters in North India, while their operations are in down south. To avoid embarrassment i have suppressed the name of the company.
Last week, the Corpcom Head called me over my mobile saying that their company wanted to engage a PR Agency and they were contacting few agencies over phone for presentation. I told the corpcom head that I did not want to participate. Since, I am in regular conversation with different political leaders and media persons, i know some of the real issues of the company. Hence, I shared some of the real problems of their company with the corpcom head during the course of conversation. Though, I did not want to pitch the account, I suggested him some ideas as a fellow communication professional. Corpcom Head expressed his interest to get more insights, when he planned a visit to chennai in the subsequent week.
After three days, i got a call from the Secretary of Corpcom Head (Head Office) informing me that an appointment with the Corpcom Head for me had been fixed at 12 noon on the next day at one of the top hotels. I presumed that they might be listing my name along with others who were participating in the presentation. I clarified to his secretary that I was not interested to pitch the account. However, as I was giving their boss lot of insights about the problem, he wanted to discuss with me more at Chennai. Hence,I told her if he wanted to meet me to understand more about the insights, he was welcome to meet me any time at my office during his stay at Chennai.
Again after few hours, I got another call from another person informing that his boss had given an appointment to me at the specified hotel to meet him at a particular time. I was totally shocked and got angry. I declined to meet him to give my suggestions for the benefit of the company, that too after fixing up an appointment.
Again, I told the person if their Corpcom Head wanted to meet me, he was welcome to meet me at my office after fixing up an appointment with me. In fact, I was doing a favour to them at free of cost. I do not know how this corpcom head expected that I should go to his place to give my suggestions.
Even if he does not have a time to come to my place, he should have called me over mobile (instead of his secretary) and invited me for a tea and discussion with proper excuse. This is where their arrogance hides their wisdom and human aspects.
Next day, the corpcom head visited chennai and stayed in a star hotel and met a couple of small PR Agencies. He did not even visit the location of the operation in the down south. He flew back after two days. I did not get any call from the corpcom head or his secretary thereafter.
The behaviour and attitude of the senior Corpcom head made me to think further.
Why this phenomenon?
This is the attitude of some of the corpcom heads in India. One side we blame the juniors for the bad attitude. Even the Seniors are suffering from this bad attitude. They lack human relations. Some of them, when they occupy such seat and receive a huge salary, assume themselves too big. They try to treat others like 'dust'.
They expect that even a person who gives suggestion for their company should fix up an appointment with them and meet, instead of being the opposite. On their behalf only their junior secretaries speak. It is their style of functioning.
They do not realise, particularly when their company is facing problems, they should be more humble and polite.
Lack of home work and leg work is the new trend
Sitting in an air conditioned room thousands of miles away and without even going to the root of their problems, they want to find a solution. They do not want to do good home work or leg work. Even with a little conversation for few minutes with the said corpcom head, i could realise that he was not fully conversant with the real issues in their own company and location.
This is the tip of the iceberg. From the various inputs, I presume that at least 50 percent of the Corpcom professionals in India may be suffering from this type of attitude. It is not meant to hurt the feelings of anybody. In fact I feel sad about this situation. At the same time, I am seeing the role models in corpcom departments both at senior and junior levels. Unfortunately, attitudinal problem is growing enormously in the past 5 years.
Can we find a way out?
Though my views may cause slight inconvenience to our colleagues, i want to make it open, so that we need to introspect ourselves and analyse the reasons for growing trend of such bad attitude and take effective steps to bring back original glory.
I invite members to share the views, as to how we can improve the attitude.
with best wishes.
Srinivasan
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