What Obama’s first 100 days can teach communicators

The 44th president offers 16 lessons in framing a message

Barack Obama’s inauguration signified more than just a dramatic change in politics: It also launched an equally significant shift in how White House communication is handled.

“Nearly 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan was hailed as the great communicator in the manner in which he shaped his words utilizing his training as an actor, but also in the way he was able to relate those words directly to the American public through a medium he was intimately familiar with: television,” says Dick Grove, CEO of INK Inc., a Kansas City-based PR firm.

On Jan. 20, “we cheered another great communicator who knows not only how to shape his words as an obviously talented orator, but also knows how to use media to transmit those words for the greatest impact,” he continues.

Of course, we’re only a little more than three months into Obama’s presidency; whether his communication strategy has any impact on the success of the administration remains to be seen.  

“But there is no question that he has ‘touched’ the public in a way unlike any president before him,” says John Baird, director of corporate communications at Blue Nile in Seattle.

Here are 16 lessons that his first 100 days hold for corporate communicators:

1. Ask for help from those who went before you. Just before he took office, President-elect Obama met with President Bush and all the living former presidents. “He realized that he needed to be able to build relationships with these men so that he could pick up the phone,” says Rick Maurer, principal of change management firm Maurer & Associates. “So instead of pretending he had all the experience in the world, he had the good sense to ask the counsel of those who have done the job before [for help]. Seems like good advice for anyone moving into a leadership position—both as an act of leadership and humility.”

2. You catch more flies with … oatmeal raisin cookies. In his first couple of weeks as president, Obama held in-person meetings with all his departments—but he also reached out to many of his internal critics. Among the various receptions he held for bipartisan groups of legislators was a Super Bowl party at the White House—where Obama passed around a plate of hot, homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. Representative Trent Franks, R-Ariz., was one of the guests. As he told The New York Times, he is “probably as philosophically opposed to this president as any member of Congress”—but when he left that night he had a new respect for Obama. “First of all, when you have a meeting like this, it humanizes and personalizes opponents, where you recognize them as human beings,” Franks told the Times. “I think that does a lot toward helping people put aside politics and really try to do what is best for the country.”

3. Meet with the “enemy.” Is someone talking smack about your organization? At least it’s not Hugo Chavez. But just say it were Hugo Chavez—or, you know, a disgruntled employee or customer—consider the Barack Obama method of handling conflict, and meet it head on. From giving his first official presidential interview to Arabic TV channel al-Arabiya (during which his said he wanted Muslims to know that “Americans are not your enemy”), to calling for a new openness with Cuba, to shaking hands with Chavez, Obama has been taking pains to improve relations with countries whose relationship with the U.S. is strained.

He responded to the many critics of these actions at a press conference following the Summit of the Americas: “It’s hard to believe we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States” with a handshake. Rather, he argued, the thawing of tensions between previously hostile countries could lead to “an opportunity for frank dialogue on a range of issues, including critical issues of democracy and human rights throughout the hemisphere."

There seem to be positive signs already. On April 16, Cuban President Raul Castro released a momentous statement, asserting; “We are willing to discuss everything—human rights, freedom of press, political prisoners, everything, everything, everything they want to talk about. We could be wrong, we admit it. We’re human.”

Chavez, meanwhile, also said he’s interested in restoring diplomatic relations between his Venezuela and the United States.

Whether there will be actual policy change remains to be seen, but at least the dialogue is open.

4. Take social media seriously. Obama’s team excels at using technology to get information to and from the public—from the social network and organizing tool My.BarackObama.com, to weekly videos on YouTube, to a Facebook group, to a constantly updated blog on whitehouse.gov.

The administration has done more than just slap up the tools; Obama has been consistent in the frequency and type of access he has granted the public and staffers. “This is an important lesson for corporate communicators in the new media era, because the new channels offer a bewildering range of levels of corporate engagement,” says Peter Hirsch, a former Porter Novelli partner who is teaching a course on new media and corporate communication at Baruch College in New York.

“Consistency in that engagement is crucial,” he says, “regardless of the stakeholder audience. In other words, don’t start a CEO blog if its frequency is highly volatile.”

5. Do your homework. These days, nothing stays hidden forever—even, say, embarrassing photos you assumed would never see this side of 1987 (thanks, Facebook). That goes for the big stuff, too, as several appointees to Obama’s cabinet could tell you. Make every effort to research and unearth secrets that could harm your organization—before someone else does. Likewise, always fact-checking the messages you communicate on a daily basis will boost your credibility.  As Obama notably said, when asked why it took him and his team several days after learning about the AIG bonuses to publicly address them, “Because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

6. Admit it when you screw up. Obama has not been afraid to “own it” after a misstep. Both when he joked about Special Olympics bowling on “The Tonight Show” and when some of his key appointments were revealed to have tax evasion and other flaws in their backgrounds, he immediately stepped up and took the blame.

In a press conference after a couple of key appointees withdrew their nominations, Obama said: “I’m here on television saying I screwed up, and that’s part of the era of responsibility. It’s not never making mistakes; it’s owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them, and that’s what we intend to do.”

The president also invited five broadcast and cable television anchors to the Oval Office on Tuesday to apologize for and take responsibility for nominating aides with tax troubles.

“Hearing leaders admit mistakes is rare,” Maurer says. “At best, we might hear mistakes were made, but that leaves us to wonder just who made those mistakes.

Another common reaction to a screwup is to obfuscate with spin so that no one understands what is going on. And a final favorite is to parse the error so minutely that it appears that everything worked out just fine. But to hear someone say, ‘I screwed up,’ is as shocking as it is refreshing.”

7. Control the flow, or the flow will control you. “Bush was continually beset by bad news and was always seen reacting to it. Obama daily communicates an active agenda of what’s going on today and tomorrow,” says Bill Pemberton, senior vice president at Forte Public Relations in Dallas. “Whether you agree with his policies or not—I don’t for the most part—you have to admit he projects a guy who is involved in finding solutions. The media have to react to Obama, he is far too active to allow himself to have to react to them.”

Obama went so far as to become the official salesman for his stimulus plan before it was accepted: He wrote an Op-Ed for the The Washington Post in which he defended it against “misguided criticisms,” held a prime-time news conference, and gave interviews from the Oval Office on the topic.

8. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Sometimes Obama’s actions do not match his words, says Dianna Booher, CEO of Booher Consultants in Grapevine, Texas. For instance, “during the stimulus package discussion, he promised [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner would unveil a big ‘detailed plan’ in his speech to the nation,” she says. “Geithner unveiled no such details. The stock market reacted with a huge drop the following day.”

U.S. stocks fell more than 4 percent the next day; Standard & Poor’s 500 Index took its biggest plunge since Obama's inauguration.

Another example: “He promised that North Korea would face tough consequences if they tested a nuclear bomb,” Booher points out. “Only more talk followed.”

9. Tone is everything; content can be basic. Obama is rarely rattled, mad, frayed, off- guard, negative, or confrontational. “So in a world that has to make judgments on sound bites, Obama comes across as very, very cool and in control,” Pemberton says. “He offers our enemies no harsh words to build a countercampaign against. He won’t give them a straw man to beat.”

Business leaders would do well to keep similarly cool under pressure. (Consider the volatile Ted Turner did not remain cool and found himself marginalized in his merger with Time Warner as a result.) They should calmly solicit the opinions of others and keep an open mind until final decisions are made.

10. Communicate to your audience on their terms. Find your audience (be they employees, customers, or shareholders) and go to them. Obama has done that geographically—with trips both domestic and international—and otherwise.

“In modern communications, audiences are so amazingly fractured and so loyal to their outlets that you have to go directly to them, meet them where they are on issues, and speak a language they understand,” says Dan Cohen, principal of Full Court Press Communications in Oakland, Calif.

That’s why in one week, the president appeared on three television programs. In addition to CBS’ “60 Minutes.” viewers could watch Obama on ESPN and on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”

“Many pundits have suggested this is not presidential or that Obama should be focusing on the nation’s problems, not appearing on entertainment shows,” says Tripp Frohlichstein, founder of media coaching firm MediaMasters. 

Radio station KTAR.com quoted Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona stating, “There is nothing funny about President Obama's appearance on ‘The Tonight Show.’”

“Those critics have missed the point,” Frohlichstein says. “This is a very smart media strategy designed to reach out to average Americans. It demonstrates for people that Obama is in touch with their needs and interests. It shows that he is in touch with popular culture, while his predecessor was not.”

Apparently, it worked. During the AIG discussion on “The Tonight Show,” the president said: “Listen, I’ll take responsibility. I’m the president”—which led to cheers and applause.

11. Make upward communication easy for your CEO. Every organization would be well-served to have a communicator playing the Mike Kelleher role. Director of correspondence at the White House, Kelleher selects 10 letters, faxes, or e-mails (out of the tens of thousands the president receives daily) to show to Obama every day. He picks ones he believes best represent what Americans are thinking and feeling. As Kelleher told The New York Times recently: “We pick messages that are compelling, things people say that, when you read it, you get a chill. I send him letters that are uncomfortable messages.” Often, Obama personally writes back to the author. 

The president also uses the letters to keep his staff “real.” As White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said in the Times piece, Obama “believes it’s easy in Washington to forget there are real people with real challenges being affected by the debate.” In policy meetings, the president will say to advisers and say, “No, no, no. I want to read you a letter that I got. I want you to understand,” Emanuel said.

12. Keep it interesting but keep coming home. Refresh your message—but keep going back to key elements. This administration has succeeded in keeping focused on the economy but not beating the drum to the point of tone-deafness. “They recognize that they can’t talk about the same issue every day. They do economy on Monday, health care on Tuesday, NCAA brackets the next. And then return back to the economy,” Cohen says.

13. Meld formal and informal. Obama’s tone is “a fascinating—to fans—blend of warm and cool,” says Hirsch, who’s writing a book about corporate communications and Web 2.0. “This is another very tricky balancing act in the age of Web 2.0. The legacy formality of corporate communications sits uneasily alongside cheeky tweets. Finding the right blend is going to be a huge challenge for most corporations.”

For the most part, Obama is a good example of providing the right tone for the time and audience. His light-hearted demeanor on Jay Leno's show was a strong contrast to formal messages in front of Congress, at press conferences, or at town hall meetings.

He doesn’t always get it right, however. Press conferences, for instance, have been criticized as being too controlled. “His responses have been characterized as a series of mini-speeches rather than spontaneous answers,” says Booher, author of The Voice of Authority: 10 Communication Strategies Every Leader Needs to Know.

14. Don’t be afraid to morph the message. Obama’s initial discussions about the economy were alarmist (mostly to make sure that people understood he inherited the mess). But that had the accompanying effect of helping trash the stock market. “They moved their message to one of working together to restore and rebuild the economy and both the market and his personal popularity stabilized,” says Ed Coghlan, longtime senior corporate communications executive for medical companies and current communication consultant in North Hills, Calif. “Many organizations don't have the immediate barometer of a stock market to test messages, but we all know and preach that if something isn't working, you change it.”

15. Prepare your speaker. Whether it’s the CEO or another company spokesperson, he or she should be completely prepared, says Beth LaBreche, chief executive of Minneapolis-based brand communications firm LaBreche. Obama’s team, she says, are experts at this. “Every time he is mentioned in traditional media it’s through either a sound bite or a direct quote—talk about nailing the key messages,” she says. “The time he and his team have spent developing policies, ideologies, and messages that support his initiatives is evident. This lesson of preparedness is something that every organizational communicator should know.”

16. Don’t overextend the CEO. “The words of the president have an enormous weight,” Calvin Coolidge wrote in his autobiography, “and ought not to be used indiscriminately.” “Silent Cal” Coolidge refrained from speaking so much that he gained a reputation for always being worth listening to. “By necessity, business leaders speak a lot,” says San Diego speech coach and consultant Chris Witt, “but when they speak too often, they risk sounding repetitious. Then they lose their employees’ and customers’ interest and respect, and they cheapen their message.”

Witt, the author of Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint, believes that “the frequency of Obama’s speeches may diminish his power." Instead, he argues, the president should delegate to others to speak about important, but less urgent issues. “Why, for example, did he need to comment on Cheney’s criticisms? Why not have his VP do that? The same for owners or CEOs delegating to their VPs or department heads. Less is more.”