What would brutally honest executive statements look like?
Here’s a look at recent crisis communications from Twitter’s current chief and Volkswagen’s former CEO, without the jargon (but with added transparency).
We’ll probably never get the answer from a real chief, but Quartz has done a fine job imagining what it would look like at Twitter. The company announced this week that it will lay off up to 336 of its employees.
CEO Jack Dorsey sent a memo to the staff that was “riddled with jargon,” Quartz’s senior editor, Gideon Lichfield, wrote. I won’t repost the entire doctored letter, but here’s a choice excerpt:
It made me take a second look at another recent jargon- and legalese-laden statement that was recently in the news.
Here’s a revised version of the statement by Volkswagen’s former CEO, Martin Winterkorn , following the news that the company had doctored software in their “clean diesel” cars to pass emissions tests:
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