High Road Communications

Today’s Globe has a Q&A with Nortel’s CEO Mike Zafirovski. Interestingly, the first couple of questions are related to Nortel-centric blogs (like this one), PR, and public pressure from critics. Zafirovski stands firm in his views of the blogosphere and media coverage, essentially saying you can’t pay attention to them because then you may start to run a popularity contest and get distracted from mid and long-term plans. He also states "it’s normally unhappy people on those sites anyway" blogging about Nortel.

Best course of action for CEOs of companies in downturn or turnaround phase is to have PR monitoring the online buzz and chatter. This can help influence proactive communications to get ahead of small issues before they become big ones. Later, you may decide to engage in the online conversations. While no one (besides maybe some of the Nortel bloggers themselves) thinks Zafirovski should be making decisions based solely on their online musings, tuning out the chatter completely cuts off a valuable information source.