Bloghound

In times of crisis, the job of leaders is to be visible — to step
up and absorb people’s fears, reassure them about what’s being done,
and put the events within a forward looking perspective. People want to
be led, especially during times of upheaval.

So where oh where
is France’s President Jacques Chirac this week? I don’t live in France
and I’m scared about what’s going on with the unrest and riots in the
country’s slums during the past two weeks. Imagine being a French
citizen?

Rather than going on TV or the radio to declare a
national state of emergency, Chicrac and his administrators had a
government spokesperson read a statement to journalists on Tuesday
after a Cabinet meeting. Unbelievable.

The job of
communications is an executive’s job. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, Jack
Welch, or Tony Blair. In times of crisis, communications cannot be
shunned or delegated without serious ramifications.

The medium is not the message. The deliverer is the message.

For France, this means the government may have much graver problems than any of us realize.

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