Long-time listeners, first-time callers

Hey, Steve and Craig.

I'm Hannah Wong, former chief communications officer at OpenAI, and now I advise CEOs, founders, and communications leaders.

Congratulations on 100 episodes.

I usually listen when I'm driving by myself because it's one of the few times I'm not being interrupted by my kids.

One of my favorite episodes was when you talked about United's pitch to merge with American Airlines.

Your analysis of how United was able to shape the broader conversation and build credibility around the idea without ever having to confirm they'd made a formal pitch was a great reminder to me that there's a real art and a lot of patience in creating the conditions for what you ultimately want to achieve.

My question for you both, what's one communications lesson you used to believe that you've since changed your mind about?

Well, what I used to believe was that the communicator's job was to just help the organization to tell their story.

And now I'm just very clear that it's also about helping the organization to warrant the story that they want to tell.

And we put enormous confidence in explanations and apologies, but if you're explaining, you've already lost.

There's this great Greek expression that translates, ever since they invented the words, I'm sorry, everyone's a donkey.

And the donkey gives the farmer this very sorrowful look and it's standing still or trying to get the donkey to move.

And the reality is the farmer doesn't need the donkey to have a sad face and to apologize.

It needs it to move, right? So people don't want another apology.

They want the problem fixed.

And as we've also said before, you can't talk your way out of a problem you behave your way into.

And if the behavior created the judgment, then only changed behaviors can be able to alter that.

Okay, so you've gone from feeling like apologies are maybe enough in some cases to your point, like you've got to do the work.

It's not enough to apologize.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's not just enough to create the story in the first place, right? We have to make sure the story is real, that it's true.

And what I enjoy more is thinking, let's make it a bigger, bolder story,

which

may mean lifting people up to think larger than what they're thinking at the time.

reflecting back with the senior leadership team is saying, we're actually encouraging them to think harder and bigger and bolder and step into it and make it a reality.