As I was about to retire, a colleague and I were talking about what’s defined as one’s total professional output — a person’s body of work. We were wondering how, in a PR career, you could measure your total professional output. Because PR people often work behind the scenes. Even when they’re front and center, what they’re doing – the metrics reflecting their efforts — can be somewhat intangible.
So… after several decades, my total output was intangible? Elusive?
But then, as restlessness set in, not that long after I retired, I started writing articles. And without consciously planning to raise alarms, I wrote something about politics and business that ran in a 2011 edition of Business Insider.
“These are challenging times,” I said in the article. “Surely for the United States, as the nation’s self image is being undermined” by a host of problems, not the least of which, at the time, was constant bickering among politicians. Various businesses were “creating a modern form of slavery, when those who (were) lucky enough to be employed” were doing the work of three or more people, to achieve a little job security. We seemed to be losing ground, even as we were racing at warp speed.
Lower unemployment, more recently, hasn’t moved the needle, all that much, for a lot of workers. And with COVID-19, the workforce may be under even more pressure.
In a 2013 issue of a financial industry publication, American Banker, I wrote: “The megabanks’ mega-image crisis — (in the years following the Great Recession) — might have been averted had financial firms paid closer attention to a key fundamental of banking: spurring the development and growth of enterprise… As maudlin as this may sound,” I said, “banks truly can help people in all walks of life accomplish what they set out to do.”
In the article, I was reacting to what was being described, at the time, as exotic financial instruments, fancy investments, in other words, that factored into the recession.
Banks needed to get back to basics, to fundamentals of the business, I was thinking, at the time. Other businesses, perhaps, needed to do so, as well.
Yah, that probably seemed maudlin, when mindsets were set on warp speed, growth and shareholder value, and — in government — on bickering and polarization. Getting back to basics, to fundamentals, didn’t seem to be on radar screens.
Recently, in the Daily Post, I recalled something I’d written about values, eight years ago, in the Quincy, MA, Patriot Ledger newspaper.
And just the other day, I read an article in Salon, mentioning what Pulitzer winner Chris Hedges, the author of America: The Farewell Tour, said… these “are the good times – compared to what’s coming next.”
And, what was that in Huffington Post, the other day? “An ex-speechwriter for former President George W. Bush… argued that President Donald Trump is sacrificing the lives of many Americans to the coronavirus in a ‘desperate ‘ bid to save himself politically.”
Pretty alarming, all in all! Isn’t it?
ALARM BELLS!! Indeed!
But we can always get back to basics.
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.