Transparency in business: is it possible?

Magazine journalist Wired Fred Vogelstayn (Fred Vogelstein) recently learned that at least one major organization has a detailed dossier on him. But, judging by the completely perplexed article about this, he certainly did not expect that this organization is Microsoft.

In recent days, Fred has been working on a large article about the new Channel 9 project , a video blog that tells the public about working at Microsoft, about people and events happening at the company. After taking several interviews with his manager and two other team members, Vogelstein, unaware of the scale of the surveillance machine built over him, calmly collected the accumulated material in parts, sitting in the editorial office.

But the letter that fell into his inbox permanently knocked the journalist out of the creative process. In bulk text (pdf, 310 KB) 13 pages contained detailed recommendations on how Microsoft employees should talk to Fred: What to focus, how to get away from the tricky questions that he probably will ask how to direct his thoughts in the right to company side. In addition, the document contained a real dossier, with a brief biography and an exhaustive description of Vogelstein's personal and professional qualities: his manner of communication, level of education, writing methods, writing style and information that interests him.

This report was prepared for Microsoft by the Waggener Edstrom PR agency ., which has long been firmly entrenched in the market for public relations services. Among his clients, in addition to the redmond giant, there are such brands as Master Card and T-Mobile. But even such mastodons make mistakes: an internal document intended for a narrow circle of people was sent to Vogelstein by mistake, which was reported to the journalist at the agency itself.

Fred admits that there is nothing surprising in the very fact of the existence of the dossier: he has been working as a journalist for more than 20 years, he wrote for Fortune and other business publications and earned the fame of a rather sharp and sensationalist author. But what angered him was that they tried to manipulate him (as he admits, not quite unsuccessfully) when he described the initiative of Microsoft to create a more transparent and open image of the corporation. As Fred now understood for himself, on his part it was naive to expect a humane approach from MS.

Waggener Edstrom president Frank Shaw wrote a postin a corporate blog, where he spoke from his point of view, from the point of view of a PR specialist. He drew up a detailed plan for the preparation and conduct of a “magnificent” interview and expressed the view that it is logical that in this process both parties should work equally hard, because the result is important for everyone. If everything is done correctly, he writes, then both the journalist and the hero of the interview receive exactly what they wanted from him.

Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, in turn, expressed his opinion on the topic in his own Long Tail blog. He realizes that Microsoft, like other large companies, is striving to gradually move away from the old closed system of interaction with society (or at least dilute it significantly). And their efforts in this field are difficult to overestimate: the corporation now employs more than 3,500 bloggers who make its activities more open than ever. However, in the transition period, inevitable phenomena such as excesses or, conversely, relapses of the outgoing habitual closed behavior. This is what Vogelstein faced. However, as Anderson admits, almost everything on Fred’s dossier was true, and there’s no point in taking offense at her.

And everyone still has to draw conclusions about the existence and the very possibility of complete transparency, which is now much talked about not only in the US, but also in our vast expanses. In any case, this story once again showed that the world is not becoming easier, and do not be too surprised.