Ask the Tech Answer Guy: CEO Say Can You C...EO?

Yo, Tech Answer Guy,

What kind of twit uses Twitter? Why would anybody choose to lose face on Facebook? Who would willingly get peed on in Pinterest? Okay, a colleague of mine may be attracted to that last one. More than one colleague, probably. However, how wealthy people choose to spend their leisure time is irrelevant to the question at hand. Harrumph! I'm a busy executive with empires to build and workforces to devastate. I don't have time for social media.

Yo, Guy,

Could you phrase that in the form of a quest - oh! Argh! Jeopardy flashback! It's gonna take me days to get Alex Trebek's moustache out of my head - thanks for that. I'm going to assume you actually asked a question and do my best to put this whole regrettable incident behind me.

Remember when e-coli broke out among Busaru Primitives, forcing the automobile manufacturer to recall 27,000 sets of building blocks because they were a choking hazard for little children? If Busaru CEO Melville Hackenscetti had been on Facebook, he could have taken control of the situation and blamed the mess on workers at the corporation's Chinese production facility. If he had been on Twitter, he could have humanized the company by making a joke about the time he caught e-coli from building blocks when he was a child. If he had been on Pinterest, he could have posted cute photos of cat bellies.

Aww, cat bellies.

Social media can give the heads of corporations an opportunity to limit damage in a crisis by speaking directly to the public. And, the best part is that the CEO doesn't even have to be the one social mediaing. Any minimum wage corporate drone can post messages to Facebook or tweet under the boss' name, and nobody would be the wiser.

In fact, let's be honest - you're not even the executive you claim to be, are you?

Whu -huff! Of course I am! I mean - Dow Jones! Stock options! Five star hotels! Help me, Landru, help me!

Yo, Poseur,

Right. You're probably named Larry or Gary or Jerry or something like that. You're a male secretary, but that job description is still considered embarrassingly feminizing, so you prefer the term "personal assistant." When you received your MBA - which you will only admit happened "some time in the distant past" - you thought you would immediately be getting a corner office and a company limo. To say that you were disappointed would be like saying the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests were loud enough to wake the neighbours. The company tie is beginning to feel like a noose and your girlfriend is beginning to feel like you're an anchor - your life has officially entered the Tim Burton zone.

You don't sound like a CEO to me.

Actually, my name is Harry. Harry Proctolor.

Yo, Harrison,

I'm not judging. Before the Tech Answer Guy was The Tech Answer Guy, he interned with Prime Minister John Turner - not a long gig, as it turned out! He spent most of his time in that office responding to letters from little old ladies who wanted to know why the Liberal government didn't establish a federal Ministry of Getting Cats Down From Trees. The job was so mind-numbing that half the time he wrote back to them that the Department of Cat Saving was part of the Environment Ministry, and he gave them the number of a phone sex line if they wanted more information. He rarely heard from them after that.

Believe me when I say: The Tech Answer Guy knows how tough making your way in the world can be.

Thanks.

My CEO is scared stiff that if he says the wrong thing on a social network, it will come back to bite him on the ass (and, as far as I know, the only one he allows to bite him on his ass is the mistress he has me send chocolates, flowers and the occasional MRI scan to). For one thing, you may be shocked to discover that people on social networks can be mean! My boss has heard new CEOs get tweets like "u run a Fortune 500 co, & you can't even spell antideluvian?" and "Nice ad, shame about the product!"

For another thing, he is afraid that people will misinterpret what he writes. If, for example, he posts to Facebook that our competitor's products cause whooping halitosis in people between the ages of 3 and 97, and that their CEO has a secret fetish for women with eye patches and peg legs, readers might think that our CEO has a personal animus against our rivals. Some people just don't understand how modern business works, I guess.

Honestly, the negatives of social media for corporate leaders seem to outweigh the benefits.

Yo, Hairy,

Looks like you answered your own (non-)question. Keep at it, kid - you're definitely leadership material.

The Tech Answer Guy

If you are a dude with a question about the latest technology, ask The Tech Answer Guy by sending it to questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Just remember: when the beef jerky hits the fan, things could get messy. Very messy, indeed.