CEO’ public opinion

Yesterday I read an article which posed a question- What CEO should speak publicly?

CEO not only is a manager but a leader of its organisation. Whatever it speaks can influence all stakeholders of the business. Sometimes investors’ decision is based on the CEO’s public statements. Therefore it is always expected from them to articulate their statements which will have positive impact on organisations image. Can CEO speak their mind?

CEOs can speak their mind but they always have to keep in mind about their business activities. Every human has personal views towards many issues and especially business environment. Being a leader, a CEO should always think about betterment of its stakeholders. His or her small statement can become an issue. But when it comes to give personal opinion on any issue they have to articulate their statement so it becomes more balanced opinion. Then what about their freedom of expression? They can do that with their modus operandi of business. They should implement those strategies in business and corporate social initiatives which will differentiate themselves from others. Then their work speaks more about them rather than their statements. They have the choice to showcase their talent in their work but when it comes to the public address, majority of them follow traditional methods.

Can CEO eat Vadapav in public?? Of course not, it has to eat burger even in recession time and might remain hungry if quarterly growth is negative but no Vadapav under any circumstances.

The Discrimination

Few days back, we had a debate on the issue of discrimination in Indian society. Few of us were arguing that ours is the society which discriminates people on the basis of their casts. We are living in such a society where we are not ready to award same social status to our fellow citizens. Argument went forward and our society was compared with developed western societies. Here arose the real problem. All of us were aware about loopholes in our social behaviour but when we were compared with western developed countries, there took place another big debate about the supremacy of the traditions in various societies.

No doubt cast based discrimination is still dominant in India but that does not mean only Indians are discriminators. It takes place everywhere. Now one thought came out that westerns discrimination is based on abrasion and not on casts.

For me, discrimination in either of the forms is fatal to any society. It is not about the Indian or other civilizations but its about the basic human nature. People like to differentiate themselves from others irrespective of their geographical locations. Rather I would say they like to find commonality among each other. Indian civilization is the oldest among other societies. Cast based discrimination became dominant hundreds of years before. The Indians found the caste as the common factor among themselves and various Varnas came into existence. Initially these Varnas defined the day to day job responsibilities of individuals belonging to their Varnas. Later on when time changed these Varnas started creating major problems in Indian society. Same is the case with westerns. They found skin colour as the common factor among themselves. So they became racist. After macro differentiation people will go to the micro level e.g. nations, states, cities, behaviours, languages etc. More or less each human has contributed in this discrimination with above mentioned parameters. So it doesn’t make any sense to term Indians as only discriminators in the world.

This is the social problem and everybody is aware about that. We have mastered the art of problem findings but we are poor in solving them. If we can’t work on solutions then it would be better to avoid creating other problems.