I’m not sure, but I may have just pissed all over the next great employee communication idea. Listen to the story, and then you tell me if I’ve uncovered the next hot trend in employee communications . . . .

Last Saturday I took an eight-hour flight from London to Chicago, went straight from the airport to Naperville to watch my son play baseball, hung out with him for as long as I could keep my eyes open, took a train to Chicago, a bus to my apartment, and got home late Saturday night.

After about four hours sleep, I woke up and went to El Jardin’s for a much-deserved brunch with my wife Cindy.

I give you this schedule so that you can understand my mental state.

I was exhausted. And jet-lagged. And after two margaritas, I wasn’t even sure where I was . . . but I knew I was glad not to be in an airport or on a plane or in a hotel.

And in that fuzzy, buzzy state, I stumbled into the bathroom at El Jardin’s, and started using the urinal . . . when suddenly, I heard someone talking to me. Mid-stream, so to speak.

I looked around, but nobody else was in the bathroom. I was alone, hearing voices. I shook my head a bit, to clear it. The voice was still there. And it was coming from . . . down there. You know, sort of below the waist.

How can I say this politely, without offending anyone? I guess I can’t.

For less-than-one-second, in my altered, sleepless, jet-lagged, margaritaed state, I thought I was having an acid flashback . . . and that my penis was talking to me.

Which is a really, really scary thought. Because anything he has to say, I don’t want to hear. I kept waiting to hear things like:

“Touch me again and I swear I’ll piss the bed for a week straight.” (Remember, I had been on the road for a long, long time).

“Remember that girl in college, from the townie bar, when you were on mushrooms? What the hell were you thinking about, asshat? Don’t you ever give any consideration to what I have to go through when you make decisions like that?”

“Will you please stop telling anyone who will listen that I’m the size of a longshoreman’s forearm? It’s embarrassing . . . to say nothing of being a bald-faced lie.”

But the voices weren’t saying anything like that. In fact, the voice was talking about a television show. And when I shook the acid flashback out of my head and looked down into the urinal, I saw the real source of the voice.

There, in the urinal, instead of one of those deodorant cakes they sometimes stick in there, was a little round recorder thingy that, when hit with water (or, in this case, urine), started playing its message.

The message itself was an advertisement for some asshole macho TV show on some asshole macho TV station called “Spike TV,” which I can only assume is a TV station for asshole macho guys.

At first, I was pissed . . . no pun intended. Then, I started thinking. Could this be the next great employee communication tool?

I’ve long advocated posting news articles in bathrooms stalls and above urinals, where you have a captive audience. Isn’t this the next logical step? As our intranets and Web sites go more multi-media, shouldn’t our urinals follow suit?

Call it Urinals 2.0!

Can you imagine if, whenever your average employee unzips and gets down to business, he hears the CEO talking to him directly? Saying things like:

“As you liquidize your assets, I’d just like to remind you that here at Horizon Enterprises, YOU are OUR greatest asset. Now take care of business, and remember as you go about your work today to always pay heed to the 47 Guiding Principles of Horizon, as well as our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement, our Code of Ethics, and our Safety First Guidelines, all of which are posted on the wall in front of you. Remember, Horizon’s future is in your hands! Well . . . it’s not in your hands right now . . . uh, at this very moment . . . but, you know what I mean. Have a great day, and remember: All employees are required to wash their hands!”

Some would say most CEO communication belongs in the toilet anyway . . . why not put it there directly?

Well . . . hello again! Remember me? The guy who used to blog in this space?

It’s been almost two months since I last blogged. Almost two months to the day, in fact. Tomorrow would have been two months exactly, and since one of the things I teach in my seminars is that you have to blog on a regular basis, I feel I would lose some credibility if I let two months go without blogging.

One month and 29 days and about six hours? That’s okay? But two months? That’s bullshit.

Why no blogs? Well, my last one was on April 5th. It’s now June 4th, and I’ve been in London for two days. Since April 5th, I’ve also been in: Atlanta, New Orleans, Seattle, Albuquerque, Toronto, New York, Minneapolis, Charlotte, and now London.

Add to that three events where I didn’t have to travel, but still had to stay in hotels in Chicago and work very hard: The three-day Ragan Fellowship meeting, the three-day Corporate Communicator’s Conferenc, and my two-day Advanced Internal Communication seminar with Jim Ylisela.

Mind you, I’m not complaining. I made good money, had a lot of laughs and some unbelievable meals, met some terrific communicators . . . and gained ten pounds. I’ve got about a dozen great stories that I’ll start sharing out here this week. Some of them even have to do with communication!

But I feel like I was on one long road trip . . . and it didn’t start very well. Let me tell you about it.

Whenever I leave for any trip, even if it’s just for a couple of days, I try to leave from my son’s house in Naperville, if at all possible. I like to see him the day I leave, and the day I get back. So I always leave from his house in the suburbs, which is 45 minutes from me . . . even if that means just seeing him for an hour before school in the morning.

Well, this Bataan Death March I’ve been on started with a trip to Atlanta, on a Wednesday, which is a school day. So I drove out to Naperville at 5:30 a.m., so I could take Zach to school. Which I did.

But that was at 7:30, and my flight wasn’t until 1, so I had some time to kill. So . . . knowing I would be eating and drinking like a pig for two months, I thought I’d work out.

So I headed over to the Naperville Bally’s, worked out, then realized that I had to shower, and I didn’t have a towel. I didn’t have anything with me to dry myself . . . not even an extra shirt.

But getting on the plane without showering wasn’t an option . . .so I showered and then stood in the open stall, naked, my hairless body glistening like a baby seal, trying to figure out what to do.

First, I tried to sort of rub the water off with my hands. But there were four other dudes in the shower, and I don’t think they were comfortable with a large hairless bald man standing in their midst, slapping at himself like he was on a bad acid trip.

Finally, I did the only thing I could do. I went to the hot-air hand dryer, turned it on, and crouched underneath it, like a midget taking a hot-air shower. And I started rubbing myself to facilitate the drying process.

And then I made a horrible mistake. I looked up . . . and there was a mirror right there. And I got to see myself, like a 220-pound naked mole rat, all pink and hairless and fat, pathetically crouched under a hot-air dryer rubbing myself, while seven or eight muscle-type guys tried hard not to look at me.

I finally gave it up, dried my feet with my dirty workout shirt, put on my clothes, which immediately stuck to my wet skin, and went to the airport for a very unpleasant flight.

That’s how the two-months started. And boy do I have some stories to share with you. I’ve got a cab ride story from New Orleans, a culinary experience in Seattle, some great communications work done with a big government agency, a terrific experience doing executive interviews for a client . . . lots have happened since April 5th.

So look to this space often in the next month . . . if you’re still bothering to come here at all.

I’m having a great time right now, doing a brand-new seminar with Jim Ylisela.

It’s “Advanced Employee Communiations,” and it has a little bit of everything. Basically, we walk folks through a four-step system for improving your internal communications.

1. Research (the boring, but necessary part: focus groups, surveys, executive interviews, vehicle assessment).

2. Planning (the even more boring, but even more necessary part, where we build a communication plan from the ground up.)

3. Execution (the fun part, where we talk about vehicles and social media and intranets and all the stuff I love).

4. Measurement (back to the boring but necessary stuff: making sure that what you are doing is working).

I thought the execution/vehicles/social media part of the seminar would be the most popular, but I'm shocked at how starving people are for the research/planning/measurement information.

We’ve had great crowds in D.C., San Francisco, and Atlanta so far, and we’re still going to Seattle, Toronto, New York, and Chicago. There's still room in some of those cities, so sign up!

And, as usual with my seminars, I'm learning as much as I am teaching. For example, last week in San Francisco, I met a couple of people from Intel. Now, Intel has always been ahead of the game, when it comes to technology and online publications and social media.

And they still are.

In fact, they have a policy where any employee can blog . . . and many of them are. They use them to share information, swap ideas, get the word out about something . . . all sorts of reasons.

But when I was chatting with the Intel communicators, they told me something I had never heard of before.

“Our executives—some of them, anyway—are starting to ‘pop in’ to employee blogs, and join the discussion,” one of them told me. “You know how you used to have Management By Walking Around? This is Management By Blogging Around.”

MBBA!! What a concept. If you believe executives, they have no time anymore to walk the corporate halls and chat with people . . . even though that’s a very effective management technique (and one that used to be very popular in the 80s).

But they do have 15 minutes a day to stop into some blogs, leave a comment, add to the discussion, read the comments, and see what people are saying.

Management By Blogging Around. What a wonderful concept. Now, maybe this isn't all that new. Maybe Shel Holtz will come out here and tell me that MBBA has been around for years. But it's the first I heard of it.

Of course, it will only work if employees are allowed to blog in the first place . . . so it probably won’t catch on anytime soon.

In case you missed it, there’s a big debate going on right now on myragan.com, and ragan.com. It’s such an important debate that the Ragan editorial staff—and CEO Mark Ragan—even videotaped a discussion on the topic, and put it on the site.

What’s the debate about? Not politics; not whether employee engagement is a buzzword exploited by consultants or a legitimate thing that communicators should worry about; and not whether social media can ever work inside organizations

No . . . this debate is about cussing. Using naughty words. Specifically, it’s about whether writers at ragan.com should be able to use swear words in their stories.

Now . . . regular readers of this blog probably think that I caused the debate, by swearing profusely in a ragan.com article.

But no! It wasn’t me. While I may swear like a sailor out here on occasion, I rarely swear in the “journalism” pieces I do for Ragan. I may say the occasional hell or damn . . . but that’s about it.

No, a different editor caused the debate, because he used the word asshole in a story. And not only in the story, but in the headline!

Well, a furious tempest sprung up in a teapot on myragan.com, and now they’ve done follow-up stories, a video, and my pal David Murray even wrote an article about it, which is also on the site.

All of which prompted Mark Ragan to slap down a moratorium. When he saw that most of the people commenting on the issue were against swearing, he set a policy: No more swear words on Ragan.com.

Which if fine. I actually don’t give a shit one way or the other . . . but I do have a problem with the “reasons” that many people give for objecting to using swear words.

Whenever this debate springs up, people usually offer one of three reasons for being against it:

Reason #1: Words like Goddamnit offend their religious sensibilities.

Well, I don’t give a good God damn about that. As an agnostic who believes that organized religion is responsible for most of the evil in this world, I really don’t care about your religious sensibilities.

When your religion (pick one, anyone: Islam, Catholic, Christian) stop starting wars and slaughtering people in the name of your God, looking the other way while men rape boys (specific to Catholics), stoning women for not wearing the right clothes (specific to Islam), discriminating against women (Catholics) and gays (all of them), and promoting poverty and AIDS in third world countries with their stance against birth control and condoms (Catholics again) come talk to me about how my “dirty” words offend you.

Reason #2: Swearing is the product of a small mind.

Well hell, I like my mind. If swearing means its small, then I’ll take a small mind any day of the week. You and your big mind can go fuck yourself.

Reason #3: Swearing reveals a lack of creativity. It’s the sign of a poor writer. If you have to swear, the theory goes, it’s because you’re not a good enough writer to figure out a better way of saying what you want to say (this one came up again and again in the Ragan forum).

Well . . . bullshit. I’ll tell you what: Let’s pick a topic, any topic, and we’ll both write essays on it. I’ll use swear words if it’s appropriate or to make a certain point (which is the only reason to swear when you write . . . but it’s a damned good reason); you can write lily-white prose with nothing stronger than “gosh” in it.

And let’s see who writes the better essay.

Maybe your essay will be better. Maybe mine will be. But if yours is better or more creative, it won’t be because mine had swear words in it and yours didn’t.

The policy—which again, I support, for ragan.com—has already bitten me on the ass.

They re-ran one of my old blog posts last week. In it, I talk about a job title that I read about in an employee publication. The title was “Concerns Coordinator.” The job entails listening to employee complaints day after day.

The woman featured in the article looked like she was about to snap, and go postal.

I said that this job would eventually drive this woman insane, and I wrote the follow-up story I expected to see in the publication in about two months:

Concerns Coordinator kills four, wounds seven

'In a dramatic turn of events, former Concerns Coordinator Cindy Kasak reportedly stormed into the cafeteria on Friday with what police say was a 12-gauge shotgun, and opened fire, killing four of her fellow employees before turning the gun on herself.

According to eyewitnesses, Kasak reportedly kept shouting, 'What are your concerns now, you whiny little bitches!?!?!? What are your concerns now!?!?!'

Under the new policy, “whiny little bitches” was changed to “whiny little idiots.”

But that’s not the same thing, is it? They’re NOT idiots. They’re whiny little bitches. And that's what Cindy would have called them, in her mindless rage. Idiots doesn’t work as well.

I chose that word carefully, and I chose it for a reason. Changing it took some of the air out of the piece.

I’m not sure how this will play out in the future . . . but it all makes me very nervous.

Okay . . . first of all, THANK YOU to everyone who submitted a haiku. I enjoyed reading them . . . in fact, it's the most I've ever enjoyed doing this blog, and I've enjoyed lots of things out there over the years.

Now, for the winner. It was done fairly, and with no bias. Again, it was not judged on quality, because that would be too hard. I picked one person at random, with multiple people having more of a chance.

AND THE WINNER IS . . . . .

Chuck "The Goose" Gose. Which is approriate, I guess, since he was one of the first ones to submit, and submit several excellent specimens.

So, Congratulations, Chuck!!! For those of you who don't know Chuck, he is from Indiana. So this is a real treat for him to come to the big city . . . Chuck, we have restaurants here, and theater, and all sorts of neat things.

But if you start missing the run-down areas of Indiana, you can always go to the South Side, which is Indiana-like.

I'll make sure the good people at Ragan know you're the winner. Of course, I never asked them if I could do this contest, so they may tell me to go to hell. But probably not.

See you in Chicago in May. As for the seven drinks, we should probably break them up a bit, since you're from Indiana, and are only used to drinking weak moonshine. We'll probably have three or four on the first night, three or four more on the second night.

And please bring your wife. She's nice.

Again, thanks to everyone who played!!

Steve C.

I ran into an interesting story in an employee publication yesterday. I sort of had to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Here was the headline:

Can you haiku? Vent your technology frustrations with a verse

That’s right . . . the editor was asking readers to take time out from work to write haikus about the struggles with technology—using the standard 5-7-5 syllables-per-verse haiku formula.

She even gives them an example! Here it is:

No, say it's not so
Frozen words on screen, help me
The day’s work, hanging.

Of course, the problem with running these sorts of contests inside organizations is that you’re not going to get any really edgy haikus. Everybody will be polite and safe and . . . well, boring.

For example, you’re not going to get anything like this:

Mister I.T. Man
Trousers soaked dark with urine
Won’t answer my calls

And you’re not going to get anything interesting like this:

IT Department
Steaming sinkhole of liars
It’s not the bandwidth

But I sort of like the idea of writing haikus about corporate topics . . . so I thought maybe we could have a contest out here on Corporate Hallucinations. Anyone who submits a haiku on any corporate, government, or organizational topic will go into a drawing for a free registration to this year’s Corporate Communicator’s Conference!

Just remember to stick to the 5-7-5 syllable format for haikus.

And you don’t have to write about IT or technology. You can do any topic, and any department. For example, you might want to do HR:

Human Resources
Why do they hate all humans?
They don’t talk normal

Or maybe accounting:

Bean counters count beans
They don’t make any money
Where is their power?

Anything is fair game . . . so let’s have some fun! And I'll buy the winner seven drinks in Chicago at CCC.

A recent Gallup poll reveals that U.S. workers say they waste about an hour at work each day.

That got me thinking about how much time I waste every day. So I decided to keep a minute-by-minute log of one of my work days.

Now, it should be noted that this was one of my rare, “work from home” days. I wasn’t traveling; I wasn’t doing consulting; I wasn’t teaching a seminar; and I wasn’t being Mr. Mom with my son.

Those are more typical days for me. On this day, the day I decided to monitor, I was just working from the home office. So here we go . . .

4:13 a.m.: I wake with a start—and with an idea for a column for ragan.com. I go to my office (which is the the dining room table; Cindy has taken over the actual office in the apartment, under the theory that she actually uses it to work) turn on the computer, and write down my idea. I then look at it for five minutes, and decide it’s not a very good idea after all. I put it in the file of “possible ideas for stories and columns.” There are now 427 ideas in there that I’ll never write about.

4:23: I make a pot of tea and eat an orange. I haven’t had a margarita in two weeks. I contemplate going to El Jardin’s for lunch.

4:47: I hear Cindy in the shower, getting ready to go to Topeka, Kansas on business.

4:49: I try to get involved in Cindy’s shower. I am rebuffed. Heartily.

5:10: I start to answer the 87 e-mails that are in my “answer immediately” e-mail folder. Those e-mails have been in there since November. It is February. There are also about another 50 unanswered e-mails in my regular e-mail in-box.

5:13: I hear Cindy out of the shower and getting dressed. I try to get involved in that process. I am rebuffed again. Fun Cindy has switched to Professional Cindy, and I am alone. Back to e-mail.

5:30: Cindy leaves for Topeka. It’s me and the cats. Back to e-mail.

5:52: I hate e-mail. But not as much as I hate talking on the phone. I seriously contemplate El Jardin’s for an early lunch. I miss Cindy.

6:10: I am bored. I go to www.dartagnan.com, the gourmet food site, and order two quarts of duck fat, because I plan on making my own duck confit this week. There are so many wonderful things at dartagnan—rabbit and venison and pheasant and duck terrines and pates and sausages. Other men, when their wives leave on business, go to porn sites. I go to food sites.

7:15: I pull myself off dartagnan.com to go to Cubs.com, to see the latest Spring Training news.

7:30: Back to e-mail. I feel like that Sissypuss guy pushing the rock up the hill again and again.

8:15: I go to www.epicurious.com and look for recipes for duck confit. There are so many recipes for duck that I get sucked into reading all of them.

8:47: I decide that if I’m going to make duck confit from scratch, I might as well learn from the master, so I go in the kitchen and get my Julia Child/Jacque Pepin cooking bible, and copy down all the ingredients. I wonder if I should shop before or after El Jardin’s.

9:00: Back to e-mail. Six more messages have come in already today. I answer those right away, because of a New Year’s resolution I made to answer e-mails right away.

9:15: I decide that if I’m going to make duck confit, I might as well double the recipe, and use some of it to make cassoulet. I get the book out again, to get the ingredients.

9:20: I go back to Dartagnan to alter my order.

9:48: I’ve had a speaker cancel his session at the big Social Media conference in Las Vegas. I do some research trying to find a replacement.

10:30: I do an interview for a Ragan Report story. God, I hate the phone. By the time I type up my notes, it is . . . .

11:15: El Jardin’s is open, and I’m ready for lunch. I drink three margaritas, and read the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader (our alternative paper), and the New York Times. I do the Tribune’s crossword puzzle. I also debut two new magic tricks for the daughter of one of the El Jardin’s waitresses.

2:00: Nap time

3:10: Time to get up! This would normally be time for my “status meeting” with Cindy, but she’s in Topeka. So I have a status meeting with myself. It is not the same.

3:20: Back in the saddle! 14 more e-mails have come in. I put them in the “answer immediately” folder, because I have more pressing things to do than answer e-mail.

3:41: I work on my Ragan Report story.

4:00: I call someone back about a possible in-house workshop

4:20: I work on my Ragan Report story.

4:45: I go to ragan.com to see if anyone has commented on my stories there. They have not. I decide the Social Media bloom is off the rose, and it’s all a fad.

4:51: I go to this blog, to see if there are any new comments. There are not. I re-read my blog item, to see if it was funny. I spend countless hours a month trying to decide if I’m funny. I almost always decide that I am not.

4:55: I work on my Ragan Report story.

5:00: I feel guilty quitting at 5, since I took a long lunch. But I did start at 5:37, and there is shopping to be done, dinner to be eaten, wine to be drunk, and books to be read.

Tomorrow, I will spend the day with my son, and not work at all.

I don’t think a single minute of either day will have been wasted.

My wife Cindy is a horrible networker.

Now, anyone who knows Cindy, or who has even just met her once, will be surprised by that statement. She’s outgoing, funny, a great conversationalist, not shy at all, and a terrific listener.

But she sucks at what she calls “forced networking.” This is when you are at a professional event, and there are clusters of people standing around networking and talking, and you don’t know anyone.

You have to sort of butt your way into one of the groups, introduce yourself, try to catch up on the conversation, and start contributing.

It’s hell . . . and I can’t think of anyone who likes doing it except Mark Ragan. He's weird like that. I think it's the reporter in him.

And yet it must be done. Especially when you spend half your life at those types of events, it seems. It's either butt in, or stand in a corner by yourself.

Well, late last year, Cindy and I were at a function where I was the speaker, and there was a reception before the event. Cindy got there before me for some reason, and when I walked in the room, it was the usual set up:

Little clusters of three and four people who didn’t know each other standing around desperately trying to make conversation.

Except for Cindy. I found her in the corner, where she was diddling her Dingleberry.

I pounced. “What are you doing?” I said to her.

“I needed to e-mail Greg,” she said. Greg is our accountant, and to my knowledge, Cindy has never sent an e-mail to Greg from her Dingleberry. Never.

“Why, is something important up?” I asked her. “Tell me all about it!”

She knew she was busted. She wasn't e-mailing Greg. She was just pretending to do something so she wouldn't have to network. “I hate this,” she whispered. “I suck at it. I hate butting into other peoples’ conversations.”

So of course I teased her and called her a bedwetter and told her that maybe she should consider moving out of communications and into the accounting profession, or maybe the IT profession, where nobody talks to anybody at the industry conferences.

But then she busted me.

“You know, it’s real easy for you to do this,” she said. “You’re recognizable. You’re usually the speaker, or people know you from your blog, or they’ve seen your fat head on one of the eight thousand promotions Ragan sends out with your picture on it. You don’t have to butt in at these things. People come up to you.”

Sure enough, as she was talking, two women from a government agency who had been in one of my seminars earlier in the year came up, and within seconds we were chatting and laughing and drinking and . . . dare I say it, networking.

But, I told Cindy afterwards . . . even if people didn’t recognize me, I would still be good at networking. I would easily and seamlessly integrate myself into first one group, then another, until I found the one with the best conversations. Because, I told her, I am a communicator. It's what I do!

“Bullshit,” she said. “If nobody recognized you, you’d go get a drink at the bar and take it back to your room.”

Well . . . we agreed to disagree. And then a month later, I was put to the test.

I was invited to Asheville, N.C. (a beautiful part of the country) to speak at Duke Energy’s annual communication meeting.

I was speaking on Friday morning, and there was a reception Thursday night. The event was being held at this historical landmark of a hotel in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, my room had a gorgeous view, the clients had so far been more than friendly . . . it was a dream job.

So I got to my room after the flight, showered, then headed down to the networking reception. I walked in . . . and waited. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. But I was . . . I was doing exactly what Cindy said I did. I was waiting for someone to come up to me!

I mean, surely the folks who hired me would come up and introduce themselves, right? One of them had seen me speak before, and I have the kind of head one doesn't easily forget.

I waited some more. Nothing. I was standing by myself. I started eyeing some of the clusters of people. I got a drink. I waited some more. By myself. There might not be a worse feeling in the world than standing in a roomful of people by yourself.

What I didn’t know was that the woman who knew me best wasn’t there . . . and neither were any of the other communicators whom I’d had conversations with.

So . . . nobody knew who the hell I was. I was on my own. I needed to network the hard way . . . and I completely choked.

First, I walked slowly through the entire room, desperately trying to make eye contact with someone. Nope. Then I made another circuit. Slowly. Still nothing. Now, ten minutes have gone by, and I haven’t talked to a soul.

I tried standing by the bar . . . but the bartender was too busy to talk. Then I realized something: these folks all knew each other!

They were all engrossed in their own conversations . . . they weren’t going to come up to me, and I wasn’t going to be able to find any lone stragglers who also didn’t have anyone to talk to, that I could leech on to.

I was going to have to butt into a cluster of people. And I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cluster-butt.

I mean, I tried, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I made another long circuit through the room. I was about to butt into one friendly-looking group, when one of the woman let out a loud shriek of laughter. I couldn’t cluster-butt in on that!

I started circling a group of guys, hovering nearby, thinking maybe I could get in there. But they weren’t saying much. As the new person, I’d be the main attraction, like raw meat tossed into a tiger’s cage. I wasn’t up for that . . . so I moved on.

And so it went . . . for 20 agonizing minutes. I was sure that everyone in the room was secretly watching me, whispering things like:

"Hey, who's the Uncle Fester lookalike?"

"Check out the pervert in the corner . . . he keeps staring at everyone."

"Hey, why don't you go talk to Curly?"

"Hell no, you go talk to him!"

"Hell no!"

Finally, I remembered Cindy’s trick: the Dingleberry! At least I would appear to be doing something and not just standing there by myself! I could send Cindy an e-mail!

I reached for it . . . and realized that I had I left the damn thing in my hotel room.

So then I did something I never thought I would do. It was a complete and total choke job. I knew that people had noticed me standing by myself for 20 minutes, so I felt that just walking out of the room would be a humiliating retreat.

So instead, as I was standing there by myself, sweating, with nobody to talk to, feeling like I was on an island and under a microscope . . . I answered my wallet.

Yes, that’s right. I answered my wallet. I’m not proud of it, but I took my wallet out of my suit coat pocket, held it up to my ear like it was a phone, mouthed a couple of words, put a concerned look on my face, and stormed through the party talking to my wallet.

I went back to my room, finished my drink . . . and decided I would have to face my fears. I went back . . . but this time, I told myself, I was going to cluster-butt my way into the first group I saw.

But I didn’t have to. This time, someone did recognize me as soon as I walked in, and welcomed me warmly into his group. I met the husband of the vice president who had brought me in, and he was a great storyteller, and we had some drinks together, and I met more people, and they were all wonderful, hospitable southerners.

They were great people, the speech was a hit, and it was a wonderful memory all the way around.

Except for the fact that I had a two-minute conversation with my wallet.

Now, I’d like to think that the second time I went down to the party, I would have cluster-butted . . . but I’ll never know for sure. And that’s depressing.

And I’m curious: Has anyone else ever talked to their wallet to get out of a room? Have you cut yourself with the bartender’s lime-slicing knife to get out, which is something else I considered?

Or is just me?

There was a very disturbing article in the Chicago Tribune yesterday.

It was titled: “Your personal assistant, half a world away.”

It seems that it’s becoming somewhat common practice for people in the U.S. who are too busy to tend to their own lives to hire personal assistants.

Now, there is nothing man bites dog about that, right?

Since the first executive at IBM first strapped on a tie and picked up a briefcase, harried titans of the corporate world have hired personal assistants to plan their travel, pick up their dry cleaning, send flowers to their spouses after they’ve screwed something up, and otherwise do the menial tasks they don’t want to do.

But there are two twists to the story:

1. First, it’s not just busy executives. It’s regular people. And, more importantly . . .

2. The personal assistants are in India.

Yes, that’s right, even personal assistants are being outsourced to India, where everything is cheaper and you get more bangalor for your buck.

Now, many of the tasks these people have their Indian personal assistants to do are mundane: Book travel, find lost luggage, create a PowerPoint presentation, etc. But some of the tasks that people are “outsourcing” to Indian personal assistants are disturbing, to say the least.

According to the article, the following tasks are all recent examples of the kinds of things people are asking their Indian personal assistants to do:

* “Calling clients’ friends and family to say “'happy birthday.'”

* “Searching online personals for matches.”

* “Reminding a client not to speed and paying parking fines.”

* “Apologizing and sending flowers to spouses on clients’ behalf.”

* “Buying underwear on behalf of the client.”

* “Reading bedtime stories to a young child on the phone.”

* “Talking to parents in client’s stead.”

* “Engaging the client’s spouse in hot, steamy phone sex when the client is too exhausted to participate in lovemaking activities."

Okay, I made that last one up. But only the last one! And is outsourcing dirty phone sex with your wife really any stranger than having your assistant read stories to your kid?

And I don’t even want to think about what would happen if my mom ever got a call from my personal assistant, Rajeeshi, enquiring about her health and well being.

I’m trying to imagine the scenario in the typical midwestern house, as a family gets ready for bed in this scary new world:

Scene: A mom and her eight-year-old daughter Tiffany are in bed, reading The Trumpet of the Swan.

Soccer Mommy: That’s it for now, sweetie. Mommy has to finish her PowerPoint presentation for tomorrow, make your lunch, finish the laundry, update her blog, listen to the Oprah podcast, check on my eBay auctions, and call in the Peapod food delivery order for next week.

Tiffany: But Mommy, you always read two chapters when Daddy isn’t here. One for you and one for Daddy, that’s what you always say.

Mommy: I know, honey. But there is too much to do tonight, and Daddy is with an important client and can’t even call to say good night. But guess what? Uncle Deepak from India is calling in five minutes! Uncle Deepak is going to read you a chapter and then tuck you into bed over the phone!

Tiffany: Uncle Deepak!! Yay!!! I love Uncle Deepak. Can he also help me with my spelling words?

Mommy: Of course he can!

Tiffany: And Mommy? Some of the older girls at school today were talking about getting something called their “period” and it sounded real scary. Can Uncle Deeprak help me understand that?

Mommy: Of course he can! That’s why Uncle Deepak is a part of the family!!

The phone rings. Mommy answers it. It is Deepak, the family’s personal assistant, calling from Bangalor.

Deepak: Good evenings! It is I, Deepak. Your loving husband wanted me to tell you that he says good night, and to say that he is very horny for you while he is on the road. Also, I have updated your MySpace page and found you 417 new online friends! Also, as you requested, I have spent many fine hours at the Victoria Secret Web site, and located you some sexy-time new underwear which will arrive tomorrow, in time for your majestic husband's glorious homecoming! I am also to called your mother for you. She wishes to nag you about working so hard, and I said you accepted such nagging with great respect and adoration. Now, please to put on Tiffany, so we can finish up the homework and get into the Swan’s Trumpet again!

Mommy: Thanks, Deepak . . . I don’t know what we’d do without you. Listen . . . I just want to warn you. Tiffany is at an age when she has some questions about . . . you know, boys and her body. Are you okay with that?

Deepak: Oh, yes, Mrs. Sahib. Deepak is very well versed in both the bees and the birds. I will help her to understand the miracles of the universe as they perpetrate to her body.

Mommy: Thank you, Deepak . . . I would do it myself, but Dr. Phil finally got that interview with Brittany Spears, and I’m just dying to watch the tape.

Out here at Corporate Hallucinations, we talk a lot about executive communication. Usually, I like to make fun of it . . . because so many executives are so bad at it.

Face it: it’s fun to make fun of those constipated-looking white guys on page two of the employee publication, with their stupid signature on the bottom of the page, as if they are trying to say: “Hey, I swear, I wrote this column myself! Look, I even signed it! I must have wrote it, because I signed it! That’s my signature, right there on the bottom!”

But while it’s easy to have some laughs at their expense, every once in a while I see an example of bad executive communication that’s not funny at all. Once a year or so, I’ll come across a case where poor—or worse, dishonest—CEO communication really hurts the employees. I mean, really hurts them.

In fact, this just happened to me personally.

First, you have to understand that, even though I work for myself and have my own company, I consider Mark Ragan of Ragan Communications to be my CEO.

Mark hired me right out of college 16 years ago. He gave me the chance to edit the Ragan Report, Ragan’s flagship newsletter, even though I only had a year’s worth of experience at the time. He took a flyer on me and put me on the road to do seminars, something I love doing.

Mark has opened doors for me throughout my career. So even though I now have my own company, I still consider Mark to be my CEO. I sometimes even call him “Chief” just to irritate him.

So when Mark tells me something, it means a lot, because it’s coming from the CEO. Just like at any other organization where employees want and need to trust the CEO, I want and need to trust Mark.

But I’m not sure I can do that anymore. And there’s a lesson here for communicators. Here’s the story:

Mark, as some of you may know, was diagnosed last year with prostate cancer. He is doing great, and all tests are good, and he somehow has more energy than ever. Which is a scary concept to Ragan employees everywhere.

But he’s been telling any male who will listen—and, since he’s the CEO, we all listen—to get a PSA test. That’s the test that indicates whether you might have prostate cancer.

Well, I was in the office the other day, and I happened to mention to Mark that I was going to the doctor to get a checkup.

“Get that Goddamned PSA test,” he said. “I met guys in treatment younger than you who had prostate cancer. You better get it done.”

Now, as a guy, just the very word “prostate” scares me. It conjures up visions of rubber gloves and pain and horrific invasions into places that are sacred to me. So I’d rather just not think about it at all.

Mark, being Mark, a trained reporter, sensed my hesitation. “It’s just a blood test,” he told me. “All they’re going to do is take some blood. It’s that easy. The doctor will tell you that you’re too young to worry about it, but you need to insist on it.”

A blood test? I could handle a blood test, I said to myself. Any sissy could handle a blood test. So when I went to the doctor, I told him I wanted a PSA test.

“You’re a little young,” he said—just like Mark, my CEO, said he would.

Thanks to my CEO, however, I was ready for that particular line of bullshit.

“No, I’m not,” I said, with what I hoped was a steely look of determination in my eyes. “My friend Mark just battled prostate cancer, and he told me he met tons of guys my age who were going through it. I really want that test.”

Now, I don’t know if I pissed the doctor off by telling him his business, or what. But he looked at me for a while, before he finally said:

“Okay. I also want to check your prostate,” he said.

“Right,” I said. “That’s what the PSA test is. Test away, my good man. Test away.”

But that’s not what he meant.

“I also want to do a digital rectum exam,” he said.

Digital! Rectum! Exam! Those are exactly the words I didn’t want to hear! Those are the words I’ve been afraid of since I knew what a rectum was!

And I’m not stupid. I knew “digital” didn’t mean electronic, as in a clock. It meant digits, as in fingers. As in fingers and knuckles and fingernails and all of those things getting intimate with my rectum.

But, God help me, it was too late to back off. And I can only say this: If Mark Ragan were within reach at that moment in time, I would have given him a digital rectum exam with the doctor’s stethoscope, followed by that little tool they stick in your ears and throat, before finishing up with a chair leg.

Before I could even realize what was happening, I was laying on my side, while the doctor made small talk and greased up what must have been four or five digits, and a limb, and stuffed them into my rectal test area. In this particular doctor’s office, “digital” apparently meant: “entire arm.”

I was too shaken up afterwards to look at the doctor’s hands, but this guy had to have been a cross between Herman Munster and a Polish pipe fitter.

And as I made my way home, walking a little like a dog that has just been fixed, I realized that a part of me could never trust my CEO again, because he didn’t tell me the whole truth.

He left out the hard part, the part he thought I wouldn’t want to hear, or couldn’t handle . . . which is what CEOs tend to do when it comes to employee communication. They sugarcoat. They spin. They think employees can’t handle the truth.

The lesson for communicators is obvious:

Make sure your CEO tells employees the whole story—even the bad news. Especially the bad news. In fact, make sure they understand the bad news first, before anything else. Because if the bad stuff gets sprung on them unawares, you’ll never be able to build that trust back again.

Telling someone about a “restructuring” but leaving out the “layoffs” part is like telling them to take a blood test and neglecting to tell them they’re about to take it up the ass.