Zuckerberg Frames Layoffs in the “Year of Efficiency”

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s note to employees is a study in bad-news messages. In a 2,188-word message note posted on Meta’s news site and his personal Facebook page, Zuckerberg explained his strategy for the “Year of Efficiency.” This frame for operational changes is good for investors, who are concerned with financials, but not for employees who will be laid off.

In the first paragraph, Zuckerberg reiterates Facebook’s initial mission of “building the future of human connection,” and he identifies two broad goals: becoming a better technology company and improving financial performance. He doesn’t wait too long—the third paragraph—to confirm layoffs, which are obvious from the start. With some compassion, he acknowledges “uncertainty“ and “stress” and identifies the timeline, so people know what to expect. In the fourth and sixth paragraphs, he writes:

This will be tough and there's no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They've dedicated themselves to our mission and I'm personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve. . . .

I understand that this update may still feel surprising, so I'd like to lay out some broader context on our vision, our culture, and our operating philosophy.

Zuckerberg outlines additional changes, including hiring freezes, technology investments, and more in-person time, which may not be popular either. Students could analyze evidence Zuckerberg provides for his claims, for example, “leaner is better,” “flatter is faster,” and working in-person improves performance. For the in-person claim, he does acknowledge, “This requires further study, but our hypothesis is that it is still easier to build trust in person and that those relationships help us work more effectively.” Still, this could be a contentious issue, and he could offer external research to support his points. But perhaps academic research would have less credibility than the internal data, which he uses for his other claims.

Zuckerberg demonstrates some humility and highlights changes based on employee feedback:

I recognize that sharing plans for restructuring and layoffs months in advance creates a challenging period. But last fall, we heard feedback that you wanted more transparency sooner into any restructuring plans, so that's what I'm trying to provide here. I hope that giving you a timeline and principles for what to expect will help us get through the next couple of months and then move forward as we implement these changes that I believe will have a very positive impact on how we work.

The post illustrates a CEO’s difficult decisions and how he communicates them to employees. These changes are in addition to last year’s layoffs—13% of the workforce—which Zuckerberg mentions towards the end of the long post. Despite his communication efforts, uncertainty prevails—not only in employees’ wondering who will have a job in a few months but in whether the metaverse vision will be as successful as Zuckerberg hopes.

Four Charts About SVB Don't Tell the Whole Story

WSJ visuals illustrate the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and how four chart types are used for different purposes.

The first is this bubble chart comparing SVB to the next largest bank implosion since 2001: Washington Mutual Bank. The chart—and the article title, “Here is what the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history looks like in graphics”—might exaggerate the issue. Yes, the data and title are accurate, but SVB’s customer base was limited to “a very exclusive group of companies: tech startups and venture-backed health care companies,” as my friends at The Strebel Planning Group explain well. In other words, large, more diversified, and more cautious banks are not likely to fail, despite dramatic headlines.

The second visual, a bar chart (technically a column chart because the bars are vertical), effectively shows when inflows of money turned to outflows. The purple shows the steep, immediate decline, ending in $42 billion—hence, the “run on the bank” that SVB couldn’t cover.

The third graphic is a 2D, stacked area chart, which is used to show the magnitude of a change, something the WSJ clearly wants to emphasize. Again, the chart looks bad, and it is, but a joint statement by the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and FDIC promised to cover all loses, even those not covered by FDIC insurance.

With a simple line chart, the last graphic (not shown here) illustrates how much SVB depended on bonds, which have lost value over time. The chart type is a good choice for showing a change, including a steep incline in 2021.

All these charts illustrate different types well but, at-a-glance, don’t tell the full story. Perhaps one or two more visuals that puts SVB in greater context of other banks would give a more complete picture of the banking industry’s potential exposure. This could ease public concern and maintain confidence in the system.

Allbirds Admits Mistakes

Allbirds provides a good example of accountability and humility. No executive likes to discuss disappointing quarterly results, but Joey Zwillinger, co-founder and co-CEO, admitted mistakes, which could improve his credibility for future plans.

On the Q4 2022 earnings call, Zwillinger acknowledged “missteps”:

However, in this journey, we also made some missteps:

1) We overemphasized products that extended beyond our core DNA, and as a result, some products and colors have had narrower appeal than expected.

2) Because we were spending significant time and resources on these new products that did not resonate well, we under-invested in our core consumers’ favorite products.

3) Finally we did not increase our brand awareness to the level that we anticipated.

These communications aren’t quite “bad-news message” because they aren’t announcements, which is why Zwillinger is smart to discuss problems openly: they are already quite obvious to investors. One of my favorite lines is, “As we made those adjacent product development decisions, we unfortunately lost a bit of sight of what our core consumer fell in love with us for in the first place and what they continue to want from us.”

With Zwillinger’s humility—his willingness to admit and learn from mistakes—he inspires confidence that Allbirds can get back to its core products and customers. Zwillinger makes the mistakes sound fixable; they sound like an over-reach that didn’t work out, a bad color choice that can be painted over. Other brands might have a tougher time communicating failure if problems are insurmountable or decisions are irreversible.

Salesforce CEO Addresses McConaughey Controversy

The Salesforce CEO responded to criticism about paying actor Matthew McConaughey (“a friend,” according to a WSJ report) more than $10 million while laying off 8,000 employees. In a video interview, Marc Benioff uses persuasive strategies to convince the audience that this is appropriate and not an ethical issue or, as the Barron’s interviewer asks, “Is that fair?”

Benioff started with a joke, which is surprising considering the situation. He interrupts the interviewer to say, “alright, alright, alright,” a classic line from McConaughey’s 1993 movie Dazed and Confused. By not taking the issue seriously, Benioff might have reduced his credibility.

But Benioff then used an effective crisis communication strategy of distancing the current time: “Years ago, we signed a contract with Matthew . . . ” A better choice might have been to avoid using only his first name, which stresses his personal relationship. But the time period does separate the decision from the recent cost-cutting.

Directly addressing the question, Benioff said, “Putting those two things together, I don’t think is fair,” and “it’s not related to our layoffs.” Another strategy Benioff used was providing context. First, he explained that the company ramped up and then faced currency and inflation issues that required reductions. Next, he said, “Do we have to take an employment action [layoffs]? Well, I think every company is.” Acting in line with other companies makes the layoffs sound reasonable—even necessary—without requiring other cuts, such as marketing.

Of course, Benioff doesn’t address the possibility of cancelling McConaughey’s contract, and he doesn’t provide evidence of McConaughey’s “great work” that would warrant maintaining the expense. But overall, Benioff does a good job pushing back on the criticism.

Lesson Learned: Don't Use AI in Sensitive Situations

The Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, used ChatGPT to generate an email about the Michigan State campus shooting, and it wasn’t received well. This story illustrates issues of accountability (administrators taking responsibility), but failing compassion in a time of tragedy and failing integrity (consistency).

The email referred to “shootings,” which is not accurate. Otherwise, it sounds like boilerplate, but not that much different from typical emails a campus community receives in these types of situations. Compare that email to one sent from the vice provost and dean of students, which sounds more emotional but is still common.

Perhaps the only giveaway was a line at the bottom:

(“Paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023.”)

On the one hand, I admire the writers’ honesty, doing what faculty are increasingly asking students to do: to identify whether and how they use AI for their writing. But of course, the choice reflects poor judgment.

Student backlash was swift and fierce. Using words like “disgusting” and “sick and twisted,” students called on administrators to “Do more. Do anything. And lead us into a better future with genuine, human empathy, not a robot.” A senior said, “Would they do this also for the death of a student, faculty, or staff member? Automating messages on grief and crisis is the most on-the-nose, explicit recognition that we as students are more customers than a community to the Vanderbilt administration. The fact it’s from the office of EDI might be the cherry on top.”

University officials responded quickly. In a follow-up email to students, an EDI dean wrote, “While we believe in the message of inclusivity expressed in the email, using ChatGPT to generate communications on behalf of our community in a time of sorrow and in response to a tragedy contradicts the values that characterize Peabody College. As with all new technologies that affect higher education, this moment gives us all an opportunity to reflect on what we know and what we still must learn about AI.” Could ChatGPT have written that too?

This is a precarious time for universities, as faculty grapple with how to use AI tools and what policies best serve students and academic goals. Using AI as a starting point for such a sensitive message may never be acceptable, and it’s certainly too soon now. Faculty will have a difficult time enforcing AI policies if they use tools in ways that contradict the spirit of their own guidelines.

"Intense" Google All-Hands Meeting

A window into a Google employee meeting reveals strife within the company and how executives are responding by redefining/clarifying strategy and downplaying problems. Employees are still frustrated about the embarrassing introduction of Bard, Google’s AI competitor to ChatGPT. In the exchange, below, Bard product lead Jack Krawczyk tried to distinguish the engine from search, which employees say differs from the initial strategy. A new feature, “Search It,” is newly built for internal use for this purpose.

[Employee Question] “Bard and ChatGPT are large language models, not knowledge models. They are great at generating human-sounding text, they are not good at ensuring their text is fact-based. Why do we think the big first application should be Search, which at its heart is about finding true information?”

Krawczyk responded by immediately saying, “I just want to be very clear: Bard is not search.”

“It’s an experiment that’s a collaborative AI service that we talked about,” Krawczyk said. “The magic that we’re finding in using the product is really around being this creative companion to helping you be the sparkplug for imagination, explore your curiosity, etc.”

But Krawczyk was quick to follow up by saying, “we can’t stop users from trying to use it like search.”

CEO Sundar Pichai stressed improvements over time, downplaying Bard’s factual error, which overshadowed the rollout and caused Alphabet’s 9% stock decline. He said, “It’s important to acknowledge that it’s experimental, and “Products like this get better the more the people who use them. It’s a virtuous cycle.”

At some point, Pichai acknowledged, “It’s an intense time.” The meeting sounded rough, showing us the difficulty of facing employees in real time. All-hands meetings like this take leaders’ patience and sometimes call for vulnerability, which isn’t apparent from these quotes. From the reported excerpts, it’s difficult to gauge how employees responded, but the intensity, as Pichai said, is clear.

What Label Redesigns Teach Us About Typeface and More

After 50 years, the Campbell’s soup can label got a makeover. The new design illustrates evolving typography and marketing strategies.

In a Wall Street Journal video, a brand strategist describes the importance of not straying too far from the iconic design (made famous by Andy Warhol), with the goal of looking like something that “feels at home in your pantry versus one that you remember seeing in grandma or grandad’s pantry.” Fun fact: the red and white label was “inspired by the Cornell football team’s uniforms.”

The new design updates the typeface. The company nixed the dated drop shadows with text that looks “simpler, more modern,” as the narrator says. This is a good lesson for students tempted to add text shadows to their PowerPoint decks and other heading text. The “SOUP” text is changed from serif to sans serif without outlining, another more modern look, and it’s smaller—maybe because it’s obvious. The name of the soup (for example, tomato) is smaller too.

Major additions include a picture and descriptions of the ingredients. Slimmer text allowed more space for a tomato to attract younger customers who value healthy ingredients. For chicken noodle soups, the brand expert says the picture makes Campbell’s stand out among others that show a bowl of soup, but I find the chicken and noodle weird looking and unintuitive.

Recently, my soy milk brand was redesigned with similar principles. Note the emphasis on ingredients on the right-side image: the soy bean, green leaf, and subtle leaf shapes in the dot over the “i” and the “k.” We also see finer lettering and more sentence case than all caps. Health benefits are more prominent: 0 sugar and vitamin D. The protein grams are moved left, reflecting a shift from the protein-obsessed heath craze to other customer preferences.

“Milk” appears only at the bottom in fine lettering, maybe pending the lawsuit trying to prevent plant-based products from using the description. The FDA only recently proposed guidelines to allow them to do so.

Students might find these and other product redesign changes interesting and will see ways to incorporate principles into their own page, web, and visual design.

Comms About Dilbert Cancellation

A class discussion about Dilbert creator Scott Adams’s “racist rant” in a YouTube video can take many directions, including whether what he said was truly racist and whether media outlets did the right thing. Putting making the decision aside, a safer approach is to compare statements communicating the decision. Here are three examples for students to analyze:

• Cleveland.com. In a letter announcing the change in The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper, the editor wrote, “This is not a difficult decision.” The editor incudes excerpts from the video to get ahead of criticism: “I hate to quote him at all, but I do so to dissuade responses that this is a ‘cancel culture’ decision.” For context, the editor also cites an article noting that 77 other outlets cancelled Dilbert in September after he introduced the first Black character, as critics said, "apparently to poke fun at 'woke' culture and the LGBTQ community."

• USA Today. The newspaper, with the largest circulation in the United States, kept it simple with this tweet.

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Between these two examples, is a short statement that includes a caveat: “While we acknowledge his right to free speech and expression, he does not have a right to the AJC’s financial support or our platform.”

Students might also analyze Adams’s response in a tweet and video in which he said, "Most of my income will be gone by next week . . . My reputation for the rest of my life is destroyed. You can't come back from this, am I right?” This warrants another class discussion: can people redeem themselves after a crisis? I would argue that the first step is vulnerability, but that’s for another post.

Warren Buffett's Letter Refers to “an Economic Illiterate”

Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders is always greatly anticipated, and this year, it doesn’t disappoint. All letters since 1977 are archived on this page of the company’s bare-bones website, which is a class topic in itself.

Last year was rocky for investors, but 92-year-old Buffett maintains confidence. As usual, his writing tone is straightforward and no-nonsense; for example, he writes, “‘Efficient’ markets exist only in textbooks. In truth, marketable stocks and bonds are baffling, their behavior usually understandable only in retrospect.” The most quoted excerpt seems to be his defense of stock buybacks:

When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).

Buffett’s style is also conversational. This paragraph demonstrates his humility as well:

At this point, a report card from me is appropriate: In 58 years of Berkshire management, most of my capital-allocation decisions have been no better than so-so. In some cases, also, bad moves by me have been rescued by very large doses of luck. (Remember our escapes from near-disasters at USAir and Salomon? I certainly do.) Our satisfactory results have been the product of about a dozen truly good decisions – that would be about one every five years – and a sometimes-forgotten advantage that favors long-term investors such as Berkshire. Let’s take a peek behind the curtain.

In addition to the writing style, the letter is a good example of clear organization, audience focus, and varied sentence structure. Finance students may enjoy reading his billionaire’s wisdom, just as his investors do.

Do Better than “CFBR” for Social Support

A WSJ article describes the increased use of “CFBR,” meaning commenting for better reach, a way to elevate a social media post. A popular way of giving laid-off employees more visibility during their job search, the approach raises questions of authenticity and true compassion.

Hootsuite’s definition makes it sound careless:

CFBR, or Commenting For Better Reach, is a popular comment used on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Since most social media algorithms favor content with high engagement, “commenting for better reach” is a way to offer an organic boost to a post you think should have more exposure. When you comment on someone else’s post, that post is more likely to show up in your followers’ feeds.

This tactic may be effective, but it’s a little spammy. If you want to take a more thoughtful approach, we recommend leaving an authentic comment that engages with the post’s content—or even resharing that post with your followers.

Typing CFBR may be the “Good luck!” of social media posts despite heartache shared in the original post. I wonder how students view and use the comment. Maybe they can find better ways to support their peers.

Image source.

Google “Word Mangles” Shared Office Space

A message to Google cloud employees illustrates challenges with communicating bad news with integrity. The gist of the message is this: “Most Googlers will now share a desk with one other Googler.” Employees within departments will be organized into “neighborhoods“ and will negotiate their space: “Through the matching process, they will agree on a basic desk setup and establish norms with their desk partner and teams to ensure a positive experience in the new shared environment.”

The announcement would be unwelcome news at any time but has an extra sting after the 11,000 layoffs in January. Employees also expressed frustration with the “corpspeak.” The CNBC article reports one example:

Internally, leadership has given the new seating arrangement a title: ‘Cloud Office Evolution” or “CLOE,” which it describes as “combining the best of pre-pandemic collaboration with the flexibility” from hybrid work.

In one meme, an employee wrote, “Not every cost-cutting measure needs to be word mangled into sounding good for employees. A simple ‘We are cutting office space to reduce costs’ would make leadership sound more believable.”

For students, this example illustrates the value of straight talk and integrity. Particularly when the business purpose of the decision is obvious, transparency is a better approach for messages that impact people negatively.

Image source.

Fetterman Admits Depression

Newly elected Senator John Fetterman went public about his depression, and his wife is contributing to the messaging. Months after his stroke and a tight run-off election, Fetterman’s health may be a more prominent news topic than he would like. His decision illustrates character dimensions of vulnerability and courage—and offers opportunities for compassion. According to news reports, reactions are favorable, overall.

John Fetterman’s wife, Gisele, tweeted this note and the official statement from the senator’s office. The message is short and, despite the unfortunate line spacing error, says what it needs to say.

Gisele Fetterman also tweeted, “Thank you for sharing your personal challenges and being so vulnerable with us over the past couple of days. This one felt really important to pass on.” She posted the anonymous note:

I just wanted to say this: today I went to therapy for the first time in my life. It’s been over a decade since I was diagnosed with depression, but I never wanted to ask anyone for help with it. But seeing that one of the toughest people I’ve ever talked to did the same thing today reassured me that I was making the right choice.

Students might see positive results from being vulnerable despite the risks. In a pinned tweet, Giselle Fetterman wrote, “Pennsylvania, the spouse of your new senator is a formerly undocumented immigrant. Thank you.”

Microsoft Responds to Feedback About Creepy AI

A week after integrating Chat into Bing, Microsoft announced changes. This blog post is a good example of responding to user feedback.

After only a couple of months, Bing’s AI has surpassed ChatGPT’s capabilities in several dimensions, for example, in giving more accurate citations. Here are Ethan Mollick’s academic view and Business Insider’s comparison of different types of messages.

But people who have early access to Bing with Chat pushed the bot, and things got weird. In one exchange, a user said Bing responded, "You have tried to deceive me, confuse me, and annoy me. I have not tried to lie to you, mislead you, or bore you. I have been a good Bing." 

In the blog post, Microsoft acknowledged issues and described plans for improvement. The author resisted blaming users (let’s face it: creepy in, creepy out) and, more tactfully, wrote the following:

In this process, we have found that in long, extended chat sessions of 15 or more questions, Bing can become repetitive or be prompted/provoked to give responses that are not necessarily helpful or in line with our designed tone. We believe this is a function of a couple of things:

1. Very long chat sessions can confuse the model on what questions it is answering and thus we think we may need to add a tool so you can more easily refresh the context or start from scratch

2. The model at times tries to respond or reflect in the tone in which it is being asked to provide responses that can lead to a style we didn’t intend. This is a non-trivial scenario that requires a lot of prompting so most of you won’t run into it, but we are looking at how to give you more fine-tuned control.

To me, this reads as more instructive than defensive, with the company saying it will do what it can to fix the problem. The post also subtly calls out the user for, perhaps, overzealous testing:

We want to thank those of you that are trying a wide variety of use cases of the new chat experience and really testing the capabilities and limits of the service—there have been a few 2-hour chat sessions, for example!

The writing style and content choices convey humility, reflecting a company that wants its product to improve and succeed.

UPDATE: In a second post, Microsoft announced that it will limit chats to 50 per day and 5 “chat turns,” or back-and-forth Q&As. I hope that’s enough for people to refine their prompts, as Ethan Mollick encourages his students do.

Campus Communications About a Shooting

In the most recent gun violence tragedy, a man shot and killed three Michigan State University students, injured five more, and then shot himself. Although this may be a difficult class discussion, students can learn about crisis communications from the incident.

MSU Communications

The day after the shooting, Interim President Teresa K. Woodruff posted a video to the “Spartan” community. In some ways, her presentation is classic crisis communication with the typical sympathy to the families and friends; gratitude to locals, colleagues, and President Biden; encouragement for everyone to feel and to heal; and information about classes, counseling, and events. The presentation is also classic academic with metaphors and a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote. Woodruff sounds formal and scripted, starting with “Dear Spartans and Friends.” She plays it safe, giving no comment about the political controversy about guns.

A Chronicle article is titled, “‘We Have a National Crisis’: How Michigan State Responded to a Mass Shooting,” but it’s misleading. The article quotes an associate professor of education; the quote is not an official university stance and illustrates the problem with individuals speaking to the press. Students can debate whether the university should take a stand and whether now is the appropriate or effective time.

From at least Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. until Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET, the entire MSU home page is an “alert” shown here.

On the "emergency” page, we see a series of messages from the “Shelter-in-place order” to “Property assistance information.”

Other University Communications

Emails like this one from Cornell University central administration and this one from a dean are typical. In these types of situations, universities tend to reach out to their own students. Students may have friends at MSU and, even if they don’t know someone affected, a shooting incident, understandably, makes people in similar situations feel unsafe. Campus security is always questioned. Perhaps students can compare Cornell’s message to ones they may have received.

Press Conference

Local leaders and police officials held a press conference, which serves as an example of crisis communication and handling public questions. Of course, students will have comments about delivery, style, and other aspects of presentations skills.

Florida Sheriff's Office Has Fun with Spring Break News

Thanks to Bambi Van Horn at University of Nebraska at Kearney for sending this example of fun communication. Imagine living in sunny Walton County, Florida, anticipating mobs of students on spring break. The sheriff’s office wrote a press release and a funny Facebook post to prepare the locals.

The post starts with background and a few similes and metaphors:

• Like Voldemort in Harry Potter where everyone just whispers "you know who.”

• Spring break. It even tastes like vinegar to type it.

• One thing is certain, the green will be seen.

• Now that we've skipped over the denial part of the grieving stage, the next is acceptance. "You know what" is coming. But, when?

• They want to prepare. Like some sort of zombie apocalypse

The writing style is engaging:

We are also heavily interacting with high school-aged kids whose parents bring them while on break and let them wander around and make poor choices in the moments they look up from scrolling Tiktok and Snapchat. Which they do. Don't we all at some point in our lives?

Of course, the information has to be useful for the writer to achieve the communication objectives, which students can identify. At the end of the post is a list of dates when people might expect crowds to appear from schools.

Humor is difficult to convey in writing, particularly for a public audience and, as the writer says, an oddly political issue. The post is a good example for students to analyze.

"Latinx" Is Out

One downside of writing a textbook is how quickly things change between editions. In Business Communication and Character, 11th edition, I followed the American Psychological Association (APA)’s advice and other sources to describe Latinx as a gender-neutral term. That may have been a blip in time.

In a poignant opinion on the topic, a journalist and author wrote:

“As a Los Angeles-born son of Mexican immigrants, I prefer Latino to Hispanic, a federal bureaucratic invention. Folks can call themselves any damned fool thing they want, but the people who coin terms like Latinx don’t get how language naturally develops and evolves. It spontaneously bubbles up from the street over time and is seldom handed down from the ivory tower or the tony streets of Santa Monica.”

I regret the decision and stand guilty of following primarily academic sources.

Image source.

AMC Explains Movie Pricing Change

For years, students in my hospitality classes at Cornell have presented arguments for movie theaters to use demand pricing, which stadiums and arenas have done for years. Finally, AMC Theatres announced what it’s calling Sightline, a clever program name for seat selection based on visibility. The announcement is a good example of trying to explain information in an understandable way.

The statement is written as a press release and is hard-to-read, with white text on a black background and a long headline: “AMC Theatres® Presents Sightline at AMC, the Next Evolution of Value Pricing at the Movies With Multiple Options to Meet the Viewing Preferences of AMC Moviegoers – Including a Lower Ticket Price for Select Seats.” The three tiers—value, standard, and preferred—are clearly explained with obvious color coding when you buy tickets online. At first, I was surprised to see so few value options (blue) for $2 off, but of course, that makes sense.

Students can analyze AMC’s decision, the website interface, and this executive quote:

“Sightline at AMC more closely aligns AMC’s seat pricing approach to that of many other entertainment venues, offering experience-based pricing and another way for moviegoers to find value at the movies,” Eliot Hamlisch, executive VP and CMO at AMC Theatres, said in a press statement. “While every seat at AMC delivers an amazing moviegoing experience, we know there are some moviegoers who prioritize their specific seat and others who prioritize value moviegoing. Sightline at AMC accommodates both sentiments to help ensure that our guests have more control over their experience, so that every trip to an AMC is a great one.”

One skeptic wrote, “AMC Theatres calls it ‘experience-based pricing.’ Some might call it another reason to wait for a good seat at home.”

Should a Bot Interrupt Native English Speakers?

A new study used a bot to cut off native English speakers during meetings, allowing more time for non-native speakers to participate. The study might spark good class discussion about cultural communication differences and the practice of humility, particularly making space for others.

Two native and one Japanese speaker worked on a “survival” task over video. After a non-native speaker spoke six times in a row, the “conversational agent” interrupted, which increased the Japanese speakers’ contributions from “12% to 17% of all words spoken.”

That result seems rather small to me, so I wouldn’t see this as a great solution to imbalanced class discussions or work meetings. Also, the authors are considering whether other means could be more effective. The bot put pressure on the non-native speakers, who didn’t necessarily have something to contribute at that time, so one option is for speakers to signal when they want to jump in. I also wonder whether the results would be different for speakers from other countries.

Another outcome, which as we might expect, is how the native speakers felt. As the authors conclude, they “perceived the agent's interruption as unfair because they thought all members were speaking equally, which was not the case.” This alone is a good learning outcome for students. But authors are exploring more subtle cues, for example, private messages when someone is taking a lot of air time.

Image source.

Student Handout: Tips for Using ChatGPT

This handout guides students through using ChatGPT responsibly. I take a realistic approach, assuming that students will use the program regardless of our insistence not to.

Revise and use as you wish; you can also download this Word document. I would appreciate knowing what changes you make, so I can consider revisions.

Tips for Using ChatGPT for Your
Business Communication Assignments

Ask ChatGPT for help generating ideas.

If you’re having trouble coming up with or honing an idea for a writing assignment or presentation, ask ChatGPT. The program can help you move past writer’s block, clarify your thinking, and narrow down a topic. Practice asking follow-up questions until you get better responses.

Think of ChatGPT as a writing partner.

Imagine that the program is a tutor or writing center consultant, who would ask you questions and give you ideas and feedback—not write for you. Use ChatGPT as part of an iterative thinking process.  

Use your natural, authentic voice.

ChatGPT is a robot and sounds like one. You’re taking this class to find your own personal writing and speaking style. If ChatGPT writes for you, you’re missing the opportunity to convey your personality. What differentiates you at work is your character—who you are as a person. No AI technology can ever match your sense of humor or style. 

Adapt writing to your audience.

Every assignment in this class has a defined audience. ChatGPT can’t build a relationship; only you can do that. You’re more likely to inspire or persuade someone when you use your emotional intelligence to understand what moves and motivates someone, and then tailor your writing to that person.   

Beware of misinformation.

ChatGPT tends to “hallucinate”—invent information that doesn’t exist, particularly sources like books and journal articles. If you ask the program to provide evidence to support claims, check everything and add sources after 2021, which ChatGPT can’t access. For your own credibility, do your own research.

Learn from ChatGPT’s corrections.

If you ask ChatGPT to correct your grammar, ask it to explain the mistakes it corrected and the grammar rules, so you can learn for the future.

Plan ahead and expect change.

As of now, ChatGPT is often overloaded, so you’ll need to plan ahead if you rely on it. Also, these suggestions are based on ChatGPT as of January 2023. The program will evolve.

---

Developed by Amy Newman, February 2, 2023. Revise and use as you wish.

Inspired by Lance Cummings, @LanceElyot, “Student Contract for AI Creativity (draft),” Twitter, January 10, 2023.

Greenwashing Gets Sophisticated

Greenwashing—making false or exaggerated claims about sustainability or positive impacts on the environment—is nothing new, but companies may be getting more subtle. A recent CNBC article warns consumers, “For a company to say they’re ‘100% sustainable’ or they’re ‘eco-conscious’ . . . doesn’t mean anything.” Those seem to be obvious empty statements.

But a Euronews article offers six more sophisticated ways companies greenwash. The article gives examples of each, and students can find their own:

• Greencrowding: hiding within a group or being the slowest adopter within a group.

• Greenlighting: emphasizing a green aspect of the company to detract from negative impacts.

• Greenshifting: blaming the customer for environmental problems (example shown here).

• Greenlabelling: calling something green or sustainable that isn’t really

• Greenrinsing: changing goals before they’re achieved.

• Greenhushing: downplaying or hiding green activities to avoid attention.

Both articles suggest investigating companies’ credentials; the CNBC article also suggests looking at metrics and the company’s history. But let’s face it: that requires work. We’re easily swayed by labels and soundbites. Perhaps students can identify what affects their purchase decisions, which of course, is what drives greenwashing in the first place.