Need Board Help? Ask you Doctor
Sometimes you have to deliver messages like you missed a date, you blew a million bucks on a Super Bowl ad, or other news to your board. Doctors can be of great help, even more so then politicians, when it comes to presenting bad news in a not so ominous manner.
Meet Dr. Steven Nissen, chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. A drug called torcetrapib (raises good cholesterol) was in clinical trails which have been stopped. Dr. Nissen was a lead investigator on a smaller trial of the drug.
"Besides having more heart problems, patients taking torcetrapib were more likely to die of cancer and infection than those on a placebo. In all, 93 patients taking torcetrapib died, compared with 59 who took a placebo."
And from the good Dr.
“The two trials together seem to tell us that torcetrapib had an off-target effect,” Dr. Nissen said, referring to a negative side effect.
Death = Off-Target, ahh, yep.
I couldn't reach Dr. Nissen at the Cleveland Clinic for some wordsmith help so I I did the best I could. Feel free to use them as if they were your own.
"Our revenue is off by 90%" = Revenue is aligning with market dynamics.
"Product returns are over 75%" = Direct customer feedback is at an all time high.
"Our 10 million marketing spend yielded little results" = Marketing has provided a clear view on customer intentions.
"Our servers are crashing every 3 minutes" = We have demonstrable interest in our web properties. (Keep the faith, EK!)
And my personal favorite:
"Our facebook app has been universally vilified as a spyware infested piece of crap" = Through extensive Web 2.0 virally focused social media, we've fully engage our customers with worldwide impact.
Bankruptcy. Just an off-target effect of spending more then you earn.
I listened to a podcast from a popular technology show. The guest speaker waffled for an hour about nothing. The following show on the same subject referred back to the first show saying "We had a very strong response from the listeners, basically saying that they wanted to hear more about the subject".
Posted by: Darrel Miller | November 06, 2007 at 15:08