Business, Talking Less, Would Say More

BOOM IN SPEECHMAKING

ONE of the biggest booms in the nation comes from all those businessmen who are getting up to speak. Many an executive is as talky as a circus barker, while his corporation spends huge sums for scriptwriters and speech courses (typical price: $400 for a ten-day session at U.C.L.A.). This year 50,000 bright young men from General Motors, RCA, Coca-Cola and other corporations will enroll in Dale Carnegie speech schools, where they hope to learn how to win sales and influence customers. More important, most businessmen know that they must do a far better job of explaining their beliefs and goals. "Society today demands from management a restatement of the purposes of free enterprise." says Clarence Randall, onetime chairman of Inland Steel Co. "Our creed is being distorted by our enemies, and we are not talking back. Sometimes I ask myself guiltily whether we are capable of talking back.''

Many another top executive sadly observes that the man who is brilliant in the boardroom is often a bore at the microphone. "Too many businessmen cannot give a speech; they have to make an address," says Chicago Executives' Club President Clint Youle, who has heard hundreds of them. "They speak on subjects so lofty they cannot say anything that has not been said umpteen times before." Furthermore, says one Florida executive, many businessmen are barely articulate, mumble in meaningless cliches (some favorites: "broadly defined policies," "hitting the mark foursquare"), talk only to each other, and say only what they want to hear, "as if they were living in some kind of ghetto."

What businessmen can talk about best, they talk about least: the issues confronting their own businesses. Complains President George S. Dively of Harris-Intertype Corp.: "My lawyers tell me I must not say this or that--it might get us in trouble with Antitrust or the union, with the customers or the stockholders." Thus most speeches are prepared in committee, with lawyers, admen, public-relations men at hand to ax anything that could possibly offend anyone. Their rule of thumb: "If in doubt, be vague." The average speech is wrung through five to ten drafts, gets worse each time.

Writing the sanitized speeches has become a profitable business in itself. In Manhattan alone, a dozen ghostwriting agencies grind out hundreds of orations a year, collect up to $1,000 a copy. In Cleveland, the National Reference Library publishes booklets of canned speeches (price $4 to $20), tailors individual ones at higher prices, claims 100,000 contented customers. For businessmen who want to be safe and save money at the same time, some trade associations offer speech kits to all (favorite theme for 1960: Businessmen Must Break into Politics). Companies such as Esso Standard Oil and Bemis Bros. Bag have their own manufactured speeches for every occasion. Some even have spaces for timely jokes and names of local officials.

Few deny that a good ghostwriter can be a big help in gathering research and framing paragraphs. "But nobody can write a speech and make it sound like me," says President Elmer Lindseth of Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. Like many another businessman, Lindseth has a ghost, tells him what he wants to say, then heavily edits what he writes. Other businessmen wince at this system. "It's like building a foreign car with Chevy parts," says E. W. Littlefield. executive vice president of Utah Construction Co. "If they're my words, I can look up at the audience. But I can't do that if I have to read the other fellow's words." Paintmaker H. C. McClellan, manager of the 1959 U.S. exhibit in Moscow, thinks out each speech for weeks ahead, lies awake nights sifting ideas.

The blue chips among business speakers have mastered their subjects so well that they can talk comfortably off the cuff, field all the questions. Sears, Roebuck's President Charles Kellstadt ad-libs so liberally that he always has a stenographer record exactly what he says. The best platform performers are brief, carefully avoid overexposure, speak only when they have something original to say. Last year General Foods' eloquent Chairman Charles Mortimer received about 100 major speaking bids; he accepted four. Batten, Barton. Durstine & Osborn's President Charles Brower could easily make a speech a week, but likes to limit himself to one a month--and writes every word himself.

The man who uses his own words may lose some slick metaphors and rich purple prose. But he invariably gains in getting ideas across. The best approach, says Steelman Randall, is for the speaker to discuss frankly his own business problems and philosophies. "Let him stand up and say precisely what he said to his seat mate on the 8:04 this morning, disagreeable as the results may be in terms of public relations." If the businessman cannot or will not be so explicitly honest, he is better off to say nothing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.