But here's the bottom line, the president of the United States, he controls the bully pulpit, he can talk about anything he wants to talk about.
When you have that privilege of being able to talk directly with your chairman, like I've had with Daniel Levy, that make things a lot easier. Afterwards, I know what we've said to each other, and we have a relationship built on trust.
When the president offered me this job, he told me that if there were situations in which I needed to speak to him or I needed his advice or I needed to ask him a question, that I could go into the Oval Office and I could ask him.
As the briefer, my job is to carry CIA's best information and best analysis to the president of the United States and make sure he understands it.
One of the first lessons a president has to learn is that every word he says weighs a ton.
It's hard to brief in the Oval. You know, you can't - no visual aids, hard to roll out something in front of somebody.
I don't understand why people whose entire lives or their corporate success depends on communication, and yet they are led on occasion by CEOs who cannot talk their way out of a paper bag and don't care to.
Talking points are a core set of messages an executive or politician utilizes in communicating with stakeholders. It's a term of art for having an outline of your remarks.
In terms of the public positioning of the company, Satya's [Nadella] done a very good job. He sort of pivoted in a way that I don't think would have been possible for me to do even if I'd seen it that way, to really talk about this mobile-first, cloud-first world.
Shareholder meetings are not usually the occasion for utter candor - or for that matter, arch sarcasm - by chief executives.
Do too many executives still indulge in the short-sighted habit of issuing orders without taking the slightest pains to explain to those responsible for carrying them out the whyfor and wherefor of the orders? Where employees come in daily and hourly contact with the public, surely it is important that care be taken to fit them to reply intelligently to courteous questions. ""Because them are orders"" isn't a satisfying reply-even less satisfactory to the management than to the public.
I don't know any member of Congress who ever said, 'I'm satisfied with the communication that we have from the White House.'
Presidents do not go off on leave without telling the country.
I can talk to execs very clearly, very plainly. I don't get nervous in front of them anymore.
I am relatively sure, from conversations that I had with former president Bill Clinton, that George Bush seldom called upon him for advice.
I am prepared to admit that when it comes to dealing with the House and Senate leaders, Obama is terrible. But he's great with the public. Which hates the House and Senate as much as he does.
Executives should blog if they have a vision they are trying to communicate, or if they are very visible in the media.
