Lost in the Groundswell
Written on 13 July 2010
Diabetes Drug Maker Hid Test Data on Risks, Files Indicate
The drug giant SmithKline Beecham found in a study as early as 1999 that its diabetes medicine, Avandia, posed risks to the heart, but it never made the information public.
What’s rare now, in the tsunami of the Internet, in the Groundswell? Honesty. Something to trust.
As the Internet gives us more and more, more than we could ever have imagined, it takes away something too. I’m not exempt. Someone asked me recently why this blog is anonymous, why my name isn’t on it. So I can tell a story about my brother if I need to, undeterred by the fact that I have no brother.
Even Steven Jobs of Apple, a hero of mine, a historical figure among us, has stumbled. As Consumer Report (a stodgy relic of the pre-Internet era) says:
Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4’s signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that “mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength.”
But what the Internet slays, the Internet heals. Maybe readers of Consumer Reports and fans of the iPhone dwell in different universes, but not these writers:
When reports first started to surface of a reception flaw in the new phone, Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, said to a customer in an e-mail that he was simply holding the phone incorrectly. Technology writers lambasted the company for this comment.
Now that’s the Internet at its best.
My nine-year-old daughter called me one day to say that her cousin Vicki was on her bike and wouldn’t give it back. They made a deal to take turns, but Vicki broke the deal.
I treated this as an important question. Because it is. I taught my daughter to say “I did it, I’m sorry” even to an angry parent or angry teacher. That takes courage.
What would I tell her now, when someone broke a deal? She wasn’t crying, and wasn’t raging, so I knew she had already gotten from me what mattered most in this. I told her not to explode at Vicki, but not to make deals with her again. Calmly tell her ‘No more deals.’
You can’t go to war against everyone who breaks their word, I told her. You would spend your life at war with the world. But when you find someone who keeps their word, keep that person in your life. Think how much more we could get done if we didn’t have to double-check one another all the time, if we could take ‘Consider it done’ to the bank. And be that person too, that other people keep in their life and never forget, because you keep your word and that’s so rare.
Whatever you sell, you sell a story. Whatever you buy, you buy a story. Whatever business you’re in, you’re in the story business.
And the story begins when someone remembers your words because they know you will too…
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Lowell Bergman knew this better than anyone, as played by Al Pacino in The Insider.
More: Steven Covey on Trust…
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