Ep 59: Breaking Through the Noise: Sally Susman on the Art of Being Heard

But I've continued to tell the people I work with, dare to be boring.

The great thing about communications is it gives you a license within a company to ask any question you want. Be curious about the company. Be curious about the people who run it. This industry has a cure for diabetes, but they won't release it because insulin is so profitable. And when I heard that, my heart broke a little bit. The cynicism that you're describing is so deep and so at odds with what I saw inside the industry. I met a lot of scientists who but this cynicism is real and it's thick and I felt it most profoundly of course in the roll out of the vaccine for COVID and frankly I'll share that I was about ready to give it up when COVID came and I'm so grateful that I didn't leave before COVID. This greenhushing will come around to bite people. Science works best when it is as far away from politics as it can possibly be. I want my legacy to be that I showed up in a way that was helpful, productive, curious and engaged. I want to leave the campsite better than I found it.

Just to say Shoubaar, I am so glad to be with you. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Let's go, let's jump in.

That's an excellent question. The gap is real. Leaders are impatient and move quickly. Crowds take time to absorb information and can be cynical. In town halls, leaders have talking points and want to move on. I tell them, dare to be boring.

Of course, these CEOs, they don't like to hear that. Um, but it was my job to tell them.

I've worked with nine CEOs over three companies. Three were game changers: Ken Chenault, Leonard Lauder, Albert Bourla. They valued communications as much as any other function. They gave it time and resources. That's proof positive. I argue it is changing. I now sit on three boards that recruited me specifically for communications expertise. That shows the mindset is shifting.

A CEO change is charged. The CCO is crucial. It's a point of pride that I stayed through three CEOs. Key lessons: commit to candor, speak truth to power. Also, you are not a publicist for the CEO; you represent the company and its values.

Every CEO has an ego. Harness it for the company's benefit. They bring strength and energy. Find substantive opportunities like this podcast where they can talk about important things, not just sparkly stuff.

It was the same in the US years ago. Two trends changed: stakeholder activism and social media. Companies needed sophisticated communications departments. For regions starting out, ask: How do I build this business? Be curious and help leaders. Communications gives you a license to ask any question.

It's true and sad. During the 2020 debate, Trump said Pfizer promised a vaccine before November. I wrote a letter to the media; no one published it. They wanted political mud. So we posted it on our intranet. It went viral. I learned you don't need the media the same way. We have our own tools—podcasts, LinkedIn—that drive the story.

We struggle with this. How do you measure the bad things that didn't happen? I use a balance of quantitative (impressions, sentiment) and qualitative (executive feedback). Twice a year I sat with leaders, asked how we could help. That brings the quantitative data to life.

Good for business. It encourages long-term thinking. Anything good for business is good for communications.

This resonates with my biopharma experience. I heard someone say the industry hides a cure for diabetes. The cynicism is deep. During COVID, data and expertise were not enough; people trusted friends, family, local figures. Science got an A+, communications a C-.

About 10-15% love us, 10-15% despise us. The latter are in silos and unreachable. The movable middle rarely thinks about us. To reach them, make your message relevant to their daily lives. During the pandemic, everyone wanted to know when they could go back to work.

Each has its own rhythm. American Express and Estee Lauder had positive reputations. Biopharma was different. I ran into a brick wall. It took years to realize the stakes are different. I was about to quit when COVID came. Albert Bourla is an extraordinary communicator. I'm grateful I stayed. Crisis is hard, but being on the sidelines is harder.

Authenticity has become performative, but you can feel it. For me, coming out to my parents in my early 20s was the hardest conversation, but it led to a closer relationship and prepared me for a life of authenticity. It's heartbreaking when people can't be authentic. I remember an executive memorizing his talk, not being himself.

Speech you know he was saying it over and over and over. And I thought this poor man is beating the authenticity out of himself. And he needs to put those notes down and step away from trying to remember every phrase and just say what he knows, because he knew a lot. But it's still one of the things that I do a tremendous amount of coaching around, to help people breathe into their own authenticity and to know the power of their own authenticity.

I have so many stories about authenticity, but you indulge me to tell you a couple of them. Sure. The first one is authenticity done wrong. And that is, there's an executive I know. She's very talented, highly successful person, but she called me into her office one day to ask my help and she said, 'Sally, I need you to hire me the best public relations firm there is.' And I said, 'Okay, but why? What is the brief?' And she said, 'I want someone to make me authentic.' I mean, this is such a broken notion. To your point that people have perfected it and ground it down to nothing. But let me tell you a beautiful story of authenticity gone right. And that is a story from the immediate post-9/11 period here in New York. And American Express's CEO Ken Chenault. Ken was a new leader at the time that that tragedy happened. He was on the West Coast of the United States, far from New York. As you'll remember, the airlines weren't flying. Everybody was grounded. And Ken had a leader's instinct and he knew he had to get back to New York. And so he drove cross country to get back to New York. He also had an instinct that we needed to get our people together. And the American Express headquarters right next to the World Financial Center, I'm sorry, World Trade Towers. Our building was damaged. The area was locked down. Some people from the company had died as they were commuting into work that day. There was no way we could get into our headquarters. So, at Ken's direction, we rented Madison Square Garden. And we invited all the employees from the tri-state area, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. And over 5,000 people came. And of course, we handed Ken a speech that he should give, talking points. He politely set them aside. Okay. And he went into this emotionally charged moment and he spoke from his heart. He did what all great leaders do. He became a purveyor of hope and optimism. He mentioned each one of the deceased people by name without looking at a card and he waited into the audience and he said, 'American Express's best days are ahead of us.' And I'll never forget it. It still gives me chills to think about it because it was the most profound visual and oral display of a man being authentic at a critical moment. And so, you know, it really has to do with setting aside the prepared remarks and speaking from the heart.

Let's talk for a minute about the framework and then let's talk about it in today's context. So, thanks for mentioning it. I'm proud of it. It was in the Harvard Business Review, as you said, and it continues to be a discussion point in the field. The first question is, well, let me back up for a sec. Most big companies are highly metric driven. As you know, and certainly Pfizer is. Pfizer has a metric for whether a compound should move down the pipeline or whether an investment had a good ROI. But when it came to this question, Shoubaar, that you're asking, should you speak out on this issue? We didn't have a metric. And I think people thought, well, it's whatever Sally thinks and that is not a metric that I want to live by. So together with my colleagues, I came up with a five question framework. First, how does it relate to our purpose? And you know, Pfizer is a healthcare company and our purpose is breakthroughs that change patients' lives. So that's a broad thing and there are many issues that impact healthcare, but some don't. And so if it doesn't, I encourage people not to speak out beyond the reach of their company's purpose because if you talk too much, your voice loses its agency and its volume. Second question is how will it impact our stakeholders. Now everyone has their own unique stakeholders. If you work in healthcare, it tends to be patients and doctors and scientists. But everyone is not equal. You have to really say who are the most important people that I am trying to reach. The third question and this is maybe the most important one. How does it relate to our values? And I specifically am not saying how does it impact politics because every company should be value-driven and no company should be political. So you know, really usually they have their corporate values. People know what they are and you've got to go directly back to those. The fourth thing I like to talk about in the framework is what are our options here? Because many companies and communicators lean towards being passive and reactive. Oh, a reporter called on deadline. I have to get back to her. Or, oh, there's an inquiry from Congress. I need to respond. What I try to do is take a step back, take a breath and say what is our best way to communicate. Maybe instead of answering this reporter question, maybe we want to post something on our intranet that explains our view in our own voice. So remember you have optionality. And then the final question is what is the price of our silence? Because if you choose not to speak, it usually comes with some kind of a cost. So, I've enjoyed having that framework. It's helped me. I hope it's helped others. But you bring it up to date with your question about what about DEI and what about ESG and things that were very popular in the corporate world that now are being put on the back burner. I think the most important thing is to try to step away from the rhetoric, turn down the political heat and go to those values. I mean at Pfizer, equity is one of our values. So we have to continue to try to be broadly open and accessible both on our products and in our employee practices. And what I really think is going to pose a problem for leaders in the future is that political tides will swing again. And if you then suddenly come roaring back with big programs on DEI, excuse me, DEI and ESG, I don't know how your employees won't have sort of whiplash from this. And I believe a steady course is the best way to navigate these difficult waters.

I believe that this green hushing will come around to bite people because if you're just changing your language or your headlines but not changing anything else, it seems transparently disingenuous to me. And employees are by and large pretty smart people and they care about the places where they work and they watch their leaders very closely. And again, I argue to try to avoid these vast pendulum swings from being, I mean maybe we were too all-in at one point on ESG and DEI and I know there was a view that the shareholder shouldn't be completely forgotten in the mix of these new stakeholders, but now we swung all the way the other way and these swings are disruptive to employees and I think undermine the credibility of companies over the long haul. I'm not, please know, I'm not saying to be tone-deaf to the times or anything like that. I'm advocating for avoiding the big swings.

Wow, that's an important and complex question. One of the first things I was ever told when I started working at Pfizer is, don't hype the pipe. And what that means is you don't spin the science. I think myself and everyone I know in the industry takes that very much to heart that the scientific information, the data, is sacred and frankly best discussed by people in leadership in the science elements of the company that understand it best. So that was very important. And you're right, unfortunately things became quite politically charged and I thought deeply about what this means and how can I try to play a positive role in this moment of strife and struggle. For example, one thing I don't say is I don't call people anti-vaxxers. I think it's a very negative way of characterizing someone. I believe most people who are hesitant to take a vaccine are doing so because they are frightened or they are in need of information. Some communities have legitimate and long-held skeptical views about their treatment in the healthcare system. And so I felt the answer was to try to be as available to answer questions as possible. My CEO was on TV almost every day during the pandemic and I would joke with him that his job isn't CEO, it's educator in chief. He needs to get out there and explain COVID and explain vaccines. Many of our scientists I would ask them to please go on television even though some of them are shy and not necessarily loving to be in the media, but I felt if they were important. And I myself got out of the bunker of defensive and started going more proactively out to talk to the public. But there were things that politicized it and made it more difficult. And the one that stands out most in my mind is when the mandate came at one point, as the vaccine was rolling out, the government declared a mandate for certain professions or for schools. And I feel that had an unintended negative consequence of making the people who were hesitant more entrenched in their view. And so science works best when it is as far away from politics as it can possibly be.