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	Phil's Blogservations Monday, August 28, 2006 Posted by philgomes 7:27 PM Edelman, Year One: "The Conservative Evangelist Asks 'Why?' Five Times" Edelman, Year One: "The Conservative Evangelist Asks 'Why?' Five Times" My first encounter with the man who would become my new boss, Rick Murray, took place March 9, 2005, over the phone. I still have my notes saved from that discussion. Rick was looking for: Someone who can take the lead and show teams 'Here's how you build relationships and networks.' We met over breakfast at the Hotel Monaco in San Francisco about a month later. This meeting -- as well as subsequent conversations with David Dunne, JanMarie Zwiren, and others -- sealed the deal. I can't say I made it easy for Edelman -- I didn't sign the papers until more than four months later on July 26, 2005. I faxed them to the recruiter (Julie Biber, interviewed on earSHOT) the day I packed my truck for the trip to LA. I remember using a fax machine that my landlady and I fished out of the carriage house behind the 19th-century Victorian I was renting (and sorely miss to this day). Within a week, I started what would become a somewhat legendary travel schedule, at least as far as friends and family were concerned. ("Damn," my best friend said. "The plane is like the f**kin' bus to you!") In a short amount of time, I delivered many seminars, counseled many clients (current and wished-for), and participated in a number of business development efforts. December capped off 2005 with Blog Week -- 56 classes taught to seven Edelman offices in about 10 days. (Main takeaway: I've since become strongly interested in pursuing web-based, internal, distance-learning initiatives.) At the start of the following year, I got to thinking: While I was brought to Edelman to serve as an online media evangelist of sorts, I felt in those first months that an "evangelist" was the last thing the company needed at the time, at least internally. There is certainly no shortage of constructive enthusiasm for online media at Edelman. I mean... For Pete's sake... The guy whose name is on the door has a blog. (And lemme tellya... Having support from the top for your work and passion helps a whole lot, having previously spent quite a bit of time deflecting derision from folks unwilling to embrace change.) And, of course, there's the award-winning work that the company has undertaken. Far from being an evangelist, though, I found that my approach during those first several months had sometimes been internally criticized as being overly "conservative." I felt this was a just approach at the time since, after all, who'd want to have this happen to them? Nevertheless, I still think I could have made some slightly "edgier" recommendations in the beginning. Can you be a "conservative evangelist?" Perhaps. Since those early months, I've allowed my thinking to get a little more "out there." It seems that clients these days appear to be willing to take some risks and try new things in an effort to break out of the clutter. Like Matt Damon's character says in Rounders, "You don't lose what you don't put in, but you don't win anything either." All that said, I do read a lot of the breathlessness out there and, frankly, I think a little bit of "conservative evangelism" industry-wide would generally do us all some good. Someday soon, I hope, the industry will realize that blogs, wikis, and so on are tools -- great tools that 1) reflect the increasingly realized promise of networked communications, and 2) support strategies that are developed in the service of achieving objectives. Just like any other tools, there are certain techniques, methods, and mores that surround their use. A marketer saying "We need a blog" probably sounds great to the execs in the conference room, but there are too many consequences if you get it wrong. I'm reminded of the conversation I had with Rick Murray during my first week on the job, while I was figuring out what a training curriculum would look like. "Showing people things like community engagement, conversation research, and analysis is easy," I said. "But how do you really teach strategic thinking?" "Easy," Rick said. "You tell them to ask the question 'Why?' five times in a row." Technorati Tags: pr, public relations, phil gomes, edelman HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	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