Early in Bill Nielsen’s tenure as the director of corporate communication for Johnson & Johnson, Ralph S. Larsen, the CEO to whom he reported, told him, “I believe in sunlight about everything.” Larsen wanted to know the truth about company activities, whether good or bad, in an open way and without embellishment, and offered his assistance to Nielsen. From the start, then, Nielsen knew that the CEO would support him as long as he, Nielsen, was honest and direct.
New to the company in the late 1980s, Nielsen soon discovered that none of the benchmarking studies about corporate communication could provide a model for Johnson & Johnson’s corporate communication function, because its culture is unique.… Read the rest