Dear God, Whatever You Do, Mr. Immelt, Don't Speak Your Mind! (And Don't State The Obvious)

From the Globe and Mail:

So, GE is hosting a dinner overlooking Rome, on the roof-top of Castel Sant’Angelo, a former Vatican fortress and prison. The dinner guests are Italian business executives.
So far, so good. CEO Immelt is on hand, and addresses his audience. That's his job.

He makes the classic 'mistake' of our age: He speaks his mind.

Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric’s chief executive, has launched a rare broadside against the Chinese government, which he accused of being increasingly hostile to foreign multinationals.

He warned that the world’s largest manufacturing company was contemplating better prospects elsewhere in resource-rich countries and that those nations did not want to be “colonised” by Chinese investors.

“I really worry about China,” Mr. Immelt told an audience of dozens of top Italian executives, referring to the Chinese government, which he accused of becoming increasingly protectionist. “I am not sure that in the end they want any of us to win, or any of us to be successful.”

But wait, there's more!

Mr. Immelt also had harsh words for U.S. President Barack Obama, lamenting what he called a “terrible” national mood and expressing concern that over-regulation in response to the global financial crisis would damp a “tepid” U.S. economic recovery.

Business did not like the U.S. president, and the president did not like business, he said, making a point of praising Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, for her defence of German industry.

“People are in a really bad mood [in the U.S.],” the 54-year-old executive told an audience of somewhat surprised Europeans who had seen higher levels of U.S. growth as a beacon of recovery.

“We [the U.S.] are a pathetic exporter… we have to become an industrial powerhouse again but you don’t do this when government and entrepreneurs are not in synch.”

That's what the howls of protest were triggered by: He dared criticize The Winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. OMG! OMG! OMG! OMG! Send in the PR flacks to still the waters! OMG! OMG! OMG!

The real problem is, he's stating the obvious. And he used plain English, without the normal equivocations, to state the obvious.

If GE's board, management and PR division had a spine, they would be cheering for Jeff, giving him high-fives and attaboy's for standing up for them all, the stockholders, the employees, the customers, the country. Instead, it's disavowals and death by a thousand cuts.

Harvard Business Review shares wise words on the incident.

Things won't improve until we begin speaking in plain English, with the assumption that words have meaning.

Attaboy, Jeff!