Hooked by a simple gaffe

About to make a speech at a conference? Doing a presentation? Or maybe just sending an email to your secretary? Then watch your mouth. Because right now one misplaced, unfortunate phrase could end your career.

The "gaffe" has migrated from politics to business. That's a shame. A ruthless, censorious hunt for gaffes has already restricted the number of talented people who want to go into politics. It may be about to do the same to the corporate world. In the end, we'll all suffer from that.

Gaffes are proliferating on the business pages. Last month, Neil French, a creative director at British advertising company WPP, resigned after he allegedly made remarks deemed offensive to women in advertising. Women executives would "just wimp out and go suckle something" he is quoted as saying.

French denied the remark, although he added "people who have babies to look after" can't give the full commitment needed to be a creative director.

"Neil resigned of his own accord," WPP spokeswoman Feona McEwan said.

In June, Richard Phillips, a senior associate at the law firm Baker & McKenzie in London, quit after newspapers quoted an email from his secretary, Jenny Amner. In the message, she responded to his demand for prompt payment of £4 for dry cleaning to remove tomato sauce she had spilled on his trousers. Even though the secretary's mother had just died, Phillips was determined to get his £4 back.

In 2003, Matthew Barrett, then chief executive officer of Barclays, got into hot water after telling a parliamentary committee that he did not borrow on credit cards because they were "too expensive", hardly a tactful remark for the man running one of the Britain's biggest credit-card issuers.

Plenty of politicians will have some sympathy for French, Phillips and Barrett. Government leaders are used to having every word recorded, scrutinised for any possible offence and played up by hostile opponents.

Business leaders will now have to get used to the same treatment.

The classic political gaffe has some interesting characteristics. It is usually an unplanned, off-the-cuff remark.

It offends somebody. And yet it often expresses what a person really thinks, though isn't allowed to say.

Most importantly, the gaffe is deemed to make a person unfit to hold a particular office, even though it doesn't really have anything to do with whether they can do the job.

The latest business gaffes certainly fit that description. French sounds like a sexist dinosaur, with a low opinion of women. You wouldn't want to be married to him. Or, if you were female, you wouldn't want to work for him. Then again, how does that disqualify him from writing advertising copy?

How about Phillips? Certainly, the tomato sauce email showed him as a stingy, peevish individual, with little regard for other people's feelings. Then again, how does that disqualify him from being a lawyer? If you had a tax case to argue, Phillips sounds like the kind of guy you'd want on your team. He wouldn't shrug his shoulders and say: "Heck, it's only money. We don't want to hurt their feelings."

Or Barrett? He may well be hypocritical, too covetous of other people's money and over-cautious with his own. Then again, perhaps that is what makes him the right person to run a bank.

In politics, standards have been set so high that the number of people who can become political leaders has shrunk to a tiny pool. Right now, the growth of blogs and the internet is doing the same thing in the business world. Every word uttered at a conference, and every email sent through the office, can be recorded. It can be transmitted around the world in a flash. It is held up to scrutiny. Any gaffes are relentlessly exposed and criticised.

Heads have to roll. Action is demanded. Nobody pays any attention to whether the person is qualified to do their job.

We shouldn't look to businessmen or women (and certainly not advertising copywriters) for moral leadership any more than we look to politicians. It doesn't matter if they are horrible human beings - it only matters if they can get the job done.

We'll all be the losers from the gaffe hunt. After all, when companies are run by the most able people, regardless of character, everyone benefits.

Meanwhile, if the urge arises to curse your colleagues or your customers, wash your mouth out. It may well be a richly deserved description of them all - but it will only leave you out of work.

- BLOOMBERG