"To be honest,...."

When I was a boy, someone told me to always be suspicious of what anyone said after he or she offered: "To be honest,...." Anyone who needs to preface his or her honesty by calling attention to it, I remember being admonished, may not be that honest after all.

I recalled that admonition earlier this week as I was reading about one of the trends in business and communications: "authenticity." Authenticity, its proponents tell us, involves "saying what is real" and making your company's offerings "really real" by "rendering authenticity."

This is, of course, nonsense.

On its face, the authenticity movement would appear to be helpful and healthy; encouraging companies to be honest and true to themselves is laudable. But this relatively new notion of authenticity seems to suggest that creating the appearance of it is enough. It is not. It is never enough to render honesty or create an illusion of it. A good company must be it.

Here are just a few of the things that good and successful companies knew about honesty in business communications long before they were told that they need to render it.

• When the news is good, be content with what it is. Don't inflate it, artificially extend it or attach exaggerated meaning to it. This sort of deceit also creates expectations that, when unfulfilled, do added damage to the organization's credibility.
• When the news is bad, be the first to talk about it. Get out in front of it and stay there. Offer details of the plan you're taking to remedy the source of the bad news and be prepared to talk later about how you've executed it.
• Don't hide when the news is bad. The frequency of your communication should have no connection to the present quality of the news you're conveying. If you talk with your company's investors after the results of each quarter are announced, for example, keep that schedule regardless of whether those results are good or bad.

While these suggestions focus on how an organization handles its news, the authenticity movement also hopes to inform how a company develops and manages its brand(s). We'll deal with issues of branding and authenticity in a future entry. Whether in strategic or tactical communication, though, it will never be enough to create authenticity. It must be real.