Once upon a time, deep within the digestive system of a beast now known as at&t, there was a technical director and editor who was very good at communicating with the written and spoken word. He inspired his staff to great deeds. People from other departments wanted to work for him. He got nice annual bonuses.
One day, the technical director was asked to present a plan to senior management for combining all the company's technical support web sites. So he wrote up a proposal for getting the job done. It was controversial, he knew ... because deep in the heart of Texas, the technical director had foes who thought that they should be in charge of all of the company's web sites.
The technical director gave a mighty presentation in support of his plan on a conference call and it seemed he had won the day. But the mutterings started before the conference call was even over.
"Well, everything he says always sounds good. That's why you have to be espeshully careful."
"Our plan is much more comprehensive than his but it doesn't look that way in PowerPoint."
"It only sounds good because it's different from the regular way we do things. He didn't use a process template. His way won't actually work."
The technical director was flabbergasted. He did win the day, narrowly, but the bickering and sniping continued while the project was completed on time and under budget, despite never once using a process template.
And the opposition got louder and angrier after the project was done, and the technical director had management of his completed project taken away from him, and then he was fired by a new boss, someone he never even met.
Moral of the story: Excellence is often viewed with suspicion. And the more Clinton hammers Obama for being a fine speaker and someone who cares about words, the more annoyed she's making me. But ... that doesn't mean that the Clinton meme won't play in Texas.
Couldn't resist. Funny, it's been six years since the technical director was fired, and it's still just a little under the surface.