High five to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s 23-year-old CEO. Earlier this week, Zuckerberg handled a hostile PR situation in a way that disarmed his critics and quickly stopped much of the media firestorm. How did this young babe in the woods navigate a media mine field that has brought down so many notable, seasoned execs before him? He told the truth, took responsibility for his actions and promised the company would stop the activity that caused the raucous. Imagine that. What a radical approach!

The net/net of the situation was that Beacon, Facebook’s new ad system, was perceived by most to violate members’ privacy.

“We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature,” acknowledged Zuckerberg, “but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.”

In two lines Zuckerberg defused the situation. The sad thing is we rarely hear people or companies taking responsibility for their actions. Most hide behind lawyers, deny and/or point fingers in an attempt to redirect blame.  Politicians are notorious for this behavior. Think Senator Larry Craig.

I admire Zuckerberg more for how he handled this challenging situation than I admire him for the $15 billion company he built from scratch. Why? Because his actions speak to his character as a human being – something I value exponentially more than business prowess.

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