Honest Feedback

One year later, still no replacement for Derek Yach

Revisiting the Foundation's site today, I notice that while Derek Yach left on October 25, 2021 for reasons that remain unknown, the quest for a replacement has apparently not been successful. Not that this permanent interim situation seems to bother the present team. I assume they all keep their substantial compensation so all is well. The board members who had left have not been replaced either but a team of 5 is enough to keep running, as I had explained. You can look at the still active grants here. The list also includes closed grants. Very little info is available about what they are about.

What are the 30 mysterious and inconvenient questions the FSFW declines to answer and Le Monde does not want to share?

A short time after publishing the previous post about the 30 mysterious questions sent by Le Monde's journalist that Derek Yach declined to answer, I emailed said journalist to ask her if she would share them with me. She declined. I wonder why. So I am going to email Derek with the same request: maybe he'll be more transparent than Le Monde? seize an opportunity for transparency? 

When the French public radio station France Culture targets the Foundation

Just found about this radio segment aired in April, on France Culture. Interview with Stéphane Horel. Everything in French (of course). Title: "The secret war of Philip Morris against the World Health Organization and the tobacco control experts". Stéphane Horel states she asked repeatedly for an interview with Derek and finally sent 30 questions but did not receive any detailed answer. I'd be very curious to read (and publish) the 30 unanswered questions.

The high cost of lost trust

While re-reading Derek's answer to Le Monde's article, I feel a growing awareness that after 3 years the question Jean-François Etter was asking after two years, "The FSFW, can it be trusted?', would unfortunately receive a NO answer. There is a high cost for lost trust (as explained in this 2002 article of The Harvard Business Review). Quote:

"Of all the factors that can undermine behavioral integrity, among the most dangerous is managers’ inability to see an integrity problem in themselves. The issue often arises because of our natural desire to see ourselves as consistent. In many companies, a manager’s path to success seems to lie in verbal endorsements of espoused values, while his actual behavior is expected to align with certain implicit norms and standards that may be more widely accepted. For example, managers often talk about empowerment without actually yielding any power. When this happens, psychological defense mechanisms activate to divert the manager’s attention from the contradiction so he can feel better about himself. The self-deception tends to perpetuate the problem."

The self-deception does perpetuate the problem. Derek mentioned Reagan's motto, Trust but verify (a Russian proverb) at the bottom of the page 221 of his book Project Unthinkable: by making verification difficult, he has very much eroded the trust part of the equation.

Derek's answer to the article in Le Monde

Derek has just posted an answer to the article in Le Monde (in English and in French -pdf-). I wonder how many people who read the initial article will read his answer and how many will be convinced by Derek. There are certainly things to be debated in Stéphane Horel's text but I still think it would have been more effective to engage her before her writing, even with the risk of being frustrated with the end result. I don't 'buy' Derek's argument that the Foundation is  transparent because it publishes its annual 990 PF tax forms at  the bottom of its financials page (in a pdf format). The information disclosed, he qualifies as 'project overviews" consists of only one sentence description and is totally inadequate to convey relevant information. As long as Derek will maintain this position and this secretive behavior, he will retain zero credibility in terms of transparency. That's too bad because there is no real argument, nor advantage (quite the opposite) to keep things that way. But it looks like Derek does not want to hear the people, even within the THR community who tell him this is inadequate and ask him to change. The end result is a significant and probably growing credibility and trust gap, that is completely self created and inflicted.  Why such a self-destructive approach? What prevents the FSFW to communicate frankly, immediately and in a detailed way about the grants and contracts that are awarded, later with what results? Instead of burying them once a year with one line for each in a pdf document? Unfortunately I can only repeat what I wrote previously to no avail about this "false transparency" at the FSFW:  "To me, all this is in stark contrast with what Derek himself wrote in his book "Project Unthinkable", page 222: "We will make our case not by asking people to trust us, but through independent oversight, transparency and public reporting". This is not happening. Why? 

Why did Derek decline to answer questions from the French daily Le Monde?

The French daily Le Monde published on April 14 an article ( full access reserved to subscribers) focusing on the Foundation, under the title "The secret war of Philip Morris against WHO and the tobacco control experts', subtitle "The main cigarette manufacturer has created a foundation to lift the limitations to lobbying by the industry and promote alternatives to cigarettes." Here a link to an automatic translation in English.  Apparently Derek declined an interview (why?) but provided a statement (not posted yet on the Foundation's site). Did he think of inviting the journalist to his podcast? That would have been interesting. Declining to engage journalists is never a good option.

False transparency at the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World

For me, false transparency is for an organization (like The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World under Derek Yach's management) to claim they are 'transparent' when the most complete information they provide is the annual 990 form that is a legal obligation and the rest is drastically incomplete information about their activities, especially what they fund: for instance the amount of the funding for a grant is not provided except on the 990 form, a document that is not easy to consult and is only published once a year.