At 2:38 PM, EST, November 22, 1963, Cronkite reported to an anxious American people that President Kennedy had died. He was speechless for a few seconds in between the spontaneous remarks he had to convey to the millions of people watching on live television. It is remembered as one of the most important moments in the history of modern mass communication.

What made this moment so significant, and frankly what made Cronkite so revered, was his unwavering ability to be authentic. No doubt his training as one of the war correspondents in World War II, a group led by fellow CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow, chiseled that sense of authenticity into his character.

 

Cronkite and his colleagues didn’t have the opportunity for a “do-over” or all the other tricks of the trade available today that comes with instantaneous digital recording or live feeds.

 

They had to get it right. They wanted to get it right. That is Authenticity.

Workers at work don’t get many chances at do-overs either. Truck drivers only get to take a dark slippery curve once and then keep doing it every night until the weather breaks. Teachers get very few chances to win the hearts and minds of their students. Coal miners have no room for error. 

If we’ve lost the ability to inspire the authenticity of workers on the job, we’ve lost the nation.

 

The amount of courage, knowledge, accuracy, and focus by individual workers at work every day is so great that it is incalculable. We hear about mistakes, lack of effort and other failures, but we almost never hear about the overwhelming success and completion of difficult assignments by workers every day: the poultry pieces sliced and diced, the aircraft takeoffs and landings, the beams put in place, the cement finished, the bricks laid, the fires put out, the lives saved.

 

There is nothing more authentic than work itself. I think Cronkite was known as the “most trusted man in America” because of his inherent authenticity that made people believe, not just in what they were hearing, but it made them believe in themselves. They needed to see and hear the pursed lips and cracked voice of Walter Cronkite as he expressed the same grief as everyone watching him. There was nothing hiding the pain.

 

Our 100,000 frontline union members who deliver care for the nearly 9 million members of Kaiser Permanente are engaged in one of the most authentically profound experiments in the history of the country.  We are breaking with traditional modes of behavior to find the heart and soul of work, to find the deepest knowledge from the frontline of health care, where do-overs cost lives and money, and where the nation is looking for answers to how to deliver the best health care for all… now.

 

We believe our experiment can apply to everyone.

 

I am truly honored to be part of this movement toward a national authenticity.