[bretpiatt]

You'd be surprised. I work at Rackspace and when we've had issues you'll see comments or posts from our leadership (CEO, Chairman, GMs of our businesses, etc.) -- and those come directly from the person, not from them giving approval to a comment put out by PR.

It is times like this when a company needs leadership and that isn't an executive team afraid to share their vision and apologize when needed directly to customers themselves.

Could they be "using their time better"? I firmly believe, no they can't. Having real interaction with customers on their terms keeps them grounded. Many executive teams end up drinking Kool-aid(tm) by only taking customer meetings hand picked to show "how good we're doing" by their teams -- every business has at least one happy customer.