Ancient Wisdom for the Modern Corporate World

Ancient wisdom has modern applications

While it's widely accepted that solid internal communication is a cornerstone of strong companies, when it comes to putting down the dollars the vast majority balk at including this vital tool in their crisis management and public relations planning.

In a recent blog post, PR pro Becky Sheetz-Runkle applied the teachings of battlefield philosopher Sun Tzu to internal communication, illustrating exactly why it is so important:

Sun Tzu called for clear communication for armies to function smoothly and avoid threats:

"If the army is confused and suspicious, neighboring rulers will take advantage of this and cause trouble. This is simply bringing anarchy into the army and flinging victory away."

As with much of Sun Tzu, the application for business is clear. Misinformation and rumors spread like the diseases they sometimes become. In good times and especially challenging times, it’s easy for suspicion and speculation to impact the morale and the productivity of people. As Sun Tzu warns, it leads to loss.

Care and treatment of people on literal and metaphorical battlefields is essential. Employees can’t feel valued if they aren’t being communicated with effectively and meaningfully:

"Pay attention to the soldiers’ well-being and do not fatigue them. Try to keep them in high spirits and conserve their energy."

Sun Tzu knew that an organization that moved as one, understood the strategy and had a healthy fighting spirit had the advantage. Do the decision makers you work with share that outlook? If we follow the money, we can see that many put very little stock in communicating with the troops, and they do it to their detriment.

While the specifics can be complicated, the objectives are not. Keep employees free of the stress that rumor and innuendo bring by engaging in two-way communication with them, and encouraging them to communicate amongst themselves. Oh, and they work better if they're happy and not exhausted.

Simple, right? But are you putting it into practice, or just nodding "yes?"

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

He'll Be Back

Schwarzenegger down, but not out

Ex-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to make the best of a very bad thing when he humbly admitted his having fathered a child with a former staffer.. Had the timing been different, it would have undoubtedly dented his political reputation, but considering the fact that he's no longer in office, experts, including Bernstein Crisis Management President Jonathan Bernstein, give him good odds on recovering enough to stay in the movie business.

A quote, from a Fox News story by Holly McKay:

“Arnold can’t save face in the short-term. He’s now regarded as zipper-challenged, just as Bill Clinton was many years ago,” said crisis management and public relations expert, Jonathan Bernstein. “And like Mr. Clinton, he can rehab his image by getting involved in good works and not engaging in dishonorable behavior. Unless, of course, he wants to have an image of being a ‘bad boy’ from now on.”

Bernstein said that in the long run, Schwarzenegger’s target movie audience probably won’t be deterred by his wandering ways.

“Arnold’s Hollywood genre is action flicks, and action flick fans won’t care what he did. If his movies are good, people will watch them,” he said.

Arnie's built up a pretty solid cushion of good will over the years. The press will enjoy this for a while, possibly stretching it out if news is slow, but soon enough it will all be history.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Coping with Social Media Attacks

A proactive stance can stave off baseless allegations

Social media has forced a change on crisis management and public relations as a whole, altering the way we communicate and respond to situations drastically. As the following quote from a TrendyMinds article explains, what was a hard and fast rule as little as ten years ago may be your ticket to disaster today:

As a general rule, organizations and businesses do more harm than good when they allow a deluge of falsehoods to go unanswered. That’s right—the old adage of legitimizing baseless attacks is BS, in my humble opinion. By holding back, you’re missing an opportunity to get your message out AND you’re allowing someone else to define you in their words. Secondly, we’re in a whole new world of mass communication. It used to be much harder and more expensive to do widespread damage to a person or company’s reputation. Back in the day (you know, the 90s), people had to either put money behind a paid advertising campaign or convince a news outlet to cover your accusations. Now, it’s as easy as hopping on Twitter and Facebook to get the rumor mill cranking and create a buzz.

This is exactly why you need to have a social media infrastructure in place, to monitor, measure, and respond to attackers.

The first step is obviously to detect the beginnings of trouble - the angry customer, the agitated ex-employee, etc. Organizations should respond as quickly as possible in an effort to neutralize the issue, but in the case of a social media attacker, this is often not enough. After that effort, close monitoring is required to determine whether this will stop at one person venting, or whether others will pick up and repeat the messages or similar sentiments. Should this occur, social media efforts must expand to both respond to allegations and work towards creating good will among stakeholders and the accuser's own circle.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Backup Plans

One question can save your crisis management efforts

Don't be surprised if in a few years' (or a few months') time some current White House, CIA and Pentagon staffers write how-to treatises on crisis management. According to news reports, the planning for the assault on Osama bin Laden's compound included contingencies for possible engagement with Pakistani police and military units. These contingencies included two additional Black Hawk helicopters stationed just across the border in Afghanistan, ready to engage in a firefight in case the commandos in the two lead assault helicopters came under attack in the compound.

President Obama insisted upon these two additional helicopters "about 10 days before the raid," according to the New York Times.

That speaks volumes to the thoroughness of the assault's crisis planning. Up until the last moment, the U.S. strategists kept asking the crucial question in crisis planning: What else can go wrong? Initially it was thought that the U.S. could talk its way out of a confrontation with Pakistani forces in case they responded to the military action on their own turf. Somebody—the president, apparently—then asked, "Well, what if that doesn't work?"

This quote, from a PR News Online article, shows that, however much we may love to malign its abilities, on some subjects the government's crisis management still excells.

The question, "what if that doesn't work?," is at the very core of crisis planning, and smart business thinking in general. Every plan needs a backup, or even better several, so you can change paths depending on which direction the situation moves in.

What this does is incorporate flexibility into your plans, and it's this ability to change when something isn't working as planned that will allow your company to make mistakes without taking damage as a result.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Letters from Sony

Communication is critical for crisis management

The heat is still on following the massive data breach at Sony, but the company has pulled things together, and last week somewhere in the area of 100 million users were officially notified via mail that their data had been compromised. With a weak start to crisis management for the situation, largely due to poor communication, a move of this size is a good sign. The campaign will definitely help Sony, but it could have been better, as this quote from SmartMoney's Pay Dirt blog explains:

Jonathan Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management, was put off by the technical and sometimes confusing “corporate-speak” in Sony’s letter. “The theft itself undermines Sony’s perceived competency,” he says, “but I think they did a good job, overall, of factually communicating how they were getting back on top of the situation.”

The task now will be for Sony to convince customers, both current and potential future, that its system is more secure than ever before. Of course, maintaining good will while that system is created is crucial, so constant communication will be key in the meantime.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Let 'Em Know

Don't duck your head during a crisis

It may seem redundant to say so, but the key to a successful crisis communications plan is to focus on communication. There is often an instinct to withdraw from the public eye during times of crisis.

However, during a crisis, people seek strong leadership. The public expects, and needs, someone to step forward to explain the problem and to provide information on how the problem will be fixed. Think of recent notable failures in crisis management, such as last year’s BP oil spill. The concerns and frustrations expressed by the general public were not typically focused on the spill itself, but on the company’s inability or unwillingness to share information on how the problem was being addressed.

This quote, from the Ackermann PR blog, accurately describes a problem many companies face when involved in crises. Regardless of what is going on behind the scenes, if you forget to communicate exactly what is being done in terms of crisis management, then you are seen as doing nothing at all, causing your organization's reputation to take a blow.

It's crucial to not only address the issues at hand, but also make absolutely certain that people know that you're doing it, and no, a press release will not be sufficient. One simple solution is to film repair, retraining, or recovery efforts yourself, using not only a corporate website, but outlets like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the like to promote the videos, making them accessible to as many eyes as possible.

However you choose to do it, keep talking. It never pays to play ostrich.

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Social Synergy

What's the relationship between customer service and social media?

Social Customer Relationship Management and Crisis Management are more than buzz words for getting the word out about your online business. When it comes to CRM and social media, the buzz word relates to the way your customers spread the word about customer service. The nice part about social media is that you can immediately identify a problem and then intervene before is grows to epic proportions as opposed to finding out about it months after the fact.

This quote, from the eMentor Marketing blog, nicely sums up the synergy between customer service and social media. Social media is essentially an expanded "word of mouth" system, so when people have a problem with a business they now let not only their friends and family, but anyone who cares to look, know exactly how they feel.

The advantage of this is that you have the ability to scan for and respond to these problem posts, giving you the chance to do your own crisis management by publicly rectifying the situation and hopefully not only retain the upset customer, but also attract more as a result of your solid customer service!

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/

Rewarding Failure

Thoughtless communication brings negative attention

Remember the big oil spill last year in the Gulf of Mexico?

I’m guessing your answer is yes. And, because our collective answer to that question is yes, Transocean Ltd. created a PR problem for itself when it claimed in an SEC filing last week that 2010 was the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history” and disclosed that it has awarded big safety bonuses to its top executives.

For example, Transocean President and CEO Steven L. Newman got a $374,062 bonus plus a $200,000 raise.

Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon, the offshore rig that blew up in the Gulf of Mexico last April, killing 11 workers and triggering the biggest oil spill in history.

This quote, from Jerry Brown's Monday Morning Media Minute, highlights a mistake by Transocean that goes against every lesson it should have learned from its largely failed crisis management campaign following the spill. Still displaying a large dose of arrogance and self-importance, Transocean's execs are likely well on their way toward another disaster.

If a year in which 11 workers were killed and unmeasurable damage was done to the ecosystem of an entire region is one to celebrate because it was the safest in company history, then what does that really say about the organization, and shouldn't it be rushing to fix things?

The BCM Blogging Team
http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/