These posts are written to encourage thoughtful consideration of the entire range of communication strategy, plans and effectiveness. They’re based on my experiences in actual responses, as well as drills, exercises, tabletops and crisis communication plan reviews.

Feel free to share,  comment or contact me directly.  I value your input!

Relationships from fast-food to Facebook

| December 27, 2017

Managing relationships more effectively

No management degree should be offered without requiring a stint of managing a fast-food restaurant. These workplaces present unique management challenges as they combine low wages, high turnover, part time loyalty and portability. Fast food employees are starting their work career, hoping to move on and up to better work at any moment. They are learning employment skills on the job. Minimum wage is a great leveler, providing equal opportunity at a multitude of venues. With employee turnover rates commonly exceeding 100% per year, employee commitment or loyalty can be measured by Crane fly life spans.

Motivating such an ever shifting flock of employees is a constant challenge. Managers can’t offer more pay, can’t give more hours and can’t provide greater benefits, nor can they dramatically change working conditions. Any mistakes in management usually increase an already astronomical turnover rate, with employees leaving at any time for another equivalent position.

So what tools does a manager have to impact employees in this environment? Only one; they can manage their relationships better. Managers who treat employees like cogs on a gear are constantly replacing the cogs. Managers who are dismissive of employee concerns experience employee mutinies, where an entire shift just doesn’t show up. Managers who won’t listen to employees, relate to their issues or offer affirmation and support end up constantly starting new relationships instead of deepening existing ones.

A good fast food manager quickly learns the negative impact of bad relationship management. Manage your minimum-wage stakeholders without empathy and they’ll leave immediately. Implement policies badly and they’ll leave immediately. Treat them without respect and they’ll leave immediately.

High pay, good benefits and promotion possibilities make it easier to manage people poorly; employees will stay in spite of bad management if they can’t match pay, benefits or promotion potential anywhere else. It’s often said that people will stay at a bad company if they have a good manager, and this is true. It is also true that people often stay at a good company if they have a bad manager, sticking it out until they get to work with someone else.  But they’re not experiencing the relationships they deserve.

Fast food chains could do us all a favor by providing a 3-month internship for every management program graduate; you can make every known management mistake in three months at a fast food restaurant, and amply experience the fallout of poor management decisions along the way.

So what does this have to do with stakeholder communication?

Today’s Facebook-speed communication environment has created a Crane fly relationship management world.  A momentary event can damage or destroy your reputation, yet be replaced in public consciousness before you can mount a defense. Stakeholders are fractured by interests and location, news source and web access. They don’t have to invest in long term relationships with media sources, they can play the field among a multiplicity of equal media opportunities. Every stakeholder acts like a fast-food employee.

You have little to offer them to maintain your relationships. Manage your relationships with them badly and they will leave, taking your reputation with them. Manage it well and they’ll stay, allowing you the opportunity to shape their knowledge, attitudes and experience.

The same qualities that make a fast-food manager successful make a communicator successful:

  • Respect: We are worth more than what we are paid. Managers who understand this will recognize the value of their employees, maximize their strengths and carefully address their concerns. Loyalty’s price tag isn’t measured in pay, it is measured in the value granted to the individual.Communicators, understand the immense value each stakeholder brings, and treat each of them with respect. Thank them for reaching out with their concerns. Acknowledge their special needs. Be considerate of their schedules. Make their job as easy as you can. Earn their loyalty to the response.
  • Information: Minimum-wage earners aren’t mushrooms and shouldn’t be treated as such. Bottom-rung employees have the least impact on practice or policy, and are often relegated to barely-need-to-know status when it comes to decisions that can greatly impact them. Managers who care will take the time to provide the background, considerations and decision process that has led to new policies or practices. They can’t change the outcome, but they can impact acceptance.Communicators, provide all the information you can to help stakeholders understand how decisions are made. Acknowledge the negative consequences to response decisions and explain why they are necessary. Highlight why specific actions are taken – the more difficult they are, the more thoroughly they should be explained. Give your stakeholders the information they need to accept response decisions.
  • Feedback: Today, employees at every level expect to be heard. Lack of hearing is interpreted as lack of respect, or as dishonesty. Good managers keep an open door and are willing to hear criticism without defensiveness. Good listening skills lead to better understanding, and understanding always increases acceptance.Communicators, be sure you have a strong feedback loop. Be sure you are hearing stakeholder concerns, not just listening past them. Identify shared concerns and acknowledge them. Always welcome feedback or criticism. Allow time for stakeholders to process new information, and encourage their responses. Feedback given and heard leads to ownership.
  • Gratitude: A little bit of gratitude goes a long way in any job. A good manager may not be able to offer a shorter shift, better working conditions or more pay, but they can always express appreciation for work well done. With good communication, people implicitly know if they’re getting all that can be given, and a ‘thank you’ always adds value. Employees who feel valued stay longer and work better.Communicators, thank people for being there! In response communication, you are fighting to preserve or enhance your reputation with people who don’t have to be there for you to talk to. Nor do they need to do anything to help you. Yet here they are, in front of you at a news conference or community meeting, on the other end of the phone, or even on the other end of the radio, listening to what you have to say. You can’t make their lot in life easier, and you can’t make up for the mess they’re suffering through. But you can thank them for caring. Stakeholders who feel valued stick around linger.
  • Welcome: Good managers are always looking for the next employee, and they’re finding them through the ones they already have. Every person working in any job knows someone who is looking for work. Good managers draw these names out, and make it clear that good employees are always welcome. These managers are the ones who hire without advertising, land better prospects and build better teams.Communicators, always encourage your stakeholders to share your information with other interested people. Doing so is a sign of respect, of welcome and of gratitude. It tells your stakeholders that they are important to you, and so are their friends. This implicit referral increases the likelihood that your story will be shared and that other key influencers will start showing up at your workplace. You will gain the most motivated stakeholders who are seeking you out because someone they trust and respect has told them about you. And they’re coming with the heightened expectations and motivations you want.

Intangibles’ impact

All these actions are intangibles, none in itself has any weight. But when they are applied in addition to the currency of actions, they multiply the weight of each one. Taking the time to offer your stakeholders the intangibles of respect, information, feedback, gratitude and welcome will multiply your message. You can build better stakeholder relationships! Try it.

While you’re at it

Principles that enhance management of employees and stakeholders can be translated to more important relationships too. How many other arenas could be impacted by applying these? As I write this I’m convicted that I owe these courtesies to everyone important in my life, Shouldn’t we offer the most we can, to those who are the most important to us?

Not a bad New Year’s resolution!

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

A brave new world – lessons for communications

| December 14, 2017

Today’s lesson for tomorrow’s communicators

The world is changing ever faster. I’m old enough to remember waiting for checks to come in the mail. I remember faxing. I remember my first email, and wondering if I’d need a desktop computer for my first job. Yet more change has occurred in the past 5 years than what I experienced in the previous five decades. This change is occurring technologically, operationally and in the culture of communications.

Many organizations are adept at keeping up with, or at least in sight of, technological and operational changes and advancements. We quickly get used to GIS and we implement it on our operational planning. We discover that cell phones capture video, so we use them to film subject matter experts. We learn how to use virtual meeting technology so we use it for virtual press conferences. We’re (barely) managing the physical changes in our response communications tool belt.

But what about cultural changes brought about by same technology? What happens when someone moves our technology cheese? As an example of a communication cultural change, it is likely that your crisis communication plan and accompanying exercise objectives specify that you conduct a press conference. When information can be shared instantly using webcasts, live chats and video/photo libraries, what are you accomplishing with a physical press conference? Will anyone attend it, particularly if you don’t hold it ‘where the action is’? Your organization isn’t keeping up with cultural changes brought about by emergent technologies.

These changes in communication culture directly impact your ability to communicate even if you DO understand how to use modern platforms and technologies. Your risk is that, using new tools and technology, you can say the wrong things to the wrong people faster and more pervasively than ever before.

When communicators change their behavior to broadcast information, they also change stakeholders’ expectations of how to receive it. As an example, the ubiquity of cellphone cameras allows more people to capture images and video, as well as the ability to immediately broadcast it via different platforms, allowing any individual, event or incident to gain instant notoriety. We implicitly understand this. But the same capability changes both the photo takers and photo viewers. The ease of taking and broadcasting images increases the expectation that they will be taken, broadcasted and available to view – quickly. This is the new ‘media culture’ – instantaneous and pervasive imagery.

Have you considered the impact of the cultural changes that technology is forcing on your mission? You need to be ever-ready to identify what today’s lessons are for tomorrow’s communication needs. How do communicators spot and react to the changes that impact their world?

Gotta learn faster!

Spring of 2017 marked the realization by many Americans that airlines really don’t care about them. So it appeared, as cellphone videos of a passenger being forcibly dragged off an airliner became the news of the day. The airline in question was pilloried for its uncaring, greedy corporate policy and procedures that allowed an innocent passenger to be dragged off one of their planes. Images of this event were shared thousands of times, going viral before the airline could respond with any sort of initial statement. The poor communication responses led to further setbacks, and lack of communication sensitivities led to truly disastrous reputation management.

Four observations to this unfortunate incident:

  1. The obvious one: Airline booking policies need to change. What was reasonable before today’s level of real-time data isn’t reasonable any more. Even though contract language with every ticket sold allows airlines to select passengers for removal with no recourse, this isn’t going to work when everybody is a broadcaster. Facebook will accuse, prosecute and sentence you before your legal and communications teams are activated. Stakeholder sensitivities may not be apparent to security guard, but they should be clear to a communicator.
  2. The airline was blamed for actions out of their control. This may be less obvious, but it is event-critical. The airline was not the organization that committed the actions in question, but that didn’t matter one whit. They suffered the blame for others’ actions because their policies were the root cause of that action. In this case, aircraft crew apparently followed procedures perfectly; airport security was called to deal with a recalcitrant passenger, exactly according to policy. Every airline in the world should be asking their communicators to review procedures for this type of action, as well as any other human-touching activity.
  3. The responding airport security personnel followed procedures. Unfortunately, the procedure was never vetted through communicators; certainly not by anyone with any sensitivity to what enforcement actions look and feel like to the person being collared. Law enforcement agencies across the country are dealing with this dichotomy and all the body cameras in the world don’t help explain why physical force is being used. Policies need to include clear descriptions of what actions lead to which reactions. In this case, this airline, and all other airlines, suffered the consequence of poor response planning, preparation and training.
  4. Human nature had enormous impact on this event. This may be the most critical consideration for communicators. Think about it; there were scores of passengers on the aircraft, all who were perfectly content to watch a fellow passenger dragged off the airplane with attendant personal harm. Even as the attack occurred alongside them, not one person stood up to offer to leave instead. Worse than that, several people chose to film the encounter rather than offer their help, and to broadcast it with full self-righteousness. Any individual on the aircraft could have solved the problem by getting up and offering their seat instead. Nobody did. The new ‘media culture’ prevented it. What does this slice of human nature say about the likelihood that your own response efforts will be met with charitable intent?

What can a communicator learn from this event?

  1. Conduct a review of operational response plans to identify implicit communication risks.
  2. Map the likely affected stakeholders, possible outrage and the ability to broadcast it to the world.
  3. Correct operational response plans and prepare appropriate communication products to deal with an issue arising from an operationally perfect action.
  4. Make sure all response parties have the same level of sensitivity to public perception.
  5. Don’t expect any help from the people impacted by your event; human nature is to hunker down, not help out.

This event is an example of how early identification of a changing communication culture can lead to operational changes. Airlines need to require better passenger handling by airport security, overbooking policies can be changed and the process of asking for volunteers could be altered. As an example of this last point, by the time the air crew selected passengers at random for removal, every passenger on the plane had said ‘no’ multiple times: Passengers said ‘no’ to free tickets, paid hotel nights and meals, cash incentives and final pleas for consideration. Every ‘no’ increased the likelihood of security personnel coming on the plane.

You don’t get people to change their behavior under stress by asking them to reverse earlier decisions! As a professional communicator, you can help your organization learn methods to increase understanding and acceptance of your actions at every level, even on a crowded aircraft. Note: Proper attention and learning from this issue demonstrates that communication sensitivity should prompt an operational change. Communication matters!

Can your organization adapt to changing communication culture?

With this newfound focus on passenger mistreatment, several airlines were prominent in the news after this incident for their own customer service mishaps, each one for acting exactly as their operational policies specified. How long does it take to change? As demonstrated above, it can take more time than you have, even if you are looking and learning as you go. In this example, has any airline changed its booking policies since this customer service/reputation debacle?

What about your organization?  Can you rapidly adapt to the changing communication culture?  The cost of not learning can be high.

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

That was then, this is now

| December 4, 2017

While serving as Associate Director of my local United Way I had opportunity to work with a master of change management. In his tenure as Executive Director, he not only strengthened the structure and management of the agency, but he also poured his wisdom into many of our member agencies and he freely shared it with me. One of his constant reminders as we watched and waited for change in our member agencies was; ‘Any organization with any strength takes three years to change.’ His emphasis was on planning, patience and perseverance. He knew from experience with both individuals and organizations that change comes more slowly than we want.

Change comes more slowly than we want

So it is with crisis communication and response. As communicators we must be very focused on response communication strategies.  At the same time, the swirling dynamics of change are impacting the very nature and structure of crisis response as much as they are impacting our communications environment.

Those of us ‘of a certain age’ remember the days when response communication objectives read like a media calendar: Press conferences at 5:00pm. Press releases scheduled for 7:00 and 11:00 am, at 6:00pm and maybe at 9:00pm. Photo ops. Early phone interviews for ‘drive time’ listeners. Editorial staff meetings for ‘background’. Exclusive interviews, ‘off-the-record’ conversations.

Ah, nostalgia. Today we work in a different operations theater for response communication. News doesn’t wait for 6:00pm. News isn’t even 24/7, it is 86,400/7 (seconds, not hours). Press Releases have become News Releases, themselves a relic of past times. Photo pools are provided via drones and cellphones. Telephone interviews are cell phone videos and podcasts. Editorial staff… isn’t. Off-the record isn’t. Exclusive interviews… aren’t.

Today’s news media is a constant, fragmented, immediate, pervasive and unregulated beast, feeding increasingly impatient and distracted stakeholders with smaller and smaller bites of information. ‘Fair and balanced’ is an anachronism, as no modern media outlet has time to be concerned with fairness or balance. Bias feeds bias, special interests feed followers, and the end consumer expects more and more information, faster and faster. You know you’re in a different world when premise, evidence and conclusion all have to fit into 142 characters. Thoughtful and explanatory content has been replaced with ‘news haiku’ of shorter and shorter bits of information.

Videos of security guards dragging a passenger off a plane are posted before they get to the aircraft’s exit door. Images of frightened shoppers are online before police arrive at a mall under siege. Videos of arrests are shared before the suspects’ rights are read. Everyone, always, tweets, Instagrams, posts, shares and chats.

Because of this real time onslaught of content, our news-consumer expectations are escalated. We live in a world where we all expect to know what’s happening NOW. We continually click on our favorite news sites, in case something just happened somewhere. We subscribe to local emergency news feeds to get information immediately.  We still want it all, but we also want it immediately.

Change for better or for worse?

We know this, because we live with these dynamics every day. We can bemoan our brave new world if we want. We can reminisce about the good old days when professional media asked politely, investigated carefully, reviewed releases with their subjects and even chose not to cover selected private peccadillos. But those days are gone, for better or worse.

And who’s to say it’s for worse? There are certainly new challenges, but there are equal opportunities. News is more available than ever before. Secrets have been dragged out of darkness and exposed to light. Corruption is uncovered. Abuse is exposed. Unfairness is highlighted. It’s not always a fair process, it is seldom balanced, but it is the new world we live in.

This new world brings more opportunity than ever before

Winston Churchill once stated; “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” That was then. Today a lie gets around the world several times before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

But just as misinformation is spread at the speed of light (not the speed of thought – thought is too slow), truth can be shared as quickly. Today, the truth can catch up!  After all, we all have access to the ubiquitous self-publishing platforms of the day.  The Facebooks, Twitters, Instagrams and others are as available to the communicator as they are to the activist, advocate, adherent, add your name here….

The challenge isn’t the technology, it is the process.  Electrons move at the same pace for everybody, light only has one speed.  The issue is the process, not the platform:  Do our methods work?

Why have this conversation here, as we settle into consideration of actual response communication? It is true every day, not just during a crisis. Absolutely, but a crisis magnifies these dynamics and it magnifies them against a very traditional structure.

Tradition vs. change

Incident Command and Unified Command structures and processes have not kept up with the evolution of communication, and a communicator needs to be aware of this dynamic to succeed. If you want to communicate effectively in the response environment you will need to proactively address multiple issues caused by this ‘process gap’.  Here are some of them:

Restrictive procedures

Response actions occur in a command/control environment. Procedures are written and procedures are followed, regardless of current applicability. Most exercises conducted in this environment still specify communication procedures such as holding a press conference, and in answering a few inquiries. Press conferences are typically measured as “Y/N” that they occurred, and inquiries are rated the same way, as “Y/N” that they were answered. No subjective evaluations are conducted, only binary measurements for success. Responders will not readily allow communicators to change this measurable in drills, let alone in a response.

Restrictive staffing

Staffing preference is granted by agency origin or agency size.  An incident commander instinctively expects their own staff to support them, and position staffing follows this, often without regard for currency or competence.  Unified Command’s ‘Most Qualified Individual’ (MQI) canon is replaced with personal preference.

Rigid plans

Any variation from existing (often outdated) plans requires sign-off from the top. Plans and objectives come from the top, so changes have to go to the top. This leads to rigidity and delay.

Repression of information

Information is power, and must be protected rather than shared. It is common for response structures to restrict information flow to a ‘need-to-know’ basis that never includes the affected public.

Restricted access

Decisions and decision makers must be sheltered from the public eye. Their deliberations are too complex and arcane for public understanding. The knowledge and expertise in the room is considered to be above the comprehension of the ‘average Joe’. This is based on a correct assumption that people in the room know far more about the elements and dynamics of the response. The flaw in this reasoning is failure to understand the public’s right to know and the danger of misinformation.

Restricted release of information

Public information should be controlled for the good of the response. Locations of assets, responders, equipment and even the incident itself must be kept away from the public, either to keep them from alarm or to prevent possible interference, or for ‘safety’.

Secrecy

Future plans are secret, since they may change or cause public concern. Facts should be guarded and shared only if they are immutable. We can’t be changing information that we share!

How to change

Communicators must prepare well for effective response communication, persistently pushing for the thinking and changes needed to succeed with response communication:

Address restrictive procedures

Stress the importance of changing expectations to meet communication requirements. Prepare a response communication plan that outlines specific objectives and procedures. Trade assurance of performance (for Command) for greater freedom to publish (for you).

Prevent restrictive staffing

Practice ‘MQI’.  Take your training courses! Get certified. This gives you ‘street cred’ to suggest changes. Stake out the position most critical for your organization’s reputation for yourself.

Overcome rigid plans

Prepare a response communication plan as quickly as possible. Get approval from Command, and enforce it.

Counter repression of information

Remind Command that there are no secrets in any physical response. If anything is being done, it is being observed.

Eliminate restricted access

Remind Command that their only exclusive information is ‘why’. Remind them that affected stakeholders will trust them more when they know why they are doing what they are. The ‘why’ gives reassurance and reinforces the competency of the response.

Ensure full release of information

Remind Command that not sharing information will be interpreted as hiding information. Hiding information will be interpreted as lying. Lack of trust will lead to dependence on other (less reliable) sources and will expose the public to misinformation, leading to misunderstanding, wrong behavior and risk or interference with response activities. All of this is completely avoidable.

Eliminate secrecy

Facts are facts, and plans are based on known information. Information is fungible and will lose its value and utility rapidly in a response. Remind Command that today’s facts are only useful today; tomorrow’s facts will supplant them. People understand that information changes, they don’t understand why it isn’t shared.

Change takes time

Remember that it takes time to change, so real change must occur over a period of time while you persistently implement new thinking through planning and exercises. You may not get it all in place before ‘the big one’, so you need to be ready to push for what change you can during the actual event.

Don’t give up! Keep pushing for what you know the response needs. It will be challenging, but you owe it to the very people resisting it. They don’t understand the peril they put themselves in by resisting effective stakeholder communication. You also owe it to affected stakeholders. They need good information for peace of mind, understanding what is happening and knowing what they should do. Practice planning, patience and perseverance.

The worst Command can do is ‘fire’ you – you might be pushed out of your role if you push too hard, but there are other places you can impact effective response communication too. As one country singer put it; ‘I’d rather be sorry for something I’ve done, than for something that I didn’t do.’

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

Real risk and role reversals

| November 28, 2017

Communication professionals must participate in an effective risk assessment.

It’s not all about operational risks any more. While we’re ready and waiting for these operational incidents to occur, we’re waiting longer and longer. Processes, regulations and technology have combined to make physical operations safer than ever before. The real risk of significant operational incidents is dropping. While we should celebrate this lower risk environment, we have to live with the reality that today’s operational incidents always lead to greater and greater communication challenges. Even while the probability of an incident occurring is reduced, the need for effective preparedness increases commensurately.

We’ve also seen the rise of a new risk: The virtual incident, where physical harm is replaced by emotional or social harm. The emergence of social media and the accompanying instant coverage and instant outrage changes everything. Outrage is clicks away in every industry, and this concept of a communication crisis leading to an operational challenge is the new norm.

Where is the risk?

Your organization may be at greater risk of a reputation-challenging incident from the communication sphere than it is from the operational sphere. This has a massive impact on traditional risk assessment. The person or people charged with identifying business risks may not be aware of, or versed in, the very real threat of a business risk brought about entirely by external influences. The gates may stand and pipelines or track remain intact. The ship may sail and the aircraft take off. Everybody may be safe and uninjured and fumes may stay in the scrubbers. Everything may be safe and secure, and yet a crisis can erupt at any time over…feelings or assumptions.

In this new reality, communication professionals must be involved in any effective risk assessment. Today’s risk environment is changing and only communicators can be expected to be able to identify these new, asymmetrical threats. It is likely that a review of your organization’s current risk assessment and action plans will reveal a dearth of attention to this new and real risk of reputation-challenging external threats.

The unique risk in natural disaster responses

Of course, even when our operations are becoming safe, we’re also facing increased possibilities of natural disasters, as it seems the horsemen of the apocalypse are upon us at all times: fire, flood, famine, plague, earthquakes and volcanoes. Natural disaster response entails a unique form of response communication because people don’t spend time trying to decide whose fault it is; it’s pretty clear that it is nobody’s fault. This frees operational response plans up from much concern about public approbation or scrutiny.

But in any such response, stakeholder expectations quickly emerge: Why is it taking so long? Why are you ignoring me? Why are you not doing what I think you should do? Why aren’t you here yet?

Overwhelmed municipalities, damaged businesses, savaged transportation systems and overwhelmed utilities are suddenly under higher scrutiny. This scrutiny is not from regulators or responders, but from individual citizens coalescing into a mass of discontent. Individual assumptions and expectations merge, special interests stir the soup, politicians add seasoning and before you know it the rock soup of response becomes the stewing mess of failure. Organizations, already trying desperately to respond, find themselves distracted by unreasonable demands, challenges and protests. None of this is due to a failure of the response; all is due to the amorphous, coalescing opinion that ‘things must be done better’.

Communicators needed!

This toxic soup of expectations is immensely challenging to an operational response because ‘normal’ responder actions are completely ineffective in alleviating these new stakeholder expectations. Only communicators can identify the emerging risk, the key issues and messages needed to preserve the response right to operate, as well as the language needed to assure impacted stakeholders and their handlers that progress is in fact being made at a reasonable pace. Ignore effective communications in this environment and risk the loss of your right to operate. Not because you have actually done anything wrong, but because your stakeholders have decided you have.

Warning!

If you represent a response or regulatory agency instead of a private organization, don’t assume that you are safe, wrapped in robes of righteousness. Response and regulatory entities are at great risk from an outraged public. If you work for a public entity, you work for the public.

When you work for a private organization, you work for owners or shareholders. There is great potential public censure for a private organization in the form bad reputation, reduced market share, decreased stock value and challenging permitting environment, but the public can’t directly put a company out of business.

Years after the Deepwater Horizon incident, BP is doing very well, thank you. Meanwhile, the offshore drilling regulatory agency, Minerals Management Service (MMS) has been disbanded, it’s $310 million budget and 1,600+ employees scattered to the winds by political and public outrage in October 2011.

What to do?

How do you address these issues proactively? What can you do to prepare for them or to prevent them?

Be sure to identify stakeholder-driven risk in planning

Request an opportunity to provide input into risk identification so you can identify the types of stakeholder-driven issues your organization’s operations are susceptible to. Provide criteria for quickly identifying the emergence of a stakeholder issue.

Identify response risk in natural disasters

Help prevent the self-righteousness people assume when ‘it’s not our fault’. Your stakeholders will never measure your success by whether you met your own objectives; they will measure it by whether you’ve met theirs. Define issues you know will emerge in this type of response and prepare to address each one. Identify what issues are most likely to impact actual operations and share them with planners. As an example, the demand for pet rescues after Hurricane Katrina forced an operational decision to dedicate helicopter space and payload to pets instead of people. Since this decision changed the rate of rescues for operations, operational planning and resource allocation were directly impacted by the emergent public concern.

Plan to communicate with non-traditional stakeholders

Plan how you will communicate to engage with non-traditional stakeholders; the individuals, or advocacy groups made up of mobilized individuals, who often drive public outrage after an event. Traditional stakeholders – Media, elected officials and agencies – can be completely aware of your response activities and fully approving of them, but their approval will change when any of their own constituent’s priorities change. Their constituents will always include the individuals and advocacy groups who are critical of your activities, so failure to reach any of these new stakeholders will jeopardize you relationship with all your current stakeholders. Outrage is contagious!

Your strategy to prevent this is to engage directly with any concerned individuals, to provide information that settles their personal feathers. You must engage directly with them; ‘normal’ engagement through traditional channels won’t impact their opinions. Keep track of individuals and advocacy groups, and include them in communication opportunities. Don’t cede their opinions to someone else!

Interested in more information?  Contact me!

When did I become the bad guy?

| November 21, 2017

I thought we were the good guys

Today’s asymmetrical reputational risk environment can be baffling to non-communicators.  We all expect that justice and truth prevail, that if we do the right thing everything will be all right. Corporations try to be good public citizens. Doctors try to save lives. Airlines try to keep to their schedules.  Risk assessment and response planning is focused on identifying the events that can disrupt normal operations and creating response plans that minimize impact and quickly resume normal operations.  If we do this right, everything will be all right, right?  Then why does it seem so easy to become the bad guy?

Today’s always-on communication environment doesn’t accommodate our premise. We are no longer judged by an objective standard of ‘how we do’; while this provides an important and necessary measurement for responders and regulators, we are much more likely to be judged on why we did what we did, and how our actions impacted people, places and things.

Doing the right thing isn’t enough if people don’t agree with what you did. You can do what someone needed, yet become the bad guy because you didn’t do what someone wanted. As a result, well-meaning and conscientious responders are surprised when the public doesn’t reward their efforts with praise and admiration. They are baffled by the negative responses and attitudes they face.  How can good response actions result in bad public opinion?  Didn’t we do everything right?

The traditional response math (right facts + right actions = happy stakeholders) doesn’t seem to work today.   1+1 = 2 only if affected stakeholders perceive it to be so. Feelings, opinions or biases easily overrule facts.  This changes how a response is perceived and how responders are treated.  Communicators need to help response organizations understand that their communication product must change to match their stakeholder’s perceptions.

Facts are critical, but beyond the ‘what’, planners and responders must become adept at the ‘why’. Otherwise good people will be deemed to be bad people. Good response actions will be labeled as bad and public trust and acceptance will melt away.

Most response planning is built around the a standard set of objectives:

  1. Keep everyone safe – don’t conduct operations that increase the risk of injury to responders or the public
  2. Protect the environment
  3. Stop the incident – put out the fire, stop the flow, catch the bad guy, etc.
  4. Minimize disruption and damage – respond as aggressively as possible while not negating objective #1 (safety)
  5. Restore business operations as quickly as possible.
  6. Restore affected people, property and environment to their original state.

These are good and noble objectives.  You will see a version of them in every exercise or event. Operators use these objectives as a response absolute – every decision revolves around them. Every response decision is weighed by whether the good of the action exceeds the harm of the action. Responders perform this response math all the time; the problem is that the public doesn’t. While responders assume that the right and reason of these objectives is obvious on all they do, stakeholders often take issue with them.

This dichotomy is real:

  • In a major oil spill response, Unified Command made a decision to perform in-situ burning to destroy spilled oil far out to sea, before it could impact shorelines and their environments. This decision entailed painstaking consideration of whether the benefit (less oil on the beaches) exceeded the harm (incineration of all surface-dwelling animals). Burning commenced to great effect and responders congratulated themselves on making the best decision. Then the questions started; reports of marine wildlife being burned began circulating on the web and outrage began to mount. It required considerable effort by communicators to convince Unified Command that this was a real issue, and precious time and reputation was lost in the interim.
  • While escorting a Native American longboat on a whale hunt, a US Coast Guard craft inadvertently ran over a protester on a personal watercraft. In the very public rescue operation that commenced, no stakeholders concerns were expressed for the safety of the protester, but many expressed concern for the whale.

We become the bad guy

Responder sensitivities often don’t match public sensitivities, and the discrepancy erodes public trust and acceptance. This exacerbates the preset, media-managed roles of public and responders. Even in responses with no obvious perpetrator, the public dialogue tends to become ‘us versus them’, with a victim, a villian and a hero. If your organization is designated as ‘Responsible Party’ you will inevitably be assigned the ‘villain’ role. The ‘victim’ is squishy, as each stakeholder group defines that role. In the case of the whale hunt mentioned above, the logical victim (the protester run over by the Coast Guard craft) wasn’t given that role – the whale was. In the in-situ burning decision, the villain was the RP, even though the decision to burn was a Unified Command decision. The victims were the marine wildlife, overriding any appreciation for how the actions taken were sparing other shoreline ‘victims’.

Remember, public sensitivities also won’t spare the nobility of responding agencies. Public agencies tend to assume the mantle of righteousness in responses, but are actually at greater risk than private companies. When something goes wrong, a villain must be assigned, and if any affected public sees an Agency’s actions as wrong, the ‘villain’ role will be quickly and firmly attached. Public agencies have little protection against an outraged public, because they answer to the public.

The antidote to being labeled the bad guy

What steps can you take to minimize the risk of being labeled the villian?

Don’t depend on facts

Responders live with facts and use facts to make decisions. They assume that facts will speak for themselves, but facts don’t. The critical information needed isn’t the ‘what’s’, it is the ‘whys’. Response decisions lead to self-evident actions. These actions don’t explain the responders’ decisions.  Instead they serve as evidence to support or rebut a bias or supposition. Stakeholders who think their interests aren’t being considered will gather facts that support their point, using actual response actions to prove wrong decisions or motives.

Share response rationale

Communicators need to make sure that the rationale for key decisions is widely shared. The reasons for deciding on a course of action will almost always support the listed response objectives, and can serve to remind all stakeholders that response actions always reflect the best possible decisions, made by the most capable people.  Messages prepared to explain why an action is being taken can also easily be augmented to address known or emerging issues or concerns. Specific stakeholders’ concerns can be addressed even while informing all stakeholders of an action or decision.

Don’t be passive

Finally, don’t passively accept public questioning of response motives; be ready to aggressively respond to it. While we all have a core belief that the right will be evident in the end, we ignore dissenting opinions at our peril. Public perception is a fungible commodity, and a loud voice accompanied by cherry-picked ‘proof’ can sway public opinion. It is more important to correct misinformation about response motives than it is to correct misinformation about response actions. Actual facts tend to correct themselves, but motives aren’t as quantifiable; a communicator has to carefully monitor what is being said about the character, competency or motive of responders, quickly and aggressively addressing misinformation about why specific actions are being taken. These rebuttals can always reinforce the key messaging that the best people are making the best decisions to mobilize the best resources for the best outcome.

Don’t be the bad guy

  • Report response activities as quickly as they can be seen
  • Share the ‘why’ of these actions, for understanding
  • Tie the ‘why’ to specific emerging concerns and address individuals and groups concurrently
  • Reinforce key objectives by tying them to response decisions
  • Monitor and aggressively rebut any misinformation about the character, competency or motive of the response
  • Use your rebuttal as an opportunity to reinforce key messaging

Interested in more information?  Contact me!