Category: Organization Development

Online behavior has a direct impact on real-world results

Representing your brand well on social media is one of the most important things you can do to protect and grow your reputation. Solid effort that catches the attention of, and engages with, stakeholders will take you far. On the flip side, if your online attitude and customer care turns people off, or if you decide to go to the dark side and manipulate using questionable methods like false reviews, you’re in for a big hit to business.

In a stat-filled infographic, the Chartered Institute of Marketing has shared a ton of useful information on just how brand transparency on social media impacts reputation:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

Simple steps to protect your systems

This infographic from F-Secure may be in comic strip form, but the topic is no joke. The use of ransomware is growing rapidly, largely due to the fact that it puts money directly in attacker’s pockets without them having to turn around and sell information on the black market. By taking the simple steps outlined below you can drastically reduce the impact a ransomware attack has on your organization.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

Are you doing all you can to keep private information secure?

Just about every organization keeps private information regarding customers, employees, or both on hand. With attendant responsibility to keep that information secure. While it is true that skilled hackers may be able to penetrate any system, it’s important that you take every precaution to prevent that. This is not only for the up-front reason of making it more difficult for anyone who means harm to break in, but also that if a hack does occur you can point to your practices and say with honesty, “We made sure our security practices were those recommended by a security firm with impeccable credentials” or “our security practices were very much in keeping with industry best practices.”

The folks at ShareFile brought in experts to put together a list of the 5 key principles of an information security plan, which they state as:

1. Inventory your data. Keep track of all personal information stored in your files and computers.
2. Trim down and minimize. Store only the data that is crucial for operation of your business.
3. Keep it locked. Make sure to lock your computers and file storage to keep information secured.
4. Remove what is unnecessary. Trim down non-essential data and do away with the irrelevant and unimportant.
5. Be prepared for the worst. Devise a strategy for dealing with unfortunate events involving a security breach.

If you’re looking to assemble your own plan, or want to double-check that an existing one covers all the bases, ShareFile’s full Data Security Guide is a worthwhile read.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

Great no-cost resource for crisis education

One of the great things about the internet is the vast amount of knowledge available on any subject. Near and dear to our hearts, of course, is anything related to crisis management. Resources with quality content are always a welcome find, and we realized many people aren’t aware that FEMA offers a completely free course focus on social media in emergency management. While FEMA has taken a beating in the past, the organization took those hard lessons to heart and made its emergency management efforts both realistic and effective, making it a great source for information on how to handle ugly situations.

There is always something more to learn when it comes to crisis management. We’ve checked out the FEMA course ourselves, and the information within is a solid resource for anyone looking to improve their emergency management capabilities.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

By Rolfe Larson, Joining Vision and Action

What constitutes “true” social enterprises?

Thousands of nonprofits that use the marketplace to accomplish their social goals call themselves social enterprises (SEs). Thousands of for-profit companies with social goals also use that term. Yet these two groups barely talk with each other. Why is that?

Benefit corporations and B Corps

Benefit corporations can make decisions based on impact on the community, the environment and workers – not just shareholder value. B Corps, a certification program, evaluates for-profit companies that take social responsibility seriously. B Corps undergo a rigorous assessment in areas such as governance, social and environmental impact. and employee practices.

You’d think that with such common characteristics, these movements would work together and learn from one another, right? Not at all. They operate as if there were a tall wall between them.

We say, Tear Down This Wall!

“True” Social Enterprises

The general perception among many nonprofit social enterpriser leaders is that B Corps and benefit corporations are not “true” social enterprises since social impact is not their primary purpose.

For example, Kevin Lynch, co-author of Mission, Inc., The Practitioner’s Guide To Social Enterprise and collaborator on Joining Vision and Action’s Mission, Inc. Basecamp social enterprise training, is worried that “the idea of social enterprise is now more associated with benefit corporations and B Corps than with the selfless, unsexy nonprofit social enterprise model in which impact is part of the DNA.” He added his concern that “the work of true social enterprises, that put real impact first, will be overshadowed and ignored.” Source: http://huff.to/29r1wsW.

Similarly, leaders and participants in the fast-growing B Corps movement generally assume that all nonprofits are dependent on grants and contributions, and are therefore ill-equipped to function in the marketplace.

What’s going on here? We decided to crowd-source this problem to the npEnterprise Forum (npE), the 10,000+ circulation, non-commercial, moderated online forum for all things SE.

It’s About Impact

Several people pointed out that what matters is impact, not structure.

“We should encourage people to focus on what binds us together,” said Hannah Pechan, “to keep our eyes on maximizing positive impact. Like most of life, it takes all kinds.”

Fernando Botelho indicated that “social problems or the damage being done to nature are indifferent to our intellectual limitations. If a small change in a large multinational prevents the dumping of 100 thousand tons of CO2, that is exactly as valuable as the same reduction being achieved by a specialized NGO dedicated entirely to that purpose.”

It’s About the People

Hildy Gottlieb says “it’s always about the people. When we start asking, ‘Who else cares about this?’ and begin engaging as people, we don’t have to work at the walls coming down. They come down on their own.”

Jerr Boschee took a philosophical approach to this question. “The philosopher Jacques Ellul once observed that we all get our hands dirty,” Boschee said. “the only question we should ask ourselves is just how dirty we want them to get.

“I’m willing to take the risk that some private sector social enterprises run off the rails in exchange for those that can scale more quickly and do more social good than they would if they were structured as nonprofits.”

In summary, we wonder if we should look more at the social impact each social enterprise has, rather than how “pure” they are at achieving it.

We say, Tear Down This Wall!

What do you think?

See how Joining Vision and Action’s social enterprise training and consulting services can help your business or nonprofit can tear down the wall.

Joining Vision and Action is dedicated to providing social enterprises, nonprofits and government agencies with the tools and resources they need to succeed, sustain and scale. We bring research and innovation to this work, which we call implementation science. This allows our team of experts to provide more effective and imaginative tools to increase community impact.

This post originally appeared at http://joiningvisionandaction.com/tear-down-this-wall-whats-a-true-social-enterprise/

Create a solid foundation for communication in crisis

Crisis communications plans cannot be cookie-cutter, but there are certain principles that apply to just about every situation. Get the core bits down pat, and you’ll leave yourself significantly more room to think about incident-specific actions or outside-the-box solutions to the issue at hand.

In a simple yet highly informative infographic, India-based reputation firm Astrum did a great job of presenting Crisis Communications 101 in visual form:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

[Editor’s note: This guest post, originally published on the Triad Strategies blog, looks at the impact of VW’s $14 billion U.S. owner compensation agreement, and what it may mean to the company if similar amends are to be expected overseas where nearly 20x the number of vehicles have been affected. Although VW’s annual revenue is about $236b, we’re looking at the potential for a devastating $300b payout if the EU deal looks similar to the one here in the States.]

A few months back, we posted a couple of items regarding Volkswagen’s diesel emission test cheating scandal. We opined that by blatantly violating the law, the company’s brand had been severely tarnished, and the Road to Brand Redemption would be exceptionally long and hard.

That ka-boom you may have heard a few days ago, even above the din of “The Brexit,” was another shoe falling on Volkswagen. U.S. government lawyers announced a proposed settlement with the company, totaling $14.7 billion for compensation to owners of the 475,000 emission cheating Volkswagens and Audis sold in this country, for buybacks of the vast majority of them and, essentially, in fines.

The size of that settlement, still subject to federal court approval, would be second only to that reached last year with BP for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which began at $18.7 billion and grew with additional claims. Until now, the largest class-action settlements against automakers were the $2 billion agreement with GM over faulty ignition switches and $1.4 billion with Toyota over flawed accelerators.

When last we examined the Volkswagen fiasco, we laid out the steps that the company had taken as it began its journey to redemption. To review, Volkswagen almost immediately admitted its transgressions, accepted responsibility, apologized, promised full cooperation with regulators and investigators, assured customers it would “make it right” with them, and replaced the company’s leadership.

Learning from those who are doin’ it right

Figuring out how to do reputation management can be tricky. Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are plenty of positive examples of organizations doing good work both online and off, and all it takes is a bit of Googling to dig up best practices you can apply to your own efforts.

If you’re looking for a place to start your research you’d be hard pressed to do better than this list of Top 10 Reputations in the U.S., based on an official Harris Poll:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

Quick tips to help with ORM efforts

Truly excelling at online reputation management requires a customized approach and effort over time. While you work towards that, you can get positioned for success by learning all you can. Studying best practices and how-to’s (provided you vet where they’re coming from…) will allow you to lay a solid groundwork and avoid missteps that will cost you in the long run.

Simplilearn broke down some of the most common mistakes you should steer clear of, along with five principles that apply to any business or organization working to management its reputation on the internet, in the infographic shared below:

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter,Crisis Manager]

An international group of scientists says it should

More than 150 experienced scientists have signed a letter to the World Health Organization begging it to intervene and move or delay the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. The reason? Zika.

The letter cites a concern for global health as its primary reason:

The Brazilian strain of Zika virus harms health in ways that science has not observed before. An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire that strain, and return home to places where it can become endemic. Should that happen to poor, as-yet unaffected places (e.g., most of South Asia and Africa) the suffering can be great. It is unethical to run the risk, just for Games that could proceed anyway, if postponed and/or moved.

It also attacks the secretive “Memorandum of Understanding” between the International Olympic Committee and the WHO:

We are concerned that WHO is rejecting these alternatives because of a conflict of interest. Specifically, WHO entered into an official partnership with the International Olympic Committee, in a Memorandum of Understanding that remains secret.18 There is no good reason for WHO not to disclose this Memorandum of Understanding, as is standard practice for conflicts of interest. Not doing so casts doubt on WHO’s neutrality, for reasons described further in the Appendix.

You can find the full version of the letter, which goes into great detail both about the concerns held and proposed solutions, here.

“Too big to fail” has been proven a falsity on more than one occasion. With concerns being raised from around the world it’s important for everyone involved with the Rio Games to take an honest look at the situation.

The WHO did respond to the issues raised in a conversation with the BBC:

Dr Aylward, who heads the WHO’s emergency programme, told the BBC that it was already carrying out a risk-assessment programme “about this disease and the risks it poses both to individuals who get and those who might be subsequently exposed”.

In addition, he said, independent experts had reported to the WHO on the implications of the outbreak for travel and trade.

“Those are two of the exact measures that that group has asked for and that is exactly what is being done, and clearly we need to have better communicated that.”

Critics are absolutely going to see the results of that WHO risk assessment. If it comes across as honest, thorough, and shows little risk then many will be quieted. But, if there is a perception of less-than-honest evaluation, or proof continuing as planned could very well be ushering in a damaging epidemic, you can expect this issue to grow exponentially in a very short period of time.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc., an international crisis management consultancy, author of Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training. Erik Bernstein is vice president for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

– See more at: https://staging.management.org/blogs/crisis-management/2016/05/09/insurance-against-cyber-bullies/#sthash.K4dVuihy.dpuf