Category: Organization Development

Potential disaster headed off by strong crisis communication

Ethical reporting has been a hot topic recently, and this quote, from a PRDaily article by Gil Rudawsky, describes a perfect case study for media organizations to preserve a paper’s reputation and come to the unfortunate realization that one of their writers or reporters has been less than honest. When The Cape Cod Times discovered that reporter Karen Jeffrey had made a habit of fabricating sources, they made the difficult decision to print the whole story in what we say was a brilliant crisis management move.

The Cape Cod Times covered the news like it would any other breach of ethics. In a 1,024-word apology to readers, editor Paul Pronovost and publisher Peter Meyer (in a bylined story) offered a complete look at how they found out about the fabrications—including examples of her fabricated sources—while trying to explain how it happened. They noted that the reporter no longer works for the paper.

“How did this happen? Or more important, how did we allow this to happen?” Pronovost and Meyer wrote. “It’s a question we cannot satisfactorily answer. Clearly we placed too much trust in a reporter and did not verify sourcing with necessary frequency.”

Taking a page from classic crisis communication strategy, they offered a personal apology without making any excuses and holding themselves to the same scrutiny as the paper does other members of the public:
“This column is our first step toward addressing what we uncovered. We needed to share these details, as uncomfortable as they are, because we are more than a private company dealing with a personnel issue—we are a newspaper and we have broken our trust with you. We deeply regret this happened and extend our personal apology to you.”

The reporter in question was found to have been inventing sources dating back to some point in the 1990’s, with Cape Cod Times editors admitting that they have been unable to locate at least 69 “sources” used in 34 stories, and they aren’t even looking at dates prior to 1990, when the paper’s articles began to be digitized. While many organizations’ first instinct upon discovering an inside problem is to bury it, The Cape Cod Times was able to both honor the journalistic ethics code and turn what could have been a seriously damaging discovery into a way to elevate its status as a trusted source among readers. By essentially telling readers that they knew they’d messed up and were awfully embarrassed about it, the paper positioned itself as well-intentioned and honest in the court of public opinion.

No matter what your organization does, when you find a problem the very last thing you want to do is bury it. If you behave dishonestly then (and this may come as a shock to some people out there!) you are dishonest, and that stigma will follow you regardless of what colorful story you piece together to explain your actions. Stakeholders can accept that you made a mistake, especially if you put a human face to your admission as The Cape Cod Times did with its editor and publisher, but they are much less understanding when they find that they’ve been deliberately duped. It may be more difficult in the short term, but, and we’re speaking from experience, the end result will be much more positive.

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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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Thoughtless Twitter posts lead to rapid ejection from mediator role

It’s common to see Twitter profiles including comments like “opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer,” but the fact is that whether you post a qualification or not, the things you do and say online can definitely have an impact on your professional career.

Look no further than Guy Serota. Guy has been a member of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service for fifteen years, and helped to end the 2004 NHL lockout, so it was an easy decision to bring him back to mediate this year’s lockout negotiations. The difference between today and 2004, however, is that in 2012, when you’re publicly appointed to a position of interest, those interested parties are going to dig up every bit of information that they can possibly find and share it with the world.

Unfortunately for Serota, he hasn’t been the nicest “guy” on Twitter (sorry folks, couldn’t resist that one!), and it was only minutes before hockey-starved fans began lining up to make cracks at the oddball mix of comments on his feed that included nasty racial remarks directed at Sarah Silverman, a masturbation reference, partisan political comments and prevalent use of the term “ass mode.”

In a hamfisted attempt at crisis management, Serota did shutter his Twitter account, only to bring it back up and post claiming that he had been hacked, but a web-savvy public found the idea of an undetected hack spanning several weeks and with no apparent focus to be a dubious explanation at best. Much of the offending material has now been deleted, but Serota’s words have been chronicled by countless sites and columnists across the ‘net. It took us about ten seconds to find a whole series of images depicting his reputation-damaging Twitter history.

Of course, all the hubbub also attracted the attention of both the NHL and the FMCS, and within the hour the following statement was released:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Director George H. Cohen has issued a follow-up statement today regarding a mediator assigned to the ongoing labor negotiations between the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players’ Association:

 

“Within one hour after I issued a press release announcing that further negotiations between the NHL and NHLPA would be conducted under the auspices of the FMCS, it has been called to my attention that there are issues involving an allegedly hacked Twitter account associated with Commissioner Guy Serota, one of the mediators I assigned. Accordingly, in order to immediately dispel any cloud on the mediation process, and without regard to the merits of the allegations, I have determined to take immediate action, namely to remove Commissioner Serota from this assignment.”

 

“There will be no further comment from the FMCS on this matter.”

What’s the point of all this?

Image is everything.

Do Serota’s personal views or potty mouth have anything to do with his ability as a moderator? Not at all. Does the fact that the public now believes him to be a loose cannon who makes poor decisions? You betcha. Not only that, but he also embarrassed his employer simply by association, and frankly once you do that most organizations will do anything they can to pull you out of the public eye, if not cut ties altogether.

In 2012, and surely moving into the future, putting something on social media is taken the same as if you stood up in the office and shouted it out loud. THINK before you post, it’s basic reputation management.

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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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

A warm thanks to all who’ve reached out since the start of this blog. I began this series of posts thinking of a couple of my readers who consider themselves relatively new to evaluation. But regardless of whether we’re newer, seasoned or somewhere in between, isn’t there always something new to learn? This is why I enjoy evaluation. On that note, let’s continue considering professional development goals. Again, I am writing more for my own learning and development. I do not consider myself an expert. Before we dive in, some of us might be cringing at the thought of adding more to our to-do list. Here are some productivity tips that I’ve found helpful:

How to Increase Productivity and Get through that To-Do list

• Dreading a task?
  • Get it done early in the morning or whenever your energy levels peak.
  • Find a time (and a place) where you are least likely to be interrupted.
  • Un-connect: place all gadgets in airplane mode.
  • Set a timer to 10 minutes, and commit to just 10 minutes of that task.
• Keep track of time:
  • Use a spreadsheet to keep account of your time, and
  • Set a timer to avoid getting carried away by your work and losing track of time.
• Exercise—it can boost energy levels
• Tackle larger goals like professional development with like-minded others…

Join a Community of Evaluators

The American Evaluation Association (AEA) is a great professional organization that provides many opportunities to get involved, learn from others and network. Many of the links below first came my way via the AEA. Here are a few resources from the AEA:

• The AEA’s LinkedIn discussion group: A useful forum for evaluation-related questions.

• EVAL TALK: AEA’s e-mail list serve. Like all such resources, those who participate learn the most!

• aea365: The American Evaluation’s Association’s Tip-A-Day program, by evaluators and for evaluators. Don’t discount yourself from writing a post. This blog features posts from newer evaluators too. Some of the contributors shared that they wrote posts to continue learning and reflecting about evaluation. Please contact me if you’d like to write for aea365.

Commit to Continuing Your Education

Nearly two decades after he gave me this advice, my father’s words ring true now more than ever: Money comes and goes. But you can never lose your education. Here are some free or low-cost options for skill building and continuing education:

• A website of evaluation-related resources, compiled by Gene Shackman, Applied Sociologist. http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods/
• The American Evaluation Association. Topics covered by upcoming American Evaluation Association e-study webinars include:

1) Correlation/Regression Analyses and

2) Evaluation reporting using Data Dashboards.

• Consider attending the American Evaluation Association’s 2013 conference from October 14-19^th in Washington, DC.

• Coursera offers access to online university courses. I’m particularly interested in the data analysis courses using the free, open-source R software.

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For more information about personal development, see the Free Management topic Personal Development.

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Priya Small has extensive experience in collaborative evaluation planning, instrument design, data collection, grant writing and facilitation. Contact her at priyasusansmall@gmail.com. Visit her website at http://www.priyasmall.wordpress.com. See her profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/priyasmall/

Reputation management is key in sensitive situations

Jill Kelley, the unofficial social liason to MacDill Air Force Base, is at the very center of the David Petraeus scandal. It was Kelley’s complaints to the FBI about threatening letters from Paula Broadwell that initially started the investigation into the situation, and now that the proverbial stuff has hit the fan Bernstein Crisis Management president Jonathan Bernstein recommends that both her and her socialite sister inject a heavy dose of caution into everything they do or say.

A quote, from a USNews.com article by Elizabeth Flock:

Bernstein, who wrote the Manager’s Guide to Crisis Management and Keeping the Wolves at Bay says it’s “going to take a long time to sort out who actually did wrong” beyond Gen. Petraeus and Broadwell. Kelley and her sister, he says, need to remember that if they do anything to obfuscate the truth about themselves or the situation, the public will “interpret it as a lie.”

Kelley is said to be gathering a heavy-hitting legal and crisis management team, but if the sisters cause themselves to be found guilty in the court of public opinion it’s likely that no amount of lawyering will prevent them from negative consequences.

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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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Are you ready for the December rush? As ready as you should be? This is an important time of year for nonprofits as well as individuals and it needs focused attention on soooo many things. There are year-end programming events and fundraising things to do. But you can always do more. There are some easy things to do that may just go a long way.

I am writing this on so called “Cyber Monday” – the Monday after Thanksgiving. Sales today are expected to top $1.5 Billion – 20% more than last year. I believe it. I find that although I have purchased things online for years I shop this way much more frequently than I used to. It’s kind of nice to have things delivered to your door. This is also true with charitable giving. What this means for most nonprofits is that it is a good investment to greatly improve their internet savvy. But Rome wasn’t built in a day and you can’t get in the fast lane in just a few weeks. You can, however, do a few simple things to enhance your online presence and fundraising results without spending a lot of time or money. It is so much easier to make a donation online than respond to direct mail and this is the age of convenience.

I am recovered from cooking Thanksgiving dinner for a crowd and in the next two weeks I will facilitate a Board Retreat and be an “Expert” at the New Jersey Center for Nonprofits Annual symposium. I have started my Christmas shopping including some special gifts bought at the annual Newark Museum Shopping Spree. I even got up early on Black Friday and bought a new laptop. Desperately needed – my old one said enough already.

December has so many “Must Dos” that sometimes I feel I am constant motion. This is true for nonprofits too. You probably have your annual direct meal appeal out and are beginning to process the returns, your Fall fundraising event is behind you and plans for year-end festivities for those you serve are underway. Enough on your plate? All done – NOT!

There is that other group that needs attention in December. They are your online “supporters” (supporters may or may not be donors yet) who you only have contact with online. They may check out your website without you even knowing it. They may like your page on facebook but never post a comment. They may google something -your name comes up – and they browse your website. They may be checking out your name because they heard you provided food or a warm place to recharge their cell phones during Sandy.

So the question is what will they see? Do you have holiday and current news on your homepage or a report – without a picture – of an event last April? Is your Donate Now button right there on the homepage or three clicks away? Are you ready to post on facebook throughout December – not just asking for donations but with program updates and a link to your donate page.

I could keep on writing about what you should do in December but I’ll keep it simple. Keep these facts in mind: 40% of all individual donations are made in December. 22% of online giving is done in the last two days of the year and that the biggest day of the year for online giving is New Year’s Eve. So here are just three easy things that you can still do before year end:

1. Update your home page with recent pictures, news and year end planned activities
2. Plan on sending an eNewsletter – brief – one topic and brief appeal in next couple of weeks
3. Write a brief eNewsletter – key word here is BRIEF with one topic only- news or a year end activity to be send on December 29-30^th. You can write it now and queue it to be mailed then so even if you are on vacation it will go out.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.

Helping New York weather the storm

New Yorkers are no strangers to crisis, but Hurricane Sandy truly put the city’s crisis management skills to the test. Mayor Michael Bloomberg was at the helm, and faced close scrutiny regarding his handling of the entire situation.

The verdict? The veteran mayor turned in a powerful performance, navigating the perils of crisis communication and disaster management with confidence. In an interview with The Financialist, Bernstein Crisis Management president Jonathan Bernstein shared his thoughts on one of the reasons Bloomberg’s crisis management was so successful:

“There is no city in the country that has had as much practice as New York in crisis management,” says Bernstein. “Those speaking for the City of New York, and certainly Mayor Bloomberg, had a good plan in place which they began implementing well in advance of the storm.”

The old adage “practice makes perfect” applies, well, perfectly, to crisis management. Of course, it’s much less strenuous to hone your crisis management skills in simulations and training exercises than in the midst of a major incident; that’s why smart organizations, from city governments to retail chains, devote time and resources to regular practice – ironing out the kinks and confusion before it really counts.

You can’t prevent every crisis, but with the right mix of preparation, action and communication you can certainly mitigate their effects. Well done Mayor Bloomberg.

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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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Compassionate and conscientious email staves off reputation crisis

In a recent article on the Bernstein Crisis Management blog, we discussed a crisis management email from Twitter that was missing a core component – compassion. Now, we’d like to show you an example of a company absolutely nailing it that was brought to our attention by friend and colleague Bruce Bonafede.

Here’s the email that went out to members of Yahoo! Sports’ Fantasy Football league following a Sunday outage – the absolute worst day of the week for their system to crash:

Dear Yahoo! Fantasy Users,

As I mentioned in my earlier email, Yahoo! works hard to provide great experiences for our users every day. For you, we understand that Fantasy is a core part of your daily routine during this time of year. On Sunday we experienced technical issues which caused the Fantasy experience to be inaccessible. We’re sorry. Our entire team worked tirelessly to re-establish the service – however, we had a significant outage. We know this created inconvenience and frustration for millions of our fans, and we feel we owe you an explanation.

So what happened? At Yahoo!, we have giant machines called “filers” that process a lot of the real-time data and stats for us and for you. We do millions of calculations every hour for our games, and normally our machines can handle this with no problem. Recently, we discovered a hardware issue in one of the filers that caused the other one to overload. We replaced some hardware, re-configured the setup, and did some testing. However this Sunday – at approximately 12:15 p.m. Eastern – the new configuration failed. This created an overload on storage capacity and took the Fantasy part of our site down.

We had dozens of engineers from various teams working together to try to determine the cause and fix it. One option was to fall back on another data center, but that would have meant shutting the game down and losing scoring data. We wanted to avoid that at all costs. Ultimately, we were able to move our mobile apps to a back-up data center, free up storage to get the PC version of the game working, and get the mobile apps up in a “read-only” state – meaning you could see scores and data, but you still couldn’t set lineups and interact.

We spent Sunday night and most of Monday looking at dozens of potential causes. Monday afternoon, we stress-tested our system. Everything seemed to be in working order, so we turned on all our mobile app functions in time for Monday Night Football. Everything performed as expected and continues to do so. We’ll have all hands on deck this coming Sunday to closely monitor performance and ensure we can respond quickly in case of any abnormal activity.

We know many of you have questions about your leagues and games, so we’ve also set up a FAQ here that will explain how we are going to handle various scenarios.

Finally, we know we failed you this weekend, and there’s no way to fix that. As a token of our appreciation for your patience and continued support, we wanted to give something back. First, we’re offering a complimentary football weekly Scouting Report for the remainder of the year. Hopefully this will help you down the stretch. The report includes weekly expert analysis, rankings and news to help you make smart decisions. Second, we are offering all our users a 20% discount for the rest the year at the Yahoo! Sports Store.

For any updates, we will keep you informed on @YahooSports and facebook.com/yahoosports.

We won’t stop working to provide you with new and improved features that help you enjoy your Sundays.

Thanks again for playing and for your patience.

Best,

Ken Fuchs
Head of Yahoo! Sports

Prompt, compassionate, honest, informative and interactive. Yahoo! checked off on every one of the Five Tenets of Crisis Communications and it shows in the quality and effect of the email.

Kudos Yahoo!, excellent crisis management!

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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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Automaker continues its crisis management mishaps

Yes, Toyota really is in the process of yet another major recall. Although it looks like the company may be learning from previous crisis management (no injuries or accidents related to this one), the fact that it’s recalling hundreds of thousands of cars every few months constantly threatens to turn consumer’s favor.

Here’s the story, from a USA Today article by James Healey:

Toyota’s own faulty specifications led to Wednesday’s recall of 670,000 older Prius hybrids in the U.S. for potentially defective steering, the automaker acknowledges.

And about 350,000 of those same Priuses also were recalled Wednesday for water pumps that could cause the cars to stall.

The steering problem “is a design-related issue — insufficient hardness on the specification,” says Brian Lyons, Toyota’s spokesman for safety issues in the U.S.

 

 

The two U.S. recalls are part of larger global actions for these problems that cover nearly 2.8 million vehicles of various models.

Toyota, while still hanging surprisingly well with its less-beleaguered competition, is no longer ruling the U.S. auto market, with that honor going to General Motors as of last month.

It’s important for brands to avoid being associated with negative terms but, at this point, Toyota’s name – at least in the States – is at serious risk of becoming synonymous with recalls. Just think about how many times you’ve seen the two sharing a headline over the past few years – probably more times than not, right?

Toyota may still be bringing in money, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the company is more concerned about saving cash in the short term than ironing out all of the dangerous kinks in its system. Consider the fact that today’s consumers are more educated and savvy than ever before, and it’s only a matter of time before the general public chooses to take its money to a company that walks its talk.

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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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

It’s amazing how fast mobile devices have taken over our lives. I’ve had my smart phone for only a few months, but hardly a day goes by when I don’t ask it for advice. This past week alone, I looked for child-friendly restaurants, a “green” dry cleaner, bus routes, airline tickets, and a car rental. Sure, I have a computer, and I use it all the time. But if I’m waiting for a meeting, or stuck in traffic, or eating lunch alone, or waking up in the middle of the night, or waiting in a doctor’s office, or – OK, you get the idea — you’ll find me looking at something on my phone. And so are a lot of other people.

Including your customers. Continue reading “Do Social Enterprises Need Mobile Strategies?”

When it’s OK to laugh, and when it’s not

When Richard Neill posted a sarcastic comment on the Facebook page of Euro female care company Bodyform lambasting their “lies” about a woman’s time of the month, he probably expected to link it to a couple friends and have a good laugh.

However, much as with Lowcostholidays.com’s recent social media score, Bodyform recognizes the insane popularity of and unprecedented opportunities presented by social media, and quickly went to work crafting a response.

Here it is:

Bodyform absolutely nailed it here, and the video quickly went viral. By the next day, people that had never even heard of Bodyform (your authors included) were sharing and talking about the video. In the process, Bodyform firmly established itself in many minds as a straight-shooting company that “gets” the ‘net and its users, a huge boon when the vast majority of your target audience lies in that demographic.

Now, Bodyform’s video wasn’t truly in response to a crisis, but the fact still stands that humor, used properly, can be a powerful crisis management device. By coincidence, we have another example from the same industry. Remember the uproar over J&J’s o.b. Tampons shortage? Boxes were selling for outrageous amounts on EBay, and customers who couldn’t get ahold of the product were barraging J&J’s social media pages with requests and angry comments.

Did J&J trot out a stuffy corporate spokesman in reply? Nope! Recognizing that the situation, while undoubtedly containing the possibility of reputation damage, did not hold serious health or financial consequences for stakeholders, J&J instead opted for a brilliantly hilarious video response. As a result J&J also received applause from all corners of the web, and in the process reassured customers itching for the return of their favorite product.

Of course, there are those times when you absolutely should NOT attempt to use humor for crisis management. We would hope it’s quite obvious that any time when people have been harmed, or are at risk of being harmed, is no time to look for laughs. Another no-go for humor is When financial damage is involved. I don’t think anyone would have been laughing if Bank of America made a silly song and dance about jacking up their banking fees.

Just as with any other type of crisis communication, you’ve got to take a hard look at what your stakeholder’s perceptions will be. If you show your “funny” clip to a few test audiences and spot looks of disgust then don’t even bother, you’re going down the wrong road. If people are having so much fun they’re forgetting what they were mad about in the first place, you just may have a viral video on your hands.

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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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]