Category: Organization Development

The best form of crisis management is prevention

Social media, web digests, TV news, even plain old word of mouth all revolve around finding something interesting to talk about, and you really don’t want your organization’s latest slip-up to become the topic du jour. Problem is, you can’t shut it down once the story’s out. There are many things you can do to mitigate or reduce damage, but there’s only one form of crisis management that heads the issue off at the pass.

Crisis prevention is the ultimate form of crisis management. You seek out potential problems, risks, or vulnerabilities and solve them before they’re thrust into public view, ideally before they ever cause a negative impact at all. Toyota clearly is a company unconcerned about crisis prevention. Reports have shown that execs knew about the issues behind its most recent recall 7.5 million auto recall years before the info went public and well in advance of its 2010 recalls for sudden acceleration, yet neglected to resolve the pending crises before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stepped in. Between these two crisis prevention failures Toyota has spent over $100 million, and perhaps even more importantly lost valuable market share to its competition, which equates to even more bottom line damage.

How we can catch crises before they erupt? As with most aspects of crisis management, communication is key. Not only do employees need the ability to talk amongst themselves and across departments, but there also must be clear ways for them to move information up the chain in a timely manner. Especially given the non-centralized organizations of today, one of the best ways to encourage constant communication is to create internal forums. Most of us love to talk and share on all kinds of social media, so what better way to help each other recognize and resolve issues than putting a similar platform to work?

Vulnerability audits are another key tool in locating potential crises before they occur. We often end up with a frighteningly long list after these intensive inspections, even working with organizations that thought themselves well prepared. It’s absolutely critical to take a long, hard look at everything from opening procedures to possible problem employees in order to determine current and potential areas of operational and communications weakness and strength.

If you find the crisis first, you get to be the good guy. You can figure out a solution and, depending on case, either squash it silently or announce to all of your stakeholders how your care and dedication has saved them from a potential problem and rake in the reputation. Let the public and media get hold of the story before you do, and it’s going to cost you dearly.

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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]

Good crisis management covers both

It’s pretty obvious that you can’t just wing it when it comes to crisis management. While business leaders as a whole are far more on board with the whole “crisis plan” thing than they were some 10-15 years ago, their focus is still typically very much on the now.

Few feel the need to pour time and money into a long-term crisis management plan once their brand’s no longer being slammed on the ‘net or in the news, but the reality is that making this investment will help to enhance and maintain the positive results attained by the initial crisis management strategy.

Not sure what the difference should be, or wondering what exactly should be involved with each? Check out this quote, from an excellent BankDirector.com article by Jean Veta:

Develop a Short-Term Plan

The institution’s short-term plan for addressing the crisis should include an evaluation of the need for an internal investigation by internal or outside counsel. The short-term plan also should consider whether the institution’s regulator(s) or law enforcement should be notified and the extent to which key constituencies, including employees, customers, shareholders, and the public need to be informed. It is essential to act in an expedited yet careful fashion to assess key evidence and the applicable legal framework in formulating a short-term plan.

Develop and Execute a Long-Term Plan

 

 

 

To weather a crisis effectively, an institution must stay focused on its key objectives, while remaining flexible to adjust. An institution’s long-term plan, depending on the crisis, may include: remediation of the harm, implementation of enhanced internal controls, improved management reporting to ensure appropriate monitoring, and increased internal audit standards to test the institution’s compliance responses.

Essentially, the short term plan addresses the incident itself. The long term plan is more focused on settings things right and enacting protocol to ensure the crisis cannot be repeated. Not as complex as you thought, right?

If you take your crisis management seriously, it will show. Stakeholders, while undoubtedly initially quite upset, will eventually have their faith in your organization enhanced when they see you’re committed to not only cleaning up your mess, but also working to ensure it can’t happen again.

As we always say, crises WILL occur, even to the most benign and well-protected organizations. It’s the actions afterward that will make or break the well-being of your most valuable asset – your 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 Social Media Manager for the firm, and also editor of its newsletter, Crisis Manager]

Seizing social media opportunities creates crisis management benefits

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it many, many more times – it pays to be in touch with social media.

Last November, a young Brit named Thomas Cook thought it would be funny to ask travel agency Thomas Cook UK to donate a weekend in Paris to him due to the fact that they’ve shared a name for many years.

The travel agency quite stuffily denied his request, but a week later Mr. Cook was shocked to find a message in his inbox from one of Thomas Cook UK’s competitors in the UK travel scene, Lowcostholidays.com. What did this message contain? Besides a few comedic jabs at their competition, it also held an offer for a weekend in Paris for two!

We frequently refer to social media as being word-of-mouth amplified, and there is no better example than this. When Thomas finally took his trip to Paris this month, he posted the story complete with screenshots and a photo at the Eiffel Tower to Reddit (one of the world’s fastest growing social media sites, 42.9 million unique visitors per month and climbing), where it skyrocketed to the front page and drew over 2,000 comments and 56,000+ “up votes,” similar to “Likes” on Facebook.

How is this linked to crisis management, you might ask? It’s simple – the more goodwill you bank before a crisis hits, the larger the cushion your reputation has to fall back on. By doing things that make your customers, potential customers, or any stakeholders happy, you create a positive association with your brand that will tilt their opinion when a negative crisis does occur. In other words, they are more likely to think, “this is a good company that’s run into a bad problem,” rather than, “this company doesn’t care about anything, it’s no surprise they’re in this mess.”

With the greatest losses in crisis management history coming in the court of public opinion, it’s critical to take every opportunity to keep your reputation positive. Thomas Cook UK missed out, but we’d be willing to bet that Lowcostholidays.com is seeing a boom in sales right now, which means more opportunity to create lifetime customers and extra black ink on those financial reports.

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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]

Quick reaction and the right moves pay off

UK mobile provider O2 found itself experiencing a bit of deja vu when, just months after a 24-hour service disruption left hundreds of thousands without a cellular connection, yet another widespread outage hit its system late last week.

The company actually came out of that incident fairly clean, having issued a quick and public apology, as well as handling the situation in a relatively small time frame. They even successfully redirected stakeholders seeking information to the company Facebook and Twitter feeds when the main website crashed due to overwhelming traffic volume.

Would a second bout of network crisis management knock O2 off course? From the looks of it, not even close. The company was the least complained-about UK mobile network in Q1 of 2012 according to the telecoms regulators at Ofcom, and with complaint about cellular service being honed almost to an art by many, that’s no small achievement.

Although a disruption in any valued service, from cell phone or internet to closed highways, will raise some outraged voices, the vast majority just want to be informed, and for you to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. Once again, O2 pulled through with a near-instant mea culpa, followed up by strong social media customer service. Not to ignore the traditional media, the company also had press spokesmen working hard to answer any questions the major news outlets had.

Improving on this summer’s outages, O2 managed to keep its website live, and even published a running Q&A that used relatively plain terminology to explain quite thoroughly what had caused the outage, and what was being done to fix it.

The dust is still settling from this one, but we feel confident in saying that O2 made the right moves, and despite the brief flare of anger that many customers surely felt, the majority will come out pleased with the level of communication and information coming from the company in the midst of crisis.

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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]

Modern technology creates crisis management risk

While our never-ending quest for modernization has simplified many common tasks, it’s also spawned a new breed of crises related specifically to vulnerabilities in technology. The most common involve computer hacking, either as straight out attacks or a means of professional or amateur espionage, but it’s easy to forget that much more than PC’s and laptops are run on processors and microchips these days.

Take your average hotel room for example. When’s the last time you used a physical key in your door? Now all of the locks are operated via electronic keycard, which makes it very easy for ownership to replace or recode for guests as needed. You might think this is even more secure system as well, no keys for nefarious types to copy and return with later, but check out this quote from a Forbes article by Andy Greenberg and see if you still feel the same way:

A trio of hackers have built a tool that appears to be an innocent dry erase marker, but when inserted into the port on the bottom of a common form of hotel room keycard lock triggers the lock’s open mechanism in a fraction of a second.

“I guess we wanted to show that this sort of attack can happen with a very small, concealable device,” says Matthew Jakubowski, one of the three hotel lock hackers and a security researcher with the consultancy Trustwave. “Someone using this could be searched and even then it wouldn’t be obvious that this isn’t just a pen.”

The device is literally encased inside the shell of an Expo dry erase marker, the same type found in just about any conference room, and its only tell is that instead of the standard tip under the cap, there is a metal connector.

Obviously, this has serious financial implications for the hotel industry, which is looking at having to replace or upgrade millions of locks. It also raises major reputation concerns. A break-in with this device would look no different than if a maid or other employee had simply entered the room and taken someone’s belongings, and even if it is caught by cameras, affected customers will blame the hotel as much or more than they do the thief for not keeping their establishment safe and secure.

E-vulnerabilities are a fact of business today, and often the fixes are going to cost. Our advice is to bite the bullet and pay to keep your business and your stakeholders protected, the up-front cost will not even scratch the surface of the expenses should you be found at fault in neglecting proper 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]

There are many reasons why one social enterprise grows fast, while another one doesn’t. Frankly, I think luck has a lot to do with it, but there are many other factors as well. A recent article in the Guardian suggests that the attitude of the leader is the most critical ingredient, and that’s hard to challenge. Continue reading “Want Scale? Get Attitude.”

What needs to be removed, and how to do it without creating a crisis

We often espouse the importance of allowing stakeholders to share their opinions and experiences, whether positive or negative, on your social media pages. Overprotective admins seeking to guard their company’s online image have sent more than one organization rushing into crisis management mode when hasty use of that “delete” button in reaction to a few agitated posters attracted the web equivalent of a torch-carrying mob.

Sometimes, however, there are completely legitimate, even compelling, reasons to wipe a post from existence. If you’re unclear on where that fine line lies, it might be a good idea to print and distribute the following list, from a Edelman digital blog post by Phil Gomes:

1. You Used Foul Language or Imagery

This one is pretty obvious, so I’ll get it out of the way first. It surprises me how shocked (SHOCKED!) people are when they find that their profanity-laden diatribe “goes 404,” that is, gets deleted. Too many drive-by commenters appear to confirm in the 21st century what Captain Kirk observed of 20th-century language in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: “Nobody pays attention to you unless you swear every other word.” Anger, though often persuasive, is not an argument.

2. You Spammed

That acrid smell wafting from Prineville, Oregon comes from the servers melting down at Facebook’s data center after you, a group of you, or a bot cut-and-pasted the same angry shot-off-the-bow over and over again. The community and the community manager got your point the first 174 times. Thanks.

3. The Audience is There for Different Reasons Than You Are

The members of the Facebook page for Gretsch Family Farms Rhubarb Co. are probably just there to talk about rhubarb, share recipes and maybe even snag a coupon or two. Granted, some community managers take the overly heavy-handed approach of deleting any such post that isn’t “on-brand” or responding angrily or sarcastically–an approach that certainly deserves some amount of ridicule. The best community managers, however, recognize a responsibility to the audience. They balance the ideal of maintaining an open forum with providing an experience commensurate with the expectations of the community members. At a certain point, the community will expect that the community manager will start to bring things back to “business as usual.”

4. You Violated Clearly, Narrowly Drawn Rules

For reasons ranging from regulatory matters to the lack of hours in a day, many community managers will post a series of guidelines that describe what will trigger a deletion, suspension or outright ban. Their page, their rules. Such rules might include prohibiting comments that violate the privacy of a non-public individual. For a health-related company, it could include any discussion of the off-label use of a drug or medical device, or even mentions of speculative science way outside of the mainstream. For a technology hardware company, it may be the description of activities that could cause physical harm or violate warranty terms.

5. You Violated Facebook’s Terms-of-Service

Superseding the company’s rules for its Facebook page are, of course, Facebook’s own terms-of-service. These terms have plenty of language around “Safety” and “Protecting Other People’s Rights.”

Realistically speaking, regardless of why you delete a post, the author will be upset about it. The difference is that if their post is really out of line, the bandwagon won’t jump on their cause and ignite a bigger scene.

One suggestion that we would offer is that when you know a deluge of upset folks are about to hit your page – as in any time a crisis goes public – throw some guidelines for discussion up in a visible location. Acknowledge the public’s right to comment and converse, and clearly indicate what type of behavior will call for deletion. Just as in other online reputation management situations, be up front, communicative, and use a good mix of brain and heart for judgement. It will show in your results.

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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]

I’m back after a hectic work period (my apologies for the sparse posts!) I return with a renewed commitment to this blog, aspiring to practice a lesson I’ve recently learnt: do less, plan and reflect more! Today I’d like to tackle the importance of reflection when setting professional development goals. Reflection, at least in my own experience, has led to goals, and goals have led to more reflection.

Really? But how easy is it for goal-setting to become more of an obligation and less about reflection? We all have had our share of the mandatory project goals and objectives. Am I pushing it, asking us to stop and draft more goals—this time, personal ones, for professional development? Let’s re-visit the value of the reflective process.

How to Get to Where You are Going: Look back

Yes, goals help get us where we are going. But how do we set meaningful professional development goals? Recently, I found—okay, I’ll I admit it—an unused, old graduation gift. A journal. Scrawled inside the front cover was a note, something to this effect: “Write down your experiences. Looking back will help take you where you should go.”

Reflection Helps to Craft Customized Goals

1. Consider major events in the past: accomplishments/successes and set-backs/conflicts.
2. Then match these up with your professional strengths and weaknesses: growth opportunities!
3. Keep building on past experiences as you set professional development goals, until…voila! there it is, a customized goal.

It is so easy to compare ourselves with others and to try to make their goals ours. But as we, perhaps unconsciously, set out to out-do the goals of the Joneses of the non-profit world, might we be setting ourselves up for failure? Your professional development goals have to be yours—custom-designed for you and your work context.

Try not to be discouraged by set-backs or limitations. Last month consolation and insight poured in from discussing a set-back with a trusted friend and former co- worker—alright, maybe it also helped that she came bearing gifts— home-made raspberry preserves. I learnt afresh that mistakes, limitations and set-backs help me to learn and grow if I can let them go for a while and then turn them around to form tailored professional development goals.

First Stop for Setting Professional Development Goals: CES Competencies for Evaluation Practice

There has been an intriguing debate on EVAL TALK (the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) list serve) over credentialing for evaluators. But whether or not you decide to get credentialed, still check out the Canadian Evaluation Society’s (CES) credentialing requirements. Jean King, Professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota and Coordinator of the Evaluation Studies Program, stressed the importance of this resource during a past AEA Thought Leader discussion series. Pay special attention to the CES’s Competencies for Canadian Evaluation Practice. You might also find inspiration here at this CES webpage to craft a professional developmental goal or two.

So here’s a goal for this week:

I’ve been revisiting the CES Competencies and considering how I can hone these skills in my current work. Let’s look at the first competency domain: “Reflective Practice.” A worthy goal! Yet so hard to carry out in the frenzied and furious pace of the non-profit world (I exaggerate a bit). I’ve been guilty of do, do, doing and putting off reflection for later. But wouldn’t you agree that reflective practice is even more important in such an environment? One way I can weave “reflective practice” into my own evaluation work is by keeping a journal.

For example, this week my goal is to: 1. read the chapter on engaging stakeholders in Wholey and colleagues’ Handbook of Practical Program Evaluation, 2. apply it to my work by jotting down a lesson learned, coupled with a future objective for my evaluation practice. Simple, do-able, and measurable. The CES competency check-list also includes:

1. networking and joining a professional evaluation organization and
2. taking professional development courses.

Let’s tackle those topics in my next post.

So, any thoughts on professional development and goals? I’d love to hear from you!

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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/

Don’t slack on this essential crisis management step

Crisis management has really come a long way in a short time. It wasn’t more than a few years ago that the standard corporate reaction to “at fault” crises was to zip your lips and lawyer up. Now, it’s pretty well accepted that one of the most important aspects of resolving a crisis is admitting your faults and delivering a meaningful apology.

Although author Chris Mittelstaedt used the quite-unlikely scenario of an escaped circus elephant destroying a citizen’s rose bushes in the following quote from an Inc. article, his suggestions are very much on point. How do you avoid having your apology feel like a vague corporate brush off? Read on…

Get specific about your actions. Affirm your commitment to a long-term positive outcome.

Immediately: Replacement of rosebushes. I would like to bring in a rosebush specialist to meet with you tomorrow and work with you on choosing replacement bushes to be installed next week. Our team of gophers are experts in digging and planting, and we are asking our ladybug department to stay behind for an extra week to make sure that no aphids take root after our planting.

End of the month: Follow-up. At the end of the month, after the bushes have had time to root down and become adjusted to your soil, I would like to send in a team of sparrows to conduct aerial viewings and to test the pliability of the rose stems as a final inspection. Once this is approved, please let us know that all is well in your garden.

Long-term commitment to customer happiness: If in the future you have issues with your roses, I would be happy to follow up with one of our experts to see how we can help make sure that your plants stay healthy.

Take a close look at those steps, because they go far beyond what pretty much anyone out there is doing. It doesn’t stop at “we’re sorry,” it doesn’t even stop at how they’ll set things right. When an organization goes out of its way to literally ensure that the crisis it caused will never create further stress for you, how could you stay mad? You won’t, and that’s the whole point. Give your apologies meaning, and even when you do mess up, you’ll leave people talking about how great your organization really is.

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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 seems that the use of “templates” in on the rise. I’m seeing them mentioned more often lately for strategic planning, Boards, marketing and fundraising We’re getting more calls from potential clients who want us to use a certain template.

Some Advantages of Templates

1. They very quickly depict a certain approach to doing a seeming complex activity.
2. They sometimes promise a very quick way of doing a seemingly prolonged activity
3. They can quickly orient people to a certain way of doing that activity.

Some Potential Disadvantages of Templates

I’m concerned about some of the disadvantages, including that they:

1. Might minimize the time needed for critically important strategic analysis, thinking and discussions.
2. Can give the illusion that all planning and plans can be the same, regardless of the different purposes of planning.
3. Might suggest a “quick fix” to the challenge of allocating sufficient time and resources to good planning.
4. Indirectly suggest that a nonprofit should have certain structure and certain Board committees.
5. They don’t orient planners to the different variety of models for planning, i.e., don’t enhance the internal planning capacity of planners.

Some Constrictive Assertions of Some Templates

For example, I’ve seen at least five templates in the past couple of months. Some:

1. Specify which committees a nonprofit should always have.
2. Specify the maximum limit of committees for all nonprofits.
3. Specify certain procedures for solving problems and making decisions.
4. Specify the time frame that a Strategic Plan should be.
5. Specify that sufficient planning can be done in a certain number of hours.
6. Of less concern, they regularly mention the roles of EDs, fundraising and volunteers.
7. Assert that mission, vision and values must always be looked at first in planning.

Where Templates Can Go Wrong

However, the above specifications and assertions are not always true. They depend completely on the nature and needs of the nonprofit. For example:

1. The number and types of committees might depend on the number and complexity of strategic priorities.
2. The way that decisions are made and problems are solved depend on the culture of the organization, e.g., some prefer a highly rational breakdown of the issue, while others prefer a more unfolding, naturalistic, but inclusive approach.
3. The time frame of a Plan should depend on, e.g., how rapidly the environment is changing around the nonprofit and the range of its resources.
4. There are occasions where mission, vision and values are not the best to start planning with — if an organization’s programs and clients have not changed, but it has many internal issues, then address those first.

The role of templates has its advantages. But I wish that the authors of templates would do more to caution the users on the purposes, limitations and considerations in using those templates.

??? What do you think?

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

Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250

Read my blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, and Strategic Planning.