Lessons from the Frontline

By Bill Furlow

The Southern Public Relations Federation invited me to fill the “crisis communications spot” on its program in late July, and that caused me to reflect on the most interesting cases of my 13-year consulting practice and consolidate the lessons they taught me. Some of them are truisms that have become part of the basic crisis communications canon – get the news out fast, develop a crisis communications plan before the crisis– but some may be new to many readers. We’ll begin with one of those.

Lesson No. 1 – Keep a Sense of Perspective

Most of us seem to think the world revolves around us, our families, businesses, careers and our successes and failures. The first news bulletin is that this is not the case. Yes, we should take ourselves seriously. And when we have caused a problem or gotten into an embarrassing and potentially damaging situation, we must deal with it in a professional way.

But too often people panic and make things out to be much worse than they really are. They jump to the worst-case scenario and see their entire business lives flashing before their eyes. Believing Armageddon is approaching, they make bad decisions that wind up making the situation worse.

Several years ago, a gentleman named Christopher called and introduced himself as executive vice president of a small, private medical school. He said the person who ran the school’s “willed body” program was suspected of selling cadavers and body parts for his own profit, and the police were investigating. What struck me was that he was laughing as he said, “I think we need your help.”

For two weeks, Christopher and I pored over the school’s records, interviewed staff and tried to figure out what was going on. The police and the local papers were doing the same. Despite the considerable damage that could have been caused to the university’s reputation for failing to properly take care of donated human bodies, Christopher never lost his sense of perspective or even his sense of humor. (Much black humor passed between us, I’m afraid.) He never considered covering up, even when the insurance lawyers and others wanted him to keep quiet.

When the police found body parts in the suspect employee’s private refrigerated warehouse and concluded they’d stumbled on a twisted mass murderer, Christopher remained calm. He faced a huge phalanx of reporters in a press conference and disappointed them by explaining that there was no killer on the loose.

I really admired the way Christopher kept his cool in the face of a serious threat to the university. By doing so, he established his credibility and communicated effectively. In the end, the employee was charged with a crime and fired, and the university’s reputation was not badly harmed.

In 2005, I conducted an anonymous survey of clients. (http://www.furlowcommunications.com/testimonials.htm) One comment I was pleased to receive was that I show “grace under fire and help keep everyone calm and focused.” That’s what is required in every crisis situation. The adrenaline may be flowing, but your chances of getting through it are better if you remain calm, stay focused and keep a sense of perspective.

Lesson No. 2 – Get It Out Fast

Good communicators had already figured out this when I entered the business in 1995.

It is critical that you tell your story on the day of the initial news coverage. Sometimes clients who are about to land in the news say, “Let’s see what they write, and then we’ll respond tomorrow if necessary.” That’s a deadly decision because public opinion is shaped on the first day. (See the earlier post on the Anchoring Effect.) If a negative story is going to be written, you want your side to be in that story – not in a second-day article that won’t be as well read and that will be seen after most attitudes have been formed.

One of the hardest decisions our clients ever have to make is whether to release negative information that would be damaging if discovered by the media but which may never come to light if they don’t disclose it.

I generally argue that if you are sitting on bad news, you’re holding a gun to your own head.

The client that drove home this lesson to me was a recently opened hospital that had three terrible events – unrelated but all having in some way to do with sex – happen in a two-week span.

One of those events was the arrest of a male nurse for fondling female patients.

The hospital’s CEO wisely saw that, with the arrest of the male nurse making big news for several days, it would be devastating for the hospital if the other two events were leaked to the media and came out one at a time.

Our solution was for the CEO to hold a news conference and focus on the increased security measures taken since the arrest of the nurse. In the course of his discussion, he said, “We’ve also added a criminal records check to our pre-employment screening. That wouldn’t have affected the nurse, because he didn’t have a record. But it would have prevented us from mistakenly hiring a registered sex offender as a janitor.”

The third incident was handled the same way.

The resulting news stories all focused on the new security cameras and extra guards, and those that mentioned either of the other matters did so briefly.

It doesn’t always work out that well, but reporters get excited about situations when people in authority seem to be holding something back. Their instinct tells them that if they just ask the right question to the right person, they will come up with a big scoop.

When we release information that may be critical of ourselves, we build our credibility at the same time we eliminate the possibility of someone leaking that same information to the media. And anything that is known to everyone in the media will be much less interesting to them than something known only to a single reporter.

Lesson No.3 – Accept Responsibility

This is another hard thing to do, especially when there are lawyers in the room. But if we have caused problems or inconvenienced people, we need to acknowledge it.

On a cool morning in 1998, a 5-million-gallon water tank ruptured in a small California city. The water crashed through a neighboring condo complex, causing massive destruction and driving about 50 residents from their homes.

Late in the day, in a meeting with city officials, I suggested they appoint a senior staff member to function as liaison to the condo owners, who had not yet been contacted by the city. A young assistant city attorney said excitedly, “Wait a minute. I don’t want it to look like we’re accepting liability.”

I said to her, “Well, it was your tank, and it was your water, and these are your residents. I think I’d go talk with them now and figure out the blame later.” They took my advice.

I believe an organization in crisis has three basic questions to answer:

What happened?
What are you doing about it?
How will you ensure nothing like this will ever happen again?

You may not be able to answer the third right away, or even the first two in much detail. But over time you can and should.

Lesson No. 4 – Make it Right

Once you have acknowledged that you’ve created a problem, you must then fix it.

One person who understands this is Bob Eckert, CEO of Mattel. When his company suffered a dramatic series of recalls in 2007, Eckert not only recorded a video apologizing for the problems and explaining what the company was doing to prevent any recurrence, but he used pay-per-click technology to get the video at the top of the Google search page. In other words, Mattel paid each time a consumer viewed its response to the crisis. The company also took out full-page ads in USA Today and other major newspapers.

The sense one got from watching Mattel from the outside was of Eckert telling his people, “Don’t mess around with this thing – fix it now! (or perhaps even stronger language).”

We once worked with a client who sold a consumer product to its best customer for resale. After about 48 hours on the market, the product was revealed to be clearly defective, possibly even dangerous (though it turned out not to be a hazard).

There were a whole slew of dicey issues, including what to say to the customer, whether to recall the product, whether to notify the Consumer Product Safety Commission, how to handle the news media. My advice to the client was to take the first flight the next day and meet face-to-face with his customer’s CEO.

He did that and told her he had decided the product must be recalled and that he would pay all expenses. He also told her that, regardless of her qualms about it, he had to report the recall to the CPSC. (That proved a brilliant decision.)

When all was said and done, the CEO was impressed with my client’s unhesitating commitment to make things right for her company and its consumers. My client swallowed hard and absorbed the financial loss – but saved his best customer.

Lesson No. 5 – Be proactive, be honest and listen

In 2000, my client, the Orange County Fire Authority, successfully built a massive training, maintenance, warehouse, administration and communications facility contiguous to three residential communities – and did so without a single objection being raised against it.

A friend in Southern California says he still drives by the place and says, “How did they do this?”

We did it by getting out very early and talking with the neighbors, by being honest – not sugar-coating anything – and by listening to their concerns. In the early days, homeowners would ask, “Do you have drawings of what the thing would look like?” And we’d say, “No. We haven’t even hired an architect yet.” They were amazed that someone was talking with them that early in the process.

We did it by earning their trust. When the residents complained that the first set of drawings didn’t match what we had promised, the fire chief sent them back to the architects for a do-over. When our construction kicked up dust, we hired window washers. When rain caused runoff that damaged landscaping, we replaced it.

We did it by listening and responding to the legitimate needs of the residents.

Being heard is one of the strongest human desires. Too often we think of communications as what we want them to hear rather than what they need for us to understand. It has to go both ways.

We must bring affected stakeholders into the loop and try to make them our partners rather than treat them as potential impediments to whatever it is we’re trying to accomplish.

Lesson No. 6 – Reach beyond the media

Of course, the news media are important. But sometimes we can focus on handling them to the exclusion of communicating with stakeholder groups that are even more important. For each business or organization, that list of key stakeholders is unique. But most have employees and customers or clients who must be considered.

Employees are often overlooked in a crisis, but they should be at the top of your list. For one thing, an employer has an obligation to let the people who make up the organization know what’s going on. For another, they can be your ambassadors in the community, helping tell your story to those in their own spheres of influence.

Other stakeholder groups could include shareholders, neighbors, strategic partners, key vendors, board members and home or branch offices. Most organizations also have special people who deserve specific communications, such as a founder or major donors.

One way to identify your list of stakeholder groups is to ask yourself, “Who do I not want to learn of this situation through the news media?” Then determine how to communicate with each of those groups in the most appropriate way.

We once worked with an automobile dealer who had closed a store for poor performance. The local newspaper stories about the closure said the manufacturer was suing the dealer for $6.9 million. In reality this was a formality, and when the dealer returned the cars on hand, the suit was dropped. But he was surprised at the number and type of people who called or emailed him for information. At the extreme end, a couple who was considering sending their children to a parochial school for which the auto dealer had raised money and co-signed a bank note wanted to be sure the school was going to be okay. That’s how far removed people can be and still care about what’s happening with you.

Lesson No. 7 – Engage reporters

In 2007, I handled the news media for the district attorney of Jena, Louisiana, who was prosecuting the controversial “Jena 6” case. My involvement began after the story had been told and retold in the national news media for more than half a year. Opinions about the case were already formed and often set in stone.

When I arrived in Jena, the day before a mass demonstration was to occur, I learned that several aspects of the story were being misreported. The most egregious fallacy was that the incident that led to the prosecution of six African-American high school students had been a “schoolyard fight” in which a white student was injured. The reality was – and no one disputes this – a black student had blindsided the other student, hitting him hard on the side of the head and rendering him unconscious. Several other black students then joined in kicking and stomping the defenseless kid. That’s no “schoolyard fight,” and I wanted to get the phrase removed from future news coverage.

In his press conference the day before 10,000 or more demonstrators were due in town, the D.A. described the assault and then challenged the reporters directly, saying, “To continue to refer to this incident as a ‘schoolyard fight’ is to intentionally mislead the public.”

That direct approach was highly successful, and most of the reporters present at the news conference stopped using the phrase. But other journalists were not there that day, so anytime I saw or heard the phrase used in news coverage, I contacted the writer or producer and explained why it was inaccurate. To a person, they all responded favorably, usually thanking me for contacting them.

The lesson in this is that the most conscientious journalist can make a mistake. But reporters don’t have the right to repeat the same mistake or false story over and over again once their errors have been pointed out. It’s the job of communicators to stay on them and follow up aggressively. If we approach reporters with facts and logic, not emotion, they will usually be receptive.

I have never accepted that we are victims of the news media. The more we work with reporters, showing transparency and a willingness to help them understand our side of the story, the better – and more accurate – the coverage will be.

Lesson No. 8 – Control rumors

As difficult as the news media sometime can be to deal with, at least we know where to find them. But today, anyone can become “the media” or a “citizen journalist” by creating a blog. A crisis can begin on the Internet and migrate into the mainstream media, or it can remain online eating away at an organization’s credibility and reputation.

Several years ago, most companies had policies against commenting on rumors. That policy no longer works. To ignore what’s being said about you online is to become complicit in your own destruction.

Executives who believe the Internet is populated entirely by wacko extremists who have it in for their companies are putting their heads in the sand. Not everyone blogging is a nut, and even nuts can come across as credible sometimes. Big companies like Procter & Gamble, Coke and Starbucks all have pages on their corporate Web sites dedicated to responding to rumors.

When bloggers go after an organization, we should respond with all our communications vehicles. We can create our own blogs, use our Web sites and reach out to stakeholder groups through more traditional vehicles. The best way to stop untrue rumors is by providing accurate information in large doses.

Lesson No. 9 – Work with lawyers

Because of the type work our firm does, lawyers are involved in probably 75 percent of our assignments. Over the years, we have learned that it’s important to develop partnerships with attorneys and to try to overcome the natural tension that often exists between them and communicators.

That tension can spring from the fact the lawyer is often focused entirely on any liability issues that exist, while the communicator is thinking about reputation and maintaining important relationships with key stakeholder groups.

I can argue – and cite well-known executives in support – that reputation is even more important than legal positioning. However, I have learned that rather than argue, it’s more effective to work collaboratively with attorneys so that the communications we generate are effective for the client’s reputation but also legally responsible.

Once I showed a client’s attorney a statement I had drafted for the CEO. He responded by saying, “If you say this, it will double the size of the check we write at the end of the day.” After getting his assurance that he meant that and was not engaging in hyperbole, I said that, of course, that was not my intention, and I would rewrite it to our mutual satisfaction.

Lesson No. 10 – Plan and practice

This is certainly not original with me, but it’s very important. All the suggestions outlined above have a much better chance of happening if we have gone through the planning process.

I think about 90 percent of the decisions that must be made during a crisis can be made in advance when we’re not under pressure. Needed tasks are identified and assigned; team members can be trained; backups are named for the inevitability that at least one critical person will be unavailable.

Many years ago my fire department client did not have a protocol for notifying a family of a firefighter’s death. When I researched the topic, I found out that most fire departments at that time lacked a standard notification procedure. So we created one.

A short time later, a young firefighter had a fatal heart attack while fighting a fire. All the senior officers were very upset, and none of them had had to handle this awful chore before. The fire chief said, “Let’s get the book and follow it.” As terrible as the situation was, the difficult decisions had already been made.

The other important advantage of crisis communications planning is that it changes the way an organization thinks. Going through the process of creating a plan exposes issues that otherwise would only come to the fore during a crisis. A new mentality and a confidence is developed.

No one understood this better than Rudolph Giuliani when he was mayor of New York. Giuliani led his executive staff in constant drills, planning exercises and post-mortems of every event that occurred. They even developed a list of questions reporters tend to ask during emergency situations. Giuliani encouraged his people to think of the worst possible event they could imagine. “If you do that,” he said, “you’ll be ready even for what you might not anticipate.”

Summary

If you are still with me, I appreciate your patience. You must have a desire to improve your company’s or organization’s chances of coming through a crisis unscathed.

After doing this work for 13 years and closely observing others, I am convinced that we are nearly always judged more by our response to a crisis than the facts of the crisis itself. If we communicate quickly, honestly, openly and effectively, we will come through the worst situations with our reputations intact and our images enhanced.