Even when your team does all it can to avoid screw-ups and mistakes.
The thing is — mistakes aren’t what will land you (and your credibility) in trouble with your public… It’s the knee-jerk reaction we all have to them that will actually make matters worse.
Here are 3 tips to help your team handle inevitable mistakes.
1. It’s human nature to try to justify (even to ourselves) why the mistake happened, whose fault it is, why it wasn’t that big of a mistake (if one at all)…
This is the real mistake.
Of course you’ve got to be careful in how you go public with acknowledging any screw-up, miscalculation, poor analysis, or serious error. But giving in to the reflex to be overly-protective or defensive is guaranteed to make matters worse.
So, rather than being “careful” in how you go public with a mistake, the better advice is to be “thoughtful” and not cave to human nature when you deal with your team’s mistakes.
We wish we could prevent you from dealing with any mistakes, but that simply isn’t possible, nor is it necessary.
However, we’ll help you prevent those mistakes from damaging the public’s trust in you — and help you shape them into opportunities to deepen your credibility, even with the most cynical public.
2. Public Official? Don’t Act Like a Private Firm. Except When…
Even when you try you HARDEST to avoid mistakes…Embarrassing things still manage to happen. Even to the best teams.
Mistakes don’t discriminate, do they? They happen in public-sector, as well as private-sector organizations.
The question for you is:
How should folks like you, in the public-sector, handle mistakes? Especially BIG ones… that your team caused?
When businesses mess up big-time, they hire a big name Public Relations firm.
These firms specialize in salvaging the company’s name, or saving the brand in face of the screw-up.
But what can you do when you work in the public-sector?
One of the few areas where our advice to public officials is similar to that of private-sector “crisis-communications PR experts”: Get the information out!
Don’t sit on it… Don’t DRIBBLE it out. Your team has to get the word out about your mistake immediately.
Since so little is shared between the private and public domains, we felt it was worth sharing this particular piece of parallel advice with you.
3. Hiring a PR Firm Can Backfire for Public Organizations
You know what happens when a big corporation messes up. They hire one of the few Madison-Avenue PR firms with a reputation for knowing how to help clients who have been caught with their pants down.
Public agencies can’t really do that!
The trouble is, while the public doesn’t protest when a private-sector organization hires a spin-doctor (with the clear and obvious intention of “spinning” the public, saving face, and their image)…
That same public will NOT put up with a public agency doing the same thing.
No fair!
Double standard alert!
Even so, we have to admit that even we, as a citizens, don’t really want our government to spend our tax money to hire a “spin-doctor” to “spin” us.
Do you?
Yet mistakes happen, and your team needs to deal with them.
So how can you save your credibility with your public, when hiring a PR firm will only create more animosity and cynicism?
Is it a crazy “Catch-22” situation? What’s the best way to deal with it?
We explain the double-standard in more detail, including what you can do about your team’s mistakes in this month’s webinar.
What’s become known as the “Aarhus Model” is an interesting take on developing trust with extremists — even those who are tempted to flee to Syria and support ISIS.
It touches on the underpinnings of what we discussed in this month’s Consent-Building Clinic #83, and what we’ve taught in our CPO-2 course that focuses on dealing with extremists.
That is, it’s not enough to say you care — you have to demonstrate it.
Look into the work of a handful of detectives in the Danish town of Aarhus, who rather than vilify teenagers tempted to join ISIS fighters in Syria, asked them to meet for coffee and then actually listened to how they became so disaffected with their homeland.
For many, if not most of those burgeoning terrorists, being heard caused them to finally believe what the officials and others were saying: they DID care about these youths and their frustrations.
Moreover, the police detectives acknowledged and validated the source of the teenagers’ feelings.
They HAD been treated unfairly, and while that was true they need not abandon Denmark and become radicalized to even the score.
Also laid out before them was that if they continued down the path of terrorism offered by ISIS, these teenagers could expect a grim future . . .
You’ll hear him say that by simply listening to him — he concluded he could trust these detectives.
They gained credibility with him which was thekey to turning his extremist attitude around 180 degrees.
As you heard Hans say in this month’s Clinic, dealing with extremists IS dangerous business.
But until you show them you really do want to understand them, you won’t have the essential trust needed to make progress on de-escalating their (Anti-Government) attitudes and behaviors.
Things in Burns, Oregon might get have officially turned ugly.
And while the folks at the wildlife refuge in Oregon aren’t your average opponents, their stance isn’t legitimate, there is an element of their stance that no public official should ignore…
Unfortunately, NO ONE is immune from anti-government attitudes.
(Ironically, especially in a democracy… But we’ll cover that topic on March 8th in Clinic #78.)
Because this attitude is something you either ARE dealing with or likely WILL be confronted with, we’ve adopted “Anti-Government” as our theme for all of our monthly Consent-Building Clinics in 2016.
In a self-governing society, it’s THE PUBLIC who decides — via our rules based decision-making process — what government institutions it wants to create and maintain.
If you encounter stakeholders who perceive an “Us vs. Them” relationship between the (them) public and (you) the government . . . something’s gone wrong.
Chances are it’s simply a misunderstanding . . . a misperception.
Because even “simple” misperceptions can be challenging to correct, don’t expect that lecturing these folks is going to change their view of the world.
Your stakeholders need to discover . . . they need to see — with their own eyes — and conclude on their own terms that it’s ultimately THEY, the people (i.e. all of us) who make all the decisions.
It’s WE, the people, who created your agency and it’s mission.
It’s critical that your stakeholders realize this paradigm-changing insight.
But how do you stimulate you stakeholders to have such a critical insight?
While there’s no quick-fix, there IS much you can do.
The first of which begins by answering 6 Questions
In addition to the recording of this webinar, we’ve created a follow-up video with 6 questions to help you make real headway in preventing such attitudes from being aimed at you and your organization.
Starting with the basics in this recorded webinar, we delve into every angle of WHY Anti-Government sentiments are ratcheting up all across the country, and WHAT you can do to diffuse them, and even better yet — PREVENT them in the first place — from impeding your ability to accomplish your mission.
In this session, we’ll cover something so SIMPLE and yet POWERFUL . . .
6 Points We Cover
1. How you DEFINE “public” and “stakeholder” plays a central role in anti-government attitudes towards you and your agency.
2. Whom should you INCLUDE and EXCLUDE in your definition?
3. Should your definition of your “public” and related “stakeholders” SHIFT from project to project?
4. How should you handle people who THINK they are affected?
5. What’s the appropriate ROLE of number of constituents, majority vs. minority opinions, and representativeness?
6. How to identify WHICH of the 4 Fundamental Points your team is failing to address.
Don’t be caught off guard by anti-government attitudes that are sweeping the country!
Whatever “Leadership” is, one of its components is “Crisis Management.” Why? . . .
Because that’s one thing administrators, managers, . . . leaders . . . find themselves in:crises.
Leaders Deploy Two Kinds of Crisis Management
One of them (let’s call this “Type A Crisis Management”) is when some awful thing happens, some highly unusual, terrible situation – an airplane crashes in your downtown, an earthquake or flash flood destroys an area, it is discovered that people for whom you’re responsible have done a terrible thing, etc. – andyou, as a leader, have to “manage” this crisis.
In that sort of situation, you have to figure out what immediate steps to take, how to respond to the media who are descending on your community from afar. You have to “manage” this rather unmanageable crisis that you find yourself in.
1st Type of Crisis Management
This first kind of “crisis management” refers to how leaders deal with the crisis-at-hand. Examples of this kind of crisis management include:
A1. How the various public officials responded to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina
Officials of the City of New Orleans
Louisiana and Mississippi State Officials
Federal officials in such agencies as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Corps of Engineers, and others
A2. How the Executive branch of the US government — and how the New York City First Responders — managed teh response to the 9-11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (September 11, 2001)
A3. How the US Treasury Department (Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke) managed the Financial Crisis that was triggered by an overnight inter-bank credit freeze in September of 2008
A4. How an organization – in the private or public sector – handles the public revelation that its staff has been guilty of gross negligence, incompetence, and worse: corruption or moral turpitude.
2nd Type of Crisis Management
The second kind of “crisis management” (let’s label “Type B Crisis Management”) refers to how you manage your normal, day-to-day management responsibilitieswhile you’re in the midst of a crisis. . . i.e. How you guide your organization as it tries to perform its routine, normal functions at a time when things arefar from normalbecause there is some sort of crisis that is taking place.
Examples of this kind of crisis management include:
B1. How government entities in New York – such as police or firefighters not directly involved at the World Trade Center — tried to continue performing their normal functions . . . in spite of what was happening at the World Trade Center.
B2. How organizations – private or public – tried to continue with their normal functions . . . in spite of the disruption caused by Hurricane Katrina, such as, the New Orleans Police Department, the Times-Picayune newspaper, local hospitals, local public utilities, etc.
B3. How an organizational leader tries to motivate – but also re-direct – the organization’s staff even though a scandal is unleashing a torrent of harsh criticism in the social media . . . as well as in the traditional media.
On-Going Example in the News
At this writing (spring 2014) serious students of leadership are being treated to a ring-side seat at a classical “Crisis Management” event:
General Motors CEO Mary Barra’s handling of a crisis that landed in her lap.
GM’s Board of Directors appointed her, a 30-year GM employee, as the company’s new CEO on January 15, 2014.
Two months latershe is faced with having to handle the kind of crisis that makes for the kind of classic case study that constitute the core of most graduate management programs. Here’s the Crisis GM CEO Barra has to handle:
By mid-March 2014, it was revealed that GM safety engineersknew years ago (for as long as 10 years) that the ignition switch in hundreds of thousands of Chevrolet Cobalt vehicles had potentially fatal defects. The defect could, under certain conditions, disable the car’s air bag.
In spite of mounting evidence. . .
GM lied to the families of accident victims about what they knew,
GM refused to talk to one survivor family unless it was through their attorney (they did not have an attorney because they were not suing GM),
In a case where a survivor family did sue them, Gm called their lawsuit “frivolous” . . .
An Exercise in Crisis Management 101
What Would YOU Do in the GM Recall Crisis?
So, let’s stop the clock right there and put on the Crisis Management thinking cap . . . Imagine YOU (rather than Mary Barra) are the new CEO of GM, and the very damaging revelations are not just shocking the public, they’re shocking GM employees (because very few of them were privy to what the safety engineers and the attorneys knew); the revelations are equally shocking to you!
You need to think — and plan — how you ought to proceed with managing the Type A and the Type B Crises. i.e. How to deal with the storm of a quickly widening public and legal scandal, as well as with managing the rest of the organization — that’s trying to produce competitive cars — while this storm plays out.
You’ll get the most out of this if you:
Go online andread more backgroundon the case.
One link,http://ow.ly/v9e95gets you to theUSA Todayarticle by Hillary Stout, Bill Vlasic, Danielle Ivory, and Rebecca Ruiz: “Carmaker Misled Grieving Families on a Lethal Flaw.” It is a pretty good description of the smoking gun that cinches GM’s guilt. It gives you sense of the questions the Congressional Committee that you’re going to face next week will be asking you.
Another link,http://ow.ly/v9dOMgets you to the very perceptiveUSA Todayarticle by Michael Wolff:“Wolff: GM’s Barra shames voiceless CEOs.”This pieceWolff’s is insightful, explaining justhow uncommon, how unusual, Mary Barra’s approachto managing this crisis is.
And finally, the linkhttp://ow.ly/v9dUGtakes you to aNY Timesarticle by Vindu Goes: “G.M. Uses Social Media to Manage Customers and Its Reputation.” In it, he gives some examples of how they are using Social Media in a very creative, gutsy way, as one of their Crisis Communications Tools.
2. Discusswhat you think of all this with a colleague or two.
3. Then,submit your thoughtstoJennifer(jennifer@ipmp.com). She’ll post those of your comments that meet this blog’s “Terms of Use,” and we’ll pick up the discussion from there.
Whatever “Leadership” is, one of its components is “Crisis Management.” Why? . . .
Because that’s one thing administrators, managers, . . . leaders . . . find themselves in:crises.
Leaders Deploy Two Kinds of Crisis Management
One of them (let’s call this “Type A Crisis Management”) is when some awful thing happens, some highly unusual, terrible situation – an airplane crashes in your downtown, an earthquake or flash flood destroys an area, it is discovered that people for whom you’re responsible have done a terrible thing, etc. – andyou, as a leader, have to “manage” this crisis.
In that sort of situation, you have to figure out what immediate steps to take, how to respond to the media who are descending on your community from afar. You have to “manage” this rather unmanageable crisis that you find yourself in.
1st Type of Crisis Management
This first kind of “crisis management” refers to how leaders deal with the crisis-at-hand. Examples of this kind of crisis management include:
A1. How the various public officials responded to the 2005 Hurricane Katrina
Officials of the City of New Orleans
Louisiana and Mississippi State Officials
Federal officials in such agencies as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Corps of Engineers, and others
A2. How the Executive branch of the US government — and how the New York City First Responders — managed teh response to the 9-11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (September 11, 2001)
A3. How the US Treasury Department (Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke) managed the Financial Crisis that was triggered by an overnight inter-bank credit freeze in September of 2008
A4. How an organization – in the private or public sector – handles the public revelation that its staff has been guilty of gross negligence, incompetence, and worse: corruption or moral turpitude.
2nd Type of Crisis Management
The second kind of “crisis management” (let’s label “Type B Crisis Management”) refers to how you manage your normal, day-to-day management responsibilitieswhile you’re in the midst of a crisis. . . i.e. How you guide your organization as it tries to perform its routine, normal functions at a time when things arefar from normalbecause there is some sort of crisis that is taking place.
Examples of this kind of crisis management include:
B1. How government entities in New York – such as police or firefighters not directly involved at the World Trade Center — tried to continue performing their normal functions . . . in spite of what was happening at the World Trade Center.
B2. How organizations – private or public – tried to continue with their normal functions . . . in spite of the disruption caused by Hurricane Katrina, such as, the New Orleans Police Department, the Times-Picayune newspaper, local hospitals, local public utilities, etc.
B3. How an organizational leader tries to motivate – but also re-direct – the organization’s staff even though a scandal is unleashing a torrent of harsh criticism in the social media . . . as well as in the traditional media.
On-Going Example in the News
At this writing (spring 2014) serious students of leadership are being treated to a ring-side seat at a classical “Crisis Management” event:
General Motors CEO Mary Barra’s handling of a crisis that landed in her lap.
GM’s Board of Directors appointed her, a 30-year GM employee, as the company’s new CEO on January 15, 2014.
Two months latershe is faced with having to handle the kind of crisis that makes for the kind of classic case study that constitute the core of most graduate management programs. Here’s the Crisis GM CEO Barra has to handle:
By mid-March 2014, it was revealed that GM safety engineersknew years ago (for as long as 10 years) that the ignition switch in hundreds of thousands of Chevrolet Cobalt vehicles had potentially fatal defects. The defect could, under certain conditions, disable the car’s air bag.
In spite of mounting evidence. . .
GM lied to the families of accident victims about what they knew,
GM refused to talk to one survivor family unless it was through their attorney (they did not have an attorney because they were not suing GM),
In a case where a survivor family did sue them, Gm called their lawsuit “frivolous” . . .
An Exercise in Crisis Management 101
What Would YOU Do in the GM Recall Crisis?
So, let’s stop the clock right there and put on the Crisis Management thinking cap . . . Imagine YOU (rather than Mary Barra) are the new CEO of GM, and the very damaging revelations are not just shocking the public, they’re shocking GM employees (because very few of them were privy to what the safety engineers and the attorneys knew); the revelations are equally shocking to you!
You need to think — and plan — how you ought to proceed with managing the Type A and the Type B Crises. i.e. How to deal with the storm of a quickly widening public and legal scandal, as well as with managing the rest of the organization — that’s trying to produce competitive cars — while this storm plays out.
You’ll get the most out of this if you:
Go online andread more backgroundon the case.
One link,http://ow.ly/v9e95gets you to theUSA Todayarticle by Hillary Stout, Bill Vlasic, Danielle Ivory, and Rebecca Ruiz: “Carmaker Misled Grieving Families on a Lethal Flaw.” It is a pretty good description of the smoking gun that cinches GM’s guilt. It gives you sense of the questions the Congressional Committee that you’re going to face next week will be asking you.
Another link,http://ow.ly/v9dOMgets you to the very perceptiveUSA Todayarticle by Michael Wolff:“Wolff: GM’s Barra shames voiceless CEOs.”This pieceWolff’s is insightful, explaining justhow uncommon, how unusual, Mary Barra’s approachto managing this crisis is.
And finally, the linkhttp://ow.ly/v9dUGtakes you to aNY Timesarticle by Vindu Goes: “G.M. Uses Social Media to Manage Customers and Its Reputation.” In it, he gives some examples of how they are using Social Media in a very creative, gutsy way, as one of their Crisis Communications Tools.
2. Discusswhat you think of all this with a colleague or two.
3. Then,submit your thoughtstoJennifer(jennifer@ipmp.com). She’ll post those of your comments that meet this blog’s “Terms of Use,” and we’ll pick up the discussion from there.
Hans, Annemarie & Jennifer Bleiker
PO Box 1937, Monterey, CA 93942
Training & Coaching inquiries: 781-789-6500
Main Office: 831-373-4292
Jennifer@ConsentBuilding.com
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