Crisis leadership, not management

When the dust settled and the smoke stopped after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared to all the world that he was a take-charge mayor and a highly skilled crisis manager.

Author Steven Fink of this book says: “His tough-guy/former federal prosecutor communications skills came to the fore … which helped calm a panicked city and nation. Did Giuliani thwart the terrorists? Did he prevent another attack? No, of course not, but he presented the face of a tough leader who was in charge, and he helped create the much-needed perception that everything was going to be all right.

Time was when we confine this kind of skill to a term called “crisis management.” But when Giulani came into the scene in a most reassuring way, a phrase began to make the rounds among business and PR circles, and picked up by Hill & Knowlton in its seminars. The phrase: “Crisis Leadership.”

The phrase was coined to capture the masterful handling of Giulani when the nation and the entire civilized world was in shock after the twin towers in New York collapsed to ground zero with thousands of fatalities.

Crisis leadership is the individual this book wants to see in government officials, industry leaders and CEOs of big firms around the globe. The lack of such leadership—or, at the very least—sound crisis management is the bane, if not the curse, of organizations, which find themselves with an unwanted full-blown problem of this nature.

Fink begins his discussion on the failure of BP (British Petroleum) in containing a crisis, following a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, averaging 60,000 barrels a day. At the center of attention—and at the receiving end of public anger—was BP’s CEO, Tony  Hayward, who did almost everything wrong, from making a wrong “guesstimate” of the spill at 5,000 barrels a day and making  a very insensitive statement, “I’d like my life back.”

The author narrated in detail the litany of “don’ts” which Hayward unfortunately did, sending respectable firm BP to pay a fine of $4.5 billion, to plead guilty to 11 felony counts related to the deaths of the oil rig workers, and also plead guilty to “obstruction of Congress.”  Fink said Hayward got his wish to have his life back: He was fired by the BP Board.

The contrasting stance of Giuliani of New York and Hayward of British Petroleum clearly indicated the impact of their handling of messages in times of crisis.  Giuliani now belongs to the hall of fame of much admired crisis leaders, and Hayward, according to Fink, “was thrust to the pantheon of such other insensitive, kindred luminaries as Marie (“Let them eat cake”) Antoinette and Emperor (“Hand me my fiddle”) Nero.”

Throughout the 307-page book of 30 chapters, Fink— who writes like a newsman because he was and still is—dishes out narratives and anecdotes about the key effort at managing the message. The message, as the book amply shows, has both verbal and nonverbal elements.

Fink gives us a ringside view of how Johnson & Johnson effectively dealt with the issue of “fatality communications.” Most of us all know how the chief executive handled the damage control and the product recall aspects of the incident, which claimed many lives due to the  Tylenol tablets laced with cyanide.

One of  the firm’s executives deeply felt reports of death by cyanide in every Tylenol tablet, said: “It is a terrible responsibility to cause someone to die.”

Another effective response to a crisis was that of David Letterman, a late night talk show host, who went on the air in 2009 and proactively revealed his affair with a female assistant.  In brief, he apologized for his misconduct.

The book prescribes three things that should be contained in an apology: One, it is not self serving; two,  it is directed at the injured parties, and three, it is accompanied by reparations or cessation of the conduct that made the apology necessary.

I remember that I commented on how Cebu Pacific mishandled a mini-crisis when its plane ran outside its runway, its passengers confined inside the plane for 40 minutes, and the CEO really said “sorry,” but lost no time in congratulating the airline’s pilots. In a matter of days, one of the pilots was suspended  from work by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines.

The book is not your usual textbook on crisis communication, with a framework or theory to back up some description or prescription for crisis management or leadership. Instead, it has a topic in for every chapter that can be treated independently of the other chapters. Of course, you have to read the entire book, because Fink refers to some points or incidents in earlier chapters.

He covers a lot of ground in this book on crisis communication. He dwelt on topics like: What BP Should Have Said, Toyota—On a Slippery Crisis Communication Slope with No Brakes, Truth/Lies at the Speed of Light,  Telling the Truth,  Dealing with Death, How to Break Bad News and the Failure of Business Schools.

Fink also has some chapters on how to handle some team members in a crisis communication situation, like: “Shakespeare Was Right: Let’s Kill All the Lawyers.” Mercifully so for me (I have a would-be lawyer son in a law office), he clarified that the lawyers are valuable, and must be consulted on liability or litigation issues, but not on crafting statements to media.

I recall a statement of a petroleum company in the midst of a crisis which ran: “We take full responsibility for the incident but we are not accepting liability.” Only the razor edge pen of a lawyer can compose such a self-neutralizing statement.

Ultimately, the author concluded almost at every chapter that two things must be paramount in handling a crisis: One, the company’s survival; and two, which is a precondition to the first, the firm’s reputation.

On developing or keeping a reputation intact, Fink discussed the “Rorschach Phenomenon.” He explains: “You are probably familiar with the famous Rorschach inkblots. That’s essentially what your company is if it has not taken the time to establish reservoirs of goodwill: an inkblot. And everybody will see something different if they look at it.”

It has been a well-established principle that a company with a reputation of responsible citizenship has every great chance to survive a crisis, because the public already has a “handle” about such firm. But companies with still  an undeveloped image, as amorphous as an inkblot, will have difficulty projecting a good image in the midst of a crisis. And the firm will be fair game for attacks and criticisms.

From the start the author says: “Crisis communication has become a blood sport. It is not for the faint of heart. Play at your own risk; ignore the advice in this book at your own peril. And when it is your turn to don the armor (and your turn will come; it is inevitable), keep uppermost in your mind Virgil’s sage advice: “Fortune favors the bold.”

In this time of climate change, disasters and chaos, another phrase has come into the scene: “the new normal.” Crisis has become the “new normal”—and it is well advised that CEOs and their subordinates will be in a bold and daring state of readiness for such a crisis. ([email protected])