CRISIS ISN’T CONVENIENT – THAT’S WHY WE HAVE PLANS

The weekend of December 24 and 25, 2010 will be forever remembered for one of the worst weather events in New York City history.  “Thundersnow.”  “Snowmagedden.”  Twenty inches of snow in one night.  All NYC area airports CLOSED. Subway passengers marooned in their trains for hours.

No, crisis isn’t convenient. Lots of people away for the festive weekend. Little warning. Big weather event. Big consequences. So, how did the Big Apple administration respond? Badly, it would appear. But more on that in a moment.

Why have a crisis plan? Almost all organizations have a plan or plans in place for emergencies. The fire evacuation plan is the most basic example. Many organizations have business recovery plans in case something interrupts mission-critical business activities. This might be an HR issue, such as the senior leadership killed in a plane crash. It might be an information technology issue, where products or services cannot be delivered because of a software or hardware breakdown. These are operating crisis plans. Additionally, many organizations have crisis communications plans.  And they have them for a number of reasons:

1. To formalize procedures for managing an issue into a plan so that these procedures can be shared, verified, practiced, revised.
2. To reduce “thinking” time and increase speed of response, often critical to good crisis management.
3. To give the backups to the designated first responders, who might be unavailable, the “manual” of instructions to follow.

More sophisticated crisis response plans have an escalation provision that increases the response, depending upon the severity of the issue. I once worked with an organization that had a response plan that they summarized as “Get Big Quick” (GBQ) when an incident was classified as severe. How many crises may have been minimized had organizations responded with GBQ at the first sign of an impending issue? However, the organizational tendency, in my long experience, is to minimize, not maximize. They always hope the problem just goes away. Usually it doesn’t. The momentum of moving to GBQ that is lost to indecision and tentativeness has often been the difference between a well-managed issue and an out-of-control situation – which is my definition of crisis.

Well, having a plan is one thing – sticking to it is another.  The New York Daily News reported on December 29^th: “The MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) failed to follow its own emergency protocol before the blizzard that crippled large swaths of the subway system.

“The MTA didn’t declare its highest-level Winter Operations Plan 4 in effect until Sunday when the storm was underway…An all-hands-on-deck declaration should have been made on Saturday when the forecast first predicted a blizzard would slam the city, the 300-page plan says…Instead, the Level 1 plan – the lowest – was officially in effect Friday into Sunday.”

In the days following the blizzard, the Daily News chronicled the City’s tragically poor performance.  Calling out more workers for snow clearing on Christmas day brought poor results – some just couldn’t get to work. Actions taken were sometimes misguided – like sending out buses without tire chains, only to see many of them get stuck and block more streets.  Those were the operational problems. How about the communications response?

On the Monday, with the City still snowed in, the Daily News reported that Mayor Bloomberg said: “The world has not come to an end…On balance, I think you’ll find we kept the city safe and we’re cleaning it up.”

The Daily News showed in its anatomy of the storm and response that New Yorkers didn’t agree.

“Laura Freeman, 41, was among the desperate 911 callers when her elderly mother fell ill in her Corona home. By the time first responders made it through the snow-choked streets, 75-year-old Yvonne Freeman was dead.

“Later, as the distraught family watched in disbelief, Bloomberg appeared on television.  “He said, ‘It’s horrible, but take in a Broadway show,’” recalled Lisa Moyano, another of the victim’s daughters.”

Lessons to be learned

So, what are we to take from New York’s misfortune?

First, the Plan is key. Keep it current. Don’t let other objectives (like finances) diminish it (it’ll cost more to fix than is saved by skimping). Orient new employees to the Plan. Practice it. Follow it.

Second, even a good operating response will suffer if communication isn’t handled well. BP’s “I want my life back” and NYC’s “Take in a Broadway show” will live in infamy.

Third, in crisis where someone dies, no matter what words you use, “sorry” doesn’t help the dead.

EXPOSED: CAN YOU LIVE WITH YOUR COMMUNICATION GOING PUBLIC?

The two major “dumps” of sensitive communication by WikiLeaks have reverberated around the world. Embarrassing. Destructive. Worrisome. Threatening. These are just the more polite descriptions of the fall-out from the public exposure of these private communications. Governments are scrambling to do damage control and prevent another round of leaks. And businesses are not immune to the WikiLeaks mandate – a major US bank is waiting for a WikiLeaks document dump at any moment.

This isn’t new – just the volumes and importance of the communications are novel. People have been blowing the whistle, as they say, and leaking caches of communications for a long time. The solution is prevention. Simple, but far from easy. Why? It requires major behaviour change and that, I have concluded, is the hardest solution to achieve.

Leaking isn’t the only way private communication gets into the public domain. Decades ago I worked for a company whose in-house lawyer demanded that all senior management personnel get more “security” conscious about our communication. He wanted us to be careful about how we said things in our written communication, especially advice or comments that were meant for management’s eyes only. I had largely forgotten that counsel – behaviour change is hard to remember – until I saw this report about Shell Oil in The Guardian Newspaper in the UK. Everything that lawyer warned us about so many years ago became reality for Shell.

The lead paragraphs from the Guardian story paint this picture:

Secret internal company documents from the oil giant Shell show that in the immediate aftermath of the execution of the Nigerian activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa it adopted a PR strategy of cosying up to key BBC editors and singling out NGOs that it hoped to “sway”.

The documents offer a previously hidden insight into efforts by the company to deflect the PR storm that engulfed it after the Nigerian activist was hanged by the country’s military government. Shell faced accusations that it had colluded with the government over the activists’ death.

I do not in any way wish to minimize the seriousness of the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa by using this report as an example of the need for caution, even in internal advice communication. However, the example, as exposed in the Guardian story, powerfully shows the conflict between the very serious context and the bloodless way in which communication can sound many years later, particularly with the language that is chosen. Here’s just a sample from the report:

The documents even reveal that Shell discussed whether it should stay in the country in the wake of Saro-Wiwa’s death. One scenario was called “milking the cow”, whereas the “pull-out” scenario was seen as “giving in” or “caving in” which would set a “very negative precedent for the group”. Another reason for not leaving was that “issues of liability will not disappear even with a total withdrawal.”

So, does this mean that we shouldn’t commit our advice to written (paper or digital) form? That would bring the business/organizational world to a halt. And as I said, even though I was warned a long time ago about the dangers of legal exposure or “leaking” that we now see in the Guardian story, I have written many PR strategy documents in the intervening years and I am certain my language and my advice, at times, have been fairly strong.

After reading the Guardian story, I wrote a strategy for a client addressing a post-crisis recovery and I changed my usual behaviour as a consequence. I think the takeaways from the Guardian example include the following:

• We need to remind ourselves and others to be conscious that everything we communicate – memos, emails, tweets, voicemails, verbal comments – can be brought out in court evidence that includes testimony (where a witness testifies to what you said in a private meeting, for instance).
• Our choice of language is critical and will often be reviewed later in the absence of the emotion that provoked it or the context that explains it. Just look at the offers of resignation sparked by the WikiLeaks exposure of diplomatic cables.
• If you make a conclusion, back it up with some proof. I did this in the strategy I wrote after reading the Guardian story. It only took one more sentence.
• Speed is the enemy of well considered communication. Emails and tweets needing remediation are so frequent these days one doesn’t have to look far to find proof of this lesson.
• If you couldn’t tolerate having your communication out in the public domain, then eliminate it (and I mean by that don’t write it or say it – I don’t mean delete or shred it, which in some circumstances can be criminal offenses) or re-consider how you will communicate.

Latest Tylenol recalls – gold standard no longer?

On Friday, McNeil Consumer Healthcare announced a recall of Tylenol and other over the counter products. Significance? I, like others, had held the company up as the gold standard of crisis response for their 1982 response to the fatal poisoning tampering of the popular Tylenol product. In 2004, I wrote about this exceptional response in a column I did for PR Canada. I have reproduced it below this current posting for reference.

Unfortunately, Friday’s recall was colored by a warning letter from the FDA that said in part:

“The Agency is concerned about the response of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) to this matter. It appears that when J&J became aware of FDA’s concerns about the thoroughness and timeliness of McNeil’s investigation, whether all potentially affected products had been identified, and whether the recall was adequate in scope, J&J did not take appropriate actions to resolve these issues. Corporate management has the responsibility to ensure the quality, safety, and integrity of its products. Neither upper management at J&J nor at McNeil Consumer Healthcare assured timely investigation and resolution of the issues.”

I would like to say that this situation takes nothing away from the brilliant execution of the McNeil team in 1982, but I can’t. While they performed so admirably 28 years ago, this current situation does not reflect well on McNeil or Johnson & Johnson. Like it or not, it also reflects poorly on the Tylenol brand. Brands are assets. And when they’re in crisis, their stewards need to choose their goal, keep focused and execute precisely to achieve that goal. I expand on this below.

Primary Crisis Goal:

Make it tight and get it right

By Patrick McGee

Copyright September 2004

 When it comes to crisis, my view is that a positive outcome will only be determined when one out of the many goals is designated as the primary goal. If that goal is ‘tight and right’ it will drive the response of the organization — including its actions and its communications – to success.

 Realistically, there are a number of goals that organizations have when faced with crisis. Here’s a fairly typical list of commonly promoted goals:

Don’t panic the public.

Avoid/minimize legal action.

Avoid/minimize media coverage.

Minimize financial loss/cost.

Minimize reputation (brand or corporate) damage.

Protect the share price.

Protect the customers (employees, community, public).

Restore operations/business recovery.

Manage the immediate threat.

 Nothing wrong with any of them. But if you can only choose one – if you have to make it a tight focus – which would you choose?

 I’ve asked organizations to make this choice during crisis. It would have been better had they done so ahead of the situation they were facing. But, there we were, with good goals competing with each other for primacy – because the right primary goal can determine resource allocation, priority of actions, tone, and success.

 Does choosing one goal for primacy over the others mean the others will not be realized? Certainly not. Experience shows that choosing the right goal for primacy can ensure the realization of the other goals. In fact, almost all crises that would be considered successfully handled achieved most, if not all, of the goals outlined above.

 So, which goal is the best one to choose in order to get the most benefit for the other goals?

 I believe that it is to protect/respond to the safety, health, and concerns of people such as customers, employees and so on, first and foremost. With that as the stated primary goal, I believe that everything else is achievable. If we look at crisis situations that have been dubbed successes or failures, the pivotal element was what priority this goal received.

 The funny thing is, most organizations have this in their values statements. As well, they are almost obnoxious in touting their focus on the customer or on the fact that their employees are their most important assets. But when the chips are down, profit, hard assets, lawsuits and other considerations often push for priority. And sometimes the wrong goal gets primacy.

 So what made Johnson & Johnson/McNeil different in the handling of Tylenol back in 1982? In the admitted absence of a crisis plan, what guided the response to the strychnine poison added to some its products in order to extort money from the company? What led them to make a decision to remove the product from the store shelves – a $100 million decision – against the advice of legal counsel?

 It was their “Credo” (definition: any system of principles or beliefs).  Here’s what they say about it on their website:

“At Johnson & Johnson there is no mission statement that hangs on the wall. Instead, for more than 60 years, a simple, one-page document – Our Credo — has guided our actions in fulfilling our responsibilities to our customers, our employees, the community and our stockholders.”

I am reproducing it in its entirety below because if Tylenol is the Gold Standard of crisis management we need to understand precisely why. Note in the first section what they identify as “first responsibility” and then the goal they identify as the “final responsibility” in the last section.

Our Credo

We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality. We must constantly strive to reduce our costs
in order to maintain reasonable prices. Customers’ orders must be serviced promptly and accurately. Our suppliers and distributors must have an opportunity to make a fair profit.

We are responsible to our employees, the men and women who work with us throughout the world. Everyone must be considered as an individual. We must respect their dignity and recognize their merit. They must have a sense of security in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and adequate, and working conditions clean, orderly and safe. We must be mindful of ways to help our employees fulfill their family responsibilities. Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints. There must be equal opportunity for employment, development and advancement for those qualified. We must provide competent management, and their actions must be just and ethical.

We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well. We must be good citizens – support good works and charities and bear our fair share of taxes. We must encourage civic improvements and better health and education. We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment and natural resources.

Our final responsibility is to our stockholders. Business must make a sound profit.
We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed and mistakes paid for. New equipment must be purchased, new facilities provided and new products launched. Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times. When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return.

 And did Johnson & Johnson abandon these first principles in favour of other goals when faced with a number of deaths from the criminal act involving its brand? Certainly not. As Larry Foster, Vice President of Public Relations said: “It would have been hypocrisy at its best or worse.”*

 The goal definition was tight. It was about customer safety. That’s why they’re the penultimate example of getting it right. That goal helped achieve other critical goals: protecting the brand, financial/business recovery, positive media coverage, manageable legal action, and so on.

 So, is your crisis plan guided by a goal?  Does it put people first?  Will your organization stick with that goal if the price tag heads up to, or north of, $100 million?

 If you don’t have a plan, start with your organization’s first principles to set the tight, right goal the plan needs to accomplish.

                                                                                                           -END-

 *http://www.cces.ca/pdfs/CCES-PAPER-Malloy-E.pdf.  David Malloy, PhD University of Regina cites Fritzche 1997 p.132 quoting J&J’s Larry Foster.

UPDATE:

I have been informed of an alternate view of the “gold standard” that has been around for a number of years. It is summarized on the subscription only site O’Dwyer’s PR Daily, but reproduced  on the PR Watch website http://www.prwatch.org/taxonomy/term/104?page=7&from=70. Find below the counter argument:

Crisis Management “Gold Standard” Actually Tinny

Source: O’Dwyer’s PR Daily (sub req’d), May 22, 2007

As many speeches, magazines and books have done previously, the current issue of Fortune magazine calls Johnson & Johnson‘s (J&J’s) response to the 1982 Tylenol capsule poisoning deaths “the gold standard in crisis control.” O’Dwyer’s PR Daily writes that “the Tylenol story, as commonly told, is a ‘fairy tale,'” as PR executive James Lukaszewski once called it. J&J’s CEO at the time, James Burke, “learned of the tragedy” of the seven Chicago-area deaths “on Wednesday, Sept. 30, and called a staff meeting for Monday” — in contrast to the “myth” that he acted immediately. J&J also “tried to localize the problem, recalling two batches that were circulated in the Chicago area.” A wider recall wasn’t launched until “after another attempted poisoning using Tylenols took place on the following Tuesday in Oroville, Calif.” And “while Burke has been lauded for his openness with the press, he did not hold a press conference.” The problem was the capsules, which “some pharmacists would not stock,” because they “could easily be taken apart and ‘spiked.'” After another Tylenol capsule poisoning in 1986, J&J’s Burke admitted he was sorry that the company “did not stop making Tylenols in capsules after the Chicago murders.”

While the counter view of the 1982 Tylenol crisis management may be accurate – I wasn’t involved so I can’t say either way – I stand behind the thesis of my 2004 blog above. There will always be competing interests in managing a crisis. Which objective will get primacy and how will that be determined? Look to a defined process or structure to help analyze the competing options. A values statement or credo can provide such a structure.

Influence/Change: What formula are you using?

Success at work involves influence at work. We employ influence in decision-making, sales, client relations (internal and external), change management, organizational transformation, managing, recruiting, handling conflicts, negotiations, and so on.

 We all have our ways of preparing to exercise influence. Some of us are aware of these approaches and for others the approaches are largely unconscious. A way of preparing that yields the best results is to use a formula to guide our research and analysis of what needs to be in our influence/change communications.

 There is a 1960s vintage formula that I have found provides a very useful question stimulus and analytical framework through which to strategically prepare for an influence opportunity. I’m referring to Gleicher’s Formula or Equation. David Gleicher was a  consultant at Arthur D. Little. In equation form, his formula looks like this:

Change = Dissatisfaction ´ Vision of the future ´ First steps towards that vision > Resistance.  (C=DVF>R)

This was later refined to DVF > Cost (economic and psychological). The thought is that, if any of the elements on the left side of the equation are weak or missing, then overcoming resistance/cost won’t happen.

 The great value of using a formula like Gleicher’s when we are planning to exercise influence to achieve a goal is that it brings discipline to our thinking (or lack thereof!) It makes us examine our assumptions against what the person we are trying to influence is thinking, believing, fearing, wanting, etc.

 Who hasn’t heard the admonition to be client (external or internal) centred (driven, etc.) today? Well, the client’s cost resistance is one thing, but that psychological cost is a swamp of resistance, to play on John Bunyan’s Slough of Despond. From bias, to “I don’t know you”, to the fear factors, such as the fear of failure.

 This side of the formula – resistance – has the most weight, precisely because it is the client’s centre. But how many of us want to believe that we’ll achieve the influence we want to have, based on the client’s dissatisfaction with the status quo (and how much research did we do on this?), combined with our vision of the future for the client (our product, service, idea, goal, etc.), along with our gentle (or otherwise) push with a suggested action or exhortation (“now get out there….”)? Some will do thorough research (questions, surveys, etc.) and analysis, using a disciplined approach that will include the resistance part of the formula. But many will not do much more than a cursory think- through, driven by their firmly held assumptions.

 Resistance is powerful. Facts and persuasive influencers notwithstanding, change can be non-existent or slow if it cannot outweigh resistance.  For example, on the issue of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, Professor Andre Potworowski flags the resistance problem in a column by technology writer Tyler Hamilton.

 “It is, in effect, a challenge of change management… The greatest barrier to innovation comes from resistance to change on the part of the consumer… People must begin to see the possibility of profiting from sustainability,” says Potworowski.

 And every issue, challenge – indeed, opportunity – is the same. Does DVF outweigh R?

 There is a circumstance where influence/change can happen extremely quickly. I’ll take some liberty with Gleicher’s formula to explain. When I ask myself what factors have been present when I’ve seen an immediate result in influence/change that overcomes resistance, it looks like this:

Fear + Urgency + Limited Options (FULO) > Resistance.

Why? Basically the values of Gleicher’s DVF are jacked-up to the “threat” level and the cost considerations – economic and psychological – don’t have as much sway.

 How many times do most of us have these FULO factors working in our favour to overcome resistance when we’re exercising influence? Not that many. So, we have to deal with the CVF factors Gleicher identified. We can “manufacture” FULO. Many high-pressure sales techniques do just that. We can introduce some aspects of FULO into DVF. Certainly there’s an ethical line for using these “weapons of influence.”

 Gleicher isn’t the only one with a formula. Just a sample from my bookshelves includes:

 Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends & Influence People – great advice for anyone.

Robert Cialdini, INFLUENCE – The Psychology of Persuasion – PhD. He has six “weapons of influence.” They are present in every analysis I do and often employed in my strategies and those of my clients.

John Adams, Successful Change, Paying Attention to the Intangibles – a change leader I found by exploring Gleicher, he asked the question “Why do so many of these efforts fail?” He found his own answer. His research led to a list of 12 Individual Change Success Factors that he believes are complementary to Gleicher’s Formula. He shared it in OD Practitioner in 2003.

Howard Gardner, Changing minds: the art and science of changing our own and other people’s minds – Harvard Ph.D. put forward the concept of multiple intelligences, and in this book outlines his 7 Levers of Change, all starting with “Re”. I’m thankful to Gardner for introducing me to a formal examination of resistance. It informs my thinking, training/coaching and counsel.

Gregory Berns, Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently – MD, PhD. Berns wanted to have innovation in the title but it was overused. He really framed the fear factors part of resistance for me.

Chris Argyris, Overcoming Organizational Defenses – Professor Emeritus Harvard and Thought Leader, Monitor Group. Argyris discusses the undiscussable: how organizations resist change by implementing “organizational defenses”. My take on it: Most organizations talk the talk, but few walk the talk.

 I will explore influence and the references above in future blogs, but in the meantime, enjoy your reading if you check out these experts. And don’t forget to use a formula to increase your strategic influence.

Copyright 2009

The Net shortens the News Cycle

From Politico’s Arena comes a valuable comment from Christine Pelosi on 2 counts:

1. A topical analysis of  Judge Sotomayor hearings on her nomination to SCOTUS
2. A reference to a very interesting study on how the Net shortens the news cycle today

Here it is complete with the link to the Study:

Christine Pelosi, Attorney, author and Democratic activist:

From Judge Sotomayor’s hearings, we have learned that United States Senators are on the 24-hour news cycle and Supreme Court Justices are not.

It is perhaps a historic coincidence that America’s first Internet President, Barack Obama, sent up a Supreme Court nominee for confirmation hearings the same week that Cornell University published a landmark study – “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle” – that demonstrated how the web shortens the news cycle. The Cornell researchers tracked the accelerated web-based circulation of ideas – scouring 90 million articles and blog posts during the 2008 campaign for the “genetic signatures” for ideas, memes, and story lines.

They found what most Americans already intuit: the Internet shortens the time in which a meme circulates from main stream media to blogs (2.5 hours) and into the popular culture, thus words have more weight as perceived evidence of a person’s character and philosophy. The study helps explain why the role of United States Senators in this Supreme Court Justice hearing is to elevate their chosen memes (“most experienced nominee in 100 years” “wise Latina” “prosecutor” “judicial activist” “moderate” to name a few) through repetition and questioning in order to quickly frame Judge Sotomayor’s character and philosophy, capture the conversation, and build momentum to justify their vote.

Meanwhile, by contrast, the role of Supreme Court Justices is to navigate a long-term jurisprudence cycle not a short-term news cycle. Court rulings rely heavily on precedence, must endure over time, and ideally are not swayed by the passions of the moment. As Judge Sotomayor said, “we don’t rule for the home crowd.”

But before she can be elevated to a lifetime appointment to work in the long-term jurisprudence cycle, Sotomayor must endure the last unblinking look of the 24-hour news cycle. Unlike nominees of the pre-Internet era, the judge’s public utterances were captured on tape and can be taken in or out of context with the stroke of a keyboard. Sotomayor must assess the weight of her words on and off the bench to show us her personal character and judicial philosophy without prejudging cases or adding new weight to badly chosen words. In the questioning to date, Democrats emphasize her words on the bench and Republicans emphasize her work off the bench.

She has demonstrated patience, intellect, and the ability to withstand withering patrimony with aplomb. To her credit, Judge Sotomayor is attempting a candid discussion on jurisprudence that will endure over a lifetime and avoiding a gaffe that will circulate in a news cycle.

 Again:  MEME-TRACKING AND THE DYNAMICS OF THE NEWS CYCLE

Click to access kdd09-quotes.pdf

Clinton risks violating the fairness bias

The all out attack on Barack Obama by competitor Hillary Clinton ahead of the crucial Ohio and Texas primaries risks violating the fairness bias of the undecided voters. It’s a risk that anyone in business runs when they decide to go at their opposition – whether at a shareholders’ meeting, a community forum, or through the media.

Why? Two reasons.
First, “life may not be fair, but humans have a strong bias for fairness,” says Lucas Laursen in the Feb/Mar issue of Scientific American MIND magazine. He notes that studies have found that relationships matter when people judge fairness. “Humans accepted unfair deals from computers but not from people.”

So, Clinton’s supporters (strong relationship) will likely accept unfair treatment of Obama, but the undecideds (neutral relationship) probably not. That may then be the deciding factor in how the undecideds vote.

So fairness is a key factor. It’s also very subjective and the perpetrator is usually a poor judge of fairness.

Second, Clinton may misstep in regard to the concept of relative credibility. Simply put it says that you should be very careful attacking someone with more credibility with the target audience than you  because, rather than driving them down, you drive yourself down and they go up in credibility. She better have objective data that says that with the undecideds she has more credibility or else she might just deliver the undecided vote to Obama. 

I wrote a piece on relative credibility a few years ago and have replayed below the example I used for illustration.

Relative credibility in actionParty A, my client, was involved in a complex conflict involving litigation, grievances, and harassment with Party B. My client found the situation intolerable. Both parties finally agreed to appoint an experienced mediator to try to reach a settlement of all actions and issues.The mediator selected had vast experience as a litigation lawyer and mediator. He was not sympathetic to Party A as far as we could tell, but we thought he might be partial to Party B.Party A was eager to reach a settlement, but was also very emotional about the treatment its members had received at the hands of Party B and tended to show their emotions in any discussions involving Party B. Because of this, Party A’s credibility was diminished except with its supporters. The other party had enormous credibility because of historical goodwill.Once we had agreement within Party A that Party B probably had more credibility with the mediator starting out, we were able to devise a strategy to overcome this deficit. It worked better than we could have hoped.Party A stifled its instinct to “attack” Party B. Instead, Party A signalled through words and actions to the mediator that its goal was to reach an agreement – but not at any cost – and that Party A could and would provide the mediator with all of the information on the issues he might need to mediate the dispute.The members of Party A sat on their emotions and delivered the facts, the context and the co-operation that the mediator needed. Party A raised its credibility by their professionalism, candour, and co-operation. Party A also got a boost because an arrogant, uncooperative Party B destroyed the credibility it had.As Party A surpassed Party B in credibility with the mediator, Party B — probably not realizing that the relative credibility of the two parties had changed significantly– lost even more credibility and boosted Party A further by attacking it.The conflict was finally resolved and for the most part in Party A’s favour. Party A held a victory party. I doubt that Party B did. While the resolution took a very long time and many factors came into play, there was one constant: The mediator worked tirelessly and doggedly to get a settlement, which was his victory. By doing so, he was apparently driven – consciously or not – by the credible position and actions of Party A. This resulted in victory for Party A.

Improvising answers in business

Many business people ask how they can better improvise their responses to difficult questions in meetings. I had a similar question about difficult suggestions from the audience, after watching Tom McGee compete with his Improv troupe in the Canadian Improv Games.

  In Improv, a group of people are put on the spot when they take seemingly random suggestions from an audience. Without any more than a minute or two of huddling together to confer, they are able to turn those suggestions into a coherent, funny sketch on stage.

So, I asked Tom how they do it. His answer?

“Structure. It’s all about structure.”

What? Improv is not spontaneous and unrehearsed? “No,” he said. “We use set structures of story, character, status and so on as our prepared structures and incorporate what the audience offers into those structures.”  The process still demands creativity, but that creativity is supported by prepared structures.

Structure gives the improvisers control of the situation. With it, the audience’s suggestions become part of a controlled performance. Without it, those same suggestions become large threats.

This is also the key for business people. They need to remember that they use structures to communicate every day. When the stress is less, it is easier to reach for those structures.  They come into use in responding to questions; they provide control and bring comfort.

Business people, in situations that are stressful, are often frozen by difficult questions. It’s the “deer in the headlights” effect. We should expect improvisers to suffer the same fate on stage. But the good ones don’t, because they reach for their known structures and use them to control whatever challenge the audience has given them.

Keith Johnstone says in his book, IMPRO Improvisation and the Theatre: “…it (narrative skill) also means that you look back when you get stuck, instead of searching forwards.”

When we teach media interactions, we talk about the “bridge” structure. Simply it means we either address or don’t address the specific question, and then use a word bridge, such as “the point that needs to be made is….” To take us back to the point we want to make. Certainly this structure could be and is used in other interactions, such as with customers.

Another structure used in media interactions is the “premise challenge”. Here, we challenge the premise of the question rather than answer it. We might say, “You’ve based your question on some inaccurate data. I think we need to correct that….” Now that we’ve taken control, we can move the discussion to where it is more comfortable for us. Again, a technique most people use without thinking. It is important to understand the structures we use in communicating, so that they can be consciously applied in any situation.

The empathy approach – words and actions – in situations of high concern and low trust is another control structure. In fact, it is an extremely powerful control structure when someone is expressing anger to us. I have broadened my own take on this. I call it ACUESAA: Acknowledge, Concern, Understanding, Empathy, Sympathy, Agreement, Action. Any of these responses, alone or in combination, create a structure to reduce concern and build trust. This approach is effective with any audience.

Here are some other structures that can be used by business people:

• Rule of three. When a difficult question is asked, people can freeze and not know why. Then they begin to focus on their freeze-up and their anxiety just feeds on itself. If they take a lesson from Improv and Keith Johnstone, then they need to look back and not forward. Of all the things they could say, what three things would they choose? Selecting that structure often brings content to mind almost automatically. Therefore, control is established and the ice is broken. Sometimes it is tough to come up with three, but, as in Improv, the skill of using this structure can be learned and practiced.
• Chronology. This structure is time based. To respond to the question, the content is organized and delivered in chronological order. “It’s important to start at the beginning…And finally we arrive at today….”
• Too Hot. Too Cold. Just Right. Most of us know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In it, everything was analyzed in that manner. So, using this structure, we can find the options that are unacceptable and the one that is.

As with Improv, the answer for business people to handle difficult questions is to find a control structure that gives them confidence and comfort in stressful interactions.

 Copyright 2005/2007

Risk: What’s your primary objective?

I was talking with a friend recently about the risks that young people take. A quote came to mind from a retired race car driver when asked why older drivers lose their competitive edge. He said: In the brief moment that a gap opens between two cars ahead, the young guys go for it and the older guys consider the risk. Risk assessment isn’t always dependent on age. I believe it’s dependent on the primary objective.

For instance, the young gun wants to race or get to the front. The old hand wants to have a car left to race to the finish or to live to race another day. I don’t believe we can accuse the young racer of not thinking. I believe we have to understand their mindset at the moment of decision. What is their priority?

This is true of workers on the factory floor and executives in the boardroom as much as it is of kids in a car on a Saturday night or middle-aged mothers parasailing off a beach in Cancun. What’s their primary objective? It doesn’t excuse a bad outcome, just explains their thinking at the time.

The fellow I mentioned at the beginning is involved in a project to teach young people about risk assessment in the hope that they can be better equipped to make appropriate judgement before taking risky actions. I told him a story of an outing I took as a teenager with a group to a gravel pit in winter. Where I grew up, winter meant snow. Lots of it. So, the sides of the pit were covered in snow. I remember diving down the hillside doing huge somersaults, with the momentum flinging me farther out on each roll. The snow cushioned my contact with the hill. It was a blast. No one else chanced it, so I got to be the centre of attention with the group for my feat of daring (stupidity). I never once considered that I had never done this before, so I had no idea if the technique itself could injure me. I didn’t think about hidden rocks or buried equipment that I might land on.

What was I thinking? Probably wanted to show off. To have an adventure. Use my athletic abilities to have fun. I didn’t think of risk. I would now and I wouldn’t let my son do it if I could warn him off. But would having a knowledge of risk assessment applicable to fun, have had an effect on me? You just don’t know until the moment comes. There is likely to be a conflict. Like the mom who told me that before she got harnessed up to go parasailing the thought that she might be invalidating her travel insurance did run through her mind. But it lost out to the need for the freedom to do something completely different, thrilling and, yes, dangerous.

For young people, the primary objective seems to be living – experiencing, growing, testing, chancing. As we get older, the primary objective seems to be staying alive. So, it’s easier for older people to stop and think. (Obviously not always and certainly not for all older people.)

I’m back to my race car drivers. The young gun goes for the gap while the older driver makes a fast risk assessment. The young driver goes to the front or crashes and goes home early. The older guy sees the gap close but survives to run for the checkered flag or just survives another race. A lot depends on the primary objective.

 I applaud my friend’s efforts to help young people live and live. Fewer deaths by misadventure is just a very good thing.