Today we’ve got an article from crisis management colleague and frequent Crisis Manager contributor Judy Hoffman’s Quick Tips on Keeping Cool e-zine.
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WHERE HAS OUR CORPORATE CONSCIENCE GONE?
If you are anything like me, you have probably been doing a lot of
head shaking recently. However you get your news, you’ve been
hearing numerous accounts of people highly placed in businesses of
all types who seem to have no shred of conscience any more. You’ve
probably seen stories about:
Senior management people at financial services institutions who
have engineered — or at least accepted — huge bonuses while the
organizations they led hemorrhaged profits that left their
employees and shareholders with little or nothing;
Organizations that happily accepted the 2008 bail-out funds meant
to be used to stem the credit crisis but instead used them for
fancy corporate retreats and other perks limited to a few people at
the top and then refused to reveal what they’d spent the money on;
Companies that knowingly shipped out contaminated products (from
peanut products to saline solutions and heparin) that made hundreds
of people sick and even caused the death of many.
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?
I used to be proud to say that my father, God rest his soul, was
“an investment banker on Wall Street.” If you mention either of
those two terms nowadays, the hair on the back of the neck of a
majority of people stands up on end. My dad was one of the most
ethical people I’ve ever known. Being honest in all of your
dealings was something Dad and Mom both emphasized to my brother
and me at every opportunity. When my father was getting set to
retire as head of the Government Bond Department of First Boston
Corporation (now Credit Suisse) back in 1973, there was to be a
dinner in his honor where the usual practice was to “roast” the
individual. My mother took it as the highest form of compliment
that his colleagues couldn’t find anything bad to say about Dad!
After 30 years of being with the company, where he had started at
the lowest level, people spent the evening talking about things
like trust and their confidence in him when he gave his word and
his ethical conduct in all matters.
Too many times nowadays it seems that big business leaders are
playing a game — seeing how many financial shenanigans they can get
away with and how far they can bend the rules and regulations, if
not outright break them. If rules and regulations are broken,
those who are willing to do so seem to be counting on the fact that
organizations set up to regulate them will not be capable of doing
their job properly – whether that organization is the Securities
and Exchange Commission or the Food and Drug Administration. Did
these folks actually rationalize to themselves that, if they could
get away with it, it must be OK?
WHEN AND HOW WILL THIS END?
I’d like to think that one of the first people to try to bring an
end to this type of activity would be whoever was going to have the
job of trying to explain the situation to a
horrified/angry/concerned public. This individual could have a
title like Public Affairs Manager or Corporate Communications
Director. Or it could be any employee at any level of the
organization who had a good sense of right and wrong. When
organizations do not DO the right things, there is no way that any
public relations person or crisis communications professional is
going to be able to come up with some words that will make it all
be just fine. (Even though I jokingly use a magic wand in my
workshops, I’m here to tell you that it really does not work,
especially in circumstances such as we’ve been seeing of late.)
Sometimes this individual has to be very courageous. It certainly
isn’t easy to stand up against an arrogant CEO or other senior
manager who has come to believe that he or she can do anything
necessary to assuage his/her ego and achieve personal goals of
wealth and power. This person must have earlier established
credibility within the organization so that he/she will be listened
to by the appropriate people when the question is posed, “How is
this going to be received by the public when this comes out – as it
will?”
I have often said that the most effective form of crisis
communications is crisis prevention. It is always preferable not
to have to scramble to put together a statement attempting to
defend something that is basically indefensible. As one of my
clients in a recent workshop said, “If you do the wrong thing well,
it’s still not good!”
Playing the role of the corporate conscience is not an easy task.
But it is needed if you hope to avert having your organization’s
reputation severely damaged if not totally ruined. The stakes are
high for all of the employees of that organization.
JB
Jonathan Bernstein
www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com