Quote of the Month:  We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. As quoted in “Apples of Gold”  Compiled by Jo Petty

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.

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A QUESTION FOR YOU:  I would be very interested in knowing whether my subscribers are actively involved in the social networking field.  It seems I am constantly being advised that I should be involved in Facebook or Twitter or MySpace.  My sense is that my clients and prospective clients would not be looking to these kinds of sites for news and advice on issues related to crisis communications.  I’d appreciate your dropping me an e-mail to let me know if I am right in this assumption, or if I am just rationalizing because I don’t want to learn these new skills at my age!

UNTIL NEXT MONTH…Keep Cool!

Judy Hoffman
jchent@earthlink.net
www.judyhoffman.com

JCH Enterprises, 116 Nelson Lane, Clayton, NC 27527, USA