Assignment #3
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Chapter Five— Assuming Responsibility: Victim or Villain?
''Last week, in a private meeting with Jewish supporters, Senator Al D'Amato called his opponent, Representative Charles Schumer, a 'putz head,' which is a vulgar Yiddish insult.
When Schumer took umbrage, D'Amato offered this stateoftheart response:
"STEP 1: Feign ignorance. 'I don't know. I
C o p y r i g h t 2 0 0 0 . A M A C O M .
A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r ,
e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .
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don't remember. It certainly was not for any public, ehh . . . '
''STEP 2: Deny it happened. 'I have no knowledge of ever doing it. I just don't. I think it's ridiculous . . . I would never, I have not engaged in that. I wouldn't engage in it. I haven't
done it. Why am I going to do it now?'
"STEP 3: O.K., O.K., admit it. Although just in a private letter. Which somehow gets in the hands of the media: 'The Yiddish word I used to describe you at a private meeting means
'full.' '
"STEP 4: And even though you've completely ignored the common meaning of the word, pat yourself on the back for your courage. 'I stand by my remark 100%.'
"STEP 5: Now quickly blame the victim for being insulted. 'You are trying to twist that into a religious slur . . . I urge you to stop this transparent politically motivated attack.'
"STEP 6: Pray that with just a little more than a week to go until Election Day, the blunder isn't fatal."
"Campaign Textbook: How to Handle a Gaffe"
Time 1
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Chapter Four argued that effective CM is not a matter of following some mechanical formula or procedure. No framework for CM, no matter how comprehensive or
good it is, can substitute for character and creativity. In slightly different words, effective CM is the product or the multiple interaction with a comprehensive
framework and an organization's character and its creativity.
This chapter thus continues the exploration of additional stakeholders, and their attributes, that are critical to consider for effective CM.
Victim versus Villain
In almost all humancaused crises, there are only two major outcomes. You will either be perceived as a victim or cast as a villain. Once you are labeled a villain, it is
extremely difficult, although not impossible, to shake the label. And even in the fortunate case where you are cast as a victim, it is still relatively easy to turn into a
villain.
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In almost all humancaused crises, there are only two major outcomes. You will either be perceived as a victim or cast as a villain.
All things ''being equal" (which is virtually never the case), most persons and organizations in crisis will tend over time to fall into the role of villain. It requires very little
effort to be perceived as a villain or the bad guy. Conversely, it requires a great deal of effort to be perceived as a victim or the good guy. And it requires continually
ongoing efforts to continue to be perceived as a victim.
Why do some people and organizations get tagged or naturally fall into the role of a victim, and why do others invariably get tagged as villains? Furthermore, once
tagged as villains, how do some people and organizations manage to shake the labels? And, how do some people and organizations that are tagged as victims manage
to maintain the roles? Clearly, the answer to the preceding questions cannot be, "Never do anything wrong!" for it is not in the nature of humans never to commit
errors.
The Differences between Victims and Villains
The essential definition of a victim is a person, or organization, to whom harm is done, whether intentionally or not. A victim can also be a person who, unintentionally
or unknowingly, causes harm to another. Further, a victim can also potentially be someone who causes harm to another person even though the victim did everything
humanly possible to prevent it.
Common parlance differentiates between "liars" and "damn liars." By the same token, there are "villains" and
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''damn villains." A villain is someone who knowingly causes, or allows, harm to another. Damn villains are those who knowingly cause harm to another and then deny
that they did it or act to evade assuming responsibility for their actions or inactions.
"Recovered" or "repentant" villains acknowledge forthrightly what they did, accept full responsibility for their actions, promise to correct the situation, promise never
to repeat it, and finally, ensure actions to enforce their promises. "Damningly damnable villains" engage repeatedly in stonewalling or denial, such that they compound
the original crisis, thereby setting off a chain reaction of additional crises in response to the initial one.
Guaranteed Ways to Become a "Damningly Damnable Villain"
There is no doubt that one of the most horrendous things about villains is not merely that they are full of denial, but that their denial takes the particularly odious form of
their acting like they were the real victims of a crisis. They not only fail to own up to their own behavior, but they act as though the real crisis is what has happened to
them.
So rare is the act of owning up that when it happens from time to time we are truly shocked. In responding to the (substantiated) charges that Chrysler falsely reset
odometers on its cars, Lee Iacocca's response was a model of brevity. He said: "It happened; it shouldn't have happened; it won't happen again." Notice carefully that
Iacocca broke the inevitable and vicious pattern that often results when one denies responsibility. He broke it by forthrightly assuming responsibility for what
happened. He thus prevented the initial crisis from turning into a chain reaction of further crises. If one does not assume responsibility right from the very beginning,
then a
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chain reaction is virtually guaranteed. It is not necessarily the initial crisis that gets one into trouble, but it is the chain reactions of further crises that result from the
deepening of a mess.
Dumb Arguments:
USAir
Those who are thrust into the role of a villain invariably use convoluted, dubious, ''dumb" arguments, or "clever halftruths," to deflect criticism and to deny their
responsibility. For instance, when USAir experienced five crashes in five years, USAir's CEO, Seth Schofield, said that each crash was completely independent of the
others. In other words, there was no pattern of statistical association among the five crashes. To underscore his belief in the safety of USAir, Schofield said that he
would have no hesitation whatsoever in having his family fly on the airline. Whereas his statement was obviously meant to assuage the fears of the public, it could well
have produced the exact opposite result. Offering to fly his family was obviously meant as a gesture to reassure the public, but it very well could have communicated
just the opposite, i.e., that he was foolhardy and willing to risk the lives of his loved ones!
The basic premise that underlies Schofield's argument is truly incredible, since it assumes that everyone is a "rational statistician." One should confront the statistic of
five crashes in five years by accepting the "fact" or the "premise" that each of them is statistically independent of one another; that is, none of the crashes have anything
whatsoever to do with one another. Such arguments not only fail to react to the deepfelt anxieties of humans, but they actually perpetuate them.
One of the most basic lessons of CM is that one should never—repeat never!—give technical explanations or imper
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One should never—repeat never!—give technical explanations or impersonal statistics to assuage the fears of consumers.
sonal statistics to assuage the fears of consumers. Technical information is more likely than not to be perceived as gobbledygook, a sure sign that one is engaged in
hiding the truth, and indeed has truth to hide. Thus it serves only to further the crisis.
One of the most interesting aspects of the USAir crashes was an investigative analysis by a New York Times reporter. First of all, his report shows that once again
there are no secrets in today's world. As any good investigator would do, he dug in and interviewed a number of people in the USAir system. What he found was so
revealing and shocking that it made the front page of the newspaper. 2
Like so many of today's organizations, USAir was the result of mergers among several airlines. One of the worst outcomes of a merger is unfortunately something that
is rarely scrutinized. It is well known that different organizations tend to have very different ''safety cultures." Merging such cultures is not easy, for they often think
quite differently about safety and have quite different safety standards. For instance, while in theory all organizations are supposed to meet the minimum standards set
by the FAA, organizations differ considerably in the amount that they exceed the minimum standard.
An important factor in the creation of USAir through mergers is that it occurred in the first place because of the desire to cut costs. One of the most frightening aspects
of many corporate mergers is that safety is often one of the very first things that is seriously cut or compromised. While this
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does not and need not happen in every case, it happens enough that the public has good reason to be worried.
The New York Times article argued that whether the crashes were independent of one another was really beside the point. For instance, one thing was certainly
common to all of the crashes: USAir's management system. It surfaced that on numerous occasions, USAir flights were forced to request emergency landings because
the airplanes were flying without enough fuel. This is very disturbing since one of the very first items on the preflight safety checklist is whether there is enough fuel
aboard a plane. And in fact, on numerous occasions, USAir pilots lied about why they were requesting emergency landing.
The investigative reporter found that there was indeed a ''common pattern" across all of the accidents. In effect, a "safety culture" had become a "crisisprone culture."
Flawed Reasoning:
Intel
Intel's . . . failure was to respond to people as human beings who needed "emotional reassurance" that their trust could be placed in a particular
product.
Some of the same kinds of errors—i.e., flawed reasoning—were committed by Intel when it was faced with a flaw in its computer chips. Instead of replacing all chips
without questions asked, Intel put the burden on its customers to prove to Intel's satisfaction that a customer's application was "critical enough" to warrant
replacement. The unstated assumption by Intel's top management was that "everyone is an engineer" or
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''thinks like an engineer." That is, in terms of the ways in which engineers think, no "rational person" would want a replacement if one was not "rationally warranted."
Once again, the failure was to respond to people as human beings who needed "emotional assurance" that their trust could be placed in a particular product. Of
course, one can argue that running a computer application is not as dangerous as flying in a plane. However, it ignores the fact that computers are used in highly critical
situations, such as by hospitals or air traffic controllers. In this sense, flaws in a computer application can indeed have dangerous consequences.
Another Lesson Learned from USAir and Intel
The cases of USAir and Intel illustrate another important lesson, one that was stressed in the last chapter: One almost invariably ends up doing later—as a crisis
unfolds and becomes much worse—the very thing one stated one would never do in the beginning of the crisis. For instance, in the case of USAir, it later hired an
outside crisis and safety consultant to inspect the safety requirements of the total USAir system. In Intel's case, it later made an unconditional offer to replace all chips,
no questions asked. However, by then, the number of chips that it had to replace potentially was much greater than if it had made the offer initially without any
constraints. Thus, while I cannot prove that in all cases one will be forced to do what one has refused to do in the beginning, there is a clear trend. The burden, in other
words, is on the person and the organization to prove that it will not be forced to do later what it has refused to do in the very beginning.
While telling the truth may be damaging and hurtful to one's character and reputation, it is often one of the very few strategies open to someone in the heat of a major
crisis. While
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it cannot be guaranteed that such a strategy will always win in the court of public opinion, it is often the only viable option.
Continued denial will ensure that one will lose in the court of public opinion, and hence, become and remain a villain.
One thing above all is clear. Continued denial will ensure that one will lose in the court of public opinion, and hence, become and remain a villain. One always needs
to bear in mind that there are multiple courts in which one is being tried. First, there is the court of law. Second, there is the court of public opinion. Third, there is the
stock market and other societal institutions. While lawyers may prevail in helping one survive the legal system—and even this is not guaranteed—the pursuit of legal
strategies alone is likely to doom one to fail in the wider court of public opinion.
Vigorous Denial:
ValuJet
The alltime worst example of villainy may well be that of Lewis Jordan, president of the illfated and by now defunct airline ValuJet. From the very beginning of the
crash of a ValuJet airliner in the Florida Everglades, Jordan denied vigorously that any aspects of ValuJet's operations were defective. As a result, Jordan literally set
himself up by waving the proverbial ''red flag" for everyone to investigate thoroughly whether his contentions were true. Instead of admitting problems from the very
beginning, he repeatedly claimed that his airline was free from defects.
The case of ValuJet is worth examining in detail. As ValuJet's crisis unfolded over months, I scrutinized every aspect
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of the extensive TV and print coverage to which I could gain access.
One of the most illuminating, and damaging, aspects of the case is contained in one of Jordan's very first interviews immediately after the crash on the Larry King
show. At one point, King asked Jordan how he and his airline were responding to all the intense scrutiny by the media of ValuJet. In responding to King, Jordan
committed a classic Freudian slip. He said: ''Well, after all, it [intense media scrutiny] comes with the territory. We're in a business where we take [italics mine] the
lives of people." He obviously meant to say, "We safeguard the lives of people given to us in trust."
A few minutes later, Jordan committed another Freudian slip. In response to a question by King asking him how competitive ValuJet's wages were and how profitable
ValuJet was in the industry, Jordan said: "We pay the lowest wages." Once again, it is clear from the general context that he obviously meant to say we have the
"lowest prices" of any airline in the industry.
These slips, of course, stand in marked contrast to Jordan's earlier claims with regard to the safety of ValuJet. When it was later confirmed that ValuJet farmed its
maintenance out to the lowest bidders, Jordan lost what little remaining credibility he still possessed.
One of the saddest and most tawdry aspects of the ValuJet crisis occurred a few months after the crash. CNN filmed a meeting between ValuJet's top officers and its
employees. In one scene, ValuJet's chief corporate counsel reacted angrily to the media because it had portrayed ValuJet as the villain. He is seen proclaiming in front
of his employees that they were "the true victims of the situation."
Proclaiming that ValuJet was the victim was not only disingenuous, but morally outrageous. How could the airline
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claim to be the victim instead of the 110 persons who died in the Florida Everglades under the worst of conditions?
What happened on the Larry King Show was not an isolated incident. On more than one occasion, Ted Koppel of ABC's Nightline pressed Jordan repeatedly as to
whether there were any aspects of ValuJet's operations that were not up to par, and might even be at fault. In every case, Jordan denied any culpability. From a legal
standpoint, one can understand Jordan's denial. Nonetheless, even if he won in the court of legal opinion, he more than lost in the court of public opinion. Indeed, the
airline finally lost in the biggest court of public opinion, the stock market, when it was forced to declare bankruptcy.
Ignoring the Human Side:
Intel
Because the case of Intel is important, it is also important to review it in a bit more detail. Intel, the manufacturer of Pentium chips, was forced, after first staunchly
refusing, to recall all of its chips when they were discovered to contain a flaw that affected complex division problems.
The flaw was first discovered by an obscure mathematician. He was performing esoteric calculations with prime numbers (numbers that are divisible only by 1 or
themselves, for example, 1, 3, 5, 7, and so on). The area of mathematics in which he was working necessitated performing billions of computations on tendigit
numbers. Intel claimed that the errors associated with its chips were extremely rare. They would show up only in every few billion calculations. But since the professor
was performing billions of calculations, he was in a perfect position to discover the problem. The error later turned out to be more common than Intel first admitted.
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The professor alerted Intel, and after receiving an unsatisfactory response, he went public. He used the Internet to alert others and to inquire whether they experienced
the flaw as well. The Internet was soon abuzz as others quickly discovered the error as well.
Intel refused to recall its chips even though customers were complaining strongly. In effect, Intel put the burden on its customers to prove that their applications were
critical enough to warrant a replacement chip. What a clever marketing and public relations (PR) ploy! What better way to quickly alienate one's customers.
The situation quickly escalated in to a crisis when IBM, which used Pentium chips in its personal computers, announced that it would no longer utilize Intel's chips.
Only after the howls of protest from consumers reached a crescendo did the company finally agree to replace all chips, no questions asked. By then, Intel had created
a PR nightmare for itself.
The Intel case is a model for how not to manage a crisis.
This case is a model for how not to manage a crisis. First, it is never advisable to alienate one's customers. As obvious as this seems to be, it was not obvious to the
engineering culture that drives Intel. To Intel's engineers, the customers were ''reacting emotionally," and hence, "irrationally." Intel's engineers reasoned as follows: "If a
customer's application wasn't critical enough to warrant a replacement, why then would he or she rationally want one?" By eschewing emotions, Intel's engineers
were unable to understand the reactions of its customers.
Intel defined its problems in purely technical terms, as a computer applications problem. It did not define it in human
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terms: Users had fears and anxieties that needed explicit acknowledgment and attention. Without this attention, one of the most vital links in the chain between the
manufacturer and its customers—trust—was broken. As a result, Intel committed one of the most basic errors associated with problem solving: solving the wrong
problem precisely! 3 It defined its problem primarily as a technical one when it was in fact both a technical and a human one.
Saddest of all, this story shows that Intel, one of the companies most responsible for thrusting us into the Systems Age, doesn't really understand systems. In this
sense, it certainly does not understand the ''systems factor" that is one of the components of the CM framework that we introduced in Chapter Three.
No matter how complex they are, systems are not composed of technologies alone. Instead, systems are the interactions among organizations, people,
and technologies.
I cannot emphasize enough that no matter how complex they are, systems are not composed of technologies alone. Instead, systems are the interactions among
organizations, people, and technologies. While technologies may be rational—and even this is assuming a great deal—organizations and people are certainly not
completely rational.
In sum, Intel defined its initial problem using too narrow a set of disciplines—in this case primarily only engineering and technology. The inevitable consequence was
that the problem quickly turned to a major crisis, which ended up costing the company half a billion dollars, much more than it would have if Intel had initially offered to
replace all its chips with no questions asked.
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Should One Always Admit Responsibility?
The moral of this and the preceding chapter is not that every individual and organization should admit responsibility and disclose the worst about itself whenever it is
challenged. It does mean that if one chooses not to admit or not to tell the complete truth with regard to a specific charge, then one better have a very, very strong
case to justify and to support one's position. If one indeed has ''all the facts" to back up that what one did was the correct thing to do, or, if one can clearly prove that
one is not guilty of the charges at hand, then obviously no one is asking that an individual or an organization roll over and play patsy. Such a recommendation is
patently absurd! However, if there is any truth whatsoever to the charges, then I unequivocally advise the individual or organization to admit their culpability, put the
crisis behind them, and get on with business.
In spite of this, no one can guarantee that coming "absolutely clean" will stop a crisis dead in its tracks. Nonetheless, I believe that the public is far more forgiving of
someone who forthrightly admits his or her guilt and promises sincerely to correct it, and most of all, who follows through on those promises, than of one who
continues to engage in evasion or denial. The case of Richard Nixon is testimony to what happens when one does not come clean, and indeed, engages in distortion
and worsening denial.
Can the Media Cover Its Own Crises?
To show how complicated and muddied the waters are, consider the following case. One of the most ironic aspects of tell
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ing the truth involves the news media, the very institution that ''sticks it" to others when they don't follow its advice.
A few years ago, NBC was accused of staging tests that overrepresented the danger of GM trucks exploding upon being hit from the side. In the early days of crisis
management, PR firms counseled organizations not to be antagonistic in their dealings with the media. Crisis experts advised organizations to send their top executives
through media training so they could respond to tough questions under fire and not lose their cool. We urged them to be straight and candid with the media. We
counseled them that "no comment" was a strict nono and tantamount to an admission of guilt. We advised them that if they didn't know the answer to a particular
question, they should get back to the appropriate person or persons when they did, such as Johnson & Johnson did in the Tylenol tamperings. Above all, we
cautioned them again and again, "Don't be defensive; don't get mad or angry; it will only hurt you even more."
I am not so sure any longer whether this advice holds in its entirety, even though I have stated strongly that one should err on the side of coming clean. Ever since the
NBC fiasco, I've observed that more and more organizations and top executives are not only beginning to fight back, but if they feel that they have good reason to
believe that they have not done anything that would qualify as a crisis, then their attitude is that "they are not going to take it anymore." In short, they are not only willing
to fight back, but in the direct words of one top executive with whom I spoke, "Every time the media calls, I view it as a declaration of war." Such sentiments are an
expression of more than the perhaps natural hostility that organizations that have committed an impropriety typically feel towards the media. Something else is at work.
In the past, most organizations basically feared the media. They believed, correctly or not, that the media could
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make or break any organization at will, whether it was right or wrong. Indeed, whether one was ''right" didn't really matter. Little wonder that organizations were
naturally suspicious of and even hostile towards the media.
However, NBC's admission that it staged explosions with regard to GM trucks makes it a very different ball game, especially when the "truth" had to be dragged out
of NBC. Organizations have always felt to a certain extent that "the media will distort and lie in order to sell papers or TV programs." Now, however, they feel that
they have "real proof."
In the end, the power of all institutions rests not only on fear but on moral authority as well. When both of these qualities are lost, then no institution can command
attention or respect.
For years, the media have successfully obliterated the lines between sports, news, and entertainment. 4 That is, they have blurred the line between "reality" and
"fiction." As a result, they cannot retreat to the position that the NBC fiasco was merely an isolated episode of embellishing or "stretching the truth."
The true significance of the NBC flap is that it is a clear early warning signal that the media, which revel in covering the crises of others, have a significant one of their
own brewing. One cannot perpetually cross over the line between reality and recreations of it and continue to believe that it will have no serious repercussions. 5 One
cannot distort or manufacture reality at will. If the media want to continue to remain the "objective" watchdog of society, they must cover their own crises with the
same vigor that they cover those of others.
In short, isn't it time for the news media to learn the very same lessons that they have forced on others: In today's world, there are no secrets?
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• Strategy List for Chapter Five
• Assume responsibility for your actions or inactions.
• Do not act like the ''real victim" of the crisis.
• Do not try to hide behind halftruths or dubious arguments.
• Never give technical explanations to assuage the fears of customers.
• Respond to the emotional reactions of the victims.
• Don't assume that the public will use the same logic as your organization.
• Avoid alienating the victims, customers, or stockholders.
• Recognize that telling the truth may not stop a crisis from developing.
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