Case study
Disaster response actions
The chairman of Exxon's fear and distrust of the media became a self-fulfilling prophecy for him. Ignoring the media when dealing with issues and crises will always prove to be a catastrophic error of judgment. This may seem obvious but it is a mistake often made by organizations facing a tricky, potentially disastrous, situation.
For example, in the immediate aftermath of the Lockerbie disaster, Pan Am made a conscious decision to minimize communication with the press. The airline believed a policy of non-communication would somehow distance Pan Am's name from the tragic consequences of the disaster.
This was a huge error of judgment. In a situation like this the media will descend on the site of the accident like a plague of locusts which needs to be fed. If it isn't fed by the organisation, which finds itself, however inadvertently, at the centre of the crisis, it will feed from the hands of others. And become deeply suspicious of the hand that obviously isn't feeding it.
When questioned about the warning of a possible terrorist attack, Pan Am initially said it was unaware of any warning. It was later revealed that all carriers operating in Europe, including Pan Am, had been informed. A cardinal public relations principle had been breached. Concealing the truth is simply not an option. There are too many eager sources and too many eager reporters. In crisis situations, it is imperative to tell your own story, to tell it all and to tell it fast.
So did Pan Am's CEO, Thomas Plaskett, go to Lockerbie, apologize, attend memorial services, atone for responsibility? He did not. The media made mincemeat of the airline. It was already in financial difficulty and the trans-Atlantic route was its only remaining profitable one. Passengers lost confidence in the airline - in its willingness and ability to transport us safely from one side of the Atlantic to the other - and chose other airlines in preference. The boycott proved to be the final nail in the airline's financial coffin. It went bankrupt.
In contrast, when JAL suffered its worst-ever crash on 12 August 1985 - 520 people died - the airline followed an elaborate protocol to atone. Personal apologies were made by the company's president, memorial services were held and financial reparations paid. For weeks, more than 400 airline employees helped bereaved relatives with everything from arranging funeral services to filling in insurance forms. All advertising was suspended voluntarily. Had JAL not made these acts of conciliation, it would have courted charges of inhumanity and irresponsibility.
At the memorial service, JAL's president, Yasumoto Takagi, bowed low and long to relatives of the victims, and to a plaque bearing the victim's names. He asked forgiveness, accepted responsibility and offered to resign. The maintenance chief committed suicide.
It spent $1.5 million on two elaborate memorial services and dispatched executives to every victim's funeral (although some were asked to leave). It also established a scholarship fund for children whose parents died in the crash.
From the day of the accident, JAL had mobilized its staff, from the president down, to offer gestures of apology and regret. When family members had to travel to a small mountain village to identify bodies, airline staff accompanied them, paying all expenses, bringing them food and drink and clean clothes.
Importantly also, JAL were quick to notify victims' families. Overnight it issued lists of passenger names. One relative of a victim on Pan Am's flight 103 was not told officially of her husband's death until six weeks after the crash.
Although JAL did suffer from some media criticism, and for a while lost market share, it eventually made a full recovery. Much of its response was driven by Japanese culture. One would not, after all, expect the chief maintenance engineer of a western airline to commit suicide. But its response was seen, crucially by the media, to be humane, caring and responsible.
A similar response came from British Midland Airways when one of its Boeing 737s crashed near Kegworth alongside the M 1 freeway just a few weeks after the Lockerbie crash.
The airline's chairman, Sir Michael Bishop, immediately raced to the scene of the accident giving live radio interviews from his car phone. His voice was patched in to a live interview with Michael Buerk on the BBC's Nine O’Clock News.
His response was remarkable. Many people in senior managerial positions, fearful of being misreported by the media - and of the consequences of being misreported - won't give media interviews until they have all of the facts at their fingertips and have worked out all the answers to the potentially most difficult questions. In a crisis situation this can be disastrous not least because it will usually take many hours before this is possible. Communication has to begin immediately.
Sir Michael Bishop gave interviews when he had no knowledge about the cause of the accident; how many people had died, been injured, or had survived. Lack of information at the outset of a crisis is typical. Very little information will be available for several hours. Some facts will be known -'one of our planes has crashed' - but not much else.
Faced with this dilemma, Sir Michael Bishop focused on expressing how he felt about what had happened and what he was going to do about the situation. He immediately began to 'manage' the flow and content of news to the media. In essence, he said he was going to do everything in his power to ensure the families of victims were looked after properly, the injured received the best possible treatment; and no stone would be left unturned in establishing the cause of the accident to try and prevent such an accident from happening again.
There was not much 'content' to what he said but he understood and implemented one of the golden rules of crisis communication - begin it at once, from the top of the organisation. Even though it was eventually found to have been pilot error that caused the crash, no one lost confidence in British Midland or in Boeing 737s. Ironically, some people have argued the airline's reputation was actually enhanced by the chairman's response. It was seen to be caring and responsible.
The Winning Edge October 2008