Apology Update: Public apology is a five-note chord.

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6/12/10, BP: Benighted Planning >>

“Plan for what is difficult when it is most easy,

do what is great while it is small.

The most difficult things in the world must be done

while they are still easy,

the greatest things in the world must be done

while they are still small.”

The Tao-te Ching, or The Way and Its Power

Lao Tzu (604-581 BCE)

….

Let’s simply stipulate that BP’s response to its disaster in the Gulf is shaping up to be the new standard for mishandled crises.

We’ll continue to harvest how-not-to lessons from BP as long as Tony Hayward continues to talk, the oil continues to flow, and beaches, fisheries, wetlands, wildlife, and livelihoods remain at risk.

But what are the deeper lessons?

I believe the key is this: The seeds of what happened after the April 20 explosion were planted well before April 20.

To harvest the most meaningful lessons from BP requires us to look at the sequence of events leading to the fire, explosion, collapse of the rig, death of 11 workers, and the surge of oil into the Gulf.

Prevention More Important Than Response

However important getting crisis response right may be, crisis prevention is even more important.

BP got both spectacularly wrong.

First, BP missed the signs that things were amiss and that a disaster loomed. Second, its purported crisis plan was a patched-together copy-and-paste of prior plans, with no meaningful assessment of the particular challenges of drilling a mile deep, or of an out-of-control gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s no wonder that BP seems to be making the response up as it goes along. It is.

Will Your Next Mistake be Fatal?

Most crises follow predictable patterns, and crisis prevention involves pattern recognition. Early recognition of patterns helps a leadership team adapt and resolve problems before they get worse.

A seminal work in this sort of pattern recognition is Will Your Next Mistake be Fatal?: Avoiding the Chain of Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Organization by Robert E. Mittelstaedt, Jr. Mittelstaedt is Dean and Professor of the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, and former Vice Dean and Director of the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

I require my crisis management students in the executive MBA program of the NYU Stern School of Business to master Mittelstaedt. The book puts leaders on notice that they have both more control and more responsibility for their organizations’ destinies than they may imagine.

Red Flags

According to Mittelstaedt, mistakes don’t just happen; they’re allowed to happen, sequentially, and with increasing severity.

Although the specifics may be different, the human behaviors, interpersonal dynamics, and preconceived notions play out in similar ways. Mittelstaedt writes,

“mistakes, both in business and nonbusiness settings across industries, reveal patterns that are so repetitive that every manager should recognize them as potential red flags.”

Such mistake chains often involve some combination of the following:

Failure to correct a seemingly minor or isolated problem.
A subsequent problem that compounds the effect of the initial problem.
An ineffective corrective action.
Disbelief that the situation is getting out of hand.
Denial (or self-denial) about the truth of what’s happening.
Sudden recognition that an extreme situation exists and is out of control.
The ultimate disaster.

The earlier one can intervene and break the mistake chain, the easier it is to regain a successful course.

Operational Problems, Unattended, Become Strategic Failures

But failure to break the chain causes the damage to increase exponentially. And problems that are initially operational, over time and unattended, become strategic failures.

As in all crisis management, the first and most effective defense is vigilance. Mittelstaedt notes,

“the greatest challenge in most organizations is not figuring out how to fix a problem but recognizing that there’s a problem that needs to be fixed.”

Mental preparation is critical.

Leaders and those they lead need to be taught to recognize patterns of mistakes and to extrapolate implications from other situations to their own.

Among the factors that cause otherwise intelligent and successful leaders to miss predictable crises are:

Failure to evaluate their own assumptions, about the problem, their own abilities, their customers, their competitors, etc.
Previous successes that cause leaders to believe in their own invulnerability — and that cause arrogance that interferes with effective decision making.
Failure to communicate or listen to others both internal and external, who may be calling attention to early problems.
Lack of standard procedures, or failure to follow existing procedures.
Cultural barriers, that penalize challenges to prevailing thinking, or that inhibit initiative and information-sharing.
Ignoring economic laws and cycles.
Not internalizing lessons from prior failures.

BP’s Mistake Chain

We see just these patterns in the run-up to the April 20 disaster. Although the specifics are still coming out, it’s already clear that warning signs abounded on the Deepwater Horizon.

According to the New York Times, as early as June of 2009, fully 10 months before the blow-out, the BP had concerns that the metal casing planned for the rig might collapse under high pressure. Says the Times,

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so I know it can occur.” The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards. The internal report does not explain why the company allowed for an exception.

The Times reviewed more than 50,000 pages of company documents, including engineering reports and internal e-mails. The Times reports,

In March, after problems on the rig that included drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as “kicks” and a pipe falling into the well, BP informed federal regulators that they were struggling with the loss of “well control.” On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.

“The most important thing at a time like this is to stop everything and get the operation under control,” said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, Austin, offering his assessment about the documents.

The initial June 2009 failure to follow existing procedures regarding the casing was compounded in April when the company ignored concerns about sealing the casing. According to the Times,

In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was “unlikely to be a successful cement job,” according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well. The document also says that the plan for casing the well is “unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations,” referring to the Minerals Management Service.

Further deviations from protocol occurred in testing the blowout preventer, which is supposed to be tested every two weeks. The Times says that BP asked regulators for a delay of such testing, and that initially the regulators refused. They relented, literally at the 11th hour. According to the Times,

When the blowout preventer was eventually tested again, it was tested at a lower pressure — 6,500 pounds per square inch — than the 10,000-pounds-per-square-inch tests used on the device before the delay. It tested at this lower pressure until the explosion.

Aftermath

On April 20 an explosion and fire took the lives of 11 rig workers and injured 17 others. Two days later the Deepwater Horizon rig sank. Since then, millions of barrels of crude have surged into the Gulf of Mexico, one mile below the surface.

Regulations require that those who drill offshore prepare response plans, just in case of a catastrophic development. BP persistently downplayed the risks of such an event, and seems to have merely gone through the motions.

BP filed a 582-page plan for the Gulf of Mexico as a whole, and 52-page plan specific to the Deepwater Horizon drill site. According to an analysis by the Associated Press, the plans

vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company’s preparedness to deal with one.

The Deepwater Horizon site plan was explicit about BP’s capabilities:

BP has the capacity to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst case discharge, or the substantial threat of such a discharge, resulting from the activities proposed in our Exploration Plan.

For example, BP said it had sufficient watercraft with skimming technology to remove 20 million gallons of oil from water each day.

In addition to BP’s capabilities, other factors would mitigate harm. For example, the site plan said that coastal areas were unlikely to be affected by a major spill:

Due to the distance to shore (48 miles) and the response capabilities that would be implemented, no significant adverse impacts are anticipated.

The site plan also predicted no adverse impact on wildlife: birds, turtles, or marine mammals.

I Am the Walrus

And it is in reference to marine mammals that the site plan exposed its true nature: a copy-and-paste from other plans, without even cursory attempts to customize the plan for the Gulf of Mexico.

The site plan, for example, lists the kinds of marine mammals that might be affected by a spill: Otters, sea lions, seals, and walruses. None of these species can be found in the Gulf of Mexico. They are residents of very cold environments, such as Alaska.

Another telling detail: BP’s 2009 Gulf of Mexico spill response plan lists professor Peter Lutz as its national wildlife expert, saying he’s a professor at the University of Miami. But professor Lutz left Miami 20 years ago for Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. And he died in 2005.

The Associated Press says that the plan also lists incorrect names and phone numbers for several Texas A&M University marine wildlife experts. And it lists marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida that are no longer in service. And the website listed for Marine Spill Response Corp., which provides BP with response capabilities, links to a defunct Japanese-language page.

Lessons for Leaders

Bad things happen to good companies all the time. Whether a company emerges from a crisis with its reputation, operations, and financial condition intact is based not on the severity of the crisis, but on the timeliness and quality of the response.

One of the burdens of leadership is to assure that your company is ready for things to go wrong. And further to intervene early to prevent those very things from happening.

No Leader Plans to Fail

But Many Fail to Plan

And an effective and timely response can take place only if there’s an effective plan in place. Not just any plan. Simply saying you have a plan; taking an off-the-shelf plan and thinking it will serve; or copying and pasting without regard to the actual situation can be recipes for disaster — witness BP.

An effective plan takes a candid look at scenarios, including unlikely scenarios. But it also looks at the magnitude of each scenario — including the unlikely scenarios. And however unlikely a scenario may be — say, an uncontrolled gushing of oil into the Gulf for months at a time — if the magnitude is significant, there has to be good faith planning to respond effectively to such an event.

Mental preparation is key. One of the advantages of scenario planning is that it sensitizes leaders to the consequences of catastrophes, and also to the causes of catastrophes. Per Mittelstaedt, catastrophes aren’t only the result of major unexpected events, but rather of the predictable accumulation of relatively minor events.

Mittelstaedt says that mistake chains show patterns so predictable that leaders should see them as red flags.

So here’s the burden of leadership — and the failure of leadership at BP: See the patterns, wave the red flag, and stop the mistake chain before it becomes fatal.

I welcome your feedback.

Fred

3/23/10, SXSWi Speakers Wrap-Up: Clay Shirky >>

Clay Shirky by Joi

Clay Shirky, NYU professor and author of Here Comes Everybody, was another highlight of my time in Austin. His talk, “Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data,” touched on a number of themes and was grouped in three parts:

Buses and Bibles
Monkeys and Balloons
Lingerie and Garbage

Part One: Buses and Bibles

Shirky began with a discussion of the inefficiencies of modern cities, and how many of the solutions people present to address the inefficiencies are engineering solutions, but that a new approach treating inefficiencies with information solutions may provide a better alternative. For example, in Canada an approach to congested roads is a ride share network - sharing information about who’s going where when. This approach is better for almost everyone BUT bus companies, who filed suit against the company offering the service.

Key point 1: “Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”

Shirky calls that kind of sharing “jackhammer sharing — sharing that’s powerful enough that it actually destroys existing things in the environment.” That kind of sharing “doesn’t happen very often, but it sometimes does around media revolutions.” He connected this idea to Gutenberg and the printing press.

Key point 2: “Abundance breaks more things than scarcity. When things become really abundant, the price goes away. The things that were previously thought of as scarce that are now available to everyone change the world. [E.g. Scribes vs. printing press.] We generally know how to manage scarcity, we don’t know how to manage abundance.”

Part Two: Monkeys and Balloons

This section began with a background on Napster, and Shirky argued that Napster changed the motivation around sharing, which wasn’t a new motivation, more of a bringing back of an old one. Shirky discussed three modes of sharing from the book Why We Cooperate.

Key point 3: There are three different types of sharing: 1. Sharing goods; 2. Sharing services; and 3. Sharing information. Sharing goods is the hardest, sharing services a little easier and sharing information is the easiest of all. “Napster took the world of music, where music was always shared as goods or services, and made it possible to share as information.” We’re programmed to share information - it gives us a positive feeling.

Part Three: Lingerie and Garbage

Here, Shirky gave a number of examples of institutions, groups or initiatives that centered around sharing information that creates a kind of civic value (e.g. Ushahidi, PatientsLikeMe). We now have tools that swing the way we share information with each other.

Key point 4: “Intrinsic motivation and private action was just an accident. Now we can do big things for love, not just private things for love. We’re moving from doing little things for love and big things for money, to doing big things for love.”

On Presenting

Shirky is a master presenter. No tools, no technology, no (visible) notes. Just a man in a three wolf man t-shirt, a well-crafted story and an astute sense of his audience. (I haven’t yet been able to find good video of his talk at SXSW this year, but you can see one of his TED talks here.)

[Note: This post is cross-posted on my personal blog.]

3/18/10, SXSWi Speakers Wrap-Up: danah boyd >>

I’m back from Austin, slowly catching up in the office and working on synthesizing my thoughts from SXSW Interactive 2010. This was my second time attending, and there were a few things that I did differently and that were different in terms of the conference than in 2009. The SXSW experience contains many different parts, so I thought I’d break them down into more manageable bits versus one big overview post. I’m planning to break the pieces into the following parts, and if meaty enough a particular speaker or discussion might have its own post:

Part One: Solo Speakers
Part Two: Panel Discussions
Part Three: Technology

Part One: Solo Speakers

From my experience last year, I found that I get a lot from the best solo speakers as SXSW, and that panel discussions can be a bit more hit or miss. There were both keynote speakers each day and multiple sessions daily of what they called “featured speakers.” I arrived a bit later than anticipated Friday afternoon and stayed till Tuesday morning, but was able to fit in a lot of content between Saturday — Monday.

danah boyd

Danah Boyd theme chart by jdlasica

danah boyd delivered the Opening Remarks for the conference, and she was someone I was really looking forward to hear speak. She’s with the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society and Microsoft Research New England, and her research into social media (and youth & teens in particular) is something I’ve shared in both my consulting and teaching work. Her talk at SXSW, “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity,” centered on a few themes, and what I think she did particularly well was to shed light on the nuance of the debate around privacy online, which too often devolves into two extremes.

I took five pages of notes, but I’ll try to paraphrase what I saw as the main points from her talk:

Privacy is about control of information flows. When people feel like they don’t have control of their information they feel like their privacy has been violated. This includes the opt-out versus opt-in debate.
Technologists assume that the most optimized system is the best one, but forget about social values and social rituals. (e.g. discussion of Google Buzz launch)
Merging worlds. Just because someone puts something online doesn’t mean they want it to be publicized (difference between public and publicity). There’s a security in obscurity - most people online have very few followers. Making something that’s public more public can be a violation of privacy.
By continuing to argue that privacy is dead, technologists work to make data more public and things public that were never meant to be. We’re seeing a switch to public by default, private through effort.
With privilege, it’s easy to take for granted things that not everyone gets to experience, and with privilege comes a different value proposition - what one person may gain from publicness, another person may lose. This affects not only groups sometimes thought of as marginalized (immigrants, victims of abuse, LGBT community), but also groups like teachers - they have more to lose by public information online. Public by default isn’t always a democratizer.

Her full unedited talk is available on her site here. I urge you to spend the time reading it, as I’ve captured only a small sliver of a very wise discussion.

[Note: this post is cross-posted on my personal blog.]

1/4/10, Delta/NWA and Flight 253: A Failure to Communicate >>

Like many people today who are back in the office for the first time since before the holidays, I’ve been spending the day catching up, including going through my Google Reader. I subscribe to a number of corporate blogs, and as I got to the Delta Air Lines blog, I expected to read something - even a short post - about the attempted bombing on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it made its way to Detroit on Christmas Day.

But there was nothing about the incident on the blog, an incident which caused a ripple effect of newly enacted security measures and massive disruptions in international air travel around the world.

I went to the Delta Air Lines website, found the News section of the site and one very short official statement, “Delta Air Lines Issues Statement on Northwest Flight 253.” The official statement described a passenger who “caused a disturbance” on the flight and was restrained. The description of events is vague enough to apply to any number of types of potential “disruptive” activities, and wouldn’t necessarily lead one to believe that an attempted terrorist act had been committed. While directing “additional questions” to law enforcement, the statement goes into no additional detail about what happened, even though some of those details were already being reported by the media.

So, I checked Delta’s Twitter account, to see if additional information or context was being provided there. There’s exactly onetweet specifically about the December 25th attempted bombing:

Now, the Delta Twitter account appears to have sat dormant from June 17th till December 22nd of 2009, when traveler outcry over U.S. domestic travel delays due to various winter storms was reaching a fever pitch. But the one tweet about the 25th simply redirects back to Delta’s website, where no additional statements about the incident have been provided since the 25th. There have been additional tweets on @DeltaAirLines advising travelers to expect delays due to new TSA regulations, but nothing specifically about the incident on the 25th.

I’d guess that there were at least three factors working against Delta’s communication efforts:

The attempted bombing occurred on Christmas Day, one of the very few days of the year when almost no corporate employees are in the office. But in today’s age, it’s inconceivable that “the world’s largest airline,” a company responsible daily for hundreds of thousands of people’s lives, wouldn’t have some kind of chain of communication in place to deal with an event like this, even on Christmas Day.
Delta and Northwest have been in the process of merging in the last year, and just in the last week were given government permission to fully complete the merger. There’s some confusion (for an average reader) in the company’s statement, with Delta as the company issuing the statement and the flight branded/operated as a Northwest flight. I can imagine that there’s still confusion in corporate communication operational role clarity as well. I know, as a frequent Delta/Northwest traveler, there has still been confusion on the ground. Again, I can’t imagine that a company of this size and complexity wouldn’t have negotiated a crisis communication response process as part of the merger details.
From this and other articles, it appears that there’s some behind-the-scenes dissatisfaction between the Delta CEO and the government agencies responsible for airline safety. But “inside baseball” talk isn’t what the average member of the public needs or wants to hear in the aftermath of this kind of event.

Also, what I find unfortunate in this communication situation is that Delta had the two social media channels - its blog and its Twitter account - already established, had an audience eager for more information, and provided only the scant minimum of content or context. What I find particularly disconcerting about the blog is that there have been two posts since the 25th about totally innocuous content, which in the wake of the serious events of the 25th read as even more out of touch. (I imagine they were probably scheduled to post in advance, but again, when crisis happens sometimes the response calls for suspending business-as-usual activities.)

Other companies have used their social media channels in the wake of attempted terrorist attacks despite restrictions on detailed disclosure due to ongoing legal investigation. For example, look at the heartfelt message on the Marriott blog after one of its hotels in Pakistan was the target of an attempted attack in 2007, which lead to the death of a hotel employee and severe injury of another.

Thankfully, Northwest Flight 253 landed safely and disaster was averted, due in large part to the response of the flight crew and other passengers on the flight. But what a lost communication opportunity for the company to provide context, as well as show some humanity and thankfulness, for what in the end was as good an ending as could have been expected.

*Note: I’m a very frequent Delta/Northwest flier, but other than being a long-time customer have no professional ties to the company.

This post has been cross-posted on my personal blog.

Logos Recent Publications

Reputation Management
by John Doorley and Helio Fred Garcia
Dropping the Ball
Why the Soccer Ball Project is Failing to Protect Workers in Pakistan
by Anthony Ewing
Showing the White Sail
by Barbara Greene and Susan Balcom Walton

Apology Update: Public apology is a five-note chord.

<div class="tweetmeme_button" style="float: right; margin-left: 10px;"><a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http%3A%2F%2Flogosinstitute.net%2Fblog%2F2009%2F12%2F29%2Fapology-update-public-apology-is-a-five-note-chord%2F"><img src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http%3A%2F%2Flogosinstitute.net%2Fblog%2F2009%2F12%2F29%2Fapology-update-public-apology-is-a-five-note-chord%2F" height="61" width="51" /></a></div>Recent public apologies from Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Tiger Woods made me wonder why we accept some apologies and denounce others. Which components of a public apology show us that it is authentic and sincere and, therefore, that we can accept it? Is there a perfect public apology? <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.total-banker.com/Images/Lloyd_Blankfein.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-967 alignright" src="http://logosinstitute.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/lloyd_blankfein-300x221.jpg" alt="" width="205" height="151" /></a> Goldman Takes The Lead When Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein issued a public mea culpa, his goal was to convince the public that he accepted responsibility for and deeply regretted his firm’s role in the financial crisis. As a form of restitution, he offered to have Goldman invest $500 million over five years to help small businesses. Mr. Blankfein’s was the first official apology by an investment bank of that caliber, which is by itself a unique occurrence. And yet, Goldman’s apology caused a mixed reaction. Some stakeholders gave the company credit for taking the initiative to apologize and for its willingness to help small businesses. Most others, including the general public, questioned the sincerity of the apology and its real value. The media called it a “faux apology”, a “non-apology”, a “hollow apology”, and an “unspecified apology.” The author of Mean Street blog (WSJ) <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/11/18/mean-street-dont-apologize-for-anything-goldman-sachs/">Evan Newmark</a> called it a “big PR exercise” that is “so sequenced and packaged that it’s bound to come across as disingenuous, even deeply cynical.” The negative public reaction was caused mainly by the apparent disconnect between Goldman’s carefully calibrated message and real issues that the company still needs to fix if it is to restore public trust and earn forgiveness. <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/30731492@N08/3692625789/"><img class="size-medium wp-image-964 alignright" src="http://logosinstitute.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/tiger-257x300.jpg" alt="" width="189" height="219" /></a> Tiger One Over Par Tiger Woods’ attempts to apologize also caused a mixed public reaction. On November 27, 2009 Woods crashed his car into a fire hydrant near his house. After the incident brought to light many affairs, Woods posted two separate apologies on his website, several days apart. After the first apology mainstream media, bloggers, vendors, corporate sponsors, and the golf community expressed major disappointment and dismay at Woods’ behavior and did not accept his apology as sufficient. Woods’ story caused a lot of debate even among the apology experts. The only stakeholders who showed support were his fans. Most of them accepted his apology, demonstrating higher tolerance for his personal failings. Woods’ second apology was more successful and resulted in mostly positive reviews among his fans, critics, media, the golf community etc. It could have been even more effective if the athlete had come clean earlier and had delivered the apology in person rather than on his website. Why Didn’t the Apologies Work? Why didn’t people believe Goldman Sachs CEO’s apology? Why did Woods’ first apology reach his fans but did not convince others? Why did his second apology result in more positive reaction among his stakeholders? What type of public apology do people need to hear to be able to believe it and accept it? The authors of “The Five Languages of Apology,” Gary Chapman and Jennifer Thomas, might have an answer. When we apologize we hope that the act of sincere apology will eliminate bad consequences and automatically earn forgiveness of other people. But the authors discovered that “…sincere apologies may not always be received as sincere and forgiveness and reconciliation are not always forthcoming.” In other words, an act of apology alone doesn’t necessarily lead to forgiveness. Rather, people tend to forgive based on their own decision-making process as triggered by various forms of language. The authors discovered that when people apologize they tend to use one or more of 5 different languages of apology: ? expressing regret, ? accepting responsibility, ? making restitution, ? genuinely repenting, ? and requesting forgiveness. Each person has his/her own primary language of apology, which is usually defined by his/her sense of morality, culture, and spiritual traditions. When making an apology, each of us would use our own primary language of apology to demonstrate how sincere our intentions are. For instance, if our personal apology language is to express regret, we will consider our own apology sincere by showing regret. But when receiving an apology, we consider the apology sincere only if it is delivered in our primary apology language of regret. Similarly, if our own apology language involves making restitution, we will believe an apology to be sincere and accept it only if it provides restitution. But what if the apology is couched in language other than our own? If we require an expression of regret as a necessary part of an apology, and the person apologizing speaks only of restitution, we won’t accept the apology. Let’s have a quick look at 5 apology languages: <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mulazimoglu/2615183407/"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-971" src="http://logosinstitute.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/five-300x228.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="190" /></a> #1: Expressing Regret #2: Accepting Responsibility #3: Making Restitution #4: Genuinely Repenting #5: Requesting Forgiveness Apology language #1: Expressing regret People whose primary apology language is expressing regret will accept an apology as sincere when they hear genuine “I’m sorry.” For them, the expression of regret is the first step to earn forgiveness. Regret demonstrates that an offender recognized his/her wrongdoing as hurtful to others and is ready to deal with it. But most important, it signals to others that the offender can express empathy for hurting other people. For people whose primary apology language is expressing regret it is very important to experience the regret verbally. In rare occasions regret can be expressed through body language. Example: Watch <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.mtv.com/videos/news/437300/kanye-west-apologizes-to-taylor-swift-on-the-jay-leno-show.jhtmlhttp://">Kanye West</a> apology on Jay Leno Apology Language #2: Accepting Responsibility According to the authors, the ability to admit mistakes and accept responsibility is the second most important component of a sincere apology, “Admitting the wrongdoing and communicating it to other stakeholders requires humility and honesty. Without these or similar words that accept responsibility for one’s wrong behavior, they will not sense that the other person has sincerely apologized.” For people whose primary apology language is accepting responsibility, hearing the words “I was wrong” communicates the apologist’s willingness to take responsibility and make the first step to earn forgiveness. Apology Language #3: Making Restitution For some people restitution is the most important component of a sincere apology, “The idea of making things right to make up for a wrong is embedded within the human psyche, and both our judicial system and our human relationships are deeply influenced by this fundamental idea.“ For these people, restitution is the tangible measure of a sincere apology. For people whose primary apology language is making restitution, the most important part is the apology aftermath - how the offender fixes or remediates the issue. Apology Language #4: Genuinely Repenting Some people will argue that the most important part of a true apology is repentance and a promise of the offender not to repeat the wrongdoing. Repentance, often used as a synonym of remorse and regret, in fact, has a more complex meaning. The Greek word for repentance - <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repentance">metanoia</a>- means “to think differently after” - to take a new point of view and find a better way. For people whose primary apology language is genuine repentance, the most important part of an apology will be “an expression of intent to change” behavior or way of thinking about an issue, situation, or an individual. The intent to change comes in three parts: a promise to change, a plan how to make this change happen, an action. Apology Language #5: Requesting forgiveness. Forgiveness is a generous act of letting go of resentment and retaliation. The authors’ research showed that one in every 5 people (21%) expects an apologist to ask for forgiveness. For people whose primary apology language is requesting forgiveness, the most important part of a sincere apology is the offender’s need to be forgiven because it shows that he/she “is willing to put the future of the relationships in the hands of the offended person” and wants to see the relationships fully restored. <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://logosinstitute.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/untitled11.png"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-961" src="http://logosinstitute.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/untitled11-292x300.png" alt="" width="292" height="300" /></a> Having interviewed individuals and married couples the authors noticed that there is lack of persuasive apologies between couples because people tend to speak different languages when they apologize. Seventy five percent of married couples, according to the authors of the book, differ in their primary apology language. In 15% of the couples one member’s primary language is the other member’s last choice, “ If you apologize to your spouse in the way that you most want to be apologized to, our data suggest that, on average, you wouldn’t stumble upon his or her favorite apology language until your third attempt.” That means that three out of four families must learn an apology language different from what they would like to hear. Most people internalize one or two languages of apology and use or expect to hear them exclusively when an apology is in order. As the author explains, “For most people, one or two of three speak more deeply or sincerity than the others. You don’t need to include all five languages to offer an effective apology. For an apology to be accepted, you need to speak the language (or perhaps two languages) that conveys to the offended your sincerity. Then he or she will regard your apology as genuine and will likely accept it.” Using 2 or 3 languages in personal and one-on-one apologies can be sufficient to match the apology demands of the affected party. But does it mean that using only 2 or 3 apology languages will work effectively for companies and individuals that are facing a multiplicity of stakeholders? In crisis, the reputation of a company or an individual often depends on their ability to respond quickly by admitting the wrongdoing and genuinely apologizing. Every organization has a multiplicity of stakeholders: customers, employees, distributors, regulators, shareholders, local and international communities, critics and fans. And each of these constituencies has its own primary language of apology. For some, an expression of regret would be enough to demonstrate a sincere apology, for others it won’t be sufficient. Hence, to deliver a sincere and effective public apology, a company or individual has to hit all 5 notes of apology chord, or in other words, speak all 5 languages of apology. The apologies from Mr. Blankfein and Woods demonstrate how using 2 or 3 languages of apology might not be sufficient when the company faces a multiplicity of stakeholders. Goldman Sachs CEO’s apology<img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-968" src="http://logosinstitute.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/goldman-sachs-broad-st-hq.jpg" alt="" width="223" height="247" /> In his apology, Mr. Blankfein clearly used two apology languages: expressing regret and accepting responsibility, “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret.” Despite the fact that he failed to name the wrongdoing and specify to whom he is apologizing to, Mr. Blankfein still managed to get his 2 apology languages across. He failed, however, to speak the other three languages: making restitution, showing genuine repentance and requesting forgiveness. 1. Mr. Blankfein did not provide sufficient restitution. The restitution of $500M offered by the company couldn’t really suffice for a meaningful contribution because it was just a small fraction of Goldman Sachs’ business and was directed at a group other than those directly affected by Goldman’s actions. The New York Times <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/opinion/22sun1.html">opined</a>, “…if Goldman wants to make a meaningful contribution, it would have to be in the billions and aimed more directly at taxpayers.” 2. Mr. Blankfein did not show repentance. Mr. Blankfein demonstrated the lack of true repentance on his side by not willing to change the company’s behavior. His apology was not his first attempt to try to win public trust. In February 2009 Mr. Blankfein wrote a<a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://http://bit.ly/2bWrkN"> piece</a> for the Financial Times about responsibility in the financial sector where he agreed that, “People are understandably angry and our industry has to account for its role in what has transpired.” In June 2009 he was criticized for <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://http://bit.ly/UHUGy">bragging</a> about his company while trying to show regret about the financial crisis, “While we regret that we participated in the market euphoria and failed to raise a responsible voice, we are proud of the way our firm managed the risk it assumed on behalf of our client before and during the financial crisis.” As Crisis Musings <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://bit.ly/8AK7ar">blog</a> wrote, “Companies successfully work their way out of a problem because they address the problem, and not just the perception of the problem. In other words, a business problem requires a business fix. A letter of apology or regret published in a newspaper solves nothing.” 3. Mr. Blankfein did not ask for forgiveness. The company’s CEO failed to speak the 5th language of apology - requesting public forgiveness. The apology came across as a one-way message to the rest of the world that did not demonstrate a true intent of Goldman’s executives to earn public forgiveness. As Mark Gilbert from Bloomberg wrote, “Goldman and its peers need to practice humility and contrition for an extended period, rather than seeking image-buffing headlines with token gestures.” Mr. Blankfein’s apology had a much better chance to communicate the message of responsibility and regret for the financial crisis. Unfortunately, by making a half apology, he lost this chance and failed to win the trust of stakeholders. Mr. Blankfein apology became the first public apology ever made by an investment bank, and for that Mr. Blankfein deserves some credit. But if the leader of Goldman Sachs ever decides to make another public mea culpa, he should learn his stakeholders’ primary apology languages and make sure that he uses them all in his apology. He also should remember that the willingness of his stakeholders to grant forgiveness might not be immediately available and earning forgiveness might take a long time. <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/albaum/2368238302/"><img class="size-medium wp-image-965 alignright" src="http://logosinstitute.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/tiger-2-300x202.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="202" /></a> Tiger Woods’ apologies Tiger Woods’ <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://http://web.tigerwoods.com/news/article/200912027740572/news/">first apology</a> was posted on his website on December 2, 2009 and had 2.5 languages of apology: expressing regret and taking responsibility, “I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves.” He made an attempt to use the language of repentance by promising to be “…. a better person and the husband and father…,” but never explained what he was planning to do to accomplish that. What did Woods fail to do? - Tiger never said directly “What I did was wrong.” - He tried to justify his actions by saying, “I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect.” - He didn’t immediately apologize to his family for hurting them and to his fans for disappointing them. - He failed to provide restitution. - And failed to ask for forgiveness. Most of the general public found it is hard to accept his apology, “… when so much dirt comes in the press every day. There is no crisis management possible, because, by not addressing this issue right from the start, Tiger Woods lost all the credibility he ever had.” (From <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http:/http://www.pamil-visions.net/i-am-tiger-woods/29254//">Everything PR blog</a>) On the contrary, a lot of Woods’ fans remained more tolerant to the athlete’s personal failings. Based on my assessment of the comments on his Facebook page and his website, the majority of the fans accepted his apology or remained neutral. Some comments from <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://http://web.tigerwoods.com/news/article/200912027740572/news/">Tiger Woods blog</a>: ” That’s good enough for me. First act of healing is admitting the problem. It is never too late to do the right thing…” “72 wins, 13 majors. Remember when he crushed the field by more than ten strokes winning his first green jacket? How about the 2008 US Open, winning on a broken leg. This is the stuff that made Tiger who he is, not his personal image. All any of us should care about is his golf career and how he changed the game of golf by opening the door to young (and old) minority golfers around the world.” Tiger Woods’ apology sparked debate even among apology experts. The thought leader on apology, <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://http://blog.effectiveapology.com">John Kador</a> argued in his blog that Tiger Woods is accountable to the public for his transgressions and therefore owes a public apology. He wrote, “Tiger Woods is perhaps the world’s wealthiest and most privileged athlete. From where does that wealth and privilege derive? From his talent, no doubt, but also from a compact he has made with his sponsors and the public. It has been a carefully cultivated compact that goes way beyond his performance on the golf course and from which he continues to draw resources.” The authors of <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http:http://www.perfectapology.com//">Perfect Apology blog</a>, took a different stance on this issue and offered their perspective, “Tiger owes the public and his fans a “public” apology — which is precisely what he delivered ….. To claim that Tiger somehow OWES these people a more detailed apology than the one he has already offered, when they themselves have profited enormously from Tiger’s talent, is a bit of a stretch.” The second apology was posed on December 11, 2009 and was addressed to Woods’ family, fans, Golf foundation, business partners, the PGA Tour, and fellow competitors. Most Tiger’s critics accepted his apology but still criticized him for failing to communicate to the public directly. This time Tiger hit all five notes of a sincere apology chord: - He expressed regret and accepted responsibility for what he did, specifying the wrongdoing, ”I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children.” - He extended his apology to the public, “I would like to ask everyone, including my fans, the good people at my foundation, business partners, the PGA Tour, and my fellow competitors, for their understanding.” - He asked the public for forgiveness, “I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness…” - He showed a sign of genuine repentance, “It may not be possible to repair the damage I’ve done, but I want to do my best to try.” - He offered restitution and proved that he is ready to pay any price to redeem his transgressions, “After much soul searching, I have decided to take an indefinite break from professional golf. I need to focus my attention on being a better husband, father, and person.” - And finally, Tiger expressed his gratitude to his supporters, “….I am especially grateful for all those who have offered compassion and concern during this difficult period.” Tiger did a better job with the second apology using all five languages of apology and got more positive reviews from his fans, apology experts and the general public. See below: Comments from <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http:http://web.tigerwoods.com/news/article/200912027740572/news///">Tiger Woods blog</a>: “You are an awesome golfer & now you need to be an awesome father & husband. Take the time to fix/mend this situation….Anyone who is a fan, like me, will always be a fan.” “… I have an 11yr or girl and a 9 year old boy who just adore Tiger. I explained to them in detail what is going on and what Tiger has done and instead of them turning their backs on him, both of them said ” dad, can we pray for Tiger tonight” They have been praying for him for the past 3 nights….” From Perfect Apology: “…the most significant additional item in this round is the announcement by Tiger that he will take an indefinite leave of absence from golf to focus on repairing the damage. …the second apology offers at least some additional restitution.” From Effective Apology: “….Woods finally delivered a statement that, for the first time, demonstrated his acknowledgment that while he may be entitled to a measure of privacy, he is not entitled to total secrecy…. “ Even PGA Tour commissioner <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="//">Tim Finchem</a> backed Woods and tried to reframe his role as an underdog , “I think people will look at the number one athlete of the decade and pull for him, now really in an underdog position….” But there was still a lot of criticism of Woods’ failure to deliver the apology directly to the public. <a target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://http://www.golf.com/golf/tours_news/article/0,28136,1946679,00.html">Phil Taylor</a> from Golf.com wrote, “If he wants to regain anything approaching the high regard the public once had for him, he’s going to have to open up to us more — and for a man who named his yacht Privacy, that’s going to be harder than winning the U.S. Open on a wrecked knee.” Some people left comments of Tiger Woods Facebook page,“Tiger, you really need to get out from behind your curtain. No more statements posted on a website. Get in front of the cameras and take it like a man.” Woods’ corporate sponsors didn’t buy his apology either and stopped airing the ads. Accenture became the first corporate sponsor to publicly announce that Tiger Woods is “no longer the right representative” of the company. Why did Tiger’s apologies get mixed public reactions? In his first apology, Tiger used only 2.5 out of 5 apology languages and received a negative public reaction. In his second apology, Tiger used all five languages of apology and received a more positive reaction from most of his constituencies. Unfortunately, by issuing two online apologies and failing to face the public directly, he let his critics define the situation and watched his reputation go down the drain. From crisis management point of view, Tiger did a terrible job of handling the crisis - he broke all rules of effective crisis response and crisis communications. And for that he deserves the lowest grades. What lessons can Goldman Sachs’ and Tiger Woods’ apologies teach us? 1. Public apology is always intended for multiple stakeholders. Public apologies differ from personal apologies simply because they tend to reach much bigger audiences. No matter who is apologizing, a company or an individual, each of them will have to face multiple stakeholders that are very diverse in their sense of morality, culture and spiritual traditions. Hence, all stakeholders will be making judgments about the sincerity of a public apology based on their individual values. 2. Effective public apology is a 5-note chord. Public apology should be very well thought through and address each stakeholder group using its primary language of apology. Sometimes, it’s enough to incorporate 2 or 3 languages of apology to reach the key stakeholders and make a good public apology. However, considering the diversity and complexity of stakeholders’ cultural and spiritual background, public apology would be more effective if a company or an individual includes all five languages of apology: Expressing Regret, Accepting Responsibility, Making Restitution, Genuinely Repenting, and Requesting Forgiveness. In other words, public apology is always more effective if an apologist plays all five notes of apology chord.