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On Wall Street, Reputation, and Recovery: Guest Blog by Julia Sahin

Blog, Communication, Crisis Communication, Reputation, Trust, Worth Reading

Helio Fred Garcia | Bio | Posts
17 Jul 2014 | 5:48PM

One of the joys of teaching in NYU’s MS in PR/CorpComm program is the ability to work with very smart graduate students, in the classroom, as advisor in their capstones (theses), and as a mentor. Some of these students have great potential, and I’m certain represent the future generation of leaders in the field.

This year I had a bumper crop of capstone advisees (six), who offered some significant insights into some very important topics. Over the next several months I will be sharing some of their insights.

I’m delighted today to share a guest blog from one of these students, Julia Sahin, who graduated in May. I had the good fortune of having Julia in my Strategic Communication course and then to supervise her research and writing on her capstone.

Julia chose a challenging topic: Reputational Effects of Regulatory Action on Mega Banks: A Comparative Analysis of Goldman Sachs’ Abacus and JP Morgan’s Squared. To be able to do that, she had to develop a deep understanding of reputation in general, regulation of the securities markets, the particular transactions that drew regulatory concern, each of the banks’ reactions to it, and the consequence on the banks’ reputations. You can see her capstone here.

Along the way she developed insights that go well beyond the two banks and their regulatory settlements. She provides insights that all financial institutions can harvest and from which all communication professionals can benefit. I commend them to you here:

On Reputation…

By Julia Sahin

Julia Sahin

A few weeks ago, Makovsky issued its 2014 Wall Street Reputation Study. The research found that the recession is still a primary reason that financial institutions continue to be perceived negatively. I believe the financial crisis is where it started, but not where it ended. From my research on the reputational effects of regulatory action on banks, I found two other reasons.

The first is additional crises and wrongdoing.

Financial institutions continue to make headlines because of illegal and/or unethical behavior. This includes guilty verdicts and settlement agreements. One institution’s association with this behavior has an overarching impact on other institutions and on the industry. Most recently, the culprit is Citi.

The second is how financial institutions handle them.

There is no doubt that reactions, responses and remedial actions have improved since 2009. But the accrual of poor crisis management, past and present, is still a pain point.

All of this stems from the industry’s delayed realization that it had a reputation problem after the onset of the economic recession. One financial journalist I interviewed spoke about a period of denial that banks went through in 2010 and 2011. The banks thought it was business as usual, but everyone else knew the business environment had changed dramatically.

Three years later, the banks have accepted the change, but have only recently begun to work on their reputations.

David Weidner, of Wall Street Journal’s “Writing on the Wall” column, wrote that banks have put reputation management on the back burner because it’s not seen as a priority. Their services are a necessity to clients who will continue to pay for them regardless of public perception.

While this is true, a quality reputation is a competitive advantage. It evokes a more favorable view from the stakeholders who are important to the banks. For example, a better reputation means…

…less regulatory action and regulation.
…a better foundation of trust for relationship-based services (an industry trend).
…less biased media coverage.
…employment candidates of a higher caliber, who are flocking to the tech space these days.
…an engaged workforce, meaning increased productivity.
…less attention from the Hill.
…more capital from premium stock and product prices.
…less attention from activist investors.
…better analyst reviews.
…less public scrutiny.

A number of professionals who are immersed in this every day, and I, agree that now is the time for financial institutions to concentrate on repairing their reputations.

On simplifying the complexity…

The finance industry is unique in that it has a challenging regulatory environment and extremely complex products. Turning around the sector’s reputation, or an individual institution’s reputation, seems overwhelming. Communicating with stakeholders differently seems daunting.

Three things need to stay top of mind:

First, it will take time.

Second, the problem won’t fix itself.

And third, tackling different segments one at a time will contribute to the whole.

The question is how to take on such a large feat for a giant institution whose reputation may not be a priority.

The solution is stakeholder management. By looking at an institution’s stakeholder list, the benefits of an optimal reputation should be clear. Those benefits should be tied to business goals, and should be the reason to initiate the program. Then, work backwards from the optimal state, then forward, to achieve it.

Breaking down the complexity of a reputation program into moving parts, motivated by business benefits, is the best first step. The list above can be a good starting point.

……………………………………………..

Your feedback is welcome.

Fred

July 17, 2014/by Helio Fred Garcia

The Power of Framing: GM’s Cobalt and the Failure to Understand

Blog, Communication, Crises, Crisis Communication, Crisis Management, Framing, Power of Communication, Reputation, Worth Reading

by Helio Fred Garcia

Imagine that you’re an executive at a large company.

You learn that one of your products – a good revenue generator but not a franchise-defining product – has a customer convenience issue. It sometimes does things that annoy customers. In particular, it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do 100 percent of the time. Several dozen customers have complained.

Given all you have on your plate, how urgent do you consider this problem? What kinds of resources do you devote to it?

Now consider a different scenario: You learn that this product has a significant safety defect. That safety defect, in turn, risk loss of life – in fact, it may already have cost some lives.

Given all you have on your plate, how urgent do you consider this problem? What kinds of resources do you devote to it?

Finally, what if the problems are one and the same? Is there a difference in your reaction to something described as a customer inconvenience compared to the same thing that’s described as a serious safety defect?

Customer Convenience v. Safety Defect

Herein lies what may finally be an explanation for the otherwise incomprehensible behavior at General Motors (GM)

The Power of Communication

Communication has power. But as with any powerful tool, if communication is not used effectively it can dissipate or cause self-inflicted harm.

That’s one of the lessons of the tragic events at GM that have just come to light this year.

I have taught elements of the GM Cobalt ignition switch crisis since it first became public back in the Spring. And in all the discussions, my students and I keep coming back to the same questions: Why did GM not fix the problem when they had a chance? Why did it take more than ten years? Did they simply not care? Did their cost/benefit analysis lead them to conclude that it was OK to keep an unsafe car on the road? We’ve been baffled.

So I’ve waited with anticipation for the formal report conducted by GM’s independent law firm. That report is now out, and it is stunning. Not just for its tale of incompetence and neglect. But also for providing an intriguing clue about how this baffling series of mis-steps could have happened in the first place.

I am indebted to author and Forbes columnist Carmine Gallo for first calling attention to what I cover below. Gallo’s June 9 post focused on how two words explain the massive failures at GM and how two different words could have prevented the fiasco in the first place. It’s worth reading.

The Valukas Report

The report, prepared by former US Attorney Anton R. Valukas, the chairman of the law firm Jenner & Block, was released on May 29. In the course of 315 pages it lays out the causes and tragic consequences of GM’s failures.

Anton Valukas

Three in particular caught my eye.

GM engineers failed to name the problem accurately.
That’s because the engineers didn’t understand how the cars worked (!?)
The engineers mis-framed the crisis and therefore it wasn’t taken seriously for more than 11 years.

Let’s take these one at a time.

1. GM engineers failed to name the problem accurately.

When the Cobalt’s ignition system switched from Run to Off or Accessory, it also turned off the electrical system.

But the engineers described it as a “moving stall” and didn’t seem to understand that the lack of electrical power meant that airbags wouldn’t deploy, with potentially catastrophic effects. So they told the media and others that a moving stall did not create a safety hazard.

From the Report:

“[T]hose individuals tasked with fixing the problem – sophisticated engineers with responsibility to provide consumers with safe and reliable automobiles – did not understand one of the most fundamental consequences of the switch failing and the car stalling: the airbags would not deploy. The failure of the switch meant that drivers were without airbag protection at the time they needed it most. This failure, combined with others documented below, led to devastating consequences: GM has identified at least 54 frontal-impact crashes, involving the deaths of more than a dozen individuals, in which the airbags did not deploy as a possible result of the faulty ignition switch.”

Chevrolet Cobalt

2. That’s because the engineers didn’t understand how the cars worked (!?)

From the Report:

“A critical factor in GM personnel’s initial delay in fixing the switch was their failure to understand, quite simply, how the car was built. GM had specifically designed the airbag system not to deploy, in most circumstances, in the event that the ignition switch was turned to Off or Accessory, a deliberate and sensible decision made to prevent passengers from being injured by airbags in parked cars.

In 2004, however, GM engineers, faced with a multitude of reports of moving stalls caused by the ignition switch, concluded that moving stalls were not safety issues because drivers could still maneuver the cars; they completely failed to understand that the movement of the switch out of the Run position meant the driver and passengers would no longer have the protection of the airbags.”

3. The engineers mis-framed the crisis and therefore it wasn’t taken seriously for more than 11 years. To me this is the most interesting.

From the Report:

“GM personnel viewed the switch problem as a “customer convenience” issue – something annoying but not particularly problematic – as opposed to the safety defect it was.

Once so defined, the switch problem received less attention, and efforts to fix it were impacted by cost considerations that would have been in immaterial had the problem been properly categorized in the first instance.”

It isn’t that GM didn’t care about safety. It did. The Report makes clear that when presented with safety problems GM acted responsibly.

From the Report:

“Indeed, in this same decade, GM issued hundreds of recalls at great expense (including at times when its financial condition was precarious) because in the great majority of instances, it correctly determined or agreed that the issues that came to its attention implicated safety and demanded prompt action. But in the case of the Cobalt, it did not do so.”

Why not? According to the Report, in 2005 a number of committees recommended a range of solutions, but they were rejected because they would be too costly. The report makes clear that such cost considerations would not have been in play if they had understood the connection between the stalls and the disabling of airbags – in other words, if they had understood the safety hazard.

Cobalt Ignition and Switch Assembly

Why didn’t GM recall Cobalt? The initial framing of the problem as a “customer convenience” problem meant it wasn’t seen as a safety concern, and therefore got a back burner.

From the Report:

“From 2004 to 2006, not one of the committees considering a fix for the switch – filled with engineers and business people whose job was to understand how GM’s cars were built and how different systems of the car interact – ever reclassified the problem from one of customer convenience to one of safety or demonstrated any sense of urgency in their efforts to fix the switch. GM’s Product Investigations group, charged with identifying and remedying safety issues, made the same mistake; it opened and closed an investigation in 2005 in the span of a month, finding no safety issue to be remedied.”

The tragedy is that the signs of a serious safety issue were there to be seen. But in the “customer convenience” frame GM engineers didn’t see it. It took people outside of GM who had not been influenced by the “customer convenience” frame to grasp the real problem.

From the Report:

“As the early committees failed to fix the problem, accidents and fatalities in which airbags did not deploy began coming to GM personnel’s attention, including GM’s in-house counsel and the engineers who worked with them. Those outside GM, including, in 2007, a trooper from the Wisconsin Safety Patrol and a research team from Indiana University, figured out the connection between the switch and the airbag non-deployment. Yet, GM personnel did not.”

The Power of Framing

According to the Berkeley cognitive linguist George Lakoff, frames are mental structures triggered by language.

George Lakoff, Cognitive Linguist, UCal Berkeley

When a frame is triggered, an entire worldview is triggered, and that determines the meaning of what comes next. When the frame is triggered, we tend to focus what’s within the frame, and to ignore what’s outside the frame.

And when we say something “makes sense,” we mean that something is consistent with the frame.

So when the GM engineers referred initially to a “moving stall” and called it a “customer convenience” problem, that frame determined the meaning of what followed. As a result there was no sense of urgency, so cost and other tasks took priority.

But what if the original engineers had framed the problem differently: if they had called the ignition switch problem a “safety defect”? The reaction could have been completely different.

Urgency makes sense when grappling with a safety defect, but not necessarily when facing a customer convenience issue. Conversely, cost becomes a challenge for a customer convenience issue, but not at all when grappling with a safety defect.

Of course, there were many other challenges at GM besides this basic failure of understanding. There was compartmentalization, turf, and a culture that included the “GM Nod,” defined in the Report as “when everyone nods in agreement to a proposed plan of action, but then leaves the room and does nothing.” There was plenty of incompetence and indifference.

Lessons for Leaders and Communicators

But at one level the Report serves as a teachable moment:

1. How you name the problem goes a long way toward how you fix the problem.

2. Framing matters. The frame defines what makes sense and what is possible.

3. Situational awareness isn’t just about facts; it’s about understanding significance — and that comes from frames.

Your comments welcome,

Fred

June 12, 2014/by Helio Fred Garcia

The Power of Information

Blog, Communication, Crisis Communication, Crisis Management, Leadership, Power of Communication, Propaganda, Reputation, Social Media, Trust, Worth Reading

by Helio Fred Garcia

Communication has power. But as with any powerful tool, if misused it can easily be dissipated or cause self-inflicted harm.

The Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and former Dean of the Kennedy School of Government, Joseph Nye, defines power as the ability to get what you want. In his 2001 book The Paradox of American Power, Nye distinguishes between hard power – military force and economic might – and soft power – attraction. He says that the paradox is this: the more a nation uses hard power, the more it dissipates soft power. But it can use soft power all it wants without in any way diminishing its hard power.

Power Shifts

In his 2011 book, The Future of Power, professor Nye describes a power shift from state players to ordinary people. This power shift changes the game for all concerned: for corporations, for NGOs, for governments, and for all others. The power shift is this: what used to be the exclusive domain of governments, militaries, and corporations, are now the domain of regular people.

In a TED Talk at Oxford University he put it this way:

“Computing and communication costs have fallen a thousand-fold between 1970 and the beginning of this century… If the price of an automobile had fallen as rapidly as computing power you could buy a car today for five dollars. …In 1970 if you wanted to communicate from Oxford to Johannesburg to New Delhi to Brasilia to anywhere, you could to it. The technology was there. But to do it, you had to be very rich. A government. A multi-national. A corporation…. But you had to be pretty wealthy. Now, anybody has that capacity… So capabilities that were once restricted, are now available to everyone. And what that means is not that the age of the State is over, the State still matters, but the stage is crowded.”

We saw that power shift in 2011 when the Chinese government initially lied about a high-speed train crash and its victims. But Chinese citizens took to the Chinese versions of social media, Sina Weibo and Renren, and embarrassed the Chinese premier into coming clean.

Information as an Instrument of Power

A new contribution to this discussion comes from Dr. Amy Zalman, in a recent policy piece in Perspectives. Dr. Zalman, who is currently the Department of Defense Information Integration Chair at the National War College, grapples with a paradox about information as an instrument of power.

In “Getting the Information Albatross Off Our Back: Notes Toward an Information-Savvy National Security Community, Dr. Zalman notes, “while the effects of the information revolution on national security deepen, the American ability to act powerfully in these new circumstances remains shallow.”

She says,

“We are virtually drowning in information —the words, images, and sounds through which humans communicate meaning to each other via various technologies, from the human voice to remote sensors. Yet, the United States wields ‘the information instrument of national power’ — as national security parlance would have it — poorly.”

Dr. Amy Zalman

She observes that rapid advances in communication technology have fundamentally changed society – not only relations between citizens and governments, but for all forms of institutions among themselves, and among those who matter to them. She says,

“These changes are so profound as to have chipped away at the bedrock of the international system, the sovereign state. Once considered inviolable, the autonomous boundaries of states are now transgressed daily by people, news, and ideas set in motion by new technologies.

Yet no such revolution has occurred concerning the United States’ priorities when it comes to using informational power. Both in normative documents, such as the National Security Strategy, and in actual practice, the United States appears to think little of informational power as a strategic instrument.”

We Need a Mindshift to Accompany the Power Shift

Zalman argues that incremental reforms will not resolve the basic problem: The United States organizes information activities on the basis of a Cold War mindset.

“During the Cold War, it made good sense to think of the informational ‘instrument’ of power as the capacity to inject American values into populations whose governments and/or technological advancement limited their access to outside ideas.”

Hence the overwhelming success then of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. They projected American voices to where they could not otherwise be heard.

But Dr. Zalman admonishes that we are no longer in the Cold War.

“Soon, almost everyone in the world will be able to receive as well as disseminate informational content. There are few populations that are unknowingly isolated from others’ media. The ideological landscape is variegated and complex, not bipolar.”

Consider the failure of US public diplomacy in the aftermath of 9/11:

“The failure of the Cold War/Industrial Age model should be clear from the informational debacles of  the ‘global war on terror.’ In the decade following the 9/11 attacks, just as in the Cold War, the United States sought to “tell its story” to Muslim publics that we imagined not only as isolated from information about the United States, but as geographically secluded in Muslim majority countries.

The effort backfired among not only satellite TV- saturated cosmopolitans in Arab and Western capitals, but also provincial Afghans who in some areas had not heard of the 9/11 attacks. In both cases, the mistake was the same: the United States failed to note that people everywhere already have their own narratives, their own histories, and their own ways of articulating even the values we universally share.”

Prescriptions for Effective Use of Information as an Instrument of Power

Dr. Zalman calls for a new conceptual framework and a new alignment of resources to mobilize power within that framework. It consists of the following:

Retire the Cold War/Industrial Age Information Model.
Instill a New Framework of Information Power. Using information powerfully today requires the ability to
- “Act in accordance with the fact that actions, as well as intended communications, relay meaning to others
- Use different kinds of communicative media to distribute and collect information
- Develop and sustain networks required to tackle multi-disciplinary issues
- Engage other stakeholders by aligning goals and interests on an issue-by-issue basis
- Navigate the symbolic territory of adversaries, friends, and key stakeholders. By ‘symbolic territory,’ I mean that landscape of historical memory, stories, images, figures of speech, and metaphors through which people understand and relate their experiences.”

3. The education of professional senior leaders should reflect and promote a new framework of thinking.

4. The United States Government should organize informational activities to generate informational power.

“Today, we need a new model that reflects the fact that all government actions and activities are potentially communicative, and that this situation poses both risks and opportunities. Every agency should house an office of informational power to develop proactive communications risk strategies, to exploit opportunities for mutual engagement— whether military exercises or agricultural exchanges— and to coordinate with other USG agencies.”

Lessons for Leaders and Communicators in Business and Other Realms

Whether at the national level or at the level of individual business enterprises, NGOs, not-for-profits, and other organizations, we need to think differently about telling our story.

It’s not about telling our story. It’s about connecting with our stakeholders, and having them share in our story. We need to be as good at listening as at sending messages. We can’t direct until we connect. Or as I say in The Power of Communication, we can’t move people until we meet them where they are. But that means knowing where they are; caring about where they are; and mobilizing resources to actually connect.

Your feeback welcome.

Fred

June 1, 2014/by Helio Fred Garcia

Mentors and Leadership: Adventures at DINFOS

Blog, Communication, Crises, Crisis Communication, Crisis Management, Humility, Leadership, Power of Communication, Reputation, Worth Reading

by Helio Fred Garcia

About two years ago, just before the publication of The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, I began teaching as a guest speaker in the Public Affairs Leadership Department at US Defense Information School (DINFOS) at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. I am usually the first speaker on the first day of a weeks-long Joint Senior Public Affairs Officer Course, Joint Senior Non-Commissioned Public Affairs Officer Course, and occasionally also the Joint Intermediate Public Affairs Officer Course. I teach five to six times a year, and I’m honored that both The Power of Communication and my US Marine Corps Gazette Schulze Essay are required readings.

Helio Fred Garcia at US Defense Information School

Each course is different based on the rank of the students, but my role is the same: on Day One, even before they get formal instruction from senior military and national security officials, to help students understand decision criteria and how to push back on senior officers or civilian leaders who might be making questionable decisions. My session, Ethical Decision-Making for Public Affairs Officers, works them through decision criteria for maintaining trust and confidence, complete with case studies, and closes with the Abu Ghraib case study. In each of the sessions I have come away impressed with the students’ sophistication, aptitude, and integrity. And also at the frustration they sometimes feel when they can see things about to go awry but are unable to intervene.

Helio Fred Garcia teaching Ethical Decision-Making for Public Affairs Officers at DINFOS, April 28, 2014

Meeting My Mentor

On my last visit, by sheer coincidence, DINFOS was hosting a VIP guest: my dear friend and mentor, the crisis guru Jim Lukaszewski. No single practitioner has had a more meaningful impact on my work than Jim. He became my mentor more that 25 years ago. We have worked together, taught together, published together, and I have been much the better for all of it. It was Jim who initially got me involved with the Marines 24 years ago. And Jim who first encouraged me to publish, 26 years ago. And when I decided to start my own firm 12 years ago, Jim very generously helped me understand how to do it with a minimum of mistakes. He has encouraged me and challenged me and helped me for more than a quarter century.

Double Whammy

So although we happened to be at DINFOS on the same day by chance, and completely unrelated to my class, we decided to make the best of it. I invited Jim to speak to my students during my session.

Helio Fred Garcia with Crisis Guru Jim Lukaszewski at the Joint Senior Public Affairs Officer Course at DINFOS April 28, 2014

Jim helped the students better understand the ways their bosses make choices and how to influence those choices. And I was able throughout my remarks to point to where I had gotten those ideas in the first place — the other fellow in civilian clothes in the classroom.

And I was delighted to see that DINFOS also assigned two of Jim’s books, which I also teach in my NYU courses and recommend to clients: Why Should The Boss Listen to You: Seven Disciplines of Trusted Strategic Advisor, and Lukaszewski on Crisis Communication: What Your CEO Needs to Know About Reputation Risk and Crisis Management. I am gratified that my students have the chance to read Lukaszewski (the Three-Minute Drill from Why Should the Boss Listen to You is worth the price of admission!).

What Awaits Students on Their Arrival at DINFOS Joint Senior Public Affairs Officer Course

Paying it Forward

I have been extremely fortunate — I sometimes think blessed — that in the course of my career people have gone out of their way to help me.

This began during my first year in PR at Edelman when Jody Quinn and Mel Ehrlich each took this awkward classics geek under their wing and taught me to be a business communicator and consultant. And six years later when Jim took me on. And there have been countless other teachers (Fraser Seitel taught me speechwriting in 1983!), bosses, and colleagues who have taken me aside and made me a better professional. None of us is an island. It really does take a village.

And I take joy in paying it forward to the next generation — whether in my own firm, with my clients, with my students at NYU and other institutions.

But usually when a boss, colleague, or mentor is done, we rarely see them again. So it was a particular joy to find myself serendipidously working again with Jim, at DINFOS.

My students were certainly the better for it. And it serves as a good reminder that our success is not ours alone: However far we see it is because we stand on the shoulders of others. And that every teacher is simultaneously also a student…

Thanks, Jim…

Helio Fred Garcia (L) and James E. Lukaszewski at US Defense Information School

May 25, 2014/by Helio Fred Garcia

To Change Gun Laws, Control the Debate

Blog, Communication, Crises, Crisis Communication, Framing, Leadership, Media, Politics, Power of Communication, Reputation, Uncategorized

On the Wednesday after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, President Barack Obama called for changes in gun laws to prevent similar tragedies in the future. He said:

“We may never know all the reasons why this tragedy happened. We do know that every day since more Americans have died of gun violence. We know such violence has terrible consequences for our society. And if there is only one thing that we can do to prevent any of these events we have a deep obligation – all of us – to try. Over these past five days a discussion has re-emerged as to what we might do not only to deter mass shootings in the future, but to reduce the epidemic of gun violence that plagues this country every single day.”

December 22, 2012/by Helio Fred Garcia

Small World

Blog, Communication, Conferences, Crisis Communication, Power of Communication, Reputation, Worth Reading

Santiago

One of the joys of launching a book is that you never know who will read it and where.

The Power of Communication launched in May. The publisher, the FT Press imprint of Pearson, is global and the book got broad distribution. But because it was launched in the US in English, I focused most of my attention on the US and in countries where I’ve recently done teaching or have clients (China, Switzerland, Italy etc.).

So imagine my delight and surprise when in early August I received an e-mail from a graduate student in Chile who had been assigned to read the book.

Fernando Godoy is an industrial engineer in Santiago, studying in the Global MBA program of the Universidad de Chile. In his Business Management course students are assigned a number of books, and each week a group of students presents a book to the rest of the class. Fernando and his colleagues Natalia Ruz and Christian Aravena had been assigned The Power of Communication, and they took the initiative to reach out to the author for resources. They had done their homework. They had seen the companion video. They had read the book. And asked whether I had any visuals I could share. They also asked if I could do a short video introduction.

So I did. I sent slides and illustrations, and recorded a video greeting. As it happens, and unbeknownst to Fernando and his team, I have a Chilean connection. Although born in Brazil and a native speaker of Portuguese, my grandfather was raised in Chile – in fact, my last name is Chilean – and my Spanish is passable.

Fernando, Christian, and Natalia presented to their class, and told me that the students were surprised to hear the video greeting in Spanish. They say they had a very good response and lots of interaction.

As part of their global MBA Fernando and his colleagues will be traveling the world this year, studying in the US, Britain, Australia. It’s a very small world. I look forward to connecting with them when they’re up north.

Lima

Tonight I’ll be heading to Lima, Peru, to speak next week at the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) annual meeting and concurrent Latin American Congress.

I’ll be speaking Wednesday, September 19 on The Power of Communication in a Crisis. I’ll blog and tweet (@garciahf) about that from there. I’m looking forward to spending time with a number of folks from the States whom I know directly or by reputation. But mostly I’m looking forward to spending time with folks from elsewhere, expanding the community of the book to a broader audience, even as my publisher begins the process of securing translations into other languages.

Stand by for updates from Lima.

Ciao….

Fred

(In Latin America, I go by my first name, Helio…)

September 14, 2012/by Helio Fred Garcia

Teachable Moments from the Aurora, Colorado, Tragedy

Apology, Blog, Communication, Crises, Crisis Communication, Crisis Management, Leadership, Power of Communication, Reputation, Trust

Even as America mourns and tries to make sense of Friday morning’s massacre in Aurora, Colorado, there are some lessons emerging on appropriate — and inappropriate — response to tragedy.

Context Drives Meaning

Context drives meaning. Words, actions, or events that are perfectly appropriate one day may be wildly inappropriate, distasteful, offensive, or even inaccurate the next. One key discipline for leaders and organizations is to continuously adapt to changing circumstances that may alter the context in which communication takes place.

The shooting that left 12 dead and 58 wounded in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater is such an event.

July 22, 2012/by Helio Fred Garcia

Stakeholders Expect Leaders to Be Good Communicators

Blog, Communication, Leadership, Power of Communication, Worth Reading

I sometimes tell a bad joke in response to a client’s question about whether the boss will improve as a result of coaching: How many executive coaches does it take to change a light bulb? Only one. But the bulb has to really want to change…

That bad joke has a very serious subtext. Executives won’t rise to the occasion if they don’t take seriously the need to continuously improve their communication skills. As Winston Churchill famously said, “The most important thing about education is appetite.”

Read more

July 1, 2012/by Helio Fred Garcia

Non-Profits and The Power of Communication

Blog, Communication, Power of Communication, Trust, Worth Reading

Nonprofit organizations need to win hearts and minds no less than corporations or governments.

And the skills that work in other areas of leadership are particularly important for nonprofit leaders.

As Amazon Vine Hall-of-Fame Reviewer Harold McFarland wrote recently, although many of the examples in The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively are drawn from corporations or governments, the book has relevance also to non-profits.

In fact, I note in the book that I have used its principles and techniques with dozens of non-profit organizations, including religious and multi-faith advocacy groups, social justice groups, human rights organizations, museums and other cultural organizations, and universities. Sometimes the very idea of using techniques also used by corporations causes some initial discomfort. But folks get over that quickly when they see the results.

Today The NonProfit Times, the leading business publication for nonprofit management, weighed in. It quoted from the book on the need for not-for-profit leaders to be strategic in planning communication. Excerpts:

“6 strategic questions to consider

When it comes to marketing, words matter. The words you choose to use in one of your campaigns can be the difference between a success and a failure.

That’s the point that Helio Fred Garcia made in his book The Power of Communication. He wrote that effective communication begins with strategic thinking. Strategy is all about what he called “ordered thinking.” For example, a communicator should never start with the question “What do we want to say?” because it skips the essential questions that establish goals, identify audiences and attitudes, and lay out a course of action to influence those attitudes.

Garcia recommended asking six strategic questions to become an effective habitually strategic communicator:

What do we have? What is the challenge or opportunity we are hoping to address?
What do we want? What’s our goal? Communication is merely the continuation of business by other means. We shouldn’t communicate unless we know what we’re trying to accomplish.
What stakeholders matter to us? What do we know about them?
What do we need them to think, feel, know, or do in order to accomplish our goal?
What do they need to see us do, hear us say, or hear others say about us to think, feel, know, and do what we want them to accomplish?
How do we make that happen?”

June 4, 2012/by Helio Fred Garcia

SmartBlog on Leadership: Lessons on the Anniversary of “I’d like my life back”

Blog, Communication, Crises, Crisis Communication, Crisis Management, Leadership, Power of Communication, Worth Reading

Two years ago yesterday BP CEO Tony Hayward inadvertently got his wish when, in the thick of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he told a press conference, “I want my life back.” He was sacked soon thereafter. In the battle for public opinion – for trust, support, the benefit of the doubt – Hayward lost. It was a failure of leadership on a massive scale. And it began with a failure of communication. And that failure, in turn, was a failure of discipline.

Hayward’s blunder is not unique to him. It should be a wakeup call to CEOs and other leaders, to all whose leadership responsibilities require inspiring trust and confidence verbally.

Whatever else leadership may be, it is experienced publicly. While it may emanate from within, it is a public phenomenon. And however technically proficient someone may be, if her or she does not communicate effectively, he or she will not lead well. Communication has power. But as with any form of power, it needs to be harnessed effectively or it can all too often backfire.

In 33 years of advising leaders on the actions and communication needed to win, keep, or restore public confidence, I have concluded that many leaders, much of the time, fundamentally misunderstand communication. This misunderstanding has consequences: corporations lose competitive advantage; NGOs find it harder to fulfill their mission; religious denominations lose the trust and confidence of their followers; nations diminish their ability to protect citizens and achieve national security goals.

Today SmartBlog on Leadership published an excerpt from The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, starting with Mr. Hayward’s blunder, and moving from there.

The full excerpt is published below.

General Management, Inspiring Others
Guest Blogger
Leadership communication isn’t about saying things; it’s about taking change seriously

By Helio Fred Garcia on June 1st, 2012

Tony Hayward, then CEO of BP, told the media in 2010 that he wanted his life back. He got it, but not in the way he intended. His quote was part of an ineffective attempt to show he cared about the consequences of the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.

The full quote: “I’m sorry. We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. And you know we’re — there’s no one who wants this thing over more than I do. You know, I’d like my life back.” But the back end got all of the attention. He had stepped on his message.

It was the beginning of the end for Hayward. He was out of a job a few months later, having lost the trust and confidence of those who mattered to him. His blunder was a failure of leadership on a massive scale. And it began with a failure of communication. And that failure, in turn, was a failure of discipline.

A burden of leadership is to be good at communicating. If you can’t communicate effectively, you will not lead. But there’s a paradox: Unlike most other skills a leader needs to master, communication seems to be something leaders already know; they’ve been communicating their whole lives. So leaders often are unaware of their communication abilities, or lack thereof, until it’s too late.

Harnessing the power of communication is a fundamental leadership discipline. Effective leaders see communication as a critical professional aptitude and work hard at getting it right. And getting it right requires becoming strategic as a first resort: thinking through the desired change in the audience and ways to make that happen. And then making it happen.

Effective communicators take change seriously: They ground their work in moving people to be different, think differently, feel differently, know or do things differently. Effective communicators also take the audience seriously. They work hard to ensure that all engagement moves people toward their goal. That means caring about what the audience thinks and feels and what it will take to get the audience to think and feel something else. It means listening carefully to the reaction, adapting where needed and not saying things that suggest they care only about themselves (I want my life back!).

Effective communicators also take words seriously. They know that words trigger world views and provoke reaction. They plan engagement so the right words are used to trigger the right reaction. Effective communicators also know that the best communication can be counterproductive if it isn’t aligned with action. And effective communicators take seriously the need to package all that an audience experiences — verbal, visual, abstract and physical — into one powerful experience.

The Discipline of Effective Leadership Communication

Six questions to ask before communicating

Effective leadership communication never begins with “What do we want to say?” but rather with a sequence of questions. An effective communicator always begins by asking questions in a certain sequence.

What do we have? What is the challenge or opportunity we are hoping to address?
What do we want? What’s our goal? Communication is merely the continuation of business by other means. We shouldn’t communicate unless we know what we’re trying to accomplish.
Who matters? What stakeholders matter to us? What do we know about them? What further information do we need to get about them? What are the barriers to their receptivity to us, and how do we overcome those barriers?
What do we need them to think, feel, know or do to accomplish our goal?
What do they need to see us do, hear us say or hear others say about us to think, feel, know and do what we want them to?
How do we make that happen?

June 1, 2012/by Helio Fred Garcia