A Leadership Test

Leaders are judged on how they deal with their most significant challenges.

As American Express CEO Ken Chenault said on the cover of the November, 2007 Fortune, “We have to remember that reputations are won or lost in a crisis.”

Each year the consulting firm Booz & Company studies CEO turnover among the 2,500 largest public companies in the world.  Their report, published in Booz’ online magazine Strategy+Business, is worth reading, and provides not merely statistical data and trends, but also insights into the particular leadership challenges facing CEOs today.

The 2008 CEO Succession Survey, published this month, concludes that the financial and economic meltdown that began in the last third of last year is still causing CEO turmoil.  Forced CEO turnover remained high in 2008, but those CEOs who kept their jobs aren’t out of the woods yet: Read more

A public apology is a good way to express remorse and offer reconciliation to an affected party. But the very act of apologizing can be daunting.

If delivered effectively, an apology can mend relationships and restore trust between two or more parties.

If delivered effectively, an apology can help maintain company’s competitive advantage, reduce litigation costs and minimize business disruptions.

If delivered effectively, an apology can create a perception of genuine regret on behalf of the offender and mend his or her reputation.

But here is a question:

Can an effective delivery distract the audience from an insufficient apology?

And,

Can a weak delivery diminish a powerful message of a genuine apology?

I invite you to look at three recent apologies and share your opinion about the effectiveness of each apology is in terms of its message and its presentation.

Read more

Domino's Pizza by Nemo's great uncle

I’ve been a little reluctant to chime in on the Domino’s social media crisis this past week because of the sheer volume of coverage, but after a few conversations I wanted to post some thoughts here.

If you’re not aware, on Monday, April 13, two Domino’s employees at a Conover, NC restaurant filmed themselves doing “disgusting” things to food that, in the video, they claimed was going out to customers, and then posted the video on YouTube. (Read the New York Times summary here. The original YouTube video has been removed due to copyright claims by the female employee who filmed it, but as of this posting you can view it on this site.)

The video spread like wildfire, the two employees were identified, fired and arrested, and Domino’s has had to respond to the maelstrom.

Domino’s USA President, Patrick Doyle, issued an apology and response on YouTube on Wednesday, April 15, including a detailed outline of steps the company was and will be taking to make sure such a situation never happens again. The company has also been using a new Twitter account to listen, respond to concerns and thank people for their support (when appropriate). (As of 4/20, the company response video had been viewed 538,000+ times on YouTube.)

To review the timeline:

  • Monday, 4/13: Original YouTube video posted. Company spokesman notified in the evening.
  • Tuesday, 4/14: Employees fired. Rest of company learns about the video. Store closed and health officials visit.
  • Wednesday, 4/15: President posts apology on YouTube. Company launches @dpzinfo Twitter account. Original video viewed more than 1 million times on YouTube. Employees charged with felony crimes.

I’ve read a number of sides to this issue, both supporting and critizing the company’s response. Many have criticized the company for not responding soon enough, and in the New York Times article the spokesperson says that executives hoped “the controversy would die down” and so didn’t respond immediately. Some have criticized the president’s apology video as not effective enough, saying that he looks like he’s reading a script and that he doesn’t look into the camera.

But there’s the crux, isn’t it? On the one hand people get upset when a company doesn’t respond quickly, but on the other hand, they criticize the performance of the response when it does come.

In the choice between perfect performance and getting the response out relatively quickly, I think Domino’s made the right decision.

All in all, I think that Domino’s has done a pretty good job responding to this crisis. I give them kudos for:

  1. The apology. The Domino’s video apology does all of the things that my colleague Oxana Trush said makes an effective apology in her post last month: acknowledgement of wrongdoing, expression of genuine remorse, promise to not do it again, and restitution. To me it comes across as genuine, direct and personal, regardless of the performance.
  2. Going to the source. By posting the video on YouTube and (not just on their corporate website, for example), they respond in the channel where the conversation is happening. Ditto for Twitter. And they seem to be listening. Also, on a more technical note, they use the title of the original video in their response video, “Disgusting Dominos People – Domino’s Responds,” so that when people search for the original video the company’s official response will also appear in the search results. Very smart. I know this may be obvious to most social media folks, but for other people I think this is very counter-intuitive.
  3. Matching actions to words. The best apology in the world can’t rectify an underlying problem. The company appears to be acting in ways that demonstrate their recognition of the severity of the problem and what they can do to try to change it.

What could Domino’s have done better?

  1. Maybe they could have been a little faster in their first public communications response, but I think that, all in all, they did as best they could given the circumstances. They also were taking action behind the scenes to deal with the problem directly. From my experience working with large and sometimes decentralized companies (Domino’s is a franchise organization), large organizations are often simply not equipped to respond as quickly as the online world might want. That’s changing with time, but it doesn’t change overnight. Domino’s is not the only company learning from the past weeks’ events.
  2. Had a crisis plan in place. This is just supposition, of course, because perhaps they did have a plan in place. Also, there are always going to be situations that no plan could anticipate. However, from the outside, at least, it seems like this type of thing might have been something Domino’s could have anticipated. This exact thing? Probably not. But something like, “Employee malfeasance at a franchise location” would be a category I’d include in planning.

(And then it’s not just having the plan. It’s educating employees, coaching senior staff on how to deal with the media [even if the media is talking into a camera for a web video], establishing a presence on online communities and engaging with people before a crisis hits, etc.)

But just as we’re all figuring this social media stuff out, so are large corporations too. And best efforts – not just perfect efforts – should be recognized, especially during crisis situations.

Leadership in a Crisis

A hearty salute to Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger, III, the US Airways pilot whose cool and decisive handling of a breaking crisis prevented a plane crash from becoming a tragedy.

Captain Sullenberger, a former US Air Force fighter pilot, a pilot union safety official, and a sometime plane crash investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), exhibited exceptional leadership skills when his Airbus 320 aircraft hit a flock of geese when taking off from LaGuardia airport yesterday afternoon.

The geese took out both of his plane’s engines at approximately 3,200 feet as the plane was making a left turn over the Bronx.  With no power in his engines, Captain Sullenberger had a choice to make, and very little time to make it. Read more

Into the fog by raindog

Into the fog by raindog

This time of year is ripe for reflection about the year past and prognostication about the year to come. Best-of lists, predictions for the new year, goals – many good & inspiring thoughts and ideas, but they’re so numerous it can become hard to digest even one more.

But I hope you will take just a little time to digest this one.

As I thought about the year past, all of the power of social media came down to one thing.

It wasn’t new in 2008, but it was new to me.

The most truly powerful communication and social media tool I used last year was CaringBridge. It’s a free, non-profit service for individuals or families during times of illness or treatment. It allows you to create a personalized website (either public or private) with a journal/blog-like feature, a section for photographs, a welcome or background page, and a guestbook for people to sign and leave messages.

It’s a service I hope most of you will never need, but it’s important, and it’s important to know it exists should you, or anyone you know, find yourself in need.

I was referred to this service during a time of intense family crisis last spring. During family crises, just like business crises, it can become difficult and burdensome to communicate. Have we communicated with everyone we need to? Have we forgotten anyone? Does everyone have the same information or the information they need? These questions are pretty universal, during any crisis. But all the updates, all the repetition – it can be crushing during a personal crisis.

CaringBridge was a lifeline for my family. The founder of CaringBridge describes it as a kind of “compassion technology,” combining “the human elements of care and concern with the Internet’s ability to connect people.” The private site we created gave us one central place to keep far-flung family and friends informed, and we drew strength from the messages of support from around the world.

Often with social media, we focus on what the tool or service is, versus what it does.

This is a powerful example of the doing. And something I will try to take with me into the new year.

What a week for crises!

Forget about the financial melt-down, the transition to the new president, or any of the really old news.

Last week was one for the record books.

The curtain rose Monday, December 8, on the usual tired old economic meltdown crises, particularly  the prospect of an auto bailout (that still hasn’t happened).

Then things got curiouser and curiouser…

Not Available on E-Bay

Tuesday Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich was arrested for trying to sell his appointment of President Elect Barack Obama’s vacant senate seat to a high bidder.  He’s still governor (as of 3:30 PM Monday, December 15).

Read more

‘Nuff said….

Fred

Mumbai by karmadude, under a Creative Commons license

Mumbai by karmadude, under a Creative Commons license

Like many people in the U.S., I was out of town for Thanksgiving when I heard about the Mumbai attacks last week. After a Wednesday afternoon spent grocery shopping in Denver, CO, my family and I returned to my relatives’ house, turned on the news, and saw our first reports about the horrific attacks on CNN. Trying to learn more, I pulled up Twitter on a laptop, and searched for reports about what was happening. A flood of information started coming in.

Apparently, I wasn’t alone in using Twitter to follow the crisis. Twitter is a social networking tool that allows users (“Twitterers”) to post 140-character updates (or “tweets”) to their followers (or the public – over 80% of the 6 million users have public pages), either online, via text message or through other tools. This New York Times article notes that, “At the peak of the violence, more than one message per second with the word ‘Mumbai’ in it was being posted to Twitter.” Approximately 80 tweets were sent via SMS (text message) every five seconds (CNN).
Read more

When the U.S. economy sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold.
When the U.S. economy catches cold, the rest of the world faces an outbreak.

The credit crisis that started in the U.S. and traveled around the world had already made French, German and British economies suffer massive bailouts, forced the government of Iceland to seize its three largest banks, deepened economic deterioration in Hungary, Poland, Ukraine and questioned economic stability of emerging markets in China, Brazil, Russia and South Korea. Read more

No, this is not a post on the financial markets or political campaigns

A month ago, I paused to digest the report out of Pakistan that a truck bomb had destroyed the Islamabad Marriott, killing 55 people and wounding more than 250.

The news unnerved me. I had stayed at the Islamabad Marriott for five nights in February 2007 while on an ILO mission to evaluate the Soccer Ball Project. I remember the modern, glitzy lobby, the Thai restaurant, and the “foreigners only” club in the hotel basement that played cosmopolitan Hindustani dance mixes and served alcohol outlawed for most Pakistanis. Read more