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Thirty-seven words sparked global outrage last week:

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”

Tim Hunt, a British biochemist with a 51-year career in scientific research, owns these words. His distinctions include a Nobel Prize in 2001 for his work on cell cycles, and the conferment of knighthood by the Queen of England. Speaking at the World Conference of Science Journalists last week, Dr. Hunt had an opportunity to further distinguish himself among his peers. Instead, in 37 words, the 72-year old scientist ignited a vocal, angry discussion around the world. Three days later, the global indignation prompted Dr. Hunt to resign from his position as honorary professor with the University College London Faculty of Life Sciences. He was subsequently asked to step down from the European Research Council, where he was a long-standing committee member.

A week out, there is more perspective on the issue. Dr. Hunt apologized, though many argue his apology was insufficient. Also, personal details of his life emerged, adding texture to his relationships with women. In addition to being the father to two daughters, Dr. Hunt happens to be the husband of Mary Collins, a senior immunology researcher, who is a professor and former dean with a 20-year career at the University College London. She is a self-proclaimed feminist who agrees her husband’s remarks were stupid, but defends his character and long record of collaborating with and mentoring female scientists. Some of those associates, mentees, and even Dr. Hunt’s first wife also came to his defense in media reports over the weekend. But the damage was done.

How did someone with a lifetime of achievement nosedive to global contempt? The public response may have less to do with Dr. Hunt’s 37 words, and more to do with the disgust of a greater misogyny pervading the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions. Unfortunately for Dr. Hunt, the thoughtlessness with which he spoke about women in science – jokingly or not – wove an irresistible media story in which he was the main character in a tale full of conflict, controversy, and contradiction. And for whatever story traditional media had to share in print and on the air, the social media sphere quickly made the shaming viral. For Dr. Hunt’s life and legacy – his words mattered.

This post is neither to condemn nor to pardon Dr. Hunt. That is another discussion. What I do want to raise is the power of words. Words have a remarkable ability to shape business outcomes. Words help individuals and businesses enhance positioning, but also have the potency to slay a reputation. Words alone, however, are not sufficient to cause people to think or do something different. For that, emotions are necessary, and emotions come when language shapes a mental structure, or “frame.”

The current frame around women in STEM is a contentious one. Women are underrepresented in both STEM degree programs and STEM positions for a variety of complex reasons tied to gender inequality. Perhaps Dr. Hunt, who referred to himself in the same controversial talk as a “has been scientist,” thought he was being humorous, during what could be considered a dry, scientific discussion. He failed to appreciate that within the frame of discussion around women in STEM, female efforts are persistently marginalized, and this needs to change. Therefore, any collegial, emotional appeal he was seeking fell short. Instead of head nods and laughs, he received an uncomfortable silence from a stunned audience.

If Dr. Hunt were a stand-up comedian, it could be presumed that people came for jokes and perhaps he would have received some laughs in a forum where comedy is often off-color. The reality, however, is that he was representing a greater scientific research community and his sexist comments were no laughing matter. The response to his remarks was swift and harsh, and fit the frame society has placed around the importance of elevating women in STEM. Whether or not the global vitriol fit the offense is another topic.

The lesson? Words matter. The frame, which gives context to words, matters even more. The next time you speak, consider how your message could be received beyond your immediate audience. Dr. Hunt’s talk and fallout is an easy example since his words were unarguably condemning to female scientists, whether it was his intention or not. In smaller, more subtle ways, however, it may be difficult to think beyond oneself or the immediate audience. If we find ourselves ever saying, “what I mean is” – and we all have – then it’s wise to think more critically about the words we choose and the frames that are so fundamental to shaping them.

June 16, 2015/by Kristin Johnson

Part 2: Bridging the Sociocultural Gap: Lessons from The Power of Communication China Trip

Blog, China, Communication, Framing, International Affairs, Language, Leadership, Power of Communication

by Iris Wenting Xue

Last month, my mentor and boss, Helio Fred Garcia, and I visited more than 20 organizations, including top universities and prestigious corporations, in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Tianjin.

During our visit, we have experienced different learning approaches and different cultural styles of lecture attendants. We had international students from joint-venture universities; Chinese students at top Chinese universities majoring in business (both MBA and Executive MBA), communication, and other liberal arts and sciences; senior PR managers from multinational groups; mid-career bankers from a national banking commission; and officials from local governments.

This post is the second in a series of posts on how to understand and overcome sociocultural obstacles. I learned three lessons about sociocultural and linguistic gaps during the Logos The Power of Communication China trip. In my last post I described the first gap: different languages. We can easily bridge the language gap by translation.

Today I will describe lessons about two other gaps that are harder to solve, although we constantly talk about them.

Lesson 2: Different Learning Approaches

In order to demonstrate how hard it is for audiences to pay attention, we showed many of our audiences the video Invisible Gorilla. You can click on it and watch before you keep reading. You will be surprised about your counting skills.

I first watched this video during my strategic communication course at New York University in the Public Relations and Corporate Communication Graduate Program.

In this 30-second video, six people – three in white shirts and three in black shirts – pass basketballs around. The task for the audience is to count the number of passes made by the people in white shirts, and spot a gorilla that strolls into the middle of the action, thumps its chest and then leaves.

At that time I had a robust discussion with my classmates about 1) why was it so hard to accurately count how many times the players passed the basketball and also to spot a gorilla among human beings, 2) how to understand cognitive tunneling, which is what makes the tasks so hard, and 3) what we could learn and apply to our work from that exercise.

This time in China, I discovered some interesting learning approaches beyond these three takeaways – each specific to different groups of people.

1) PhDs

When we showed this video to a group of, let’s say, 50 people, there were always 15 who counted accurately, 10-ish who came close but got the number wrong, 10-ish who got close but chose a different number, 7-ish of some less-close number and two or three people who counted very wrong.

So one of our conclusions was “Counting numbers under 20 is not as easy as we thought it’d be.”

However, when we showed the video to a group of people including Ph.Ds in China, one of their conclusions was: “The answers could be plotted as a curve.”

This was the first time we discussed The Invisible Gorilla with PhDs. And this was the first time we received a response with the word “curve.” So, we responded with their language, “Gaussian distribution,” to acknowledge their worldview, to motivate them, to deepen the conversation.

2) Bankers

After the count, we typically asked: “While you were counting how many times the players passed the basketball, did you see a gorilla?” People either saw it or did not see it, so when they watched the video again they either were proud of their observation skills or disappointed that they had missed the gorilla.

We played the same video to a group of mid-career bankers. When we rewound the video, they denied that they had missed the gorilla:” We saw it, but we didn’t think it was a real gorilla. Instead, it was a human with a gorilla costume.”

This was the first time we had showed bankers The Invisible Gorilla. This was also the first time the audience challenged the content of the video. We respected the different habits, so we reframed the “gorilla” as “a human in a gorilla costume” based on their descriptions, to keep the conversation going.

3) Heads of Communications

Our routine at the end of the discussion was – “Any other thoughts and comments?”

Typically audiences will respond with their opinions about their counting skills or the missing gorilla.

But when we showed the same video to a group of PR directors, heads of public affairs and senior PR managers — from Standard Chartered, General Motors, Estée Lauder Companies, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical Company and some other multinational enterprises — some of their final thoughts went far beyond the counting and the gorilla. Some of them knitted their brows and raised questions like “Are you manipulating us?”

They provided an interesting reason why the curve occurred, and why the gorilla, or the human with a gorilla costume, was overlooked. They insisted that the designer of the experiment manipulated the audience through putting a black gorilla among black-and-white-shirted players. They argued that since they concentrated on counting the passing of the white-shirt team, they could not pay attention to the black team and the black gorilla. If it had been a light brown gorilla, they would easily have dentified it.

How would you respond to this tricky question?

Lesson learned: “Understand your audience” appears in the slides we show to our clients. But we have to walk the talk and meet our audience by observing their approach and adopting their language.

Lesson 3: Different Cultural Styles

Before we landed in China, we thought we would face one group of audience – Chinese audience. To our surprise, our audience differed in certain ways: Some of them were shy but smart; some of them were as open like those in the States; some of them stayed in their own world, and it took us a long time to understand their thoughts.

I use the word “cultural style” to emphasize their subtle differences beyond imagination. To my surprise, I found in my research that Professor Dan Kahan of Yale Law School blogged this conception based on his study with his collaborators on Joseph Gusfield:

“The term “cultural style” is, for me, a way to describe these affinities. I have adapted it from Gusfield. I & collaborators use the concept and say more about it and how it relates to Gusfield in various places.…

Examples of these are cultural generations, such as the traditional and the modern; characterological types, such as ‘inner-directed and other-directed’; and reference orientations, such as ‘cosmopolitans and locals.’”

I agree with Kahan about how people differ from each other due to the difference of location or character and share the affinities with each other due to time or education background.

Below are the four main cultural styles during our trip:

1) Top Local University Style

We visited four of the top ten universities in China. Not to our surprise, the institutions are powerful. Here are some recent updates of some of them:

Tsinghua University celebrated its 104 anniversary this past Sunday and posted some old pictures of its famous alumni, including current President Xi (graduated from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences Department and later got an LLD degree), former President Hu (graduated from the Water Conservancy Engineering Department); the governor of the People’s Bank of China Xiaochuan Zhou (got a Ph.D. degree in Automation and System Engineering), and the controversial Chinese-born American Nobel Physics Prize winner Chen-Ning Franklin Yang (received a Master’s Degree and later became an honored director).

Xi Jinping, as a student at Tsinghua University, and now as President of China

Shanghai Jiaotong University, through its School of Media and Design (at which we spoke) and the University of Southern California jointly established The Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI). Ernest J. Wilson III, Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, visited the same campus we visited one month after our visit.

To our surprise, some of their current students were not as vocal as we expected. Lectures we held in the top local universities were much more silent than those we held in joint-venture universities, although we discovered later that they had brilliant thoughts. In general, they are proud about being “blue blood”, and they tend to appear modest but think aggressively. They were reluctant to share their personal opinions about some topics until we pushed them several times.

2) Joint-Venture University Style

Elite universities in China and other countries are already on the path of exploring partnerships with universities from other countries. For example:

In 2004, The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) was set up by the University of Nottingham (UK) with the cooperation of Zhejiang’s Wanli Education Group in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.
In 2006, the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) was jointly established by University of Liverpool and Xi’an Jiao Tong University in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
In 2012, Duke Kunshan University was organized as a collaboration between Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, with Wuhan University, and the city of Kunshan, Jiangsu Province.

Among joint-venture universities we visited in China this time, we were impressed with New York University Shanghai, Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, and Sino-British College.

NYU Shanghai is NYU’s third degree-granting campus. Its enrollment started in Fall 2013, and now there are only Freshmen and Sophomores. Students are not only from China, or other Asian countries like Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines, but also from the States, Canada, France, Dubai and many other countries.

The Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies is a joint educational venture between the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University. It has been operating in Nanjing since 1986.

Sino-British College is an international university college in Shanghai, China, jointly established by the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST), and nine British universities (The University of Bradford, The University of Huddersfield, The University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moores University, Manchester Metropolitan University, The University of Salford, The University of Sheffield, and Sheffield Hallam University).

These three joint venture universities have built global classrooms with a global view, where students are open and comfortable hearing other opinions and sharing opinions themselves. The diversity of student and faculty kindled the diverse discussion we typically associate with academia.

3) Business Style (Communicators and Non-Communicators)

Business audiences tended to be more worldly and more serious. For example, when we talked about crisis management in a Corporate Social Responsibility Forum in Shanghai and showed a picture of an oil platform explosion to the communicators, participants immediately identified it as “BP”. It was self-evident. They were aware of what was happening in the crisis management field, even though they live in a country where people tend to whitewash scandals. Also, some of them asked tricky questions like “Is it a smart crisis strategy to find another crisis that will shift the focus and will thus save our company from the spotlight?”

Here is another sign of how seriously the business community takes professional development. When the largest residential real estate company in China (which has an office in New York) invited my boss, Helio Fred Garcia, to hold a speech about The Power of Communication, they not only offered a huge auditorium of 200 people, but also live broadcasted it to 40 other national offices. Each office was equipped with live broadcasted lecture and real-time slides. Each office had at least 20 attendants. And even though it was a Friday evening lecture, the company told us that they had an attendance rate of over 90 percent and that nobody left in the middle of the speech.

Executives at a Vanke regional office spending a Friday evening watching Prof. Garcia’s workshop via remote technology

4) Local Government Style

We coached 90 officials from Nanyang, a “small” city of 10 million residents in Henan Province.

They were being trained in crisis management because they were working on a huge national project “South–North Water Diversion”. (Think of the drought in California, and imagine diverting a major river 800 miles to California.) Due to this project, a huge amount of Nanyang residents had to relocate. So government officials were eager to be trained for if (or when) a crisis might happen.

Route of the Water Diversion Project to bring water from the South to the greater Beijing area

I did the simultaneous translation for the lecture. My observations are as follow:

The officials were focused on the lecture, even though the majority of them cannot understand English beyond “Hello” and “Thank you”.
They were the only group of people that were uniformly unfamiliar with Professor Garcia’s references to Greek tragedies. Every other group understood immediately when he referred Greek tragedies as the example that people remember bad things rather than good things. They were the only group of people that could not get our point of “Greek tragedies are all about choices — Do I kill my father and marry my mother?” Every other group, including students from universities and even engineers from big companies, laughed at the reference. The officials remained silent.
They were eager to share a Confucius quote, and insisted that I translate it simultaneously for Professor Garcia. They also expected his response and feedback to the Confucius quote. In other words, they were the group who seemed to ignore others culture, but emphasize their own culture.

Zeus hurling thunderbolts; Confucius

Lesson Learned: When social patterns and cultural differences are involved, we have to be very careful about what is happening to people who do not share the same learning approach and same cultural style as ours.

The two lessons we learned today are much harder than the first lesson. Accordingly, there is no single solution for each of these gaps. But one large takeaway from the trip is that we need to take seriously not only differences in language but also differences in learning approach and cultural style.

April 28, 2015/by Iris Wenting Xue

Understanding Illusion: A Case for Business Communicators

Blog, Communication, Framing, Neuroscience, Power of Communication

By Kristin Johnson

I am in the company of millions when I admit that my amusement and interest was piqued by the “gold and white” – er, blue and black dress debate of 2015. Since then, there has been tremendous discussion on illusion and the relationship between perception and reality, and neurology and ophthalmology.

What we subjectively see often influences – consciously or unconsciously – what we believe to be objectively true. The question on everyone’s mind is, “What is real?”

Michael Abrash, chief scientist for Facebook’s Oculus, quoted “The Matrix” character Morpheus when he posed this question during his virtual reality keynote at the F8 Developer Conference this week. He declared that real “is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

As human beings, our brains have a sophisticated architecture that is continuously drawing on patterns and relationships from past experience to build conclusions. As Mr. Abrash explained, “we are inference machines.” I’s prbly wy yu cn ead ths rght nw; yur rain flls n te blnks for ou.

The world is ambiguous. We construct reality with our minds. Optical illusions are everywhere – from OK Go’s gravity-defying new video to the black and white Teletubbies video that has transformed colorful friends of children into terrifying creatures of doom, all by playing with your senses.

There are lessons in illusions for those of us in business communication. Challenging ourselves to see something in an unexpected or unconventional way is a significant part of the creative process and connecting with stakeholders.

As professional communicators, it’s valuable to acknowledge that every person’s brain has evolved to see the world through individual experience. Often, failing to see the metaphoric “gold and white” or “blue and black” can lead to confusion, disruption and an escalation of issues. As George Bernard Shaw stated so well, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

For clarity, we can turn problems inside out and upside down. Helio Fred Garcia, author of The Power of Communication, also a mentor and my boss, refers to this as strategy. He defines it as “ordered thinking.” Too often in business, the first question teams jump to – for any problem – is, “What should we say or do?” This is ineffective, however, because the answer is based on any number of assumptions – or illusions – that vary from individual to individual.

Instead, according to Garcia, an effective leader needs to ask a sequence of strategic questions to make sense of the situation, establish goals, and identify audiences and attitudes. Only after that discovery process will there be the clarity to prescribe a course of action, or the “what should we say or do.”

Neuroscientist and artist Beau Lotto contends that, “context is everything.” Indeed, ordered thinking works to reveal the context and framing that is meaningful to individual audiences. With this understanding, companies have greater opportunity to effectively trade illusion for clarity and shape messages that will be consequential to their stakeholders. The outcome? Stakeholders who are inspired to think, feel, know or do something in service of a goal…as they uniquely see it.

March 27, 2015/by Kristin Johnson

My Pick for Best Leadership Communication Moment of 2014

Apology, Best Practices, Blog, Communication, Crises, Crisis Communication, Framing, Language, Leadership, Power of Communication, Reputation, Trust

Helio Fred Garcia | Bio | Posts
31 Dec 2014

Every year I look for great moments in leadership and leadership communication. This year offered many candidates for the greatest leadership moment. The usual suspects come from the world of politics, sports, or business. But there was one unlikely moment in 2014 that in my view shows leadership in an unexpected light, one that offers both teachable moments and hope for leaders in any field.

Great Leaders Transcend the Either/Or

Ever since the murder of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri in August, there has been a growing movement calling attention to the disproportionate number of black youths who are killed by police officers. In the months following the Ferguson shooting, other police-involved shootings led to national protests, including the “Hands Up/Don’t Shoot” rallies and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The media has framed the conflict as police v. black communities, and New York City police have played into that dynamic by showing disrespect to New York Mayor Bill De Blasio after he noted that he has spoken with his own son, who is black, about his personal risk when interacting with police.

But however convenient for the media to paint the conflict as either/or; as pro-police or pro-community, it doesn’t have to be this way. And great leaders can transcend the bifurcation and find ways to unite and move forward.

My pick for the best leadership and leadership communication moment in 2014 is Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson. I’ve taught his case in several graduate business and communication courses in the five months since, and each time it brings tears to the students’ eyes. I share it here.

Ferguson

Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri on Saturday, August 9. The police mishandled the investigation and aftermath, and by midweek the St. Louis county and other local police forces mishandled the protests that erupted. The US and national media descended on the scene, broadcasting live from the streets.

The police over-reaction included paramilitary police in military gear riding on an armored vehicle, with a sniper aiming his rifle at protesters. It included tear-gassing of the crowds and of journalists, and intimidating journalists and other observers. The scene was reminiscent of a war zone, and covered that way in the national and international press.

By late week, Missouri governor Jay Nixon took control of the situation, and named the Missouri Highway Patrol as the agency responsible for crowd control. He appointed State Patrol Captain Ron Johnson the commander on the scene.

Johnson, who is black and who grew up and still lives in the Ferguson area, immediately reframed his role: it was not to protect Ferguson from the protestors, but to protect the protestors’ right to peaceably assemble.

The Transforming Moment

But the great moment in leadership came the Sunday eight days after Michael Brown’s shooting, and four days after the tear-gassing in the streets. It was at a church, at a rally in support of the Brown family. Capt. Johnson arrived wearing his state trooper uniform. There was palpable tension in the large crowd as he took the pulpit. But he began in an unexpected way:

“I want to start off by talking to Mike Brown’s family. And I want you to know my heart goes out to you. And I say that I’m sorry. I wear this uniform. And I should stand up here and say that I’m sorry.”

It was a remarkable moment. And the crowd was not expecting it. There was initial silence, then applause, which lasted for more than thirty seconds; the final fifteen of which included cheers.

In that moment Johnson transformed the situation. He connected with the community; he opened a valve that allowed pent-up emotions to be released, in a positive and constructive way. He spoke first to the people most directly affected, the Brown family. He expressed sympathy for their loss, and then said he’s sorry. He repeated it in the frame of his uniform. Their experience of the police, from the shooting of their son to the mishandling of the crime scene to the bungling of the protests, was one of indifference and of confrontation. Here was a police leader moving past those experiences and connecting at a human level.

And there was significance in his phrase: “I wear this uniform. And I should stand up here and say that I’m sorry.” He was the first law enforcement officer to say so.

Having established an institutional leadership role, he then connected more personally, and made a personal commitment.

“This is my neighborhood. You are my family. You are my friends. And I am you. And I will stand and protect you. I will protect your right to protest.” (More cheers.) I’m telling you right now I’m full right now. I came in here today and I saw people cheering and people clapping, and this is what people need to put on TV.” (More cheers and applause.)

He then told his own story.

“When this is over, I’m going to in my son’s room. My black son. Who wears his pants sagging; wears his hat cocked to his side; has tattoos on his arms. But that’s my baby.”

Then he moved from the personal to the public:

“Let’s continue to show this nation who we are; continue to show this country who we are; for when these days are over Mike Brown’s family is still weeping, and they’re still praying…

He closed by connecting, promising, and rallying:

“I love you. I stand tall with you. And I’ll see you out there.”

A police officer told the community that he loves them. Remarkable.

Watch the six minute talk here:

Leadership Best Practices

Capt. Johnson’s six minute talk met many of Logos Institute’s best practices. One is that you can’t move people unless you meet them where they are. Capt. Johnson did that, connecting in his first sentence with the Brown family and throughout with the community, both black and white. He understood the power of framing: “I wear this uniform. And I should stand up here and tell you I’m sorry.”

Our friend and fellow crisis counselor James E. Lukaszewski describes a pattern in crises he calls the Victim Cycle. Early intervention can pre-empt or shorten the victim cycle. In the early phases the victims (both those directly affected and those who empathize) need assistance with their own grief; to hear an expression of regret; to see involvement from the institution in queston; to receive information; and to have their plight recognized. In later phases they also need to receive validation of their suffering; get honest communication from the organization; to hear an apology from the top of the organization; to experience direct communication; and receive compassion. Capt. Johnson delivered all of those in his remarks.

And the Logos Institute best practices decision criteria were also met. The defining question in determining what to do or say is:

What would reasonable members of the stakeholder group appropriately expect

a responsible organization or leader to do when facing a situation like this?

And in the case of the Ferguson community, when Capt. Johnson addressed them, the reasonable expectations of a responsible leader would be to connect, express sympathy and regret, and to honestly declare his values, commitments, and next steps. Capt. Johnson did.

In many ways he was the leader best suited to do so.

Time magazine quotes St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson, who knows Captain Johnson from working on large events such as a presidential motorcade:

“He’s a quiet guy, but he is professional. When he speaks, people listen. When he acts, people respond to it. He’s familiar with the area, he comes from the area, and he connects with the community.”

Time quotes his former boss, Patrol Superintendent Colonel Roger Stottlemyer, who promoted Johnson to captain in 2012:

“I think he’s a calming influence on people. I think he knows the people there, he knows what their concerns are, he can relate to them having come from that community.” …Stottlemyer said that at the time Johnson was rising in the ranks, there were fewer than 100 officers of color in a force of 1,200 officers. “He was a star, and it was obvious from the beginning.” Stottlemyer said he promoted Johnson to Captain partly because he was impressed with his leadership style. “I observed when he was a corporal and a sergeant, the way he handled his men and the way he handled issues that comes up,” he said. “He communicates well with his people. He was an officer that you didn’t have complaints about.”

Unfinished Business

The national debate set off by the Ferguson killing and aftermath is bigger than any one local community and any one law enforcement officer. And however effective a leader Captain Johnson may be, the national controversy is large and getting larger, and many other players are now involved. The media continues to portray the issue as either/or; as police v. community/community v. police.

But in all the controversy, it is reassuring to see real leadership in action, even in a small community, that transforms a situation and brings people together. For his courage, his compassion, his authenticity, and his effective leadership, I am pleased to pick Capt. Johnson’s remarks on August 17 as the leadership and leadership communication moment of the year.

Your thoughts welcomed.

Fred

December 31, 2014/by Helio Fred Garcia

Changing Narratives in Oil Conflict Regions: Guest Blog by Claudia Espinel

Best Practices, Blog, Communication, Corporate Responsibility, Crisis Communication, Framing, International Affairs, Power of Communication, Reputation, Trust, Uncategorized, Worth Reading

Helio Fred Garcia | Bio | Posts
5 Nov 2014 | 3:07PM

This is my third in a series of guest blogs featuring my recently-graduated capstone (thesis) advisees in New York University’s Master’s in Public Relations and Corporate Communication.

(See my earlier posts: On Wall Street, Reputation, and Recovery: Guest Blog by Julia Sahin here; A Model Apology by Iris Wenting Xue here.)

Today I share the post with Claudia Espinel, whose thesis focused on a challenging topic: ways to reduce violence in regions with conflict caused by the extraction of oil. Her full capstone, A Discourse Analysis of Major Players in Regions with Oil Conflict: The Case of the Niger Delta, can be found here.

Claudia Espinel

During the last five years, Claudia has worked for both national and international NGOs, using communication to promote social change.

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By using the Niger Delta conflict as case study, Claudia analyzes the written documents of oil companies, the government, and the community involved in the conflict. Even though violence in this region has its roots in ethnic issues, the arrival of the oil industry enhanced the existing violence. Political, economic, environmental, and social factors have created an environment in which there is friction between the oil companies, the government, and the community. They have built a relationship characterized by lack of trust, respect, and tolerance.

Claudia argues that communication practitioners can help build sustainable peace by creating initiatives to change the dynamic of the relation of players of the Niger Delta conflict. Although it is difficult to create a common communication strategy for different cultures, regions dealing with oil conflicts share characteristics that make this capstone useful for similar conflicts across the world.

Changing Narratives in Regions Dealing with Oil Conflict

by Claudia Espinel

When the oil industry drilled the first oil well in 1958 in the Niger Delta, Nigeria became one of the strongest economies in Africa while the Niger Delta remained as one of the poorest regions in Nigeria.

Nigeria Flag

Even though underdevelopment in this region is rooted in ethnic conflict since before Nigeria’s independence from England in 1960, the arrival of the oil industry worsened the already fragile situation of the Niger Delta. Since then, oil companies, host communities, and the government have built a narrative of blame, hate, accusations, and stereotypes that sustain a culture in which violence is understood as the only way to survive.

This long-standing violent conflict is a classic example of the “the oil curse”—the theory that oil wealth engenders violence and slow economic growth in countries with weak governments, under-developed oil regions, and petroleum dependent economies. Key players in oil conflicts—such as oil companies, the government, and communities—use narratives that support the use of violence as a protective tool, increasingly making it impossible for people to see others as anything different than enemies.

In order to transform oil conflicts, it is necessary to create a disruption in the dominant narrative people create to understand and frame them. Communication plans should focus on changing the relationship between the parties on each side of the conflict by promoting a narrative of respect, trust, and tolerance. In order for this to happen the following strategies should be put in place:

Build a unified community voice: If the local community wants to have a seat at the table where decisions are made, they need to have a clear agenda and someone to lead it. Elders, community leaders, and grassroots organizations need to build a leadership structure that facilitates the process of decision-making within the community and develop skills to transform conflicts using non-violent means.
Promote reconciliation: Rebuilding the relationship among players of oil conflicts requires an environment in which justice is possible and people have the opportunity to heal past injustices. In this way, they can focus on building a future instead of focusing on the past grievances.
Address the root of the conflict instead of focusing on interventions to tackle the symptoms: Addressing only the symptoms of the conflict such as oil looting and militant groups has not brought peace to the Niger Delta. It has only momentarily decreased violence. As people begin to demand jobs, better healthcare systems, and prevention of environmental degradation, they also begin to feel betrayed by the government and the oil companies, which seem to bring palliative solutions, instead of action to promote the long-term survival of the local community.
Place accountability and transparency at the heart of every communication: Ensure congruence between discourse and actions. In order to build constructive relationships in which cooperation is possible, it is necessary to promote trust among oil companies, the government, and the local community. It requires fighting against corruption and a strict policy of accountability and transparency in every project that operates in the region. For instance, oil spills may happen, however, if the community knows what the oil companies are doing to prevent them and mitigate the subsequent impact of them, communities will be more likely to engage in campaigns to stop oil theft and inform the authorities about oil spill.
Establish a mechanism to promote two-way communication with host communities: The government and the oil companies need to be aware of local traditions, use communication channels that are familiar to the host community, work with community leaders, and respect traditional political structures. Communities need to be informed in a timely manner to any major development and must have the opportunity to present their opinions.
Build partnerships: Blaming and emphasizing the other party’s responsibilities does not help to reduce violence. Nor does prioritizing the relationship between oil companies, the government, and elites while disregarding the importance of building partnership with the local community. Rather, it is vital to create projects and promote dialogue in which those involved in the conflict cooperate towards a common goal.

These recommendations are aimed at achieving peaceful relations in regions facing oil conflict.

However, there is more that needs to be done to promote a narrative of non-violence in countries dealing with this issue. Please share your thoughts on how to use communication to build a culture of peace in those places where oil or other natural resources have become a source of violence.

—

Claudia’s continues to investigate and develop communication strategies that build peace, and to create initiatives to motivate people to use non-violent means of transforming conflicts.

You can follow Claudia on Twitter at @claudiaespinel. You can reach her directly at [email protected].

—

In future posts I’ll share the work of other recent NYU MS in Public Relations and Corporate Communication graduates. Stay tuned…

You can subscribe to receive Logos’ blog posts automatically by registering here.

November 5, 2014/by Helio Fred Garcia

Adventures in Time: Technology, Expectations, and the Nature of Work

Blog, Communication, Framing, Power of Communication, Social Media, Uncategorized

Helio Fred Garcia | Bio | Posts
2 Sep 2014 | 11:55AM

What’s on your business card? Twenty years ago this month I was staffing a client investor meeting when an analyst handed me a business card that baffled me. I took it to my client, a very experienced and sophisticated investor relations head of a major bank. She stared at it and said, “How strange. Why would anyone want to put their email address on a business card?”

1994: What is the Internet, Anyway?

That same year, the cast of the Today show, in an unscripted moment, tried to make sense of email address protocols.

Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric couldn’t figure out what “@” meant. Gumbel called it “that little mark, the a with a ring around it.” Couric thought it meant About. They asked their producer, off camera, what the Internet was, anyway. His answer is worth watching.

In the 20 years since, email has gone from being a quaint curiosity to a basic reality of work.

But it wasn’t easy. Fifteen years ago my firm started working with a major financial services company. But one of our key client contacts, responsible for internal communication, wasn’t allowed to email outside the company. Or to access the Internet.

2004: What is a Blog?

And on Meet the Press just 10 years ago the then host, the late Tim Russert, asked the now incoming host, Chuck Todd, then the top editor at the political newsletter The Hotline, “What is a blog?”

Todd answered by referring to then presidential candidate Howard Dean’s blog as “essentially a digital bulletin board.” Russert then recast the definition for the audience’s benefit: a “Cyber Bulletin Board.”

2014: Business Cards

Over this Labor Day weekend I’ve been thinking about that pioneering analyst with email on her business card. That’s because my firm is now ordering new business cards, and grappling with the questions of what to put on the card:

Cell phone number?
Skype handle?
Twitter handle?
Blog site?
Website?
Fax number?! (Overheard at the office: “Does anyone use faxes anymore?”)
Titles? Do work titles matter?

And in my case, since I’ll be heading to China soon, and have already planned to have a Chinese translation of my business card, the questions include: Do I put my Twitter handle? My Weibo handle? Both? Neither?

Fulfilling and Managing Expectations

In the case of my business card, the criteria I’m trying to use are these: What would those who receive my card expect to find there? And beyond that, what do I want them to find?

These criteria track the decision-making criteria we at Logos teach our clients and students on how to make choices in a crisis: What would reasonable people appropriately expect? And how do we shape those expectations?

Those criteria seem to work quite well here: Twenty years ago, most people did not expect to find an email address on a business card. Now it’s completely expected. The jury seems still to be out on blogs and Twitter; it’s more of a personal choice, or a set of expectations of the individual business card owner.

But the question of business cards is a relatively trivial microcosm of a much larger phenomenon. A recent surge in connectivity has changed expectations of when one is on the job and how to connect with colleagues.

“…and then the Internet happened and everything changed.”

It seems almost trite these days to note that the Internet changed everything. It did.

But I believe along the way there was one other event that took that change and supercharged it. Until just a few years ago, most Internet developments were self-contained: Search engines (Google), online video (YouTube), news, finance, entertainment, email, phones, Skype, etc. And we experienced them one at a time.

Then in June, 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone.

CEO Steve Jobs said that Apple had reinvented the phone. And they had.

But they also, eventually, reinvented our sense of connectivity. On one device we now had a phone, our music, and the Internet. And with the introduction of apps, within a few years suddenly our phones were capable of just about anything. (I once transferred money to my college-student daughter in Boston from the back seat of a taxi in Beijing, using just my phone and two apps — texting and banking. The whole transaction — request to me, transfer, notification to my daughter, took less than 30 seconds. My Chinese colleague was astounded that such a thing was even possible. Come to think of it, so was I.)

Perhaps as significant, Apple provided the ability to link the apps, so that we could seamlessly move from one to another — email to phone to text to calendar etc.) without having to stop and start, or even to understand how it all works.

That made it easy for someone like me — who knows nothing about computers — to use the device as if it’s an organically integrated whole. I don’t know how it works. And I don’t really care. I just care that it works.

If you can spare an hour, it’s worth watching Jobs’ complete introduction to the iPhone, if only to hear the audience reaction to his demonstration of how everything is connected. And to see how only seven years later, we take so much of it for granted.

So suddenly, whether with Apple’s iPhone or their competitors’ recent offerings, we can now access just about the entire Internet on our phone. We carry more computing power in our pockets than the Apollo astronauts took to the moon. And all of this has now changed our sense of what it means to be on the job.

Work is No Longer a Place You Go

And the integration of everything onto devices makes possible a new way of understanding work. Work is no longer a place you go. It’s what you do, wherever you happen to be. (So it’s valid to ask, should I put my street address on my business card? Or will just my email address do? My office land-line phone? Or just my mobile?)

This raises all kinds of work/life balance questions. But it can also be empowering. And the possibilities, just a few years into the future, are exciting.

Which leads back to the question I started musing about this Labor Day weekend. Why would anyone want their email address on their business card?

And I can imagine 20 years from now someone asking this question: Business card? Why would anyone want a business card?

September 2, 2014/by Helio Fred Garcia

What is PR, Really? Please discuss…

Blog, Communication, Framing, Power of Communication, Worth Reading

Helio Fred Garcia | Bio | Posts
5 Aug 2014 | 2:56PM

I started working in public relations in 1980 and started teaching it to graduate students at New York University in 1988. In all that time, the perennial question I’ve heard from clients and students is, What is PR, really… And the emphasis is always on the really.

And as I listened to their proposed answers, and read the books purporting to provide an answer, I came to the conclusion that people’s definitions of PR were like the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

There were six men of Hindustan,
to learning much inclined,
Who went to see an elephant,
though all of them were blind,
That each by observation
might satisfy his mind.

Each grasps just a part of the elephant and assumes the whole animal is like the part. So the man who grabs the tusk thinks the elephant is a spear; the one who grabs the tail thinks it’s a rope; the one who hugs the leg thinks it’s a tree, and so on. And then they argue – each holding to his firm conviction that the elephant is solely what he experienced.

We have this argument even to this very day.

We had it when I started in the field, when high technology meant upgrading from a manual to electric typewriter and from a rotary dial to touch-tone phone. We have it today among faculty members and graduate students in NYU’s M.S. in PR/CorpComm program. And we’ll keep having it well into the future: long after social networking is considered as quaint as my old IBM Selectric.

And now there’s a forum where this discussion can take place, conceived and curated by, among others, my friend and colleague Andy Green. Andy, who is based in Britain, was voted Outstanding PR Practitioner of the Year by members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in 2013. He is the author of seven books translated into eight languages.

And he is part of a team of six senior PR pros from Britain and South Africa who have started an initiative called #PRredefined. It includes a discussion forum that creates a community around this debate. And it starts with a Kindle e-book that is available to students free of charge and to others at a nominal fee.

And I’m delighted to invite my colleagues on this side of the pond — including my graduate students, who themselves come from the all ends of the earth — to engage in this debate.

From the book #PRredefined:

“As public relations practice continues in the 21st century there is a growing sense that it needs better theory to provide a foundation and sustenance for public relations practice. Theory is not something abstract, remote from real-world — dare we say it — ‘academic’.

Having good theoretical underpinnings to what you do provides firm foundations for your day-to-day activity. It enables you to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ quicker to whatever challenge you face. Good theory provides clarity and purpose to your mission.

This ebook is seeking to create new ways forward, new ideas to take the profession forward, to overcome its potential dangers as well as grow with any new opportunities.

Practitioners and academics with concerns and fears for the future of their profession are sharing their thoughts on the challenge of #PRredefined

They seek to act as a catalyst, a touch paper lit to create new momentum for inspiration, insights and ideas.

#PRredefined is not an end product. It is not claiming to provide a definitive answer – although it likes to feel it is proffering an intelligent way forward with some credible concepts to consider as possible solutions. Rather, it is seeking to start a symbiotic debate that can grow and create new thoughts, ideas and ultimately effective PR theory for 21st century practice.”

#PRredefined consists of three elements:

a collection of Forethoughts and Post thoughts articles containing commentaries about the need to redefine public relations and for a new theoretical framework for professional practice

submissions for redefining public relations or adding to its theoretical framework

a call to action inviting you to contribute to a subsequent debate to contribute to the goal of redefining public relations and creating a new theoretical framework

I’m honored to be one of the Forethoughts authors, and to be in the company of my friend and fellow Forethoughts author Christophe Ginisty, 2013 president of the International Public Relations Association.

What is the Essence?

So here’s my contribution to the argument. What I struggle to find is the essence of it all: What is it that all the competing definitions have in common?

The first people to make a living practicing what we would recognize as PR were two Greeks in the fifth Century BC, Corax and Tisias. The man who would eventually be called St. Augustine was a PR person before he found religion; he then brought those skills to his ministry. The person who was the first in the modern era to call himself a “public relations counselor” was Edward L. Bernays. He also became a thought leader, writing the first modern book on PR, Crystalizing Public Opinion, and teaching the first modern course on it, at New York University, both in 1923. What do they all have in common, with each other and with PR as it’s practiced in the second decade of the 21^st Century?

Bernays noted in 1923 that it’s hard for PR people to define what they do:

“Indeed, it is probably true that the very [people] who are themselves engaged in the profession are as little ready or able to define their work as the general public itself. Undoubtedly, this is due, in some measure, to the fact that the profession is a new one. Much more important than that, however, is the fact that most human activities are based on experience rather than on analysis.”[i]

Redefining PR

This is a discussion worth having. And every generation needs to have it, if for no other reason than to move past the particulars of their own experience and into the higher vantage point of analysis. And to understand both the relevance and the power of the profession. That is the point of #PRredefined. It is an important contribution to the discussion. (And, as co-author Andy Green notes, in implicit agreement with Bernays, the discussion has to be outside of the bubble of the day-to-day practice of PR.)

I agree with the #PRredefined authors that PR needs to be redefined, or it will die. Actually, it isn’t that PR needs a new definition. Rather, we need a new understanding. I believe the definition has been here all along. But we have lost sight of it as we’ve become infatuated with new technologies and with the quickening pace of change.

We need to move from the particular (tusk, tail, leg) to the elephant as a whole. Yes, we need to understand the particulars. But we need also to understand that the whole is more than the individual parts, or even the sum of the parts. Not all elephants have tusks. That doesn’t make them less of an elephant. Not all images of elephants show the tail. But we still recognize the elephant when we see it.

The Essence

So what I grapple with is this: what is the essence of PR? What do our clients most value? What description is as valid in an oral society and in the age of social networking? What definition applies equally to those who work with tree-based media (paper) and those who work with electron-based media?

I believe the answer is also found in Bernays’ 1923 book:

“The public relations counsel is the pleader to the public of a point of view. He acts in this capacity as a consultant both in interpreting the public to his client and in helping to interpret his client to the public. He helps to mold the action of his client as well as to mold public opinion.”[ii]

Applied Anthropology

For more than 25 years, to my clients, with my students, and in my books, I’ve described it this way: When we do our best work we function as an applied anthropologist. Like an anthropologist, we do active fieldwork to understand a group’s social and power structure, values, predispositions, and behavioral triggers. These days we can figure this out to a very granular level. We then make predictions based on these insights, helping clients understand how any given group is likely to react to any given stimulus. The applied part is then to organize activity to provoke the reaction we want, and then to be in active relationship with our stakeholders, in continuous and mutual adaptation with each other.

And when we do it well, we do it by connecting with people, authentically, honestly, but effectively. We can’t move people unless we meet them where they are. And then we invite them to move with us. This raises a host of ethical questions.

And again we find answers in Bernays:

“The advocacy of what we believe in is education. The advocacy of what we don’t believe in is propaganda. Each of these nouns carries with it social and moral implications. Education is valuable, commendable, enlightening, instructive. Propaganda is insidious, dishonest, underhanded, misleading.”[iii]

I welcome being part of the discussion here prompted by Andy and his coauthors.

Paradoxically, I believe we find the future of PR by returning to our core, as articulated 90 years ago (but so often forgotten in the day-to-day bump and grind of our work).

Everything old is new again.

Your contributions to the debate are welcomed.

Onward…

…….

The authors of #PRredefined are:

“Andy Green was voted ‘Outstanding PR Practitioner of the Year’ by CIPR members in 2013. He enjoys a portfolio career as a PR consultant, university lecturer, brand story-teller and creative thinking skills trainer. His published work is translated into eight languages includes ‘Creativity in Public Relations’ (4th edition Kogan Page 2010) and ‘Tubespiration! (Tangent Books 2013)

Professor Anne Gregory is Director of the Centre for Public Relations Studies at Leeds Business School and Chair of the Global Alliance, the worldwide confederation of public relations professional associations. Anne has written and edited over 70 books, book chapters and articles and holds the CIPR Sir Stephen Tallents Medal for her Outstanding Contribution to the Profession.

Philip Sheldrake is Managing Partner, Euler Partners. He is the author of The Business of Influence: Reframing Marketing and PR for the Digital Age (Wiley, 2011), and Attenzi – a social business story (2013).

Chris Skinner, APR and Fellow of the Public Relations Institute of Southern Africa (PRISA) is a research associate at the Durban University of Technology and a senior consultant with the East and Southern African Management Institute (ESAMI). He is a leading researcher and writer in the public relations field in Africa and[…]”

Stephen Waddington is European Digital & Social Media Director, Ketchum and President-Elect 2014 of the CIPR. His published work includes Brand Anarchy (Bloomsbury, 2012), Share This (Wiley 2013), Share This Too (Wiley 2013) and Brand Vandals (Bloomsbury, 2013).

Paul Willis is Director of the Centre for Public Relations Studies at Leeds Business School. He is the co-author of Strategic Public Relations Leadership (Routledge, 2013) and a contributing author to Exploring Public Relations (3rd edition, Prentice Hall). His research can also found in the PR field’s leading academic journals.”

Excerpt From: Andy Green. “#PRredefined.” iBooks.

[i] Edward L. Bernays, Crystalizing Public Opinion, Boni & Liveright, 1923, p. 13.

[ii] Bernays, ibid., p. 59.

[iii] Bernays, ibid, p. 212.

August 5, 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

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

CommPro.biz Excerpt of The Power of Communication

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

CommPro.biz excerpted Chapter 2 of the Power of Communication, focusing on the need to take audiences seriously:

Will We See a Netflix Summer Sequel? How Brands Can Rebuild Trust and Inspire Loyalty

Posted on May 21, 2012 in Crisis Communications, Public Relations

By Helio Fred Garcia, Author, The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively

Let’s hope Netflix doesn’t see a summer sequel this year. While it was easy to critique the company during its Qwikster fiasco a year ago, it’s looking like a third of its new customers are actually returning customers who were angered and disgusted.

Forgive and forget? Maybe for Netflix’ subscribers—but its shareholders aren’t yet hopping on the bandwagon, according to Daily Finance and other media sources. There’s a reason for that—and a lesson for all other companies.

Let’s dig into it here: Read more

May 22, 2012/by Helio Fred Garcia