Category Archives: Think Tank
Crisis Management Always Causes a Management Crisis
One day last week the New York Times suddenly discovered that officials in Japan have seriously underestimated the extent of the damage, casualties and scope of their disaster. Meanwhile, CNN, keeping that infernal yellow blinking BREAKING NEWS sign (it should say BROKEN NEWS) – which means they are about to say something for the 50th time that day using video that is 48 to 100 hours old. This time, CNN reports that Japanese authorities have seriously underestimated the scope, depth and potential of their nuclear crisis situation. Other media outlets pick up and reflect the refrain. The bloviators start grinding, pumping and carping.
Where’s the “surprise,” anyway? This always happens, in every crisis.
Shouldn’t we all know by now that crisis management means that management is in crisis?
According to the Times reports which became world wide stories, Japanese authorities were reluctant to act for fear of damaging their expensive nuclear equipment and causing wider harm than had already occurred. In fact, this is how almost all corporate crisis responses begin. Anyone Remember BP? TOYOTA? The Banking Crisis? The Home Loan Crisis? The Stock Market Collapse? The Credit Card Crunch? ENRON? Read more »
Acronyms, Abbreviations and Accolades
The weekend of January 22, I began a three-year term on the Universal Accreditation Board (UAB), which is comprised of nine public relations associations and administrates the APR (accredited public relations) examination.
I didn’t accept this opportunity without a fair understanding about what I was signing up for; therefore, I’m pleased to share that amid the overwhelming amount of acronyms and abbreviations – is any organization without its own jargon (even communicators who shun insider’s speak?) – I have reason for enthusiasm. Read more »
You’ve got a seat at the table – how do you keep it?
Advice for how PR Execs can land a seat at the proveribal table in corporate America is common, and those that have won a seat should count themselves among the lucky. But once you’ve made it, how do you continue to prove your worth? Jim Lukaszewski, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, CCEP, shared a few tips in a PR News article on catching - and keeping - the C-suite’s attention that I thought were worth sharing.
After you get done reading his advice, are there any pointers you would add? Please share!
”At a recent meeting I attended where CEOs were presenting their management strategies for the coming decade, one CEO made a particularly candid observation. She said, “What I need from those around me are ideas that can make money, keep money, or save money…otherwise they’re wasting my time.”
The question for the communicator is, “Where does what I do fit into the spectrum of finding, keeping, or saving revenue?”
Management’s expectations of us:
- Valuable, useful, applicable advice beyond what they already know
- Well-timed, truly significant insights (the ability to distill wisdom and useful conclusions from contrasting – even seemingly unrelated – information and facts)
- Advance warning plus options for solving, or at least managing trouble or opportunity, and the unintended consequences both often bring
- Information and intelligence about what’s going to happen (something the news media can never provide since news is always about yesterday)
- Supporting evidence, usually through behavior of their peers
- Your instincts and gut feelings, the real lessons of your experience
If you want the attention of those who run the business or organization, and who are almost totally operationally focused, learn to speak their language and make recommendations within their frame of reference. PR vocabulary, techniques, and approaches are well known to management. Use them and you’re wasting top management’s time. My advice: learn to talk like a manager, act like a manager, and focus on the management context of issues. This is the way you make, keep, or save money. Believe me, start doing this and you’ll be invited back to meetings time and again for your advice. ”
Come visit us at DuetsBlog
Guest blogging today on the DuetsBlog! Check out Rose McKinney’s post for a look into social media within regulated industries.
Social Media Doesn’t Work for B2B
How many times have you heard this? Social media is agnostic. It doesn’t care if you are B2B, B2C or C2C. Conversations and engagement are not specific to industry whether business or consumer.
Some tips to get started with your Business to Business social media initiative include:
Five Killer Mistakes
Recently, I read an article in the Star Tribune entitled “Start-ups Must Be Set Up to Succeed” (October 24, 2010) which explored the need for planning and due diligence IN ADDITION to a good idea.
A sidebar to the article was a list of errors small-business owners need to avoid outlined by Neil Anderson founder of the Courage Group, a business consulting firm in Richfield (www.thecouragegroup.com).
What struck me is that these mistakes cut across business and organization types. And in fact, the remidies for these mistakes are things that you apply to your personal brand or “anything” you set yourself to accomplish.
It is a piece that I’ve shared with a start-up nonprofit I work with as well as my students at the University of Minnesota. Whether driving sales, creating a company/nonprofit or seeking your first job out of college, this is sage advice.
So here the list. Read more »
Research, Measure, Repeat.
Regardless of discipline – marketing, communications, social media, PR – planning always begins with some form of knowledge gathering to inform the process, determine insights and outline the possibilities. Interestingly, the final step also entails knowledge gathering, which of course, loops back into what should be an ongoing process rather than something linear.
At the beginning of the process, this step goes by names such as Research, Reconnaissance, Situation Analysis, Listening, or Discovery. It can be formal or informal, qualitative or quantitative, primary or secondary, but it has to take place in order to establish objectives and measure results. At the end of the process, the step is often called Evaluation, Measurement, or Feedback and Adjustment (if the program is to continue).
In a recent Highlighter post, we explored the idea of measuring what counts rather than just counting what can be counted. In addition to the continued efforts by Katie Paine, who serves as an industry advocate on measurement and evaluation, the RMPR Results that Matter philosophy is supported by several other thought leaders and the industry is coming to the first global agreement we have seen on how to measure public relations and organizational communications. Read more »
Millennials – “Actually, it’s not just about me”
A couple of weeks ago, my RMPR colleague Laura W wrote this post on Millennials and the bad rap this age group gets, and argued that birth year alone does not a lazy, self-centered employee make. Specifically, she said, “As a Millennial, I do appreciate organizations trying to figure me out and cater to my needs, but it’s unfair for them to take the entirety of generation-Y and classify us all based on a few extreme Millennials.”
The Millennial (or Gen Y) demographic HAS gotten a lot of attention over the last year or so – but if we fail to look beyond the generation itself, we aren’t looking at the whole picture. Read more »
Millennials — Give Us A Little More Credit Please!
Everywhere I look, books, news headlines, tweets, blog posts, and news feeds are offering advice on how to manage Millennials, like me. (Born in 1986 and proud of it!) Just typing in “Millennials” on any search engine reveals what seems to be the workforces’ burning question today: “How in the world do we work with and manage these guys?”
“Seven Secrets to Working with Millennials,” “The ‘Millennials’ Are Coming,” “Managing Millennials: Eleven Tips,” “Understanding and Working With THE MILLENNIALS.” Sheesh, by judging these headlines, we Millennials sound like we’re pretty tough to handle! But can you really classify us all like that? Read more »
BP’s Crisis Response: Analysis from the Experts
BP and its leaders have been the subject of intense scrutiny since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Rose McKinney, APR, and other public relations experts analyze BP’s crisis response in the August 2010 issue of PRSA Quarterly. In the article, Rose points out that BP should have used its subject matter experts more frequently in media interviews instead of CEO Tony Hayward and offers her thoughts on the role of federal government in a crisis.