THE PARADOX OF CHOICE; How too many choices make us unhappy

Understanding how your choice is being influenced and how to choose wisely.
Ishola Ayodele

A popular presenter while discussing   about her choice of an idea husband for her on a popular TV show in Nigeria said, she wanted a man who is tall, handsome and dark skinned but she ended up marrying a light skinned man. Will this have any effect in her life?

Prof. William Glasser in his powerful book *Choice Theory*  postulated that "unhappiness results from making misguided choices".
He believed that by making better choices, we can maintain better relationships which will help us to lead a more fulfilled lives

*Why do we choose?*

From what we have all learnt in Economics, human wants are unlimited and the means to satisfy them are limited or scarce. Consequently we have to choose.

But the real question is.

*Do we really choose by  ourselves or others choose for us?*

Almost 99.9% of us will say YES.

Research in the field of cognitive science, neuroscience, social psychology and even Marketing have all proven that majority of people do not choose by themselves but are influenced to choose.

Why do you think advertisers bombard us with so much adverts on radio,TV, posters, Internet even on our phones.

Professor Barry in his very insightful and research based book *"The Paradox of choice"* identified three important factors.

1. Many people's choice is based on the perception of other people.

That is sometimes we make our choice because of how it will make people think about us.
For Instance
A shirt that could sell for N1500 in other markets maybe sold for N3500 in a boutique.

Some people find it difficult to marry someone who is lower in social status compared to them even when they acknowledged that the person is nice and responsible because of what their rich friends will say or think about them.


2. The ideal choice syndrome.

Many people are always looking for the perfect choice. The perfect house, job, car even the perfect man/lady. Prof. Barry described these people as the *Miximiser.*

He advised people to be a *satisficer*, not a maximizer.

Maximizing is worse than perfectionism
because perfectionists are striving to
become better whereas maximizers are always seeking the best and can never
obtain it.

They are always comparing themselves with others. And  Comparisons detract from satisfaction, especially social comparisons. We see some aspect of something that is better for someone else and it reduces our happiness with what we have.

“Satisficers” are those who settle for a
choice that is “good enough” for them
These people are generally happier with
their choice, and spend less time choosing, leaving them free to enjoy other things.


3.  Choice involves loss.

For everything we choose we lose the opportunity of experiencing another thing. What the economists called "forgone alternative".

And that is why the people who always want to choose the ideal spouse or thing are usually never really happy with their choice. They will always feel a sense of regret whenever they see someone choose something better than what they have chosen.

For instance
A miximiser man who want a tall beautiful and fair ladies but end up with a beautiful dark lady who is not so tall because she has the best character among all the ladies he has met. May always feel unhappy whenever he sees a friend marry a tall beautiful fair lady.

Let me add this

4. Cognitive Bias

This is the way an option is presented. Research has proven that this has an unquenchable impact on how or what we think, choose or do. As a communicator this is a very powerful tool to master. (I will discuss this later)

No wonder Prof. Sheena Iyengar, (the inaugural S.T. Lee Professor of Business in the Management Division at Columbia Business School) in her wonderful book 'The Art of Choice' wrote *"Choice is more than picking 'x' over 'y.' It is a responsibility to separate the meaningful and the uplifting from the trivial and the disheartening. It is the only tool we have that enables us to go from who we are today to who we want to be tomorrow".*

Here are some suggestions from my research on how to make us choose better.

1 - Choose when to choose. Make rules
and pre-decide where appropriate.

2 - Be a chooser/satisficer not a picker/maximizer.
Pickers pick from options, choosers evaluate
needs.

3 - Try to be satisfied and contented more than being a maximizer. The ideal situation or person doesn't exist. Our happiness comes from loving what we have.

4 - Think of the opportunity costs. Don't compare too many options.
Too many information will end up confusing you.

A neuroscientist Dr. David Levitin described it as *'information overload'* in his book *'The organized mind'*.

5 - Make decisions non-reversible.
When we think there is an option to back out, it stays on our mind.

6 - Have an attitude of gratitude.
Make a list of 5 things you are  thankful to God for every night.

7 - Regret less. Remember that the goodness in what you have may not be in what others have.

8 - Anticipate adaptation.
Think of how good things are right now and  work towards making it better.

9 - Control expectations.
Don't expect too much from you choice be it spouse or other things.

10 - Curtail social comparison.
Think of what makes you happy right now. Don't compare your husband or wife or possession to others. Just focus on making life more meaningful and enjoyable for you and your family.

11 - Learn to love constraints.
Work inside of them. They will strengthen you with the right lessons you need to make better choices in future.

12. Make decisions in the morning after meal .

In the paper "Extraneous factors in judicial decisions ", three researchers (Danzinger, Levav and Avnaim-Pesso, 2010) analyzed the outcomes of more than 1,000 parole judgments in an Israeli court and found more than half of judgments being made favorably in the morning, yet by the end of the session, the rate of favorable judgments reduced drastically.
This reduced ability to make consistent decisions after decision is known as 'decision fatigue'.

Intriguingly, the researchers found that once the judges took a meal break, the favorable decision rate returned practically back to normal.

Another Psychologist Roy Baumeister may have found a cause for this when he identified a link between our blood glucose levels and our ego levels, which are depleted when we are made to make decisions repeatedly.
Consequently, some expert we make our decision to choose around 11am when our blood glucose is still high.


Please share your thoughts with me by clicking on the post a comment box below.

Ishola Ayodele is a Public Relations practitioner and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.
He offers the following services to Large Corporations, SMEs and Individuals.
Result Oriented Communication,
Effective Crisis Communication,
Effectual Political Communication,
Reputation and Image management,
And Impactful Presentation Coaching.
He can be reached on
BBM 58ED6030,
twitter @ishopr and via
Email: impactfulcommunications@gmail.com

THE TORCH OF FREEDOM; Invoking The Desired Actions

It is not what you say but how you say it. 
Ishola Ayodele (ANIPR)

 William J. Brennan, Jr. once said, "We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time".

Before 1928 only a handful of women smoke cigarette mostly in secret. In 1904 a woman named Jennie Lasher was sentenced to thirty days for smoking in front of her children.

In 1928 George Washington Hill, the president of the American Tobacco Company, realized the potential market that could be found in women and said, ““It will be like opening a gold mine right in our front yard.”

Hill hired, Edward Bernays to encourage women to smoke in public despite social taboos. Bernays consulted psychoanalyst A. A. Brill whose research shows that the natural desire for  women to smoke is being repressed by social taboos which he termed "The torch of freedom".

Bernays hire a group of elegant women for an  Easter Sunday Parade in 1929. He told journalists before the parade that the women were going to light *"Torches of Freedom"*. In front of thousands of New Yorkers all the elegant women light up their cigarettes and smoked.

       The Results

1) Media Attention
This *Torches of Freedom* got a huge media attention and generated lots of discussions and debates in different quarters and it was instrumental to breaking the social taboo of women smoking in public.

2) In 1923 women only purchased 5% of cigarettes sold,

But after the this parade in 1929 it  increased to 12%, 18.1% in 1935 and this percentage peaked in 1965 at 33.3%.

*The Lesson*

This is a clear indication of the power of framing.

Edward Bernays who is regarded as the father of Public Relations masterfully framed something considered immoral, indecent and socially unacceptable ideology and framed it as a desire for freedom.

*Framing* is a way of presenting an idea to the audience in such a way that you influence how they understand or evaluate it.

*Framing effects*
framing effects refer to behavioral or attitudinal strategies and/or outcomes that are due to how a given piece of information is being framed in public discourse.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman explored how different phrasing affected participants' responses to a choice in a hypothetical life and death situation in 1981.

Treatment A (Positive)
 "Saves 200 lives"

Treatment B (Negative)
"400 people will die"

 Treatment A was chosen by 72% of participants when it was presented with positive framing ("saves 200 lives") dropping to only 22% when the same choice was presented with negative framing ("400 people will die").

In Other research

1) 93% of PhD students registered early when a penalty fee for late registration was emphasized, with only 67% doing so when this was presented as a discount for earlier registration.

2) 62% of people disagreed with allowing "public condemnation of democracy", but only 46% of people agreed that it was right to "forbid public condemnation of democracy".

3) they are more likely to enjoy meat labeled 75% lean meat as opposed to 25% fat,

4) or use condoms advertised as being 95% effective as opposed to having a 5% risk of failure.

*Principles of effective framing*
According to communication experts three things are essential for effective framing.

1) *Placement*

 Effective communication is achieved by connecting with the right people at the right time and with the right message.

 That’s why  communicators must research their target audience to figure out how to send relevant messages that will resonate with them.
This is what PR guru, Prof. Fred Garcia described in his book *the  power of communication* as meeting the audience where they are. 

So the task for PR practitioners is how to meet the audience where they are physically, psychologically, geographically and most importantly emotionally.

Oreo Milk Chocolate cookies got their  placement right with its Ad
*Power Out? No Problem* tweet at the 2012 Super Bowl, when the lights went out and the game stopped for 20 minutes — and 62,000 people were engaged by a tiny message about a cookie.


2) *Approach*

Communicators basically use three ways to present information; messages are presented using
a. Gain or Loss

b. Anchor effect

c. Bandwagon effect

Recently, a 2004 study conducted by Stanford University political science professors asked respondents if they support or oppose allowing an extremist group to hold a rally. When framed in terms of *freedom of expression*, the majority supported the group’s rights;
And when it was framed in terms of *risk of violence*, the majority opposed permitting the rally. Again, data shows that communicators can control public perception and decisions by strategically framing the messaging of an issue.

3) *Words*

The choice of words people use can be a clue to understanding their viewpoint. Words are powerful, they can invoke *actions* or *reactions*.  September 11 may be just a date to  you but it means more to a person who lost a father during the September 11 terrorist's attack in US.

President Obama's use of *Stupid* to describe the Cambridge Police department.

Rather than saying, Nigeria came 16th in the Paraolympics. We say, *Nigeria was among the top 20 teams in Paraolympics.

Being 5th in the class can be made better framing it as *being among the 5 best students in the class*

The Elements of a frame 

Credible messenger 
People listen to knowledgeable and trustworthy messengers. While it’s nice to have likable or familiar messengers, credibility is most important. For example, the public will likely believe a medical doctor when the issue is about health care.

Numbers in context.
Facts alone aren’t compelling. Unless numbers tell a story, they won’t mean anything to your audience. Most people need cues. They can’t judge the size or meaning of numbers unless they’re related to something more familiar. For example, the population of Lagos State is about 20million will not invoke the same thinking as saying the population of Lagos State is 10 times that of Jamaica. The sun’s radius is 432,450 miles, may be more interesting if you frame it like this, “you could line up 109 Earths across the face of the sun”.

Showing how things connect.
Draw clear and concrete connections between a problem and its cause. People are more engaged and supportive when they understand the causes of, and solutions to, a problem. They get “compassion fatigue” when they only hear about suffering (symptoms) or about the reasons they should care (worthiness).

Ted Cruz, the U.S Senator understood the power of framing so well that he observed that, "In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative". 

Please share your thoughts with me by clicking on the post a comment box below.

Ishola Ayodele is a Public Relations practitioner and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.
He offers the following services to Large Corporations, SMEs and Individuals.
Result Oriented Communication,
Effective Crisis Communication,
Effectual Political Communication,
Reputation and Image management,
And Impactful Presentation Coaching.
He can be reached on
BBM 58ED6030,
twitter @ishopr and via
Email: impactfulcommunications@gmail.com

The Commandments Of Damage Control

When Crisis Strikes, Your Next Step
Ishola Ayodele

On April 20, 2010, in the Macondo Prospect oil field about 40 miles (60 km) southeast of the Louisiana coast where the *British Petroleum* *BP* hired Transocean to drill for oil on it behalf an explosion occurred.

The explosion killed 11 workers and injured 17 others. The explosion caused the Deepwater Horizon to burn and sink. The same blowout that caused the explosion also caused a massive offshore oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the world, and the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Facing the US Commission of enquiry BP CEO, Tony Hayward blamed Transocean for the accident and Transocean also pointed accusing finger at BP.

BP faced massive criticism that battered their reputation so much that the board of BP had to sack Tony Hayward in less than 3 month after the accident.

Whenever a crisis occur the next thing should be *damage control* not blame game. The people can forgive mistake but they will never forgive irresponsibility.

Here are 5 Commandments of Damage Control

I. *Full Disclosure*

Everything that can come out, will come out. All too often it’s the drip, drip, drip that causes most of the lasting damage because it leads to suspicions and reporter digging around. Observe the 3T rule.
a. Tell it now
b. Tell it all
c. Tell at once.
If you don't use the *The first mover advantage* others will define your crisis for you.

This is why Abraham Lincoln said, " I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts".


II. *Speak to Your Core Audience*

Determine and quickly engage your the key Stakeholders. Ask yourself *what will responsible people expect a responsible individual/organization to do in this circumstances?*


III. *Don’t Feed the Fire*

Keep your calm, don't lose your cool not even in the face of media attack.
It’s human nature to succumb to the pressures of the moment that push you into making the situation worse. Resist that pull.


IV. *Get Ready For the Crash*

Be prepared with  detailed answers to tough questions. The smallest discrepancy can get magnified into the biggest problem.

This is more reason why
a. You should have an effective and comprehensive crisis management plan before hand.
b. You should have a sound media training.
c. Your PR firm must be proactive to have in place *MPSCC* (Media Mapping for Strategic Crisis Communication)


V. *Act Responsibly*

Ensure that you take purposeful actions towards resolving the crisis as most importantly get the right message out about what you are doing. And most importantly you must ensure the audience are actually hearing what you want them to hear and not what they think you said.

Your message must be
a. Clear
b. Coincides
c. Consistent
Throughout the period of the crisis.

Take the advice of Theodore Roosevelt,
"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing"


*My take*

*A crisis can either be a problem or an opportunity*.

*Crisis is inevitable, it is always what you do next that determines whether it becomes a problem or an opportunity*.

 John F. Kennedy observed that When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

Please share your thoughts with me by clicking on the post a comment box below.

Ishola Ayodele is a Public Relations practitioner and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.
He offers the following services to Large Corporations, SMEs and Individuals.
Result Oriented Communication,
Effective Crisis Communication,
Effectual Political Communication,
Reputation and Image management,
And Impactful Presentation Coaching.
He can be reached on
BBM 58ED6030,
twitter @ishopr and via
Email: impactfulcommunications@gmail.com

Priceless Crisis Communication Lessons From 9/11 pt 2

Precious Lessons We Can Learn From Successful Crisis Communication Of Some Companies During The Disaster Of The World Trade Center Terrorist Attack From Paul Agenti.

Previous page 

Stay Focused on the Business
“Everyone wanted to know what they could do in the wake of 9/11,” says Russell Lewis. “At the New York Times Company, no one had to even ask that question. Our mission is to put out the best newspaper we can so that readers can be as informed as possible. Just like a trauma surgeon, this is what we train for. There was no question that our employees felt that their job had meaning. And in the end, the Times received Pulitzer Prizes for its 9/11 reporting.”
A focus on work, in fact, can be enormously helpful to employees in a time of crisis. It provides an outlet for their desire to help, gets them back into a normal routine, fosters their pride in the company and what they do, and builds strong bonds between themselves and their customers, many of whom desperately need the company to keep their products and services flowing.
According to Elizabeth Heller Allen, vice president of corporate communications at Dell, “the key was finding an outlet for our employees’ desire to help.” The urgency of getting some 75 of Dell’s customers at Ground Zero and others in the DC area back in business pulled the staff together. At the same time, the senior leadership knew that only a revitalized staff would be able to deliver on Dell’s strong reputation for customer service. A Dell document stated that the objective of its response plan was “to increase employee understanding of how the September 11 terrorist attacks affected Dell’s customers and business and how Dell would respond.” But, other company documents showed, top management knew that Dell’s employees could assist affected customers only if they had a sense of security themselves.
Dell’s business model, which dispenses with the middleman, puts the firm directly in touch with its thousands of customers. Because of that direct contact, employees know exactly what these customers need and want. “We have complete records of what we’ve sold to every customer, so we knew what they had lost,” said Allen. “While it meant working around the clock to get the computers configured with the correct software, It was our way of giving back.”
Other employees worked those hours to pack and ship systems to the affected customers, who could place orders 24/7. Dell also established service and response teams that customers could reach through dedicated phone lines and the company’s Web site, which gave instructions for obtaining immediate assistance.
“Reaching out to employees struggling with shock, grief, and anger with a more family-like tone enabled us to focus those feelings on responding to our customers’ urgent needs. Maintaining that tone with regular updates more firmly than ever linked our customer-experience strategy to our teams’ everyday work,” says Rollins.
Months after 9/11, the company tried to measure how effective these strategies were. It determined that Dell Helping Rebuild America, an internal Web site, received 54,947 hits in its first two months. The site averaged 603 hits per day, and had 11,016 unique visitors during that period, almost a third of the workforce. In addition, the company asked for feedback from employees and found that 90% thought that Web casts from the CEO and COO during the crisis were helpful and relevant to their jobs and the organization.
Starbucks displayed a similar mixture of head and heart. The chain of coffee shops had a total of 250 branches in New York City’s five boroughs, four of them adjacent to Ground Zero. “A major part of what’s helped us through this was engaging in the relief effort,” Marty Annese, a senior vice president, told a trade publication. The initial “instinctive” response of the company’s crisis management team, according to Chairman Howard Schultz, was to close all company-owned stores in North America so that employees “could return home to be with family and friends,” according to a company statement. Headquarters conveyed this message by voice mail and e-mail to all the stores.
But with the exception of 15 or so stores at the southern end of Manhattan, the New York City branches reopened on September13. Several served food and coffee to rescue workers at Ground Zero, to people at blood donation centers, and to those at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, the command center for volunteer operations during the crisis.
Have a Plan in Place
While many companies have crisis contingency plans and disaster recovery plans in place, few had been tested as rigorously as they were on September 11. As Gregor Bailar, then chief information officer of Nasdaq, commented, “People will have to look very carefully at their backup strategies and see whether they can communicate with everybody easily, whether [critical data] are stored in that same building that could experience [a] disaster.”
Having contingency plans means, among other things, establishing contingency work sites. Soon after a truck bomb exploded in the garage of the World Trade Center in 1993, the New York Board of Trade began planning them. By 1995, it had built two sites in the borough of Queens. For six years, they sat empty, costing NYBOT $300,000 annually in rent and utilities. After September 11, 2001, however, these remote trading pits proved to be one of the best investments NYBOT had ever made.
Web-based communications require their own version of contingency planning. When the destruction of Oppenheimer’s Trade Center offices knocked out its intranet Web server, staff moved quickly to post crisis communications on a newly created employee section of the company’s Web site. Many other companies also took that approach so that employees who had Internet access at home could stay connected.
Although operations during a crisis should be decentralized, decision making should not be. Airlines have some of the better-developed crisis command centers. At American, the strategic command center is a vast room featuring a large, horseshoe-shaped table with fully equipped workstations and a conference call line that can accommodate as many as 200 outside callers. Large-screen televisions set up to receive satellite broadcasts allow command center employees to monitor all news coverage of the crisis.
Messages should also be sent from a centralized source. At Oppenheimer Funds, Bob Neihoff, then manager of contingency planning, called a designated number within moments of the attack, punched in some information, and activated the company’s crisis plan. Employees already knew to call into the Denver operation, which assumed control of the technology running the Web sites and voice mail systems. However, the substance of all communications came from Densen, the corporate affairs director, and CEO Murphy in New York City.
A widely circulated toll-free number can help ensure that employees obtain information from a single authorized source. Because Verizon had such a number, its 250,000 employees nationwide were able to access recorded messages containing the latest information about the crisis. Morgan Stanley’s toll-free number was televised as early as 11:00 am on September 11, making it, according to President and COO Bob Scott, “the first national emergency number of any organization, including the federal government.” By 1:30
pm that day, the firm’s crisis center had received more than 2,500 calls.
Finally, many executives I spoke with emphasized how important it was to have experienced communications professionals on board. These people were panic proof, executives said. “The advantage of communications veterans,” adds American Airline’s Tim Doke, “is that they have done everything, so in a crisis you can easily pull them out of one job and put them in another.”


5) Improvise, but from a Strong Foundation

“All of the planning that you do for a crisis helps you get through the basics,” says the New York Stock Exchange’s Robert Zito, its executive vice president for communications. Still, “people need to think on their feet and make quick decisions. Until the crisis comes, in whatever form, you don’t really understand how valuable all the preparation was.”
There is more to preparation than training. As important is instilling in employees the firm’s values. Although Starbucks ordered its 2,900 North American stores closed within a few hours of the attacks, the managers of several undamaged stores near the disaster site decided on their own initiative to stay open, a few all night, to provide coffee and pastries to hospital staffs and rescue workers. Others served as triage centers for the injured. People who had been wandering the streets of lower Manhattan in a daze were grabbed by Starbucks employees and pulled inside—and in some cases, lives were saved when nearby buildings collapsed.
One of the eight precepts recited in Starbucks’ mission statement is, “Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.” Many of Starbucks’ outlets are, even in Manhattan, neighborhood-gathering places, full of comfortable chairs in which customers may linger for hours. Essentially, they had helped bring together the community they served.
Goldman Sachs’s neighborhood is, in the abstract, the global marketplace, but its employees’ dedication to this community couldn’t have been fiercer. In one of his regular voice mails, Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson saw something of the typical bond trader’s agility and coolness under fire in his employees’ ability to cope with a disabled transportation system. “Getting to work remains very difficult,” he said. “Many routes are sealed off or closed. But that hasn’t stopped you… The police stepped in and stopped the buses [you chartered]. So one of you had the clever idea to secure ferryboats. What you couldn’t do by land you did by sea. Today, the idea of special buses with police escorts was a winner. And every colleague who needed to be in the office was here.”
That may have been due, in part, to other remarks Paulson had made. “Our assets will always be our people, capital, and reputation, with our people being the most important of the three… And the lesson here is that our principles will never fail us as long as we do not fail to live up to them.”
Goldman Sachs employees weren’t the only ones using nautical approaches to get to the office. At the New York Times, Russell Lewis told us that one reporter kayaked across the Hudson River to get to work.
Many of the executives we spoke with emphasized that a company cannot start communicating its mission and vision during a crisis. Employees will know what to do only if they have been absorbing the company’s guiding principles all along. Two of Oppenheimer’s shared values, according to an internal document, are “dedication to caring” and “team spirit.” Thinking back to 9/11, CEO John Murphy says, “If you have a strong culture, you have the ability to maintain focus. On 9/11, we had a structure, a belief system, and a hierarchy all in place. That helped us to get through the crisis, and we haven’t skipped a beat since.”
The company had one more advantage: a communications strategy, which succeeded in reminding its employees and the world of those assets. When the markets reopened, Oppenheimer, the only mutual fund manager in the towers, had one of the largest net inflows of any broker-sold fund family in the United States.
The most forward-thinking leaders realize that managing a crisis communications program requires the same dedication and resources they typically give to other dimensions of their business. They also realize that a strong internal communications function allows them not only to weather a crisis but to strengthen their organization internally.
Just as a death in the family often brings people closer together, so did the catastrophe on 9/11. Many of the executives I interviewed talked about how their companies sustained that sense of community long after 9/11 by keeping the lines of communication open. At the New York Times, the strength of these bonds was tested soon after the terrorist attacks when a reporter received an envelope containing a white powder suspected to be anthrax. Once again, Russell Lewis and other senior executives went on the public address system. “For that time period,” he recalls, “we were a family, and that doesn’t wear off, as long as you are consistent in your concern for coworkers.”

Before any other constructive action can take place—whether it’s serving customers or reassuring investors—the morale of employees must be rebuilt.
Operations during a crisis should be decentralized, but decision making should not be.

"Employees will know what to do in a crisis only if they have been absorbing the company’s guiding principles all along" said, Paul Argenti a Professor of Corporate Communication at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Please share your thoughts with me by clicking on the post a comment box below.

Ishola Ayodele is a Public Relations practitioner and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.

He offers the following services to Large Corporations, SMEs and Individuals.

Result Oriented Communication,
Effective Crisis Communication,
Effectual Political Communication,
Reputation and Image management,
And Impactful Presentation Coaching.
He can be reached on
BBM 58ED6030,
twitter @ishopr and via
Email: impactfulcommunications@gmail.com

Priceless Crisis Communication Lessons From 9/11 pt 1

Precious Lessons We Can Learn From Successful Crisis Communication Of Some Companies During The Disaster Of The World Trade Center Terrorist Attack From Paul Agenti.

In my conversations with a range of executives, I was able to distill five lessons that I think can serve as guide-posts for any company facing a crisis that undermines its employees’ composure, confidence, or concentration. 

Many of these lessons relate to preparation—to establishing plans and mechanisms for emergency action. But if 9/11 taught us anything, it’s that we can’t anticipate every contingency. Sometimes, we have no choice but to improvise. 

Here, too, the experiences I uncovered can serve as useful models. Improvisation, after all, is most effective when a strong corporate mission and vision are already in place to inform and guide it.

1) Get on the Scene

In a move that would soon attain legendary status, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani arrived at the World Trade Center within minutes of the first attack to take charge of the rescue operation. In the days and weeks that followed, he would conduct several press conferences in the vicinity of the destroyed towers, attend many funerals and memorial services, and maintain what seemed like a ubiquitous presence in the city. His visibility, combined with his decisiveness, candor, and compassion, lifted the spirits of all New Yorkers—indeed, of all Americans.

During the crisis, the most effective managers maintained similarly high levels of visibility in their own organizations. They understood that a central part of their job is political and that their employees are, in a very real sense, their constituents. 

In periods of upheaval, workers want concrete evidence that top management views their distress as one of the company’s key concerns. Written statements have their place, but oral statements and the sound of an empathic human voice communicate sincerity. And if the voice belongs to a company leader, the listener has reason to think that the full weight of the company stands behind whatever promises and assurances are being made.

 In the words of Rob Densen, Oppenheimer’s director of corporate affairs and a survivor of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, most people engulfed in a crisis “want to be led and accordingly need to trust that you are going to lead them.”

As the local telephone service provider to much of New York, Verizon faced enormous business and operational challenges in the wake of the Trade Center attacks. The 2,200 Verizon employees who were situated in the vicinity of the Center were involved in running the densest knot of cables and switches anywhere in the world. 

The attack knocked out 300,000 voice access lines and 4.5 million data circuits and left ten cellular towers inactive, depriving 14,000 businesses and 20,000 residential customers of service. Within hours, Larry Babbio, the head of the company’s telecom business, traveled to the site to inquire after the safety of employees and inspect the damage. 

The CEO, Ivan Seidenberg, during the week following the attack, worked closely and at length with the communications team to craft and record voice mails addressed to employees who could still be reached outside the area of devastation. These messages went out daily until the stock market reopened the following Monday. “This was a time for leadership, and employees wanted to hear directly from the leader,” Bardin says. 

The messages focused on employee safety, those unaccounted for, the condition of the network, and how Verizon was going to get the New York Stock Exchange open for business. In addition, senior managers toured various facilities to meet with employees, and Seidenberg himself inspected the damage to Verizon’s building at 140 West Street.

Employees at the New York Times faced a particularly harrowing challenge after the attacks. They were as traumatized as other New Yorkers—the company’s main offices are on West 43rd Street, about three miles from Ground Zero, close enough for them to see the smoke. But it was their job to cover the attacks with the clearheadedness and distance of professional journalists. 

The sheer scale of the event, and its effect on friends and neighbors, shook even the most hard-bitten news-room veterans. Russell Lewis, CEO of the New York Times Company, realized that the leadership team had to be seen acting “calmly, rationally, and humanely”—indeed, to be seen smiling—“so that our staff would mirror our behavior.” 

One of the first things he did was to go to the building’s fire command station and use its emergency public-address system to assure the staff that, until more was known about the attack, the safest place to be was within the Times’ fortress-like headquarters. He would use the system frequently over the next several days to reassure and update employees.

“When people heard us on the speakers, they listened. Your voice must sound calm, in control and, most important, earnest,” says Lewis, thinking back. 

He, Chairman and Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., and Times newspaper President Janet Robinson became the crisis management team, walking throughout the building each day to answer employees’ questions concerning such matters as building security and to thank them for their dedication. “Most of all, we wanted people to know we were all in the same boat,” Lewis says.

Communicating with the people actually covering 9/11 was far from unnecessary. “If anything,” he says, “journalists needed more information [than other Times employees] about what the company was doing in response to the crisis. They are paid to be skeptical of authority, and if you can’t adequately explain and defend what it is you’re telling them, they won’t go along.”

The presence of senior management wasn’t just important for companies in Manhattan—all around the country, bewildered and frightened employees were hungry for leadership. Think of Dell. It’s headquartered in Texas, and its people suffered little direct impact from the terrorism. Yet they were devastated emotionally. 

Within a few days of 9/11, CEO Michael Dell and Kevin Rollins, Dell’s president and chief operating officer, out of a simple desire to be involved and heard, decided they would meet with all of their directors and vice presidents, who were encouraged to talk about how they and their teams were holding up. To keep the meetings small and personal, three were held.

 The meetings were also taped and put on the company intranet for the benefit of every employee. In a stark departure from business as usual, Dell and Rollins said the focus should not be on sales or margins but rather on Dell’s people and helping affected customers rebuild.

2) Choose your Channels Carefully

Whether natural or man-made, disasters often disrupt normal flows of communication. Phone lines and power lines may be destroyed. Computer networks may go down. Groups of employees may be stranded or isolated. This was certainly the situation many companies faced after 9/11. 

To reach their people, managers often had to be creative in using unusual communication channels. Many, for instance, used the mass media to communicate with employees.

Oppenheimer Funds, which occupied five floors at Two World Trade Center, wanted to send a message to both its employees and its customers that it would be operational as soon as the markets reopened. So CEO John Murphy appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to deliver that message. In fact, its contingency site in New Jersey was ready for trading before the markets reopened.

Normally, of course, the news media and corporate America have what may best be described as an adversarial relationship—one that communications officers are asked to “manage.” 

However, as the events of 9/11 unfolded, many of them realized that they needed to start thinking of the media as allies—in part because their failed communications systems left them no other choice. At Morgan Stanley, the voice mail system serving its 2,700 employees based in Two World Trade Center and another 1,000 in Five World Trade Center, a smaller structure, had been disabled, as had the internal Web site for its broker network.

But affected companies did not view the media channel as merely a default communications system. Ray O’Rourke of Morgan Stanley explains: “[Our employees] take real-time news feeds on their desktops. They are very news sensitive. They read it, analyze it, question it. The media were critical for communicating with our employees.”

Oppenheimer’s Rob Densen concurs: “Employees take their cue from the external media, so you need to demonstrate your functionality through the media.” One way Oppenheimer did so was by publishing a full-page letter from Murphy to his employees in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the New York Times.

Some employees will trust a message that has been mediated by independent gatherers and distributors of the news more than one that comes directly from the company or appears as a paid advertisement. This filtering effect is especially useful at companies where employees tend to be suspicious of statements from management. 

American Airlines, for instance, has had a history of troubled relations with two of its unions, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and the Allied Pilots Association. 

According to Tim Doke, “In a crisis, we usually end up relying on news media to get our message out… [CEO] Don Carty speaking directly to employees through media outlets such as CNN’s

Larry King Live and the network morning shows has built bridges and created understanding between management and labor.” In the aftermath of 9/11, both unions waived a number of the rights of their rank and file to help American Airlines get its planes back in the air.

Although some companies have put computer kiosks on factory floors, the continuous nature of manufacturing operations and the distance of some workers from on-line hookups make communicating via e-mail in such venues difficult. 

American Airlines found a way around this by using its reservation system to reach as many employees as possible. “[Carty’s] voice mails were transcribed and sent to the SABRE machines—those machines that print your itineraries and tickets—as well as posted on the Internet and e-mailed to employees,” says Doke.

The machines are scattered all over airports, including employee lounges. 

While their major function is to receive messages, they do have a module permitting the company to communicate with employees, especially those in the field. “The SABRE machines meant that even maintenance people on tarmacs, who might not have Internet access at work, could be kept informed,” Doke says. American Airlines also recorded Carty’s messages on Internet hot lines and posted transcripts of them on its Web site.

To confirm that they were safe, Morgan Stanley’s employees could call one of the toll-free numbers that fed into the company’s Discover Card call centers. 

The firm also put the number on the ticker display that wraps around its Times Square building. Here, too, the TV networks played a role by broadcasting the number. Quickly, the Discover Card call center became the call center during the crisis, even routing calls from non-Morgan Stanley employees looking for information.

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Ishola Ayodele is a Public Relations practitioner and a member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations.

He offers the following services to Large Corporations, SMEs and Individuals.

Result Oriented Communication,
Effective Crisis Communication,
Effectual Political Communication,
Reputation and Image management,
And Impactful Presentation Coaching.
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