Most organizations have a crisis of some sort at one time or another. Here are three ideas regarding how research can help you manage those crises better.
1. Assess the Crisis
The first thing you want to do when your management or client says they have a crisis is determine whether there really is a crisis, and, if so, how big it is. I once worked with a major hotel chain, which had a scandal break based on inappropriate behavior of a few employees at one hotel. The client was very concerned about its frequent business traveler "club" members, who tended to be senior executives. The client wanted to take out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal apologizing and outlining measures the organization was taking to correct the problem. We suggested they wait until we'd done a quick survey of their club members.
We were able to do a telephone survey overnight, and it turned out fewer than ten percent of their club members were even aware of the incident, and most of those who were aware did not see it as serious. Taking out an ad in the Wall Street Journal would undoubtedly have made the issue worse by raising awareness of it.
The point in this case is that by assessing the crisis, we learned it really wasn't a crisis at all. However, when there is a crisis, research at this stage can help you define what the crisis really is -- that is, how your stakeholders perceive the crisis and their areas of greatest concern. In addition, you can either solicit potential solutions from stakeholders or test with stakeholders the solutions you have available to you. Then you will know which solutions stakeholders approve most and why. If you are trying to generate ideas, you might use qualitative research techniques, such as focus groups. If you are testing ideas, you would want a quantitative method, such as a survey.
So in the first phase of the crisis, research can help you diagnose and understand what is happening in the minds of your stakeholders.
2. Monitor the Crisis
You cannot manage a crisis if you cannot measure it. In this case, the measure of the crisis is what's in the minds of your stakeholders -- awareness, perceptions, attitudes. In the first phase of our research, we determined that there really is a crisis and got stakeholder opinions of some strategies we might use to resolve the crisis. In the second phase, we need to determine the effect on stakeholder perceptions of those strategies we execute. Here again we use research.
Most likely, we would again be doing surveys of key stakeholders. Depending on the crisis, we might be doing them as often as every day. If all goes well and the crisis subsides, you might just continue these daily surveys until management is comfortable the crisis has been taken care of. However, sometimes the media highlight additional information that fans the flames of the crisis. In this case, you can use the research to understand the changing dynamics of the crisis and develop new strategies and tactics, if necessary.
3. Stakeholder and Issue Monitoring
In truth, we missed what we should have done first. Before there was a crisis, we should have been monitoring our key stakeholders -- typically customers, shareholders, employees, communities where we have operations and regulators and legislators. I would go so far as to say we should assess the strength of our relationships with each stakeholder group (see http://tinyurl.com/76cbwf7 for more on this). We should be doing surveys, monitoring social media and talking with these people so we understand where they stand on the issues important to our organization. We can supplement this research by monitoring non-social media.
In addition, we should be monitoring issues in those sub-environments important to our organization. These might include the technological, socio-cultural, economic-competitive, regulatory-legislative or green environments. We may then want to do research with our stakeholders on any of these issues that might be topical. (For more on this see http://tinyurl.com/3z2asjq.)
There are sudden crises, brought on by unexpected events, such as Tepco nuclear plants and the devastating tsunami, and there are smoldering crises, such as those that developed at Penn State or Newscorp. With any kind of crisis, a solid understanding of your stakeholder relationships and where stakeholders stand on issues important to your organization gives you an immediate context for crisis planning, prevention and management.
Showing posts with label public relations research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label public relations research. Show all posts
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Thursday, September 10, 2009
The conversational medium
About a week ago I enjoyed a very stimulating discussion with some of my colleagues from the Institute for PR's Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation. We were talking about social media and how it is challenging to comment on in a way that is useful to the PR practitioner community, because it morphs so rapidly.
It occurred to me that what morphs rapidly in social media is technology, but the technology is not what makes social media important to us.
The history of the communications industry, as we know it, has been primarily one-sided. Yes, the PR masters of old all recommended research and understanding publics before communicating with them, and advertising agencies have done this kind of research for years. But we in public relations, for the most part, have ignored the advice and the practice. We've considered communications to be one way. We send to our target audiences the information we want them to have. Generally there has not been, nor have we actively sought, a feedback loop.
What is new about social media is our target audiences have found their voices. We can, and many do, use social media for one-way messaging. But that's the same thing advertisers did in the 1950s when they sponsored a television show. What is new is we now can listen and, what is more, engage in conversations. Even if we did research in the past, we couldn't really engage in conversations the way we can now through social media. The research became a static document that told us something about a group of people at the time we did the research. Social media gives us a window into what our stakeholders want and need today, and it will give us a window into any changes in these wants and needs tomorrow.
So, in my mind, the real change engendered by social media is this ability to engage in conversations. We're still learning how to use these conversations, but they are what's new. Certainly, the technology is enabling, but it is not the big story, the conversation and what we can make of them is.
Still, the conversations our employers and corporate clients have with interested parties is not the whole story. These people talk to each other as well, and, if they think they need a community, they develop one, and these have their own lives and live by their own rules. They are not like the old media in any way except that they can be widely read by anyone who has access to a computer. Still, it's the conversation that's new, and in my mind, that's what we must learn to manage.
It occurred to me that what morphs rapidly in social media is technology, but the technology is not what makes social media important to us.
The history of the communications industry, as we know it, has been primarily one-sided. Yes, the PR masters of old all recommended research and understanding publics before communicating with them, and advertising agencies have done this kind of research for years. But we in public relations, for the most part, have ignored the advice and the practice. We've considered communications to be one way. We send to our target audiences the information we want them to have. Generally there has not been, nor have we actively sought, a feedback loop.
What is new about social media is our target audiences have found their voices. We can, and many do, use social media for one-way messaging. But that's the same thing advertisers did in the 1950s when they sponsored a television show. What is new is we now can listen and, what is more, engage in conversations. Even if we did research in the past, we couldn't really engage in conversations the way we can now through social media. The research became a static document that told us something about a group of people at the time we did the research. Social media gives us a window into what our stakeholders want and need today, and it will give us a window into any changes in these wants and needs tomorrow.
So, in my mind, the real change engendered by social media is this ability to engage in conversations. We're still learning how to use these conversations, but they are what's new. Certainly, the technology is enabling, but it is not the big story, the conversation and what we can make of them is.
Still, the conversations our employers and corporate clients have with interested parties is not the whole story. These people talk to each other as well, and, if they think they need a community, they develop one, and these have their own lives and live by their own rules. They are not like the old media in any way except that they can be widely read by anyone who has access to a computer. Still, it's the conversation that's new, and in my mind, that's what we must learn to manage.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Creating CEO Crib Sheets
Here is a research idea you might be able to use to make yourself more valuable to your boss and your position more secure.
In virtually every selling situation, the seller has an advantage if he or she knows as much as possible about the person to whom he or she is selling. Since one of the primary functions of most senior managers is sales, at one point or another almost all of us have been asked to pull together research for our bosses or their bosses.
I've done this working for not-for-profit and for-profit organizations as well as for PR agencies. When I was in senior research positions at GolinHarris International and Burson-Marsteller, it frequently was my department's job to prepare the agency to pitch new business.
However, what I enjoyed most was putting together crib sheets for senior executives at these agencies. Typically, these included the chairman, CEO or regional heads, as they prepared for one-on-one meetings with similar senior executives at other companies that might become customers or partners.
Research Level I
The obvious PR thing to do is to pull together a report on recent media coverage of the company. However, to most senior executives, this is of limited value.
Research Level II
A more comprehensive report, and one of more value to your senior executives might include the following:
You usually can find the information above in the target company's web site, annual report and filings with the SEC and in reports by investment and business analysts.
Research Level III
One of my first independent consulting assignments was to draft backgrounders for the head of a Fortune 100 company to prepare him to meet his counterparts at companies with which he wanted to create alliances. These alliances would include not only purchasing products from each other, but also doing research together to meet environmental and other regulatory goals.
My report included all of the Level II topics above. But what made the assignment particularly fun was the client wanted to know what questions kept the target CEOs awake at night. It usually is difficult, if not impossible, to find secondary research on this topic. This is probably because CEOs do not want to talk about these topics to the media and analysts. So this part of the report required thinking out of the standard research box a bit.
To do this, I tried to put myself inside the mind of the target CEO. I pulled out my general management text books from business school. I ran through checklists for the main functional areas of accounting, finance, engineering and R&D, production, HR and marketing. I also reviewed the sections on analyzing large international firms, which these target companies were. Then I combined that with what I'd learned through the rest of my research regarding the business environment the target companies were in, the year they had just had and the challenges they faced.
Some of the questions I thought might be keeping these CEOs awake at night were:
I also put in a number of questions I thought the target executive was likely to ask my client executive, considering the businesses each of them were in.
I was uneasy with the section on what kept the CEOs awake at night, because I guessed about them. I didn't know for sure these were their issues. But, based on my understanding of their companies, their recent histories, their current and expected business environments and my general understanding of business, these were the things I thought they'd be worried about.
Results
My client was very happy with these reports. And the part they liked best was the section on what was keeping the CEOs awake at night.
In virtually every selling situation, the seller has an advantage if he or she knows as much as possible about the person to whom he or she is selling. Since one of the primary functions of most senior managers is sales, at one point or another almost all of us have been asked to pull together research for our bosses or their bosses.
I've done this working for not-for-profit and for-profit organizations as well as for PR agencies. When I was in senior research positions at GolinHarris International and Burson-Marsteller, it frequently was my department's job to prepare the agency to pitch new business.
However, what I enjoyed most was putting together crib sheets for senior executives at these agencies. Typically, these included the chairman, CEO or regional heads, as they prepared for one-on-one meetings with similar senior executives at other companies that might become customers or partners.
Research Level I
The obvious PR thing to do is to pull together a report on recent media coverage of the company. However, to most senior executives, this is of limited value.
Research Level II
A more comprehensive report, and one of more value to your senior executives might include the following:
- The target company's long- and short-term strategies, especially those that might pertain to your company (such as purchasing strategies)
- Company organization
- Management profiles
- Division profiles
- The company's recent successes and failures
- What management sees as the organization's strengths and weaknesses
- What management sees as threats and opportunities
- What business and investment analysts see as strengths and weaknesses
- What business and investment analysts see as threats and opportunities for that company as well as the industry
You usually can find the information above in the target company's web site, annual report and filings with the SEC and in reports by investment and business analysts.
Research Level III
One of my first independent consulting assignments was to draft backgrounders for the head of a Fortune 100 company to prepare him to meet his counterparts at companies with which he wanted to create alliances. These alliances would include not only purchasing products from each other, but also doing research together to meet environmental and other regulatory goals.
My report included all of the Level II topics above. But what made the assignment particularly fun was the client wanted to know what questions kept the target CEOs awake at night. It usually is difficult, if not impossible, to find secondary research on this topic. This is probably because CEOs do not want to talk about these topics to the media and analysts. So this part of the report required thinking out of the standard research box a bit.
To do this, I tried to put myself inside the mind of the target CEO. I pulled out my general management text books from business school. I ran through checklists for the main functional areas of accounting, finance, engineering and R&D, production, HR and marketing. I also reviewed the sections on analyzing large international firms, which these target companies were. Then I combined that with what I'd learned through the rest of my research regarding the business environment the target companies were in, the year they had just had and the challenges they faced.
Some of the questions I thought might be keeping these CEOs awake at night were:
- How can I quickly expand our presence in Asia, Africa and Latin America?
- How can I maintain an environmentally positive image around the world?
- How can I get investors to see my company as non-cyclical and increase my P/E ratio?
- What can I do now to cushion the impact of the coming economic downturn? (At the time, the economy was booming, and the year they were coming off of was the best they'd ever had.)
- With the strong returns we've been showing, how can we continue to show improvements? How can we improve our profit margins? How can we demonstrate to Wall Street that we haven't hit the ceiling?
- How can we increase our capacity and throughput, so we can take full advantage of the [then booming] economy and not end up with excess capacity when the economy turns down?
- How can we maintain competitive prices as raw material and fuel costs rise?
I also put in a number of questions I thought the target executive was likely to ask my client executive, considering the businesses each of them were in.
I was uneasy with the section on what kept the CEOs awake at night, because I guessed about them. I didn't know for sure these were their issues. But, based on my understanding of their companies, their recent histories, their current and expected business environments and my general understanding of business, these were the things I thought they'd be worried about.
Results
My client was very happy with these reports. And the part they liked best was the section on what was keeping the CEOs awake at night.
# # #
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If you would like to make any comments regarding this e-Letter, please visit my blog at http://forrestwanderson.blogspot.com/ and comment there. I'd love to hear from you.
I work with organizations that are going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong, or confusing, messages. After working with me they have a clear understanding of what their messages should be. I also provide them recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with their stakeholders.
The Institute for Public Relations (IPR) is dedicated to the "science beneath the art" of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you're there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.
Best wishes,
Forrest
Forrest W. Anderson
Founding Member
Institute for Public Relations
Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation
# # #
If you would like to make any comments regarding this e-Letter, please visit my blog at http://forrestwanderson.blogspot.com/ and comment there. I'd love to hear from you.
# # #
I work with organizations that are going through a change in strategic direction (merger, acquisition, building program, new product launch, change program) and that are concerned about what will happen with their relationships with key stakeholders (customers, employees, investors) if they send out the wrong, or confusing, messages. After working with me they have a clear understanding of what their messages should be. I also provide them recommendations on other actions they can take to enhance their relationships with their stakeholders.
# # #
The Institute for Public Relations (IPR) is dedicated to the "science beneath the art" of PR. It focuses on PR research and education. If you are interested in the topics I write about, you will almost certainly be interested in IPR. You can find it at http://www.instituteforpr.org/. While you're there, check out the Essential Knowledge Project at http://www.instituteforpr.org/essential_knowledge/.
Best wishes,
Forrest
Forrest W. Anderson
Founding Member
Institute for Public Relations
Commission on PR Measurement and Evaluation
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