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SEPTEMBER 30
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Crisis Guru Blog
This is a blog for the curious, the strategic, the articulate, and the argumentative looking for sensible, interesting, constructive discussions. |
| Excellent Collateral Resources |
Phil Rothstein is one of the great publishers and information gatherers in the field of crisis communications, business continuation and resumption, and business resilience. This is an E-mail you're going to want to examine whenever it comes out. It's always jammed with stuff that you rarely see elsewhere.
Ethikos
If you have compliance responsibilities or your organization has them, this is a must read, every issue. It's real time, it's really authoritative, and it's understandable and useful.
Bob Conrad, M.A., APR, is the communications officer for Nevada's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. He can be reached at bconrad@dcnr.nv.gov.
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Executive Action
Strategic Crisis Management Insights for
Decision Makers and Their Trusted Advisors
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Note to Readers
Hey, welcome back.
Wow. There are more than 4,000 of you now, and the number grows every month. Hopefully I can maintain our high-level relationship and, perhaps, if you like it you can recommend it to others.
Please note the very special Web seminar on June 24, 2009 from 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m. EDT, Are You Ready for Violence in Your Workplace? This topic is growing in importance and being prepared is becoming more important. Please consider attending or recommending the program to others who may need this information. Click here for registration details and more information, including pricing.
This edition contains three really interesting major topics and a handful of other curiosities for you:
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New feature in this issue: Gosseen Annual Darwin Award Nominees The truth is that I never envisioned myself publishing jokes, anywhere. But my friend, attorney Robert L. Gosseen, partner at Gallagher, Gosseen, Faller & Crowley (who specializes in labor and employment for the firm), does have a way of picking stories that you can relate to and use. He calls these his "preliminary 2009 Darwin Award nominees." These stories tend to illustrate the tiny, tiny distance that some in our species have come in the last year. Make good use of them.
Even lawyers are beginning to recognize that apologies deter lawsuits. This is a link to an April 13, 2009 story in the National Law Journal, plus links to other important writings about the powerful phenomenon of apology.
We can connect on LinkedIn. My profile address is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jameslukaszewski
Hope you'll take the time to take a look and link up.
Also check out:
Crisis Guru Commentaries:
One favor, if this eNewsletter is helpful, please recommend it to others who might benefit.
As always, your comments, questions, suggestions, debate, disagreements, and challenges are welcome.
James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, APR, Fellow PRSA
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 The CEO Survival Forecast
Forecast #1: CEOs Are Exiting U.S. Firms at Record Rates, This Will Accelerate
Forecast #2: Replacement CEOs Have Shorter, More Intense Tenure
Forecast #3: Higher Profile, Shorter Careers Require Even More Strategic Personal Communication and Operations Counsel
Forecast #4: The First 100 Days of the New CEO's Tenure Appear to Be Among the Most Critical to Success
Forecast #5: Prosecution of Top and Senior Executives Will Continue to Increase.
Click here to read more about The CEO Survival Forecast.
Special Note: Expect CEOs to be in the news at much higher levels in the coming months and, perhaps, years. The convicted, indebted, maligned, and ashamed will be making their cases in public in order to rehabilitate their reputations, make better excuses than they had earlier, sell books, and the other usual reasons. The forecast simply states the environment from which these individuals will be retained, rejected, retired, or retried.
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Radical but Necessary:
A New Way Forward
Am I the only one who has noticed that it takes catastrophe to force democracy forward: Black Friday; Hurricane Katrina; 9/11; Pearl Harbor; October 15, 2008? The incompetence, ignorance, and political paralysis of government, combined with the implacable gall of America's Greed Team-real estate, banking, Wall Street, insurance, and the commercial credit industry-has created a fragile but powerful epiphanal moment when real change in America's economic structure and destiny is possible.
We have a brief chance to recalibrate and reset crucial economic processes that will help us deter, detect, and prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
How will we capture this moment? I believe that what will catalyze the opportunity for change is America's growing revulsion toward Wall Street and the major economic and financial engines upon which we have relied for the last couple hundred years.
Special Note: This article is reprinted from The Conference Board Review's May/June 2009 issue, http://www.tcbreview.com/.
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Strategic Advising:
An Interview With Jim Lukaszewski
Special Note: Why Should the Boss Listen to You? is available at amazon.com and your local bookstores. To purchase this book, click here.
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Gosseen Annual Darwin Award Nominees
(From Robert L. Gosseen's March 4, 2009 newsletter, http://www.ggfc-law.com/)
My Preliminary 2009 Darwin Award Nominees
- When his .38 caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up, the would-be robber peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked.
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The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat cutting machine and submitted a claim to his insurance company. The insurance company, smelling negligence, sent an investigator to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger. The chef's claim was approved.
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A man who had shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a Chicago blizzard, returned with his vehicle to find that a woman was backing into the space. He handled the situation in the Chicago way-he shot her.
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It must be the 20,000% annual inflation rate. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the nearly two dozen mental patients he was supposed to be transporting had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies. The deception wasn't discovered for three days.
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A thief walked into a convenience store, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving his original $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of the cash he got from the register was $15.
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Just as a female shopper exited another convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk immediately called 911 and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the purse snatcher. Within minutes the police apprehended the snatcher, put him in the car, and drove back to the store. The thief was them taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID, to which he replied, "Yes, officer, that's her. That's the lady I stole the purse from."
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A man walked into the fast food outlet at 5:00 a.m., flashed a gun, and demanded all the cash in the register. The fast thinking clerk turned him down because, he said, he couldn't open the register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren't available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
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Customer Deflection:
Management Strategies for Losing Customers
Even though there's all kinds of talk about wowing customers, hugging customers, and super serving customers, customer repellent behaviors seem to be increasing in scope, incidences, and frequency.
The Customer Repellent Strategy Award for May 2009 goes to . . . Northwest Airlines.
Although technically defunct (NWA is now a part of Delta) Northwest Airlines has, for years, demonstrated how it dislikes customers. If you've been on any of Northwest's planes, you know that one of the most frustrating, irritating, and agitating features is the seatback pocket in front of you. You know, that space you thought was probably put there for your convenience-for your magazines, books, MP3 players, and other stuff. Guess again. On Northwest Airlines this pocket is designed so that one magazine, one thin catalogue, and the barf bag fit, and that's about it.
This airline undoubtedly has a long-serving Senior Vice President for Customer Repellency (could it be a team?). Maybe this person (or the team) retires or fails to make the switch from Northwest to the new parent, Delta. However, for the foreseeable future, the red and white planes are going to fly with the customer repelling pockets. This is a puzzler since the airline is neither low cost nor high service. What's the point?
If you have a good example of customer repellency or customer prevention, send it to me at crisisguru@e911.com, and I'll add it to the growing collection of examples.
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Apology Watch
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Jim's Critical Management Book Reading Recommendations
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American Heritage Dictionary of
Business Terms 
By David L. Scott
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Special Edition
(March 25, 2009)
Just a very interesting, jam-packed book of stuff you need to know, like wraparound mortgages, credit default swaps, haircuts, and CDOs
(collateralized debt obligations).
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Too Many Geese; Too Few Swans:
PR Sovereignty Held Hostage by 'Communications'
By John Budd
AuthorHouse (April 30, 2008)
John F. Budd, Jr. has, again, tied a bunch of interesting concepts together. He's one of the deeper thinkers in our business. There are indeed so very few. |
Get to the Point:
How to Say What You Mean and Get What You Want 
By Andrew D. Gilman and Karen E. Berg
Kendall Hunt Pub Co (July 1, 1995)
If I could have written a book about public speaking, presentations, and testimony, this would have been it. Don't be put off by the 1995 publication date. This book will help anyone who needs it, instantly, and is a powerful desk reference for anyone who makes presentations or helps those who do. |
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language
Steven Pinker
Harper Perennial (October 24, 2000)
This is just a really cool book about grammar and using words. An interesting reference work that proves to be interesting reading, as well.
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