Jan 3
Happy Birthday to us! It's been 25 years.
When we first started The Wilson Group with a $5,000 personal loan, a Spartan office and a whole lot of guts, I had no idea we’d still be in business some 25 years later.
Someone had mentioned we had to have a business plan if you wanted to start a company, so I spent hours and hours that turned into days and days slaving over what turned out to be a lot of wishful thinking. But when it was all over, we had a plan that we hoped would make us a premier firm practicing solely in the field of crisis communications and news media training. Unfortunately, it took more than a few years for that to become somewhat of a reality.
It hurts to say so, but when we first started in 1987, we had a difficult time turning down anyone who had the money to hire us. Although we did do a few gigs in crisis management and media training during those first few months, we also earned some rent money in traditional public relations…and even advertising. Not that advertising is a bad thing. It just wasn't the kind of business we had planned on starting.
When we did get a chance to conduct a media training workshop, we had no real program and no training materials such as a workbook. I still remember my business partner with his Magic Marker writing such words as "Control" and "Concern" on a borrowed flipchart pad. Those were the days before PowerPoint and we didn’t have the budget for a conventional slide presentation or a slide projector. At first, we hired someone with a camcorder to record the workshops. We often rented a television and VCR to play them back for critiques.
Ultimately, we hired an illustrator to draw some cartoons that would help add some zing to our workshops and we then went to a blueprint shop and had them blown up to fit on a flipchart pad. We individually colored each cartoon with Magic Markers. Unfortunately, the hand-colored cartoons would only last for 10 or 12 workshops before they became ratty looking and had to be replaced.
When the number of workshops we were conducting increased from the initial 10 or 12 a year to several dozen, we figured we needed to create a media training workbook. Our first ones were run off a copy machine and put together by hand as we needed them. It would be another 10 years or so before the number of workshops we conducted started approaching the century mark and it was evident we needed something a bit easier to distribute to our students. It was about the same time, the cartoons ended up on PowerPoint, along with video illustrations. You don't want to know how much we paid a hotel to rent a data projector for our first PowerPoint presentations. Eventually, we bought our own.
Somewhere along the line, the Sears camcorder we proudly bought sometime in our first year to save on rental fees became a little embarrassing and we purchased what we thought then was a state of the art Panasonic Super VHS camcorder. I think that was 1993. It lasted until we finally entered the digital age and replaced it with a Sony television camera in 2005, along with 21st Century lights and a real tripod. By then, our presentations were all included as part of PowerPoint. It was great to get rid of all those VHS tapes we used to lug around.
Crisis management consulting, which eventually replaced running political campaigns and occasional advertising projects, evolved over the years, but never really changed that much. If something worked in 1988, it was still likely to work in 1998 or 2008. You just had to adapt it to the current time and take in consideration how the media had changed over the years and how people had changed.
Social media and the Internet? I didn’t have a clue what they were when we launched our first web site in 1993. Now, we have three web sites and a forum and social media is integrated into our workshops. Today, I do interviews with bloggers and make sure our clients’ web sites are in concert with current issues.
When we first started our firm, a long business trip was driving from Columbus, Ohio, to Cleveland or Cincinnati. Somewhere along the way, we started traveling farther. At last count, we had done business in some 42 states, Canada and Mexico. We had chances to travel to other parts of the globe, but figured we were having enough of a problem keeping track of the business we had in North America.
Going back to 1987, we started out with just a couple of clients and a lot of high hopes. Since then, we’ve worked with a whole lot of clients – some of them dating back to those first few years we were in business. In putting together a business proposal the other day, I calculated we had done more than 160 workshops for one client, and well over 100 workshops for several others. Overall, we've conducted nearly 1,500 workshops over the past 25 years.
It’s not to say it’s always been easy. It hasn’t. We used to say – only half-jokingly – that we had to reinvent ourselves every January. Just because last year was great, didn’t mean anything about the next year. It seems like we’re constantly selling ourselves to new clients as well as those who have been clients for years. To paraphrase an old saying: We’re only as good as our last workshop or consulting project.
So it wasn’t exactly a picnic over the past quarter of century. We had perhaps as many ups as downs, but I know I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. At its best, it was a fantastic trip. At its worst, it still beat doing anything else.
Happy Birthday to us! It’s been a great 25 years for The Wilson Group.
Nov 17
And the crisis of the year is...
The year's not even over yet, but there appears to be no shortage of contenders for top crises in the U.S. in 2011.
Our definition of crises would include trials such as the Jackson trial and the Casey Anthony trial. Then there's Penn State and Ohio State and Miami. Not to mention the NBA season put on hold and the NFL season that was almost on hold. (Of course, we could talk about the Indianapolis Colts...perhaps they would have done better without a season.)
In politics, there are the marathon debates among the how many ever there are GOP presidential contenders. Oops, pause....it's not easy being the leader of the pack for the GOP. It's downright dangerous.
All the problems in the legal arena, the sports world and politics almost takes our minds off all the problems with big business, big banks and big wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Then, there's the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and New York City, as well as Oakland, California, and wherever else the Occupy Wall Street followers are occupying.
Social networking may not be a crisis, but it seems to be a tool for getting people to start one.....or report on them as in the case of the death of Osama Bin Laden, which was first reported on Twitter.
I'm sure I've missed some major contenders, so if you fell compelled to fill in the gaps, go ahead. Vote for your top crisis of 2011.
Sep 30
Mock Disasters Need Surprises
In every one of the mock disasters we’ve coordinated over the past 25 years, we’ve always tried to inject elements of surprise and at least one factor that would make an otherwise difficult situation even a bit more difficult.
Whether it’s a chemical release, workplace violence, a fire or an explosion – we almost always try to make sure there’s at least one special visitor on site that day. Sometimes, it’s the governor or local congressman. Sometimes, it’s a government inspection team…and sometimes, it’s a group of local school children.
The very first mock disaster I planned for one of my oldest clients called for a chemical release on the same day a group of students was touring the plant. Roll the calendar several years forward and reality came very close to mirroring that mock disaster.
I first learned of the incident in an email from a public affairs person at the plant. She said everything seemed to go pretty well. The emergency operations center, responders and public affairs worked great together, she said, and got information out to the public in what seemed like record time.
A few hours later, I got a call from the head of emergency management at the plant. She recounted the emergency and how it was handled. She agreed with public affairs that the event was handled very well and by the book. It seemed almost like a text book case of how to do everything right.
Then she recalled how I almost always include some “outsiders” in my mock disaster scenarios such as a senator, OSHA inspectors or local students. “Well,” she added, “after the event was wrapped up and things were starting to return to normal, I was grabbing a cup of coffee in the cafeteria and looked up and noticed there was a group of local students in the plant for career day.”
We both wondered out loud how things might have gone had the emergency not been handled as well as it was…or if the timing of the emergency had been just a couple of hours different.
For as long as I’ve been designing mock disasters, I’ve always had a few people who are critical of some of the elements that I inject into them. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it two dozen times that “that could never happen here.”
But over the years, I have found that “it can happen…and it does.”
It does no good to stick your head in the proverbial sand and say the unthinkable can’t happen. If you want to be able to respond to anything, you have to make sure you train to respond to anything. It may not be the emergency that takes place at the same time students are at your plant for career day, but every emergency carries its own set of circumstances that could never be predicted.
I was at a safety conference not long ago and a former student of mine was giving a presentation on how his plant responded to a particular emergency. A hazardous material had leaked from the plant and landed on a school playground during recess.
He looked over at me during his presentation and said, “You know how you said in your book: Never say never! You were right. You never know what’s going to happen. You just have to assume the worst thing will happen at the worst possible time.”
And, he added, you’ve got to be ready to handle it.
Aug 24
Taking the Lead Pays Off in Crisis
Several years ago, I wrote a magazine article entitled “Take the Lead and Take Control” citing the importance of getting out a quick media response in a crisis situation.
The way I figured it, if you don’t take the lead in a crisis, someone else will. Then, you may find yourself reacting to someone else’s agenda rather than setting the agenda yourself.
The idea of responding quickly has been a part of our crisis media training workshops for more than two decades. It’s also a crucial part of our crisis management consulting during real emergencies.
So, I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised recently when I got an email from a client telling me about a chemical leak at their industrial complex that attracted a great deal of media attention.
The leak took place early in the morning with radio and television stations quickly Tweeting on the incident and posting it on Facebook. A local newspaper carried the story that morning on its web site.
Fortunately, the client was far ahead of the news media.
The public affairs person was called once the incident happened and began working with corporate public affairs and the emergency management officials immediately.
By the time the media got wind of the story, the client had issued a news release, prepared talking points and a Q&A to respond to media questions.
In reviewing the coverage of the event, I couldn’t find one report that was in any way critical of the way the emergency was handled. All information seemed to come directly from the client’s news release or from interviews with the client.
One newspaper even ran a quote from the client: “What we saw today was just a very cohesive and well coordinated response.”
It can’t get much better than that.
Several of the stories also went into some detail about the training emergency responders go through to make sure they are prepared for emergencies like the one that happened.
Part of the training we provide for that particular facility includes one or more drills annually with the public affairs staff and the volunteer phone banks operators where we test their communications skills against challenging mock disasters. At the end of each drill, we evaluate not only how well they responded, but also how quickly they responded.
Mar 3
CEO Endorsement Important to Media Training
Too often, companies spend thousands of dollars on crisis media training for their potential spokespersons without a hint that it is important for the organization’s overall well-being.
That wasn’t the case in North Carolina this past week when a group of a Fortune 500 organization’s environmental engineers were going through intensive training in how to respond to potential crisis situations at their individual facilities.
About mid-way through the second day of training, we got a surprise visit from the company’s CEO, who stopped by to get a first-hand look on how the training was moving along and also offered his whole-hearted endorsement of the training as an important investment in the company’s future.
He mentioned how he had used the training earlier in his career when things didn’t go exactly the way they should have and his plant site became the center of news media attention. What happened, he said, was bad, but how the company handled it was what people remembered. He told them something we had mentioned earlier during the workshop, that even in the midst of a crisis, there are opportunities.
He went around the classroom and asked some of the young engineers what they were taking away from the class. They responded with phrases such as “know your message,” and “be prepared” and “believe what you say,” along with other elements they had picked up from their two days of training.
When you’re speaking for our company at a crisis, he told them, you are the company. He told them how important it was to know how to get the company’s message across, particularly during a crisis when the public’s eyes are all looking at you.
What he didn’t mention – and perhaps everyone in the room already knew – was that the CEO had always seemed to practice what he preached. The same man who visited our classroom that day was the same man I had seen earlier on 60 Minutes. He was the man who knew his message and knew how to stick with it and got it across with tremendous conviction.
In that short visit, he was able to convey something to the class better than anyone else. He was using the power and influence of his post and his personal sharp communications skills to let them know this was an important investment to the organization they were very much a part of.
It meant a lot to our class and it meant a great deal to me. I wish there were more people like him.
UPDATE:
We were conducting a workshop in Michigan a couple of weeks ago and we got a visit from the chairman of the board who talked about the importance of his company's investment in media training. He mentioned how he had gone through our course for the first time years ago and what he had gotten out of it.
The next day, the CEO was a participant in our workshop.
Now that's a pretty good endorsement when you look over at the next table and the boss is there taking the course right along with you.
Jan 24
Bigger isn't always better in media training
When it comes to media training, some folks seem to think bigger is better.
Some feel the more interviews you do, the better the outcome. And, some feel that the more scenarios you include in the training, the more prepared students will be when they have to face the real television cameras down the road.
And, some – often in an attempt to get more bang for their buck – feel the bigger the class the better they’ll feel when they have to pay for their workshop. In other words, the more students you can cram into a workshop, the lower the price per student.
Unfortunately, media training doesn’t always work that way.
Let’s start with how many interviews you should include in a single-day media training workshop. One certainly is not enough and four or more is probably too many. I’ve always felt sorry for students who only got one shot to go before the cameras when that one and only shot wasn’t that good. They never got a second chance to work on improving their performance. That’s why we always try to include at least three on-camera interviews with each student in a one-day workshop.
When you start going beyond three interviews in a one-day workshop, we’ve experienced a point of diminishing returns. It just seems a lot of people peak on their third interview and may actually get worse as they become more exhausted and attempt “just one more.” We’d prefer that they end the workshop with a feeling of accomplishment rather than disappointment.
Obviously, there are circumstances where more than three on-camera interviews and critiques are justified, but in most cases, we try to stick with three on-camera interviews and critiques. If you want more than three interviews in a workshop, consider going to to two days. That’s what many of our clients have chosen to do and it seems to work well for them.
As for the all-important scenario, many organizations feel they should include as many as possible. While a case can be made for having a variety of scenarios, it doesn’t always have a positive impact on the success of the workshop.
The problem with too many scenarios – or too complex scenarios – is that the student spends more time trying to remember the intricate details of a new scenario than on his or her performance. It’s difficult enough to stay on message and speak with conviction with a simple scenario. It can be downright impossible if there are too many scenarios or the single scenario is too complex.
The key to developing scenarios to drive media training is to make the scenario as realistic as possible. The student has to believe it is something that could actually happen. And, it needs to be something they can relate to.
So, should workshops have one scenario that changes over time or should they include multiple scenarios? There’s no crystal clear answer to that question, but we find a single, “believable” scenario works best for most people.
Complex and/or multiple scenarios can translate to a lot of time as students try to digest the information and prepare for their upcoming interviews. In dealing with a one-day workshop with at least two or three on-camera interviews and critiques, we just believe it takes away time that might be better spent developing and delivering the right message.
And one more point about scenarios. While a good scenario can really help drive the training, a bad scenario can send the workshop to a screeching halt while everyone wastes valuable time talking about how “that could never happen” or how “our company would never let us talk about that.”
As for limiting the number of students in workshops, that’s a difficult issue for both us and our clients. We understand the need to save money, but one has to be careful that they aren’t sacrificing quality in the process.
In a one-day workshop, the more students you add, the longer the workshop and/or the shorter the interviews and critiques. And, higher numbers also create more “down time” for students as they wait their turn to be interviewed.
We’ve tried with limited success over the years to cap attendance at no more than six to eight students per session. It doesn’t always work and many of our workshops over the years have had as many as ten students….or more.
When someone tries to add that ninth, tenth or eleventh student; we warn them there is a trade-off. And there is. The cost per student may go down, but often, so does the quality of the workshop and the overall experience of each student.
Jan 6
Newspaper video: The Ted Williams story
Ted Williams, the Columbus panhandler with the “Magic Voice,” is yet another story that may never have happened without the ongoing evolution of traditional newspapers, television and the growing power of the internet.
Williams was “discovered” by a videographer – not with a television station – but with The Columbus Dispatch. Doral Chenoweth’s video of Ted Williams and his magnificent voice went viral on the internet and Williams went from being a homeless ex-drug user to a media darling staring on national television.
Williams’ rise from homeless shelters and the streets of Columbus, Ohio, to announcing NBC’s Today Show and literally hundreds of job offers is bound to become one of the top heart-warming stories of the still very-young 2011.
But the irony of it all is that it may have never been a story at all had newspapers never entered the era of internet video.
At a time when some reporters are lamenting the death of so many newspapers that found they could not compete in an internet world, the story of Ted Williams is an example of how newspapers can still be major players in today’s journalism.
I’m not sure how the story would have played out at all if Williams had been discovered in the days before YouTube and newspaper web sites. What would have happened had he been discovered during the days when newspaper photographers dealt only with still photos and had no way to capture the magic of a person’s voice?
While the internet may be blamed for the death of a growing number of newspapers around the U.S., the story of Ted Williams is an example of how the internet can also make them viable.
Today, newspapers around the world carry up-to-the-minute news on their web sites and video of major local, national and global news. Television stations and television networks carry not only video from their news programming, but also print stories. The line between television and newspapers has been blurred dramatically by the internet.
Will newspapers survive the ongoing changes with the news media? Many will, I believe, but they may not look the way they do today and many may not offer a paper version of themselves. The future belongs to those who can adapt with the changes and make the most of them. And the story of Ted Williams and his golden voice may just be one of the latest chapters in that evolution.
UPDATE March 6, 2011
I had an opportunity to meet Ted Williams in between flights at the Atlanta Airport last week. We were both entering a restaurant when I heard someone say, "Hey, you're the guy from YouTube, aren't you?"
A very well-dressed Williams - wearing what appeared to be a very expensive suit with a black silk T-Shirt and sporting a likely $100+ haircut - responded with a smile and a greeting in his famous baritone voice.
I recognized him from his many television appearances and introduced myself and asked how he was getting along these days. He seemed quite charming although he had obviously traveled many, many miles from his days as a homeless man on the streets of Columbus. When I mentioned I was from Columbus, he quickly asked if I was familiar with the intersection where he was discovered by the Columbus Dispatch videographer. I was.
We were interrupted briefly by a traveler who asked me to take a picture of Williams and him together. I obliged.
As I watched him later talking on his cellphone and exchanging pleasantries with his fans, I wondered how he was adapting to his new life that seemed to be light years away from his previous existence.
Dec 23
2010: A Year to Remember
Considering the still-uncertain economy, our firm is looking back at 2010 now as a year where things started coming back to normal – at least in our niche of the crisis management and media training arena.
Where a lot of companies were hesitant to take on large projects in 2010, we saw more and more organizations coming back to our client list this past year. Some of the projects were possibly timid when compared to years past, but some of them were downright bold.
The big change we saw in 2010 was not only seeing many of our clients renewing their commitments to training and other projects, but welcoming back clients we hadn’t had a chance to work with – in some cases – for a decade or more. And, despite the economy, we had an opportunity to welcome in several new clients.
While 2010 won’t go down as a record year for our firm under any matter of calculation, it will go down as a “good year” on many fronts.
Although we did not conduct a record number of media training workshops in 2010, we did about 50 per cent more than in 2009 and better than our average number over the past few years. We remain one of the leaders in staging mock disasters with a total of six conducted in 2010.
One of the concessions we shared with our clients was cutting expenses down in ways that often called for some major creative thinking. We probably drove more miles in 2010 than any past year I can remember. Despite that, we still racked up Medallion status with Delta Airlines and frequent traveling status with Hertz Car Rental, Hilton Hotels and my aging Jeep Grand Cherokee. Overall, we have now traveled to nearly every state in the country, as well as Canada and Mexico.
As we look forward to 2011, I’m certainly in no position to predict the future other than the early indications are that it looks brighter than expected, for many of our clients – as well as ourselves.
In the spirit of the holiday season, all of us at The Wilson Group and Real World Media Training would like to extend our sincere thanks for our wonderful clients; our fantastic associates and everyone who helped make 2010 a year to remember.
Aug 24
Mock disasters are meant to find flaws
A while back, I read a newspaper article about a mock disaster designed to test the response capabilities of emergency management officials in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant.
The headline and the gist of the story centered around how the mock disaster had uncovered flaws in the response efforts and that several responders may have been injured had it been a real event. The article acted as if the mock disaster or exercise had been a failure.
As someone who evaluates graded emergency management exercises for the nuclear industry and routinely engages in mock disasters for many other industries, I question whether uncovering a flaw in your response efforts should be considered a failure.
To my way of thinking, that is what mock disasters are all about.
Certainly, I would not want to see professional emergency responders fail to demonstrate they knew how to handle a major disaster, but I would be totally surprised if they ever performed absolutely perfectly in a drill or exercise. If they did, then the exercise, drill or mock disaster wasn't tough enough.
In preparing for a major mock disaster for a large chemical company several years ago, I was told by my client that he wanted us to develop an exercise that was tough, but not impossible. I remember him saying, At the end of the exercise, he said he wanted every single participant to say, “Whew, I'm sure glad that's over.” And, at the end of the exercise, participants did feel a degree of exhaustion, but also a degree of pride in knowing they had handled a major disaster – albeit a mock one – in a very professional matter. Were there mistakes made? Absolutely. Did they change the outcome of the exercise? Not at all.
The important thing was that they learned from their mistakes and had an opportunity to correct them so they would be even more prepared in the event of a real disaster. The fact that the exercise had some flaws – even some serious ones – doesn't mean it was a failure.
In one of the first mock disasters I ever put together, our team uncovered numerous problems that were significant and our final report included more than 100 recommendations for improvement. Yet that mock disaster may have been one of the more successful exercises we've ever participated in. Why? Because that particular organization realized it wasn't as prepared as it thought it was to handle a major disaster. As a result, the CEO had his people engage in rigorous training and subsequent drills and exercises over the years to test their crisis management capabilities. Today, that organization is one of the best prepared organizations within its industry to handle any kind of real disaster.
To me, that is the real purpose of mock disasters and emergency drills. You can participate in all the training you want to, but if you really want to test your crisis management capabilities, there's nothing quite like a well-organized mock disaster.
To this day, we still design our mock disasters to be tough, but not impossible. If we find the responders are having too easy of a time with our scenario, we typically find ways to crank it up. Mock disasters have to be challenging.
As a general rule, we videotape our mock disasters and present the client with an edited “documentary” of the exercise, along with a report that indicates what they did right and where they might need improvement. Over the years, those documentaries have been real eye openers for organizations who wanted to see for themselves how prepared – or not prepared – they were to combat crises.
To quote one of my early clients who engaged his people in extensive training and mock disasters,
The more prepared I am, the luckier I get.”
I've quoted that Louisiana chemical plant manager quite a bit over the years and I have to agree, there's a lot of truth in what he said.
Jun 10
BP Response Plan "reads like fiction"
If there was ever a reason to make sure your corporate crisis plan is always up to date and is maintained to have accurate contact information, BP made that point this week.
In an Associated Press story out of Venice, Louisiana, a team of reporters noted a series of wrong information in BP’s response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
For starters, the 2009 plan listed Prof. Peter Lutz as a national wildlife expert.
Fine, except Prof. Lutz died in 2005.
The plan reads, the headline said, “like fiction.”
Under a heading of “sensitive biological resources, “the plan listed marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals." Fine, except none live anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico.
The names and numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists were wrong, the AP reported. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which the AP said, are no longer in service.
The Associated Press analysis said BP’s 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf of Mexico and its 52-page site-specfic plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig, “are riddled with omissions and glaring errors."
The Associated Press concluded that BP officials “have pretty much been making it up as they go along.” They said the plan, approved by the federal government before BP drilled the infamous leaking well understated the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and overstated the company’s preparedness to deal with one.
A Google search for “BP Emergency Response Plan” finds hundreds of hits with most of the news stories reporting the plan was woefully inadequate.
Now for years, I have always said crisis plans (or emergency response plans) are only one part of the equation in crisis management. It still takes people, I have said, to manage crises. Plans can’t do that for you. But if you are even thinking of having a crisis management or emergency response plan, you ought to take the time to make sure it not only makes a little sense, but would actually help you out in a crisis. BP’s plan, outdated and apparently inaccurate in many ways, was probably as good as no plan at all. “Making it up as you go along” is not really a solid crisis management philosophy.
In writing crisis plans for the past quarter century, I have heard many clients or prospective clients argue that the type of crisis I wanted them to consider “could just never happen.” It is just that kind of opinion that may have gotten BP into the crisis it is trying to deal with today. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to be ready to handle a huge crisis that may never happen than to just try to cast a blind eye to that potential catastrophe and ignore it as even a remote possibility?
Would it be so wrong for an oil company to be over prepared for a major oil leak rather than the other way around?
Being prepared starts with at least having a management plan that has correct information in it. BP’s doesn’t seem to pass that test.
Remember Prof. Lutz, the University of Miami expert resource for dealing with Gulf wildlife in BP’s plan? Not only was he dead four years before BP published its plan, but he left Miami nearly 20 years ago to lead the marine biology department at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
Wonder who was in charge of updating BP’s plan and making sure the contact information was current? I’m sure a lot of people at BP, the federal government and a whole lot of people in Louisiana are wondering the same thing right now.
For more on this story, go to:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/national_world/stories/2010/06/10/bps-plan-for-spill-reads-like-fiction.html?sid=101
9:50 PM Feb 4