Source: Grey .com -"Beyond crisis management, the most important task for leaders is to help employees feel confident and capable of carrying on. While acknowledging our common vulnerability, 'leaders must emphasize the importance of each person's actions and appeal to the better aims of their natures — to be the best managers, soldiers, students, best-whoever they can be," says Nancy Koehn, a business historian at Harvard Business School. —Wall Street Journal, 9/17/01.."
Before too much more time passes, adding greater distance from and allaying the pain and confusion of our shared Sept. 11 nightmare, corporate leaders, managers and communicators would do well to consider the appropriate response — if any.
By now, perhaps, you've seen it all. The network news programs are branding the post-event period with resonant slogans — e.g., "America Fights Back," "America United," and "America's New War" — accompanied by music appropriate to their chosen theme. They've also been continuously showing the video of the planes hitting the World Trade Center. This has led to a major backlash as viewers voice their anger at such exploitation.
Otherwise well-intentioned companies are buying full-page institutional advertisements to try to reach out to the victims and share their grief with sincere words of sympathy. This has also led to both customer and the public's displeasure in such activity. The common theme is to spend the money on tangible things to support reassurance and rehabilitation efforts not ads. Ironically, the media itself, using its exploitation sensors, has been scrutinizing how corporations are responding. Even companies that are genuinely trying to do good risk the appearance of trivializing a tragedy of historic proportions, inadvertently showing disrespect to victims and their families.
Where is the middle ground when an organization wants to and has the wherewithal to get involved, to contribute in some way to alleviating the pain, confusion and despair the whole country is feeling? What exactly is a corporation's role in a tragedy of such enormity, and how should it communicate in this context? How does a company go about rebuilding its business to protect livelihoods?
There are a lot of open-ended questions like these, and not a lot of clear-cut answers.
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18.02.2002