Can you imagine James Bond receiving a call from his boss, M, and reacting like this?
M: “Bond, there’s a massive crisis. Your country needs you. The world needs you. Are you ready to leap into action?”
Bond: “Nah. I know it’s a crisis threatening our very existence, but I’m not going to show up for quite a while.”
Even if Bond were beholden to a bevy of beautiful Bold girls demanding his attention – or being held captive by an evil Bond villain – he’d still find a way of turning up and doing his duty.
This would apply in any of the crisis situations portrayed by various James Bond actors over the years, including the late Sir Roger Moore (third from left) who sadly departed us recently.
Alas Bond-style action has not been the case at British Airways over the past week as it failed to transport around 75,000 of its passengers on the flights they had booked.
The airline suffered a major technology disaster which prevented it from getting many of its passengers away on their holidays over the long weekend.
And for many of those already at their destinations for business or pleasure, it’s left them stranded around the world.
Sure, bad stuff happens.
But the real failure of British Airways has been less about dealing with this bad stuff itself, and more about its failure to communicate properly about the problems.
Crowds of disgruntled and ignored passengers have been spilling their hearts out to TV cameras at Heathrow, Gatwick and airports dotted around the globe.
They’ve been telling the world how British Airways has made an abysmal effort, or no apparent effort at all, to let them know what’s being done to sort out their problems and to get them to where they were booked to go.
Here’s a typical passenger telling her story about how British Airways ruined the thirtieth birthday holiday she had been planning in California.
TELL THEM WHAT’S GOING ON
Foremost among the British Airways communications crimes has been the slowness of its executives to take up any of the flood of media opportunities to come on their shows and tell everyone what was going on.
For days the Chief Executive, Alex Cruz, restricted himself to just talking on the British Airways website while ignoring the wider world.
Eventually, long long after the problem began, Mr Cruz came onto BBC screens to apologise to customers, promise a full investigation into the IT fiasco and to seek to fend off the burning questions about why he hadn’t spoken earlier to the mainstream media and of course whether he should resign.
When something has gone seriously wrong, communicating through your own website and your own social media outlets is a good thing to do.
But you can’t rely on this alone.
If you’re being clobbered in the mainstream media, as British Airways has been, the mainstream media is where you need to have senior people out there to get your information to the wider world.
PLAN, PREPARE AND PRACTICE FOR IT
To handle the media well during a business crisis you need to plan, prepare and practice for it.
The wisest of my clients know this and do the communications training required to be ready for that moment when something goes wrong.
They realise there are three elements to it:
One: Get the initial general communication training so that those at the top – and others who require it – develop the skills to convey essential messages in a crisis, which includes doing media interviews under pressure
Two: Doing follow-up training to focus on any specific challenging situations which you know are coming up, or that could happen, so that your team is ready for them
Three: Actually leaping into action when something does go wrong – which means talking with the media, your customers and anyone else affected so that you can turn the crisis of bad stuff into a positive opportunity to show your organisation in the best possible light.
As the motto of the Special Air Service of the British Army goes “Who Dares Wins”.
It applies to communicating in a crisis.
THE COST OF SAYING NOTHING
WHEN THE HEAT IS ON
The owner of British Airways – the International Airlines Group – has now seen over half-a-billion pounds in value lost in the wake of its poor handling of the crisis.
When the stock market opened after the long weekend its share price plummeted – sending the company towards the bottom of the Financial Times 100 stock index.
The reputational damage will be higher than the compensation costs.
George Salmon, an equity analyst at Hargraeves Landsdown, says “While the costs of passenger compensation and refunds could well run into the tens of millions, the whole sorry episode has undeniably put a dent in BA’s reputation for delivering a premium service.”
“The worry for shareholders is that this unquantifiable impact could have longer-term consequences.”
If your organisation can afford to lose billions and/or to have its reputation shredded then do what British Airways did and do nothing until the damage is done.
Not planning for interviews properly could make you appear like the British politician, Diane Abbott, who managed to make herself sound ridiculous in a radio interview for the current election campaign over a simple predictable question about her own policy of providing more police officers:
People who could be in the spotlight – for good or bad reasons – need to be trained for the task just like the SAS trains for their mission.
There’s more about doing successful media interviews in “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work”.
Amazon reviews of the book have now hit 50.
You can read most of them on the UK Amazon site, found by clicking on this image:
And the rest of the reviews are on the international Amazon site, found by clicking on this image:
There’s information about putting the principles of putting great answers into action through media training here:
http://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/media-master-classes/
And when you know how to do great media interviews you and your colleagues will find it so much easier and more comfortable to leap into action… just like James Bond.
