As a counterpoint, one writer thinks that it’s psychologically harder for organizations to think about PR:
A famous investigative reporter once asked me why my corporate clients were so terrible at defending themselves during controversy. I explained, “It’s not what they do. Companies make and sell stuff. They don’t fight critics for a living. And they dread the very idea of a fight. Critics criticize; it’s their entire purpose for existing; it’s what they do.”
“But the companies have all that money!” he said, exasperated.
“But their critics have you,” I said.
The conversation ended.
My point was that companies are so psychologically traumatized by the very prospect of controversy that many of the battles they may face are over before they begin. This mindset has four pillars: denial, avoidance, surrender, and expedience. It also has a basis in functional reality. In addition to the drain on financial resources, companies don’t have all day to sit around fighting issue-warriors and the “bathrobe brigade,” the diffuse army of millions who wage war on the world from their kitchen table laptops at no cost. Their critics are able to make decisions about prosecuting attacks in a fraction of the time it takes big organizations to figure out how to respond or whether to respond at all.
Companies are simply not set up to manage crises either mechanically or constitutionally, whereas their adversaries are. Corporate and institutional critics have passion, will, and the cloak of virtue. They want the attack to remain in perpetuity. Their targets, conversely, have a different mindset: They are motivated by institutional tranquility—they want the enterprise to keep humming along, quietly paying dividends and maintaining job security.
Despite the prevalence of corporate sales meetings that traffic in the conceit that executives are barrier-busting rebels, most corporate people find fights with issue-warriors to be distressing on a personal level and resist participating. This can be because of a basic sympathy with the critics’ positions, concern about doing anything that could escalate tensions, or a fear of the career consequences of being in the line of fire. I have been in hundreds of meetings and on phone calls with large organizations under siege, and the prevailing theme of these sessions is JUST MAKE IT STOP. Put differently, it is in no one’s self-interest to make a broader organizational challenge one’s own personal jihad, to try to preserve the organization more than it cares to preserve itself.
When it is under attack, an institution is little more than a collection of individuals angling for self-preservation. No one’s mental framework includes a career arc that places them in the middle of a Fiasco Vortex during a climate when there are dozens of data points that will be leaked or otherwise surface in discovery or depositions. One corporate client likened being on a crisis management team to being a character in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, never knowing which of his colleagues may end up killing him. His corporate enemies were gently nudging him into the spotlight hoping that if he became the face of the crisis, he, not they, would take the fall.
This is very interesting; I am going to add this to the list, but just from the quoted section I am reminded of the position that companies are too risk-averse when it comes to lawsuits, which leads to the baroque CYA verbiage which covers everything, and hospitals overpaying for malpractice insurance. The law is also a case where the company relies on experts unrelated to their core competency with an overwhelming focus on just making the bad thing go away.
a fear of the career consequences of being in the line of fire
this sounds like people who are in the middle of an Immoral Maze. That’s probably statistically true, because any corporation large enough to be worth attacking is probably large enough to have three layers of middle-management.
Assuming that, doing ‘honour’ requires having goals other than power-seeking which, according to that sequence, makes one untrustworthy for the modal middle-manager, who has sacrificed everything else to it, and professionally doomed.
As a counterpoint, one writer thinks that it’s psychologically harder for organizations to think about PR:
(Eric Dezenhall—Glass Jaw: A Manifesto for Defending Fragile Reputations in an Age of Instant Scandal)
This is very interesting; I am going to add this to the list, but just from the quoted section I am reminded of the position that companies are too risk-averse when it comes to lawsuits, which leads to the baroque CYA verbiage which covers everything, and hospitals overpaying for malpractice insurance. The law is also a case where the company relies on experts unrelated to their core competency with an overwhelming focus on just making the bad thing go away.
Further to Kaj and Eric,
this sounds like people who are in the middle of an Immoral Maze. That’s probably statistically true, because any corporation large enough to be worth attacking is probably large enough to have three layers of middle-management.
Assuming that, doing ‘honour’ requires having goals other than power-seeking which, according to that sequence, makes one untrustworthy for the modal middle-manager, who has sacrificed everything else to it, and professionally doomed.