By Helio Fred Garcia 

The Year of Living Self-Destructively 

Crises in 2007 had several common themes, and reinforced three fundamental crisis management principles:

• Many crises are self-inflicted. Even when a crisis arises elsewhere, most of the harm to an organization’s reputation, operations, and financial condition results from bad handling of the crisis.

Logos Institute executive director Helio Fred Garcia and fellow Laurel Hart jointly authored a column for the CEO Advisory section of the peer-reviewed management journal Strategy & Leadership, published in December, 2007.  The column notes that today's leaders fail to appreciate the power of the blogosphere at their peril.  Given the ease with which corporate mis-steps can become enduringly public worldwide, company reputations are often just one determined blogger away from crisis.

By Helio Fred Garcia
 
2006 was the year of self-inflicted harm.
 
The year brought into sharp focus three fundamental principles of crisis management:
 
1. Many crises are self-inflicted.  Even when a crisis arises elsewhere, most of the harm to a company’s reputation, operations, and financial condition results from bad handling of the crisis.

2. Most reputational harm comes not from the severity of the crisis itself, but from the timeliness and quality of the response.  

3. Companies and leaders can be forgiven even when things go horribly wrong.  But they won’t – and can’t – be forgiven if they’re seen not to care that things went wrong.  Creating the perception of indifference is the most common mis-step in the immediate aftermath of a crisis.  Attempts to rationalize away a crisis don’t work, and only make matters worse.

A sexual assault scandal involving the Duke University lacrosse team received national attention in late March, 2006. All-news cable networks, national network news, local television news, daily newspapers, magazines, and the blogosphere all converged on the Duke story.