atkinson advisor

Crises come in two forms. Those that happen to you and those that you cause.

Your company is at risk for both if you don’t anticipate how you will respond if hacked.

Hacking is an insidious, invasive event because most of the time it involves personal data that customers entrusted to your organization for some business purpose. Companies have tried to cover hacks in the past, which led to new laws requiring disclosure for any size of data breach.

The only acceptable response to a data breach is swift and honest. That’s impossible if you haven’t anticipated and prepare for the possibility of a breach. We recommend drafting your worst-case-scenario communication to customers, i.e. the worst possible loss of data. You can always tone it down from there. Make sure to apologize for any inconvenience, emphasize your commitment to proactive communications with customers, and outline cooperation with law enforcement.

And make sure to have your legal team review the communication in advance. You don’t want attorneys holding up the process when customers are waiting to hear from you.

Swift, honest communication will win you points and minimize the overall damage to your company’s reputation.

A slow and overly corporate response creates the second type of crisis – the type that you cause. Communications that shift responsibility, try to rationalize a bad situation, and/or offer no remedy to the problem can actually deepen customers’ pain. That’s not a good thing for you.

The title is no lie. Author Clark Campbell has devised a method for capturing a project’s salient points into a one-page project manager (OPPM) that can communicate its status and the performance of those in charge.

Campbell has used his approach to plan a $30 million software project for SAP, a large event, and a $10 million distribution center.

The information captured in the page includes:

• Key objectives
• Major tasks to be accomplished
• Status of those tasks
• Who is in charge of the task and other team members
• Costs

Campbell provides a step-by-step plan for completing the OPPM, how to use the OPPM to compile reports for senior management, and how to use the OPPM as a meeting agenda.

Download the OPPM template.

http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html

It’s essential to understand your target audience when developing a social media campaign. Where are they online? How active are they? Forrester’s Consumer Profile Tool is a good place to start.

Forrester’s Social Technographics® classifies consumers into six overlapping levels of participation: creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. The Consumer Profile Tool allows you to analyze your intended audience by age range, country, and gender to see what percentages our your target demographic is in each group. The site also offers an explanation for each of the groups.

The hottest social media tools will come and go. Their impact — namely the ability to converse directly with your key audiences — is here to stay.

Clients frequently ask if they should get into social media. We believe they should, but only by adding social media tools to the mix of their overall communication strategy.

It’s essential to take a step back, understand how each tool works, and map out a strategy before diving in by creating a Twitter account or setting up your company’s Facebook fan page.

Bill Seaver, our friend at MicroExplosion Media, has a three-step model for venturing into social media that we think makes a lot of sense.

1. Monitor. Learn about the different social media tools and find out how people are using them to talk about your company, your competition, and your industry. Are other companies you admire using Twitter to interact with clients? What are bloggers saying about you, and which ones are influential enough to affect opinion? Observe how people interact with one another and the brands that you want to model. Also observe how frequently people post, tweet, comment, etc. so you can assess the time involved.
2. Participate. With a better lay of the land, you can start joining the conversation by commenting on blogs, posting messages on forums, or writing on a Facebook wall.
3. Create. Now you’re ready. Creating involves possibly starting your own blog or launching a Twitter account. You may even decide to host your own social network. At this stage you’ll want to continue monitoring and participating, because new tools—and new conversations—are being created every day.

From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental’s Remarkable Comeback by Gordon Bethune with Scott Huler

In From Worst to First, Bethune tells a classic turnaround tale and affirms that common courtesy and common sense still have a big role in business success.

Bethune stepped into the role of Continental Airlines’ CEO in 1994 as the company was on the brink of its third bankruptcy filing in a decade. With chutzpah and copious communications, Bethune and the Continental Airlines employees brought the beleaguered company from the edge of extinction to the airline industry’s No. 1 position in a few short years.

Bethune and his 40,000 plus workforce listened to upset customers and apologized for past mistakes. They then developed, communicated, and executed a plan with clearly defined goals and incentives. Employee commitment to the plan resulted in customers and partners returning in droves.

Frank and conversational, From Worst to First is full of down-to-earth ideas and is a reminder that doing the right thing is good business.

The SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) is a common planning tool. If you need some variety and creativity in your SWOT exercise, try using automobile analogies to engage people more in the discussion.

At the start of the SWOT analysis, ask everyone to say what kind of automobile your organization most resembles. As the group works through each of the four elements, participants can use analogies of their chosen automobile to describe the organization. For example, one person might choose Volvo and say that a strength of your organization is the feeling of safety that customers have.

This tip works because it provides planning participants immediate context and the opportunity to visualize an idea that someone is trying to express.