Ronnie Simpson's Blog

- Corporate Crisis Management Lessons
It was either professional interest or a reflection on the poor quality of the Champions’ League encounter between Benfica and Manchester United. But one was drawn to the 9.00pm RTE evening news on Tuesday to see how An Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Ahern TD had performed in his crisis management challenge in THAT interview. Having heard the interview earlier on radio, how would it play on TV?

Every crisis is different. But from a PR point of view, whether you are a company or an individual, there are a number of text book principles when you face a major crisis.

Generally in a crisis you need to come out with your hands up. You cannot and should not speculate but you should be open and honest. In this, I thought the Taoiseach scored well. He named names, he gave figures.

The second vital principle is that you must express regret. Say how sorry you are. This is where the Taoiseach unfortunately ignored the text book. Perhaps because he thought he had nothing to apologise for. In his own words, “My advice is that I’ve broken absolutely no codes, ethical, tax, legal or otherwise…”

At the end of the interview he did offer the Pope Benedict defence when he said, “If I’ve caused offence to anyone, I think I have to a few people, I’m sorry.” In other words, ‘I’m not sorry about what I did but I sure regret the reaction.’
In question time the next day in the Dail he continued with this tactic denying that he had done any wrong. This is sailing pretty close to the Bart Simpson defence: “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove a thing.”

As a professional PR adviser I don’t think that went half far enough. I would suggest someone in a similar position might say that while he did not believe that he had broken any laws, in hindsight, as a holder of political office,  the action was unwise and incorrect. The person might add that he had made an error of judgement and now accepted that totally. He regretted it, it shouldn’t have happened and he apologised fully to the Irish people. End of story.

The Irish electorate has proven to be, perhaps overly, tolerant and forgives most misdemeanours. But if you don’t say you’re sorry, or can’t see why you should be, then you leave yourself exposed to a backlash.

The other tactic that was unfortunate from a PR perspective was that, “…it wasn’t big money either, quite frankly…” The impression was given that because it was thousands instead of hundreds of thousands of pounds, it was somehow less serious. I don’t think so. To most people, even in Celtic Tigress Ireland, it is a lot of money. While one does not question the Taoiseach’s honesty or service, something is right or wrong. 

The amount of money is irrelevant. One is reminded of the old morality story:
He:  Would you sleep with me for 15 million Euro?
She (sheepishly): Yes.
He:  Well then, would you sleep with me for 15 Euro?
She: Certainly not. What kind of woman do you think I am?
He:  We’ve established what kind of woman you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.

Two other interesting points emerged from the point of view of professional crisis management. The Taoiseach said, “I think if I was legally advised, what I would have said the first morning, the whole lot is nobody’s business, it’s the tribunal.”

The Taoiseach is correct. There is always the danger that companies in a crisis take most heed of those that charge the most.  I.e. the lawyers. The natural programming of many lawyers is to circle the wagons and say nothing apart from the threat of writs. That is not usually good advice from a PR, reputation management or survival perspective. While they should be consulted, if traditional tight lipped lawyers take full control of your crisis then you’re really in trouble.

Another comment that jumped out from the interview was, “…they were not people that ever tried to get me to do something. I might have appointed somebody but I appointed them because they were friends, not because of anything they had given me…”

There has been a muted media reaction to this. For example, on RTE Radio 1’s Tonight with Vincent Browne there was jovial acceptance that this was the way of the world in Irish politics and sure the other crowd would react just the same if they were in power.

Yes, probably true. The danger is that blanket acquiescence of such practices is a slippery slope to the risk that certain State contracts, tax legislation or building incentives might be decided under similar criteria.

ends