Executive learning: Be prepared when disaster strikes

Reprinted from the International Herald Tribune, 23 March 99

Most executives don't want to study something they may never use, so they don't learn or understand crisis management until it's too late - when they're in the thick of a crisis. Or so says Mr. Stoller, who devotes two full days to a subject most companies spend much less time on.

Such training transcends public relations, moving into the realm of what he calls 'basic tools of persuasion': how to project character, make an argument and use language that has meaning and hasn't been watered down into corporate-speak. Nor do these skills come into play only in extreme, public situation like the Exxon Valdez spill, Dow Chemical's Bhopal explosion or Tylenol packages that had been tampered with. Barrings Plc. Executives had to confront a situation that was ultimately much more damaging to the company; and there are smaller such fires every day in large corporations.

Crisis management is one of those things that people don't know they need until they need it.

Managers need training on how to understand and work with the media and, above all, how to provide information. Says Dick Kwartler, publisher of the MBA Newsletter: "As we move into the so-called Information Age, a lot of corporations are providing less and less information." he says. "They're obsessed with confidentiality when it’s unnecessary."

In a crisis, instead of getting out the corporation's side of the story, unprepared executives may come across as stonewalling the public.

Susan Lowance, director of MIT's Sloane School Continuing Education, knows that the subject was being given more prominence by at least some forward-looking companies when she was invited to help the Boeing Corporation formulate a course on 'Crew Management' - a cooperative-sounding name for crisis management - for its Center for learning in Seattle.

"That was an indication that we should be paying attention to this," Ms. Lowance says. Appropriately, the airplane manufacturer took the pressure of a cockpit as the dominant metaphor for the decision-making process in a corporate environment.

Sloane's course, entitled 'Situational Strategic Planning', gives managers the tools they need to communicate effectively in crisis situations.

"Whether it is managing change or a dramatic announcement or responding to an environmental crisis, we build it into the course," says Ms. Lowance.

The Syracuse University School of Management is able to use the public relations faculty at its sister school, the Newhouse School of Communications to teach a course included in its MBA Upgrade program.

For most schools, however, the subject remains on the periphery of management courses as now offered.

"It's not a big deal," comments the University of Maryland's Howard Frank. "Our executive education deals with updating skills and information management." As Robert Mittlestaedt, director of executive education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, puts it: "It's one of those things that people don't know they need until they need it."

Even so, he adds: "I've never seen the market for a separate stand-alone course. It's like selling a course in ethics. No one signs up."