“A whole Cyber Legion, though. He just blew them all up. To make a point! He once chased the Atraxi off a planet, and then called them back for a scolding!” —Anglican Marine, A Good Man Goes To War

“I think sometimes you need someone to stop you.” —Donna Noble, The Runaway Bride

“I got too big, Dorium. Too noisy. Time to step back into the shadows.” —The Doctor, The Wedding of River Song
                                                                        *  *  *  *

Oscar Wilde once remarked that the only thing worse than being talked about was not being talked about. Sometimes that’s the manic mindset some organizations have around their external image.

And no one knows manic better than the Doctor.

The Doctor is the chief character in Doctor Who, a 49-year-old television series considered the longest-running science fiction show in history. The Doctor is a Time Lord who travels across galaxies and centuries in a device called the TARDIS, which resembles an antique British police box. (On the outside, anyway. It’s far more technical, and bigger, on the inside.)

Like the show itself in earlier years, the Doctor has spent most of his time in relative obscurity. But one can save whole planets only so many times before gaining a bit of notoriety. And so the Doctor has found himself in a dilemma. At his best he is widely known and admired; at his worst he is hated and feared. He embraces both reputations when convenient and resents them when they aren’t.

In essence, he is an example of that old saying, “Be careful what you wish for—you might get it.”

The same can be true for organizations that apply PR without strategic thought. If you swing open the doors in pursuit of positive press, you can’t slam them shut during a bad-news situation and expect a fair shake—or any continued interest in you when things settle down.

Some years ago, a company I know had a no-media policy at one of its sites. There was little external awareness of its innovative work. When the decision was made to reach out to reporters and educate them on that work, the site quickly gained a broad, positive reputation. A few years later, business needs caused huge staff reductions. Rather than go silent, the company proactively turned to those same reporters to explain the changes. That transparent approach earned the company a chance to share its side and provide a balanced message.

Sadly, this isn’t always the norm. Some corporations push their PR departments to get them on the cover of Business Week as an industry model, then complain when those same reps can’t quash a negative story, or when “no comment” isn’t the magic wand that makes the piece go away.

Not long ago, the Doctor in Doctor Who used his fame to intimidate his enemies and manipulate his friends. When he realized the consequences of that fame—among them good people dying—he managed to have nearly all record of his existence erased. Now he revels in anonymity. But somehow I doubt he is any more strategic in his thinking. The day may come when his lost notoriety would be valuable, perhaps even life-saving. An either/or approach isn’t likely to serve the Doctor well in the long run.

The same is true with public relations. Building relationships and dialogue with your audiences can bring great rewards. It also carries risks. The key is applying it strategically—which can put your reputation back on track when bad things happen.

Psst! Wanna know a secret? That “magic bullet” that you’re seeking to restore your business’ reputation after a crisis? There isn’t one.

Indeed, the fact that there isn’t a single cure is why crisis communicators have jobs. No crisis is exactly the same as another, and neither are the solutions. One size definitely doesn’t fit all.

At the same time, as I shared with members of the American Marketing Association of Southwest Michigan last week, there are needs and behaviors common to every crisis—basic “to-do’s” that should always define how your business operates:

-- Empathize and humanize. The public wants you to care about them. Any business that succeeds will be human in its identity and sincere in its concern. But you must be empathetic and compassionate before a crisis if you expect the public to take you seriously during or after it. They should be hallmarks of your organization at all times.

-- Be accountable. When American car buyers and auto critics rejected the redesigned Honda Civic, CEO Takanobu Ito didn’t look for a scapegoat.  He said, “The ultimate responsibility rests with me.” Ito held himself accountable not only for the failure, but also the solution—and, sadly, that’s a rarity in most organizations.

-- Be transparent. In a crisis, businesses are tempted to parse information, only revealing the least amount deemed necessary to avoid lawsuits. Usually it isn’t enough, and what’s held back will be revealed in due course anyway. Being open and honest will help deflect accusations of hiding information. People need to believe you’re trustworthy before they’ll trust you.

-- Be clear, consistent and factual. If people have some sense of control in a crisis situation, it helps them manage the emotional reaction. Communicating the fact quickly, clearly and consistently engenders trust, which is critical to preserving or restoring your reputation.  And it’s simply the right thing to do.

-- Take the long-term view. A crisis tends to pull you into short-term thinking, trying to resolve the immediate threat. Of course that’s necessary, but don’t throw out the long-term needs of your organization’s reputation. Your commitment to honesty and integrity should drive both strategies. If you embrace a closed model of behavior in the crisis, don’t expect the public to believe differently after.

My final comments to the group had to do with being prepared. Crisis plans are necessary, but trying to create a plan for every potential situation is futile. You’ll wind up with a very thick binder that no one will read. Get the basics right, have your communication avenues and people in place, and be prepared to be flexible.

Most important, don’t obsess over a potential crisis. Celebrate the good, live in the present and stay true to your moral center.

After all, as a wise person once told me, every day can’t be a crisis.

I came across an article on how to deal with workplace embarrassment … and it got me reminiscing.
 
Unfortunately.
 
No doubt you have your share of such war stories. Maybe you even learned something from it. Doesn’t make it any more comfortable to think on it, eh?
 
My tale of woe—and no, this isn’t my Mary Lou Retton story; that one you’ll have  to get from me in a different venue—goes back more than two decades, when I was  a fledgling speechwriter. I had a new client who was giving a fairly significant
speech. We met, covered the primary points, and a few days later I turned around a draft.
 
Then my client called and rejected the draft. This caught me by surprise. My speechwriting experiences had been positive, and to this day it remains one of my favorite jobs. At the time, I didn’t expect a complete rejection. It felt as if the whole world had fallen in on me.
 
But I didn’t have time for despair. I had only an afternoon to revise—actually, totally rewrite—the text before my client left town. (This was back when remote email access wasn’t nearly as easy as it is today.) So I promised I would have a new draft by day’s end.

Cue the guy from Office Space. “Um … yeah.”

Even considering all the drop-dead deadlines I had endured in my earlier journalism career, I never felt so pressured to finish something on time as I did that new draft. With no Internet access—not that it would have mattered back then—I was making panicked forages through files and reference books one minute, hammering away on my 386 PC the next. Every now and then, I’d save the draft to a 5¼-inch floppy disk.
 
The pressure grew as the clock crept past 4 p.m. My deadline for the next draft was 4:30. And deep inside, I knew this version wasn’t as good as it should be. But I was in the home stretch. With 20 minutes to spare, I saved the draft one last time and prepared to print it.

It vanished from the screen.

That’s weird, I thought as I reopened the file from the floppy disk.
 
In a mystery that remains unsolved to this day, the new draft was gone. Only the rejected draft remained—a draft that should have been overwritten half a dozen times.

All the work I’d done that afternoon had dissolved into the ether. And it was 20 minutes to deadline.

Trembling, I went to my manager’s office with two thoughts in mind: One, how was I going to explain this? And two, I’d look lousy in a fast-food uniform.

My manager was there. So was her boss. And his
boss.

Oh man, this just keeps getting better….

I explained the situation to the assembled management. They favored me with funereal looks. But when the senior-most person offered to inform the client, I said, “No. This was my responsibility. I’ll do it.”

Back in my cubicle, I prayed fervently before picking up the phone. My hand shook so much I could barely bring the receiver to my ear. As the client came on the phone, I figured I had nothing to lose, so I tried to lighten the bad news with a sprinkle of levity.
 
“Hey, you know the old excuse, ‘The dog ate my homework?’ Um, well, my computer ate your speech.”
 
The ensuing silence was so ominous, even the crickets feared to chirp.

I won’t drag out the suspense any further: Since the client planned to stop by the office the next morning before leaving town, he gave me the night to try again. I worked until nearly midnight, but a new—and far, far better—draft was on his desk when he came in. He loved it, and he delivered it a few days later with great success. (Well, except for the overhead lights glaring off the TelePrompTer screens, but that’s another story….)

The morale of this tale ought to be, “Being honest and taking responsibility will lead to a happy ending.” Often it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.

But it’s always the right thing to do.

“Dear Lord, please don’t let me f*** up.”
“Didn’t quite copy that. Say again.”
“I said ‘Everything’s  A-OK.’”
 -- Radio dialogue between astronaut Alan Shepard and capcom Gordon Cooper, The Right Stuff (1983)

Being something of a space nut, I hope I’m forgiven for reaching into that well again this week….

NASA appears to be on a public opinion high unlike anything seen in decades. In the last month alone we’ve seen the successful landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars, the discovery of possibly  millions of black holes via the WISE space telescope, the launch of twin probes to study the Van Allen radiation belt, a milestone for  the Juno probe headed for Jupiter, and the 35th anniversary of the longest-lived—and  farthest away—operational probe, Voyager 1, now at the edge of interstellar space. All of this happens as the most renowned of astronauts, Neil Armstrong, passes away—a somber event, yet one that turned hearts and minds back to the Apollo era.
 
As a child of the Space Age, I sense a resurgence of the enthusiasm that put such stellar achievements on the front pages of newspapers in the 1960s and early ‘70s. It’s a nice change after 30 years of largely ho-hum reactions to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, spiked occasionally with a Hubble or a Sojourner or a Cassini or a Spirit and Opportunity.
 
And there’s more to come. Curiosity is just starting to stretch its wheels in Gale Crater. Cassini is still cruising ringed Saturn and its moons. The Dawn spacecraft has wrapped up its study of the asteroid Vesta and is preparing to voyage to dwarf planet Ceres. New Horizon is less than three years from its encounter with Pluto. The ISS and its rotating crews continue their scientific work aloft. And private industry is partnering with NASA on such ventures as the Dragon cargo ship.
 
For NASA workers, it must be pleasant to high-five each other—yay, Mohawk Guy!—rather than have to deal with disasters like Columbia and Challenger, or embarrassments like Hubble’s initial nearsightedness or the crash of the Mars Polar Lander. 
 
The reality, of course, is that space exploration involves both great achievement and great tragedy. In
NASA’s case, a combination of hamstrung budgets and lack of national will have made the agency with the demeanor of a kicked puppy rather than that of a prize-winning purebred.
 
Yet NASA seems to be learning. Science is cool, but talking about science isn’t always sexy. So things like sharing hi-res photos online almost immediately after Curiosity landed, or transmitting a will.i.am song to the Red Planet (*sigh* Why not Led Zeppelin?), or even a loop over New York City with a piggybacked Shuttle—these are efforts that are cool, that make the space program a little more real to the public. And the more real space appears to be to the average Joe and Jane, the more support NASA is likely to glean in the years ahead.

It’s good public relations—allowing people to be part of the fun, to participate in the story.

Let’s hope NASA continues to keep things, um, “A-OK.”