Page 166 - Crisis Communication Practical PR Strategies

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How Senior Management Can Make the Crisis Worse 147
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Responsibility is a unique concept: it can only reside and inhere in a
single individual. You may share it with others, but your portion is not
diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you. Even if you do
not recognize it or admit its presence, you cannot escape it. If respon-
sibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance, or passing the
blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your
finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong,
then you have never had anyone really responsible. (Admiral Hyman
G Rickover, 1961, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Radiation Safety
and Regulation, Washington)

One notable trait to be found in some CEOs is ‘an excessive appetite
for being “in the hot seat”’, which means they take all the decisions
themselves and don’t delegate. Larken says:

Some feel obliged to make lots of big decisions quickly and with inad-
equate information; subsequently there is cause to repent but their
actions cannot readily be unravelled. At the other end of the spectrum,
some may wait until the situation becomes clearer and end up making
no decision at all.
Our aim is to help prepare the executive to navigate the middle way
between these two extremes. It’s also to instil a capacity to recognize
that over-centralization beyond the really important big decisions can
prove fatally inefficient in fast-moving situations when one casualty is
likely to be efficient communications.

A typical problem experienced by, for example, national groups of
large multinationals in a local crisis – for instance a national terrorist sit-
uation such as many UK companies and organizations have faced in
recent times – is head office dictating detailed actions and policies from
afar with a poor understanding of the situation ‘on the ground’. Larken
cites the example of a large US company that flew in a senior executive
to take charge of its UK group of companies in just these circumstances.
‘He took charge in a loud and aggressive way and quickly succeeded in
alienating everyone. It makes life extremely difficult in terms of trying
to generate effective leadership and coherent direction.’
On a somewhat different note, Larken recalls the time when a large
UK defence organization had a change at the top to a very dominant
CEO who summarily cancelled a crucial crisis training exercise
because he was unnerved by the realities that he feared would emerge.
It was never re-scheduled. ‘It’s a form of institutional constipation and
can be costly – not just in financial terms.’