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A monthly e-zine on crisis management brought to you by Judy Hoffman Quote of the month: "Everyone loves praise; look hard for ways to give it to them." H. Jackson Brown, Jr. in Life's Little Instruction Book - Volume 2 A PERSONAL CRISIS WITH LESSONS LEARNED Two weeks ago, I had an experience that revealed a number of principles of crisis management. It started out as a simple visit to my 91-year old mother in Florida. I was there to help her get readjusted to her independent living apartment after a few months in the skilled nursing portion of her retirement community. Things went very well -- until my last day there STUFF HAPPENS I use the word "stuff" because Mom will probably read this one since I'm talking about her -- but you know the saying... Plans were made for me to leave her apartment at 10 a.m. for my flight home. But at 7:45 a.m. I was awakend by her calling me because she was experiencing a severe pain in her face. I do not need to go into the details here, but between a heating pad, the retirement community nurse, and my nephew who was visiting the area, I was on my way to the airport -- frazzled and concerned -- by 10:15. With a little speeding and more than a little stress , I was through security and at the gate right as they were boarding my plane. Crisis averted? Read on... STUFF HAPPENS (REPRISE) Just as I got on the plane, the announcement came that the cargo door had come off the track! A mechanic had been called to fix it. Not a big problem, right? I had a 45 minute layover in Charlotte. But wait...the pilot said that there were no mechanics on site available and so one who was "on call" was being summoned. It would take him 30 minutes to get there and then take more time to fix the door. I quickly figured out I was going to miss my connection. SUFFICIENT PEOPLE TO STAFF CRITICAL POSITIONS Is this staffing plan adequatefor the airline? Does this "on call" system usually work for them? Is it worth all of the bad feelings among the passengers who all streamed off the plane to try to rebook flights they'd miss in Charlotte? Couldn't the airlines, by working together ahead of time, have developed some sort of mutual support agreement to be able to help each other out in times of emergency? Next it became a question of whether there were enough gate agents to deal with the upset passengers. At first, no one was there. Two others eventually joined him. That was good, but... ARE THEY WELL TRAINED TO DEAL WITH THE SITUATION? The gentleman who called me up to the podium looked completely baffled by the computer screen and had to ask another agent about every move. That agent said, loud enough for me and others to hear, that she hadn't been fully trained on how to handle these situations. (What? Re-bookings? Like they don't happen a lot?) ATTITUDE IS SO IMPORTANT! While waiting for ten full minutes to have my situation resolved, I watched the two other agents working with fellow passengers. One agent was taking care to show empathy for passenger concerns and apologizing for the inconvenience. Her passengers were mollified and accepted their fate. The other agent wasn't rude. He was just business-like, doing his job, telling people -- in a somewhat curt tone of voice -- "That's the best I can do." His passengers were NOT happy and there were lots of negative comments made about the airline. APOLOGIES MUST BE SINCERE Back on the plane, with the cargo door secured, the flight attendant apologized. Not the canned "We apologize for your inconvenience" seasoned travellers are used to hearing. Instead, she went on a bit: "We are really so sorry about the delay. We understand that this has disrupted your plans and made problems for you. If it helps at all to know it, I'm missing my connection to get home too. Again, we are so sorry." STUPID MISTAKES MADE UNDER STRESS Once in Charlotte, knowing I had had three hours before my next flight, I walked leisurely to the new gate. I sat down, prepared to start writing this month's e-zine. I opened my briefcase. The spot for my laptop was EMPTY! I knew right away what happened. In the stress of rushing for the plane in Florida, I overlooked putting it back in my case after the security check. Avoidable? Sure. Understandable under the stress? Yes. PRE-CRISIS PLANNING CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE Many of you can empathize with the feeling. You realize just what it would mean to you professionally and personally if your computer was misplaced, lost, stolen, swamped in a flood, or burned up in a fire. But when was the last time you followed what you know is good adivce to back up your information? Excuses abound. Not enough time. .. Don't know exactly how to do it... But just think of what you would have to go through if you had to try to reconstruct everthing that is on there! Proactively doing things like backing up can make the difference between an annoyance and a true crisis. UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR CRISIS IS NOT NECESSARILY SOMEONE ELSE'S PRIORITY When I realized my mistake, I went immediately to the folks at TSA at Charlotte's airport. Directed to a supervisor who was on the phone, I stood at her elbow for a full five minutes. A potentially lost laptop was a mini-crisis to me. But the TSA supervisor was working on her own crisis -- problems with scheduling crews for the next day's shift. HAVING NEEDED INFORMATION READILY AVAILABLE When I finally had a chance to tell her my problem, she knew what she should do -- put me in touch with TSA at the Sarasota airport. Easy enough, right? But she took three full minutes leafing through her notebook of TSA policies and procedures saying, "I KNOW that list of phone numbers of all the airport TSA offices is in here somewhere..." In a crisis, you need to have the phone numbers of critical people in an accessible spot -- maybe laminated. (And the phone numbers have to be up to date.) Finally, I got through to TSA in Sarasota who patched me right through to the airport police. A very professional-sounding Lieutenant took my call. When he asked if I could describe the laptop, I realized, with a sinking sensation, that I had never put my name and address on the underside of the case! (Sometimes the simplest things escape our attention until it's too late!) Luckily, I did have some unusual green sticky labels on it. Once the Lieutenant knew it was mine, he calmly reassured me that his assistant would be able to ship it to me the next day. One bit of helpful pre-crisis planning did come into play. I had my Fed Ex account number in my briefcase, so supplying that made it easier. For the first time in many hours, I relaxed a bit. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL Looking back, mine was not a big crisis. No one was injured or killed; the environment was not harmed; no product contamination or product safety issue threatened the health of consumers; no one's corporate reputation was sullied; no members of the public were attending meetings to scream at me. My mother seems to be doing well with some help from a private duty nurse and my relatives in Sarasota. My delayed flight arrived safely in Raleigh just three hours later than planned. My missing laptop showed up with the FedEx driver when it was supposed to, and everything appears intact. But hopefully I learned a lot and can take some actions to at least minimize the potential damage if a similar situation to my forgotten laptop happens again. Whether or not the airlines will learn from what happened to them is another question. I hope you've seen some things here that might alert you to actions you could take now to prevent or minimize the damage if a crisis should happen to your organization one day. ### Special Note: To my readers in upstate NY (and I mean REALLY upstate -- Buffalo, Rochester, etc.). I have been hired to present three workshops to an organization of senior executives in the Buffalo area in January. So if you have been thinking about scheduling a media training workshop, you might want to contact me now so I can fit it in when my travel expenses are already covered! 'Til next month...KEEP COOL! Copyright (C) 2006 JCH Enterprises Click here to view other e-zines by Judy Hoffman. |
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