Force For Good Communications

Avoiding a choice between the lesser of two evils; communicating 'in the gray'

We like things simple. Black and white. But few issues that matter are so cut and dry.

Successful issue management often calls for the difficult task of communicating "in the gray."

In a corporate environment, we too often clam up in the midst of uncertain times. Lawyers caution against comment and risk-adverse leaders are all-too happy to take the advice to the extreme. A skillful leader will win trust and boost the confidence -- of employees, investors and other stakeholders -- by providing some measure of the challenges being faced and the relative prospects for success in the future. Avoiding hollow promises or insincere platitudes, the leader gives stakeholders a sense of just how serious the issue is and his/her relative confidence in a positive resolution, emphasizing what needs to be done immediately to move the ball forward. Constituents understand and forgive the lack of specifics if the leader has built up good will in the past with candid and accurate communication.

That's what it means to communicate "in the gray."

Media relations in such an environment can be even trickier. The mass media gravitate to simple "archetypes" or story lines. When a villain is readily apparent, media will naturally assume the competing person (or idea) is virtuous.

Life is often more complex than that. World events in the news show the difficulty of choosing between the ready-made alternatives:

• The recent election in Iran was almost certainly rigged. Peaceful protesters there call for international support against a repressive regime. But the Obama Administration has rightly been cautious in its response, even in its somewhat more vocal condemnations more than a week after the election, not wanting to provide credence to accusations of U.S. interference in Iranian affairs. Nuance is seldom cheered, and Obama continues to draw criticism for not taking a harder stance. Further complicating the issue is the unhappy choice between the two top candidates. Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is clearly an enemy of peace and freedom, but the leading opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi is no true reformer -- despite the inclination for many in the Western media to brand him a "moderate." Obama has wisely steered away from showing any support for Moussavi.
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• Strangely, the Obama Administration has shown no such reluctance to choose sides in another messy conflict, decrying the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya from power in Honduras. But Zelaya's actions that led up to his ouster -- moving to alter the country's constitution to increase his power and to strangle any opposition -- disqualify him for membership in the archetype of duly-elected Democratic leaders overthrown by a revolutionary coup d'etat. In fact, the Honduras Supreme Court had ordered the military to remove Zelaya for his unlawful actions. 

Corporate life can be messy, too. Constituents who find one course of action particularly unappealing will seek a quick and simple alternative. When there is no easy solution, no clear-cut winning move, don't fall into the trap of endorsing the lesser of two evils. Treat your constituents as adults. Talk about the unpleasant situation without promising an easy fix. Often that means the company itself must act as a game-changer to rise above the flawed choices that appear to be the only alternatives.

- Jon Harmon

Hope for reform in Iran rests on social media

Repressive official forces in Iran, led by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei put a stop to wide-spread protests of disputed official results of the country's presidential election. It appears a 10-day cooling off period is being enforced, after which reform-minded protesters may have sufficiently lost momentum to prevent substantial opposition being voiced to the clerical regime.

In the meantime, officials in Iran have shut down Facebook use and cell phone texting transmission, and confiscated cell phones protesters have used to capture and post video of the protests and police brutality in suppressing them.

Incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has long used social media himself, as noted in my post here in 2007. Ahmadinejad came to power as a populist who at the same time made it clear to the ruling clerics that he was their man. For a time, Ahmadinejad breathed new life into the clerical regime's sagging popularity. But his hardline ways have been rejected by increasing numbers of citizens, particularly women and young people.

For his part, opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi has quite limited credentials as a reformer. A hard-liner himself, Moussavi was included among the four candidates the ruling clerics allowed to be placed on the ballot from 200 initial candidates. But only when he began to modify his rhetoric to express some support for reform did his "green" campaign catch on, with women and students his most vocal supporters.

Photo: AFP

It seems unlikely that the entrenched powers in Iran will allow any real scrutiny of the highly suspect election, The bigger question is whether large numbers of reform-minded citizens will continue to openly push for truly Democratic change in Iran. Hopes rests firmly on the power of social media to connect Iran's citizenry to each other and to supporters around the world. Call them citizen journalists or the Facebook generation -- they are the best hope for lasting change in a repressive nation.

Are we about to witness a historic moment in Iran, similar to the popular unrest in Eastern Europe in 1989 that led to fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Bloc? Or, more likely, is Tehran similar to Tiananmen Square the same year, where student protests captured the world's attention but did little to erode the repressive hold of the Chinese government?

- Jon Harmon

Crisis management Putin-style

Strategic crisis management begins with an audit of potential crisis vulnerabilities, followed by preventive actions to reduce the liklihood of a crisis, and, finally, the development of a thorough crisis communication plan that is tested and periodically updated.

Unless you are a totalitarian regime, that is. Then you can skip most of that and just concentrate on repressing the public's reaction to the crisis.

Last April, Russia launched a national center for crisis management, formally called the National Crisis Management Center of the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters, according to a United Nations press release. (The new Russian agency could be abbrevieted as an acronym even George Orwell wouldn't have believed: the NCMCMRFCDEECND.)

At that time, Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin declared that the Russian Federation was "fully engaged in cooperation with the United Nations" in its emergency relief coordination. The UN's press release noted:

This event illustrates current efforts by the international community to expand the network of coordination centers worldwide, enhance support to the coordination of emergency response actions and promote the exchange of information between humanitarian partners such as the Russian Ministry for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters.

But that was when the price of oil was approaching $150 a barrel. Russia is the world's second-largest oil producer, and the crash in oil prices has been devastating to the Russian economy. The tension is evident in the increasingly repressive actions of the Medvedev / Putin regime.

Putin is redeploying the concept of a national center for crisis management away from an alignment with the U.N. for global hot spots to a focus on the growing crisis at home. Former Soviet chess superstar Garry Kasparov, now the leader of the Other Russia coalition, provided this update in an op-ed in the March 5 Wall Street Journal: 

Russia is beefing up its federal security forces in order to violently repress public protests. Last month, for example, the regime created the "National Center of Crisis Management," which will deploy uniformed troops against "disturbances."

That's crisis management the old Soviet style.

- Jon Harmon 

Shoe-throwing journalist makes life more dangerous for the fourth estate

In the 1960s, Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe created the so-called "new journalism" by actively becoming part the dynamic stories they were "reporting" on. But they were novelists, not hard news reporters. Journalists representing news agencies are not supposed to violently interrupt a news conference to demonstrate contempt for a head of state. That would be crossing into crazed Keith Olbermann territory or perhaps Michael Moore boorishness -- not the place for a respectable professional chronicler of the news.

So when Muntadhar al-Zeidi hurled two shoes at U.S. President George Bush at a press conference in Iraq, he crossed a line of journalistic professionalism that underscored societal differences in defining a journalist's role, particularly in places with less than full protection of free expression.

The shoe-hurlling journo quickly became a hero in much of the Arab world where he was seen as honorably expressing disgust for Bush and American intervention in Iraq. All the more demonstrating that in much of the world, journalists do not necessarily aspire to stay apart from the fray but may in fact revel in it. And it underscores the dangers Western-style journalists face in trying to report in lands where press freedom is not held sacred - you begin to understand a bit how it can be that professional journalists find themselves accused of spying or anti-government activism. Indeed, the degree that al-Zeidi's tantrum is legitimized undercuts the ability of dispassionate journalists to get free access to the stories they need to cover.

And so it is that the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization I have long admired and often written about since the early days of this blog, remains silent on al-Zeidi even as accusations grow that he was beaten by Iraqi police, reportedly breaking a rib and sustaining other injuries. Sticking up for al-Zeidi and calling for his release would chip away at CPJ's commitment to journalistic sanctuary based on neutrality. 

- Jon Harmon 

Citizen journalists in danger need protection, too

Following up on my last post, another thought from the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Awards ...

At the banquet last week, PBS' Gwen Ifill mentioned that CPJ has initiated an effort to help provide some protection for citizen journalist bloggers in countries where free expression can get you jailed or killed.

Supported by Yahoo! and Microsoft, among others, CPJ has launched the Global Network Initiative (granted, not the most awe-inspiring or even self-descriptive name) to provide a spotlight on repressive practices against citizens reporting news and information a ruling regime doesn't want to get out.

A worthy effort indeed, and I wish it well. But this noble cause could have started two years earlier, and it could have been Dell as the champion of the cit journo.

Faithful readers of Force for Good may recall my open letter to Michael Dell in 2006, suggesting that Dell champion this very cause as an advocate for its customers in dangerous lands.

Fledgling Afghan news agency lets light shine on dark places

At the annual Committee to Protect Journalists' International Press Freedom Awards this past Tuesday, the director and deputy director of a fledgling news agency in Afghanistan, Pajhwok Afghan News, were among those honored for courageous reporting in repressive environments. 

Danish Karokhel and Farida Nekzad have been covering news and fighting for media rights for the past five years in a country where violence, repression and intimidation are as much a part of life as squalor and lawlessness They aren't in it for the awards or "career advancement" or even the exhilaration of covering a historic event -- all the reasons that bring Western journalists to dangerous assignments in war zones. They're freedom fighters in the truest sense and it was terrific to see them recognized for their noble, and mostly unsung, heroism.

Impressions from the CPJ awards banquet: It always makes me a little uncomfortable to walk into the splendid ballroom of New York's Waldorf Astoria wearing a tux and consuming a couple of mixed drinks along with the happy chatter all about me before we sot down to a fine meal ... and a series of video news reports that transport us to some of the most horrific places on earth, as far from the comfortable spendor of mid-town Manhattan as imaginable. And always two days before Thanksgiving. That's no coincidence -- CPJ wants us to give thanks for the freedom and liberties we enjoy and to help in the fight against press repression anywhere and everywhere.

Politically Incorrect Idle thought: Overhearing a discussion in decidedly British accents about our new President elect -- can someone please tell the Brits that his name is not Barack O-bomber!

Peace From the Bottom Up

I don’t know those people. They’re different from us. They act weird. I don’t trust them. They’re stand-offish. I’m sure they hate us.

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They’re violent people. They don’t know any better. They don’t want peace; they just want to take what we have. We need to build a wall around them to keep them away from us. They’re too dangerous.

 

What will it take to bring lasting peace to the Holy Land? In a land where conflict runs so deep, peace cannot be imposed on the people as some calculated outcome of diplomatic negotiation. But perhaps it can rise up from the people themselves. Distrust, suspicion, prejudice and even hatred melt away when we get to know each other as individuals.

 

I spent some time with one of them today. She was shy but eventually we really started talking. I don’t know if all her people are like her but she seemed okay. I like her.

 

We talked about our families today. We laughed together. She’s my friend.

 

What if there was a quiet, serene place right in the cultural fault line of Jerusalem, where Christian, Jewish and Muslim young people could get to know each other as people and eventually as friends – rather than distant stereotypes and enemies?

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That’s the profoundly simple vision of Beit Benedict Peace Academy to be built on a beautifully rugged slice of land on Mt.Sion near the old city. My wife, Mary, and I had the privilege to visit the Benedictine Dormition Abbey recently with a small group from our Catholic parish in Illinois.

It is breath-taking to stand on hallowed ground amidst ruins dating back to King Solomon, to think about the millennia of bloodshed and conflict that these hills have known, and to imagine an academy dedicated to peace and multi-cultural understanding.

Our location has served over the years as a neutral place for reconciliation, ecumenical meetings, inter religious encounters and peace negotiations. In a land so divided and torn by conflict, Beit Benedict Peace Academy provides a neutral space on holy ground that is found no where else in Jerusalem….Our community offers to people diverse in creed, culture and tradition an opportunity to be guided in the path of reconciliation. At the request those seeking peace we are building Beit Benedict Peace Academy.

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The Benedictine monks living here have acquired this the last piece of land on Mt.Sion that can be developed, secured building permits from the Israeli government and received approvals on architectural plans. Funds now must be raised to build and endow the academy.

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Click here to learn more about how you can support this wonderful project, truly a force for good in a troubled land.

 

- Jon Harmon

 

 

Will Gathering Storm of Negative Hype Sink Hopes for Global Prosperity?

Listening to Fareed Zakaria at an Arthur Page Society meeting in New York earlier this year, I was struck by his relentless optimism and faith in a coming global prosperity. The author of The Post-American World was not speaking of doom for America but of a rising tide that would lift up the standard of living of people throughout the world.

It isn’t a zero-sum game, he said, where losers have to equal out winners. America should welcome, not feel threatened by, the rising fortunes of countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Speaking without notes, he phrased his case in nearly the same words that I would soon read in his best-selling book:

 

This will not be a world defined by the decline of America but rather the rise of everyone else. It is the result of a series of positive trends that have been progressing over the last 20 years, trends that have created an international climate of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

Zakaria acknowledged that the present era feels anything but peaceful and prosperous, attributing our heightened sense of danger to the rise of instant information, news that feeds off the negative and the omnipresence of hype.

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Why do we think we live in scary times? Part of the problem is that as violence has been ebbing, information has been exploding. The last 20 years have produced an information revolution that brings us news and, most crucially, images from around the world all the time. The immediacy of the images and the intensity of the 24-hour news cycle combine to produce constant hype. Every weather disturbance is the "storm of the decade." Every bomb that explodes is BREAKING NEWS.

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So true. A few months after hearing Zakaria’s speech, I was interviewed for a story on CNBC on high fuel prices. When I later asked the producer when to expect the story to air, I was told it was on hold because Hurricane Gustav – still days away from its expected Gulf-coast arrival – had turned the network into the All-Gustav-all-the-time news channel. Remember Gustav? It was hype about this storm, rather than its actual winds, that caused the cancellation of the first day of the Republican National Convention. And when Gustav missed New Orleans altogether, couldn’t you see the disappointment on the faces of legions of weathermen-newscasters dispatched to the Gulf?

The same relentless hype has worsened the recent stock market meltdown, as normally staid financial news networks use frightening all-caps slates like “CRISIS UPDATE: WALLSTREET IN PERIL.” It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy that retail investors, like scared sheep, have panicked and sold at what will likely prove to be the bottom of the trough.

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A final thought: An email making the rounds in these last days of the Presidential campaign features this photo

 

from the New York Times of a certain candidate and the book he’s reading, none other than Zakaria’s Post-American World – which the scare-mail describes as a “Muslim’s view of a defeated America.” (More about this on snopes.)

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There are lots of things to find fault with Obama, but not his choice of reading material – nor his intellectual curiosity into the thinking behind Zakaria’s well-articulated global optimism.

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- Jon Harmon

Aggression in Georgia Puts Russian Investment in Question

(Second of what will become a three-part series.)

In my last post I wrote of Russia as being perhaps the most intriguing of the emerging BRIC economies but cautioned that the strong hand of Putin/Medvedev in exiling BP's CEO might lead to a reassessment of the advisability of investing in Russia by Western countries and global companies. Obviously, Russian aggression in Georgia the past few days greatly magnifies concerns about the wisdom of investing in the burgeoning economy of the world's largest country.

Will Russia willfully forfeit its status as a nation in good standing and on the rise in the global economy? Will the G-8 go back to being the G-7?

- Jon Harmon

Taking Your Company's PR Global: Brand, Reputation and Employee Culture

(First of a two-part series on going global with a company's strategic public relations.)

Standing at the threshold of your company's global expansion, sniffing the excitement of new opportunities and challenges and, more than anything, the sheer possibilities of it all. Building a product brand in a major new market. Establishing a corporate reputation in a place where you have been unknown. Expanding the scope of internal communications to include ex-pats as well as new employees who may not speak your corporate language.

It's exciting, for sure. But if your PR team has largely been focused on the domestic market, you likely have no roadmap to follow as you gear up to go global.

Some companies are going global by necessity. Home economies in many mature, slow-growth markets are in recession. And companies are pinched by industry over-capacity, record energy costs and sky-high costs of commodities such as steel and copper, let alone petroleum-based materials from asphalt to plastic.

Others are expanding from a strong home base, called by the siren promise of rapidly expanding consumer economies that may or may not be similar to the home market.

Whatever your company's motivation for global expansion, corporate PR can play a number of vital roles in helping the enterprise succeed.

Having recently returned from Belarus in Eastern Europe, and Mexico the week before that, I've had PR globalization on my mind, specifically:

• How to help guide the business to be strategic in laying the ground-work for patient brand development when an opportunistic game-plan seens so appealing from an immediate risk-reward stand-point? For example, developing countries seeking to jump-start their own industrial prowess offer your company semi-lucrative licensing agreements with a nice income stream but nothing in the way of a brand footprint. When the licensing agreement is up and the cash sepnt, your company may be left with no market presence.
• Are the ideals of corporate reputation universal? Or is it arrogant to assume, for example, as a U.S.-based company's public relations officer that I know what the company should stand for in Eastern Europe? Shouldn't one spend at least some time in the primary new markets before turning over the keys to local agencies and askng them to replicate what's worked in the home market?
• How to strike the right cultural balance in internal communications to help new operations assimilate into the melting pot of your (successful) company culture as well as to help spread company-wide the vibrant new aspects of a start-up operation's spunky mind-set?

Of the rapidly expanding BRIC countries -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- it is Russia that intrigues me the most. After decades of stagnation in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, Russia's economy began humming several years ago under Vladimir Putin's firm control. And that was before the incredible run-up in the price of oil. Only Saudi Arabia produces more crude oil than Russia, so as world demand and run-away speculation have driven the price of a barrel of oil over $100 (and lately far north of that lofty price), Russia has benefitted handsomely. With a new-born consumer economy led by the nouveau riches bent on conspicuous consumption, Russia may be a prime market for you, IF...

If Russia can clean up its industry and industrial products from essentially unregulated polluters to full compliance with EU emissions standards.

If Putin and his hand-picked "successor" Dmitry Medvedev get serious about cleaning up the rampant corruption and thuggery that make Western companies rightfully leery about investing there.

And if the government can resist the temptation to go retro-Soviet in nationalizing everything in sight and chasing away international investment. The recent expulsion of BP CEO Robert Dudley is certainly not a good sign. How Putin and Medvedev respond to the international backlash that is surely coming (you read it here first) may lay the foundation for a truly global Russian economy, or set it back two decades.

I'll expand on these themes in my next post. comments welcome, of course. Especially from Russian-national economic majors at prestigious Western universitites.

- Jon Harmon