Logos Consulting Group president Helio Fred Garcia co-authored an analysis of one of South Korea’s biggest crises of 2016 in Korea’s leading business journal, Dong-A Business Review.

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The analysis was co-authored with Dr. Hoh Kim, founder, head coach, and facilitator at THE LAB h in Seoul, Korea.

Dr. Hoh Kim, founder, The Lab h, Seoul

Dr. Hoh Kim, founder, The Lab h, Seoul

Dr.  Kim, former head of Edelman’s Korea office, is a certified trainer in the Cialdini Method developed by Dr. Robert Cialdini, and a certified coach in the Marshall Goldsmith Certified Stakeholder Centered Coaching method.  Dr. Kim is the primary author of the Dong-A Business Review analysis.

Their article examines the crises surrounding The Lotte Group, one of Korea’s leading industrial conglomerates.  Lotte Group consists of more than 60 business units and employs 60,000 people in such industries as hotels, beverages, candy manufacturing, fast food, retail, financial services, chemicals, electronics, IT, construction, publishing, and entertainment.

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In October Lotte Group’s Chairman, Shin Dong-bin, was indicted on tax evasion, embezzlement, and other charges.  His sister, Shin Young Ja, was arrested several months before for embezzlement and bribery.

Lotte Group is one of Korea’s chaebols, family run business conglomerates, a common form of business organization in Korea.

You can download the complete original Korean language version of the analysis here.

An English translation follows below:


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The Crisis Management of Lotte

‘A red team’ that challenges a corporation from within is necessary
in the era of ‘reputation management’

Co-authored by

Hoh Kim, Founder, Head Coach & Lead Facilitator, THE LAB h and
Helio Fred Garcia, President of Logos Consulting Group

Published at Dong-A Business Review (DBR), December 2016 Issue 2 (No. 215), pp. 90-94, in Korea

AUTHORS

  • Dr. Hoh Kim graduated from Hankuk university of foreign studies, where he majored in French literature and philosophy. He earned his master’s degree in PR at Marquette university and his Ph.D at Graduate School of Culture Technology, KAIST. He is one of the 19 Cialdini Method Certified Trainers (CMCT) approved and endorsed by Robert Cialdini, the author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.  He has previously led the Korea office of Edelman, a global PR firm and written several books including Cool Apology (co-authored), Cool Survival Kits, Reputation Society (co-authored) and Why I Can’t Say No (all in Korean).
  • Dr. Helio Fred Garcia is the founder of Logos Consulting Group and has more than 35 years of experience in crisis management, executive coaching and consulting. He is an adjunct professor of management in NYU’s Stern School of Business Executive MBA program, where he teaches crisis management. He is the author of  The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, and is the co-author with John Doorley of  Reputation Management: The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication, which was translated into Korean and published as Reputation Management Strategy in Korea by Alma Press in 2016.

 

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ABSTRACT

According to the book Reputation Management Strategy, the formula for reputation is ‘Reputation = (financial) performance + (organizational) behavior + (corporate) communication’. The Lotte crisis has largely been triggered by problems with its organizational behavior. First, ‘an owner risk’ has occurred in leadership behavior and second, in corporate behavior dealing with its customers and business partners, the company led people to believe that it is not an ethical company. Finally, Lotte has failed in communication because there has been a huge gap between its short-term responses, actual leadership behaviors and its nominal long-term vision.

This article offers suggestions for Korean companies that are facing  challenges similar to Lotte’s.

For starters, companies need to get stakeholders to be involved so that they can constantly challenge the companies from the outside. Second, corporations need to have something like ‘a red team’ or ‘a devil’s advocate’ within the organization so that they can bring genuine change to corporate behavior.

ARTICLE

This year the Lotte Group experienced its worst crisis. Here are some questions we need to ask concerning the issue:

  • Q1. How did people first respond to the scandal? Did they say “No, Lotte would never do such a thing” Or did they say “I told you so”.
  • Q2. How would you respond if someone tells you that you are acting just like Lotte?  Would you feel flattered or offended or just regard the comment as neutral?
  • Q3. Lotte has made several promises to reform it. Which one impressed you the most? Do you really believe that the company will keep the promises?

We will explain later why these questions matter for Korean businesses in terms of crisis management. In the meantime we want readers to find the answers to the questions on their own.

For the most part, when we analyze a case, we take a careful look at it as if cameras zoom in. And then we figure out what the problem was and how the problem should have been solved. But in the case of Lotte, one of the authors (Dr. Hoh Kim) thought that when it came to solving the problems there was little Lotte could do in the short term. There were three reasons for this.

  • First, the core of the crisis lay in conflicts among three members of the founder’s family.
  • Second, the founder has failed to smoothly pass down the business to his children, which should have been done over the course of years or decades.
  • Third, it is only the founder and his family who could have prevented these problems.

In this article we’d like to talk about Lotte’s crisis management from a reputational perspective.

In the field of crisis management, there is something called issue index. The index refers to a list of potential issues that might occur to a company in the future. When we were reading news articles about the 2016 Lotte crisis, it almost felt like we were seeing the issue index of Korean conglomerates in general. Of course, how dangerous the problems are and how the issues affect the businesses can be different from company to company.

But it is worth looking into the Lotte case because so many Korean conglomerates share the same kinds problems as Lotte. Conflict over succession and slush funds are a good example.

The authors discussed how we could approach the Lotte case and decided to suggest a common tool that can be applied to other Korean chaebols. (Chaebols are large Korean business conglomerates, mostly family led.)

We believe that it would be helpful to develop ‘a mirror’ that other companies or business people could use to reflect themselves, not ‘a mere window’ through which other conglomerates may just watch and do nothing.  But a mirror to create self-awareness.

Also, with this analysis we’d like to present the last puzzle piece to Korean chaebols that can help them advance their management of crisis and reputation.

One Element in the Reputation Formula that
Most Korean Conglomerates are Missing:

The book Reputation Management Strategy that Dr. Garcia has co-written with John Doorley introduces a reputation formula as below:

Reputation =
(Financial) Performance + (Organizational) Behavior + (Corporate) Communication

The seriousness of the Lotte crisis lies not just in legal risks that it might face but also in a damage to its reputation.

The crisis facing Lotte at the moment is completely different from a crisis that a conglomerate might encounter when it fails to do well in its operations. The current Lotte crisis is highly likely to directly hurt its reputation. So in this case one of the most important crisis-management goals is to recover reputation.

What lessons can the reputation formula offer to Korean Chaebols as a whole as well as to Lotte?

The three elements in the formula are:

    1. Financial Performance
      • Long-Term Performance
      • Short-Term Performance
    2. Organizational Behavior
      • Leadership Behavior
      • Behavior Towards Others
      • Behavior Towards Society
    3. Corporate Communication
      • Tactical and Short-Term Communication v. Strategic & Long-Term Communication
      • External Communication v. Internal Communication

Financial performance, as an element that affects reputation, has two factors: long-term performance and short-term performance. Long-term performance can include profits of the last 10 years or long-term growth potential. Profit for the year is an example of short-term performance. In the case of Lotte, financial performance was not the major factor that affected its reputation.

When it comes to organizational behavior, there are three factors:

  • The first is leadership behavior.
    When the Lotte crisis took place, the behavior of the founder’s family was broadcast almost in real time and not just Lotte employees but also the public were able to learn about it. The conflict among the family members exposed various problems within the chaebol including opaque business practices and governance structure, and succession-related problems. And all these conflicts still remain unresolved. What is unique about founder’s family-related problems is the fact that both the crisis maker and the crisis manager are the founder and his family dynasty. This is a serious problem because it is almost impossible for the employees to take actions to solve the problem. All they can do is simply following orders from the founder’s family.
  • The second factor of organizational behavior is about consumers and business partners.
    This includes how satisfied consumers are with the products and services provided by Lotte and what its partners (vendors) think of working with Lotte.
  • The third factor is about corporate behavior towards society.
    So-called ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ is a good example of this.  In October, Lotte’s Chairman, Shin Dong-bin, made a public apology and announced reform plans. In the plans, he adjusted the original growth target of increasing its sales to 200 trillion Won (Korean currency) by 2020 and of becoming Asia’s tenth largest company. He then shifted his focus to corporate social responsibility, particularly philanthropy, and said he would put more emphasis on meeting people’s expectation and promoting social values. He stopped short of detailing his plans for fulfilling corporate social responsibility.

In fact, what really matters when it comes to corporations’ social behavior is not philanthropic activities but how companies make profit.

As a matter of fact, in ISO 26000, an International Standard providing guidelines for social responsibility, the word ‘philanthropy’ is mentioned only once. According to the standard, how responsible a company is depends on how much the company contributes to things like human rights, labor practices, the environment, fair business practices, consumer issues and local communities. ISO asserts that corporate social responsibility is about how to make a profit, not about what to do with profit. In other words, to become socially responsible, a company needs to make profit in positive ways. Whether it engages in charitable activities or not is a minor issue. Korean chaebols need to do more in this regard.

Corporate communication, the last factor of the reputation formula, includes both tactical and short-term communication activities like press release and press conference, and strategic and long-term communication activities such as creating corporate missions, visions and values.

Another form of corporate communication includes communication with consumers and the public and communication with employees.  If you go to Lotte’s website(lotte.co.kr), you can find its management policies. The first policy is about transparency and it reads: “we shall promote transparency in our operation and financial performance by tightening self-monitoring systems and strengthening regulatory tools”.

The company also says that it shall put the idea into practice by establishing a system that helps its shareholders understand how the company is doing, by honestly sharing management-related information and decision making and by actively supporting the board of directors and creating a committee that promotes transparent business practices.

One of the core values of the company is responsibility and it reads: “we shall always honestly run the business and contribute to social development by fulfilling our social responsibility. And its action guidelines read: we shall not cover up our mistakes and immediately inform our mistakes and correct them; we shall execute our tasks according to legal, ethical and social standards.”

Lotte is being criticized because there are gaps between its corporate communication and organizational behavior, particularly its leadership behavior.  This Say-Do Gap is the key problem.

One could conclude that Lott’s statements of corporate vision, values and action guidelines are just meant to be framed and hung on the wall. One might also add that in reality no company takes these things seriously.

But stated values create expectations.  And trust rises when expectations are met; falls when expectations are not met.

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If corporate founders ignore the management policies and detailed action plans that they themselves have created, they will face a situation where it is almost impossible to exercise their leadership because they will lose the trust of those who matter to them.

This is the last piece in the reputation puzzle that Korean conglomerates need to improve. Korean chaebols have been able to show world-class business performance through innovation in their products and services. They also have heavily invested in advertising and promotion and have seen great improvement in their corporate communication.

However, they are rightly criticized for failing to make a meaningful change in their corporate behavior, particularly in their leadership and social behavior.  The founders and chief executives of chaebols create ‘great’ visions and values for their companies, but top management themselves often do not take these visions and values seriously. In today’s world, where it is easy to monitor corporate behavior and where stakeholders have easy access to information, organizational and leadership behaviors that haven’t been detected before now can greatly influence corporate reputation.

As we analyzed the Lotte case, we defined the gap among performance, behavior and communication as the fundamental cause for loss of Lotte’s reputation.

Korean chaebols as a whole often have gaps in their business, not just the gap between behavior and communication, but also between performance and communication and between performance and behavior.

So far, when Korean chaebols have faced a crisis as a result of their mistakes and wrongdoings made public, they have done all the same as if there is a formula for such situation: to issue an apology, hold a press conference, take a bow and make some promises.  But, few companies have kept their promises and now few consumers and citizens believe them.

One of the most important jobs of the public relations departments of large companies in Korea has been to stop scandals involving their founder’s family dynasty from spreading. This year Koreans saw massive protests against the government that have been symbolized as candles. In this circumstance one might wonder if Korean conglomerates will be able to continue to make profit (performance) and manage crises and their reputation in the way they have been doing for a long time. Will that be possible without changing their behavior?

The Last Piece of Puzzle:
Will They Change Their Behavior?

The important question that conglomerates, founder’s families, and executives need to ask themselves is whether they are going to change their behavior.

The challenge that Lotte chairman Shin Dong-bin faces now is not to overcome this crisis but whether he changes the corporation’s behavior. If he doesn’t, the company might face another similar or worse crisis in the future.

What can businesses do to change their behavior? We get some ideas from a behavior-change model in the leadership field, not from the crisis-management field.

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, the world’s leading leadership coach, says that stakeholder engagement is the most important factor in changing corporate behavior. So, for example, if one is to quit smoking, he needs to let his colleagues know about his decision. When around him are engaged they can watch to determine whether he changes his behavior.  As a result, he is more likely to become determined to change. This is part of why many people sign up and go to the gym, or team up with others to exercise. They aim to change their behavior by engaging stakeholders.

In October, Lotte chairman Shin announced reform plans and said that he will establish a watchdog committee that will be directly monitored by him and hire experts from outside. Will this committee be able to lead the conglomerate to change?

To succeed, the committee must be able to act like a red team.

A red team refers to a structure similar to a devil’s advocate — someone who is actually a member of the organization but monitors and points out problems from the opposite point of view in the interest of that organization.

If Lotte has such a committee just for appearance’s sake, the effort is highly likely to fail.

In the beginning of this article, we asked three questions. Now we’d like to explain why such questions matter and what our answers are.
In order for companies to change their behavior, nothing is more important than to figure out exactly how their stakeholders  think of them. In fact, many Koreans have negative perspectives of Korean conglomerates.

If the founders of big corporations or chief executives are to properly manage crises and reputation, they need to understand how those who matter to them view them. When a disaster takes place or when the end of the year is near, chaebols often donate hundreds of millions or even billions of Won (Korean currency) to those in need. They even encourage their employees to perform community services. So big companies often complain that they are unfairly criticized because they actually do many things for communities.

Here’s a question: If chaebols raise their donations by two to three times or perform more community service, will their stakeholders have a better view of them?

We don’t think so, because people’s fundamental ideas of chaebols are negative.  Many take conglomerates’ donations and community service for granted because they believe that chaebols must give some money for the poor at the end of the year because they have done so many bad things all the year round.

What kinds of strategies should conglomerates adopt to effectively manage their reputation and crises? And how should they put the strategies into practice?

In most cases, there are two types of behaviors that chaebols engage in facing a crisis. First, they engage in behaviors that make their negative image worse. Such behaviors include cover-up, lie, evasion of responsibility, denial and even blaming victims — just as recently happened when a daughter of Korean Air Line’s chairman threw a fit, angrily insisting that a plane she was on return to the gate of an airport. These kinds of behaviors reinforce consumers’ negative views of chaebols.

The other type of behavior is the ones that contrast sharply with people’s negative perspectives. For instance, the public  found it surprising when a daughter, not a son, of the founder’s family of a big company had joined the navy as a naval officer. The public knew that the decision was not made to improve the image of the company but still found it pleasantly surprising.

Also, when Korea was hit by the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome pandemic (MERS),  Samsung’s Vice Chairman JY Lee conceded his company’s fault and sincerely apologized to the public. This gave the public an opportunity to fix their negative perceptions towards chaebols because most people thought that chaebol owners would deny their responsibility when a crisis takes place.

Of course, if Korean conglomerates are to overcome crises and transform their image, they need to do more than just create a temporary surprising event. Corporate founder’s family must be determined and engage in consistent “surprising behaviors.”

Protesters holding candles are calling for change not just within the government. They are sending a strong signal that there must be a paradigm shift in chaebols’ management of crisis and reputation.

The public is calling for change in corporate behavior. We each have public relations experience and have long worked in crisis management and strategy communication consulting. The conclusion that we want to share with readers is clear: If one approaches crisis and reputation management from the perspective merely of public relations, one is bound to fail.

Food for Thought

      1. What kinds of images do publics have about my company? Apart from the products and services that my company provides, how do publics think of my company? Do they think of it as the one that coexists with, is mutually beneficial with and contributes to society? Or as evil? If the latter, why is that? What are your solutions to fix the image?
      1. It is difficult to improve corporate reputation merely by engaging in some corporate social responsibility efforts and philanthropy or by handing out some corporate leaflets. To get positive reputation, the entire company needs to make an effort to create social value, and this approach should be the center of  profit-making process. The reason why this approach matters is the reason why the CSV (creating shared value) strategy matters. Does my company take CSV seriously? Does it have a team that puts the idea into practice?

 

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Note:

Reputation Management: The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication, by John Doorley and Helio Fred Garcia, was originally published in 2007.  It is now in its Third Edition in English.  A Korean translation was published as Reputation Management Strategy in 2016.  A Chinese edition is scheduled to be published in early 2017.  A French language edition is now underway, due to be published in late 2017.

John Doorley is a Visiting Associate Professor at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina, and a Director in Mindful Reputation.  He is a founding academic director of New York University’s MS in Public Relations and Corporate Communication.

Dr. Hoh Kim and Helio Fred Garcia began working together in September, 2015 when Dr. Kim was the moderator and Mr. Garcia was a keynote speaker in the Chosun Issue Forum, a conference on crisis management in Korea sponsored by Chosunilbo, Korea’s leading newspaper.

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Dr. Hoh Kim, left, moderating a panel discussion at Chosun Issue Forum, Seoul, September, 2015

by Helio Fred Garcia

This is my sixth in a series of guest blogs featuring my recently-graduated capstone (thesis) advisees in New York University’s Master’s in Public Relations and Corporate Communication.

Wall-Street-Reputation-NYU-Flag-2014-Sep (1)

See my earlier posts:

In this blog, Nicky Honghao Ruan looks at the issue of brand loyalty, and makes a counter-intuitive discovery:  Sometimes, very strong brand loyalty can make companies’ crises worse than if they don’t have brand-loyal customers.

Nicky explores a range of crises affecting different kinds of organizations, and identifies the criteria of the organization, of the customers, and of the crisis that predict whether brand loyalty will help or hurt an organization in crisis.

Better yet, she provides a template that can help leaders and their advisors anticipate what will work and what will hurt, and to adapt accordingly.  Worth reading.

You can download the entire capstone here.

 


Brand Loyalty in Crisis:

How does strong brand loyalty affect a company during crisis under different circumstances?

by Nicky Honghao Ruan

Nicky Honghao Ruan

Nicky Honghao Ruan

Consumers are familiar with programs like “My Coke Rewards,” “Marriott Rewards” or “AAdvantage,” that help to contribute to a core marketing concept — brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty has long been endorsed by marketing experts as an intangible asset for a company or organization. Conventional wisdom suggests that strong brand loyalty can empower a company to overcome crises, but practitioners often overlook the potential risk of strong loyalty when the nature of the crisis changes. In some cases, strong brand loyalty does not shield a company from crisis, but can instead become a liability because the high expectations of loyal customers were not met.

Through case studies, in-depth interviews with crisis management experts, and public surveys, my capstone examines the interplay between crisis conditions and the role of strong brand loyalty, and identifies various causes for both helpful and harmful outcomes.

As a result, I developed a model for crisis management professionals to quickly evaluate whether to incorporate a brand’s loyalists as defense strategy, or instead to plan for ways to prevent the extra harm that could instead be created by loyalists.

Mapping the Template

Chart 1Brand loyalty is more likely to help a brand under conditions in the left column (green), and more likely to harm one under conditions in the right column (red).

At the same time, those criteria in the top row (darker color) would have stronger impact than those in the bottom row (lighter color).

The one that falls in the middle column is especially situational and could go either way.

When a crisis happens, a company would be involved with more than one of these conditions. Depending on the situation at the time, crisis management professionals would take the template and check what criteria the brand fulfills and which side it tends to lean on more.

Examples

When Strong Brand Loyalty Helps:   

Blue Bell’s Listeria Crisis

BlueBell Logo

In early 2015, U.S. ice cream maker Blue Bell announced several rounds of complicated recalls of its ice cream after listeria in its products infected five consumers and led to three deaths.

Although its crisis response was strongly criticized, Blue Bell’s strong loyalists remained highly tied with the brand.  The beloved Southern ice cream maker made it through the summer without having any product on shelves. During the time, fans continued to engage with the company on social media.

In fact, Blue Bell’s fiercely loyal consumers were waiting in long lines outside stores when the company finally came back to the market.

Chart 2

 Apple  iPhone 4’s “AntennaGate”

Apple Logo

Very soon after Apple released iPhone 4 on June 24, 2010, complaints about signal attenuation began to flood the web.

When faced with growing negative reviews, widespread criticism and potential lawsuits, Apple’s initial solution was to tell users to not hold their phones in certain way.

Critics argued that Apple’s crisis response broke all the rules: the company didn’t apologize immediately or take full responsibility. Despite all the negative publicity and critics, demand for iPhone 4 continued to exceed supply.

Chart 3

In the case of Blue Bell and iPhone 4, the brand was in the green more than in the red. Therefore, their strong brand loyalty helped the companies overcome the crisis.

 

When Strong Brand Loyalty Hurts:

The “New Coke” Launch

CocaCola Logo

Thirty years ago, Coca-Cola made its worst mistake when, without warning, it abandoned its original formula and replaced it with “New Coke.”

Long-standing customers felt betrayed.

Some deserted the brand for its biggest competitor Pepsi.

Ultimately, Coke’s strong brand loyalty led to one of the company’s largest PR crises, driven by a fierce reaction from fans who believed Coke was neglecting them.

After three months of justifying the unilateral withdrawal of its beloved Coke, and insisting that customers would prefer the new Coke, Coca-Cola brought the original back as Coke Classic.

Chart 4

Susan G. Komen and Planned Parenthood

SGK LogoOn January 31, 2012,  the Susan G Komen Foundation announced its decision to stop funding  Planned Parenthood.

The halt would affect breast cancer screening and treatment services — mostly provided to poor or uninsured women — at 19 of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates.

Within hours after the news broke, Komen was flooded by public outcry. During the next three days, the foundation saw significant lost in donation and the negative response it received was overwhelming.

After 72 hours of the initial decision, Komen Foundation announced that it would reverse the funding decision.  But the reversal didn’t stop the damage.

Long-standing Komen supporters who felt hurt and betrayed refuse to forgive the organization. Both event participation and revenue of the nation’s best known cancer foundation continued to drop.

Chart 5

Volkswagen’s Emissions Scandal

Volkswagen Logo

In  2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that German automaker Volkswagen Group (Volkswagen) had installed software in a number of cars sold in the U.S. that would provide artificially positive results  during emission tests.

Volkswagen later admitted that it had intentionally equipped its vehicles to cheat on emissions tests. For the first time in 13 years, Volkswagen’s sales in the U.S. declined 15% in November 2015.

Marketing and communication experts think that Volkswagen would be hard to forgive, especially by many of its loyal consumers.

The fact that the company voluntarily cheated on the public was worse than negligence or mistakes in testing procedure, which set itself apart from other auto recalls in the industry though some of them even linked to deaths.

Chart 6

Conclusion

The New Coke, Komen and Volkswagen crises saw far fewer conditions in the green compared to those in the red. Therefore strong brand loyalty in these cases created a backlash.

This model creates a shortcut for communication professionals to quickly evaluate their brand loyalty’s position and the likelihood that loyalty will help or hurt the organization navigate a crisis.

When a brand falls more into the green cells, instead of immediately pulling out everything, e.g. halting production or crafting the perfect apology, time and money could be better spent on gathering information and resources to fix the problem.

When a brand falls more into the red cells, the essence of response strategy should include gaining forgiveness from loyalists.

Perhaps more significant, the model can stimulate companies to take brand loyalty into serious consideration before making business decisions.

by Helio Fred Garcia

To my Students: A Fourth of July teachable moment on framing —  starting with why — and career management, on the 240th birthday of the United States of America.

On June 7, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, voted to separate from England; our own Brexit.

It passed a resolution put forward by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, declaring, in part: “These colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”

The Declaration of Independence, by John Turnbull

The Declaration of Independence, by John Turnbull

Who Writes The First Draft?

On June 11 Congress named a committee, known as the Committee of Five,  to write the announcement.  That committee included John Adams of Massachusetts, Ben Franklin of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia.

The committee initially asked Adams to write the first draft.  But Adams, 41, considered himself a statesman and thought the work beneath him.  So he suggested that Jefferson, 33 and a rising star, take the first draft.

Writing the Declaration by JLG Ferris

Writing the Declaration by JLG Ferris

According to the biography John Adams: A Life by John Ferling, Jefferson was confused by Adams’ suggestion:

“Jefferson asked, “Why will you not? You ought to do it.”
To which Adams responded, “I will not – reasons enough.”

That didn’t satisfy Jefferson, who insisted,

“What can be your reasons?”
And Adams responded, “Reason first, you are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought to appear at the head of this business. Reason second, I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third, you can write ten times better than I can.”

Adams may or may not have been sincere.

Jefferson yielded.

“Well,” said Jefferson, “if you are decided, I will do as well as I can.”
Adams concluded, “Very well. When you have drawn it up, we will have a meeting.””

There is no evidence that such a meeting took place. There is evidence that Franklin, then in his 70s, edited Jefferson’s draft carefully.

Start With WHY

So Jefferson took on the task. But instead of simply listing the grievances against the King, Jefferson, who knew a lot about persuasion, decided to start with WHY — First, with a meta-WHY, why a Declaration of Independence, as opposed to simply an account of the vote? And second, the WHY of separation.

First, WHY the Declaration:  Jefferson wrote that in such circumstances,

“a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

A Decent Respect for the Opinions of Mankind

Think about that for a moment: A DECENT RESPECT for the opinions of mankind.  That’s the foundation of public relations — and of all civil government.  This usually-overlooked opening to the Declaration is in many ways as important as what follows.  It creates accountability and sets a standard — what reasonable people would appropriately expect a responsible provisional government to do when it decides to leave.

Second, WHY the separation: First principle: All are equal.  Second principle: Fundamental rights are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.  Third principle: Government exists to secure these rights.

Move to HOW

And then the HOW: When government fails to do so, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish that government.

Heady stuff.

Of course, it was more aspirational than normative, as Lincoln pointed out 87 years later. We’re still trying to get it right.

Finishing the Draft

Draft of the Declaration, with Franklin's and others' edits

Draft of the Declaration, with Franklin’s and others’ edits

Jefferson’s draft was powerful but wordy.  Franklin edited it; the Committee of Five submitted it; the Congress tweaked it more.

The Declaration was ratified on July 2, and published on July 4.

DOI Final

The Broadside Edition of the Declaration of Independence, published on July 5, 1776.

Note that of the 1,338 words of the Declaration, the first 1,180 are all about the WHY and the HOW.

The WHAT, the text of the actual resolution of the Congress, appears only in the last paragraph and consists of only 127 words:

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

And the Declaration closes with the final 31 words:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

Rivals and Friends

John Adams as the second President of the United States

John Adams as the second President of the United States

Adams never quite got over missing the chance to get credit for the Declaration.  He went on to become the first Vice President and second President; Jefferson to be the first Secretary of State and third President.

TJ

Thomas Jefferson as the third President of the United States

History continues to view Jefferson — with all his flaws and contradictions — more favorably than Adams.

The two were fierce political rivals until both left office; then they became fast friends, frequently corresponding with each other (as only former presidents can do).

But Adams continued to envy Jefferson.

And both died on the same day, exactly 50 years after the Declaration was published, on July 4, 1826, exactly 190 years ago today.

According to legend, Adams, on his deathbed and unaware that Jefferson had died several hours earlier, lamented that Jefferson would outlive him.

He uttered this deathbed regret:

“Jefferson Lives!”

Of course, he was right.

 

Below, for reference, the final version of the Declaration of Independence.

……………………………………..

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

 

by Helio Fred Garcia

I have had the privilege of teaching Marines for 25 years.

Of all the teaching I do, it’s one of my favorite things.

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But as the Talmud notes, “I have learned much from my teachers; I have learned more from my colleagues; but it is from my students that I have learned the most.”

And of all whom I teach, it is the Marines from whom I have learned the most.  And so have my civilian students and clients.  I am a better corporate consultant and leadership coach because of what I have learned from teaching Marines.  And the more I teach the more I learn.

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My teaching Marines started almost by accident.

In 1991, in my fourth year on the NYU faculty, I was teaching a continuing education course on Spokesmanship: How to Be an Effective Spokesperson.  And I had a student, Walter, who was different from his classmates.  Most were in their 20s.  Walter had gray hair.  Most were already working in PR. Walter was a Marine, just back from the first Iraq war, where he had flown helicopters in combat.  He had reached an age when he had to give up flying, but he wasn’t ready to retire.  So he was assigned to the New York Public Affairs office. Walter was to start his new billet in September, and was taking my summer course to get a head start – very much like a Marine.

Earlier that year I had written an article for the journal PR Quarterly (pdf).  In it I reflected that the U.S. military had been guided in the war by the principles of the Nineteenth-Century military strategist Carl von Clausewitz.  I noted that just as the military applied those principles in fighting the war, the Pentagon communication office had applied the principles in their public communication about the war:

“Once the touchstone of most Western military strategy, Clausewitz fell out of favor in the late 1950s, replaced by social scientists who brought us systems analysis, gradual escalation and attrition, body counts, and other sins of the Vietnam era.

In the Gulf war, Clausewitz emerged not only on the battlefield; he was also in the briefing room.  We won not only the air war and the ground war; we won the battle for public opinion.  A close reading of Clausewitz… provides a context for understanding both the military victory in the Gulf and the PR efforts that contributed to it.”

Walter showed the article to his commanding officer. My mentor Jim Lukaszewski, who taught Marines, had earlier recommended me to the same person.

The commanding officer called and invited me to teach at an annual meeting of newly-named Marine commanders – lieutenant colonels and colonels – who would gather in New York for a week of public affairs training.  I taught my first Marine in October, 1991.  I have taught at every New York Public Affairs Symposium ever since.

Leadership Factory

The United States Marine Corps is the nation’s crisis response force.  The tip of the spear.  It’s ready to deploy anywhere, any time, on any mission.

The Marine Corps is also a leadership factory.  It instills qualities of initiative, teamwork, and dedication to mission.  It pushes accountability down to the bottom of the chain of command, even as it holds leaders at the very top of the chain accountable for their subordinates’ decisions.  Marines follow orders, but not blindly.  Commander’s intent is an essential part of an order.  Understanding a commander’s intent is the responsibility of each Marine.  And making that intent clear is the responsibility of each commander, of whatever rank.

In 2001, about two months before the 9/11 attacks, I attended a Marine Corps capabilities exercise in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.  It was intended to show visiting dignitaries, mostly staff of congressional committees, the range of Marines’ ability to fight in many forms.

 

We saw, among other things:

  • A HALO (High-Altitude Low Opening) parachute drop where, to avoid detection, Marines dropped from very high altitude, virtually unseen, and opened their parachutes just above the tree line.
  • A beach landing of many amphibious landing craft, with beach masters guiding the arriving Marines as they left their craft, riding on armored personnel carriers and deploying on foot.
  • Marine fighter jets strafing the beach ahead of the arriving landing craft.
  • A simulated helicopter rescue of a downed pilot.
  • A hostage rescue in a simulated U.S. embassy.
  • A chemical weapons decontamination exercise.
  • A riverine assault with Marines arriving on fast rubber inflatable boats.
  • An infantry, armored, and air assault of a simulated urban combat environment; Marines taking a city.

It was all wildly impressive. But what impressed me more was something that happened during this capabilities exercise.

It was July, in swampy North Carolina.  It was over 100 degrees, and very humid. The dignitaries were beginning to wilt.  We arrived at a large field kitchen serving lunch to the hundreds of Marines.

Marine Field Kitchen

I saw one of my contacts, a captain from the New York public affairs unit, speaking casually to some other officers. They invited me to get on the chow line.  I asked whether they had eaten yet. They very matter-of-factly replied, “No, we’ll eat later.”  I asked, “Aren’t you hungry?” One of the other officers replied, “We don’t eat until the enlisted Marines have eaten.” I asked, “Why not?” He responded, “Officers eat last.”

Officers Eat Last

I was taken aback. I work primarily in a corporate environment, where the idea that the senior leaders defer their own benefits to the junior ranks is not common. But I learned that it is an essential element of Marine Corps leadership. Marine leadership has two goals: 1) Accomplish the mission; 2) Attend to the welfare of your Marines.

This one human gesture, officers eat last, captured for me the essential nature of the Marines.

A Learning Organization

The Marine Corps is also at its heart a learning organization.

When they are not deployed Marines are in school. The Corps has dozens of schools, plus other professional military education programs. And an active reading program.

In 2006, during a break while teaching at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia, I wandered into the bookstore. There I discovered the Commandant’s Reading List; more than 100 titles. And as I ran through the books, I noticed some interesting things. First, many were sharply critical of the U.S. military, and of the U.S. intervention in Iraq. I was impressed that the Commandant would encourage Marines to read books by critics. Second, the books covered a broad expanse of subject matter, from history to culture to biography.

And I was honored when, in 2013, my most recent book, The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, was added to the Commandant’s Reading List.

That book itself arose from my visit to the bookstore that day. In the store I found a slim volume called Warfighting: U.S. Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication No. 1. It’s required reading for every Marine. It lays out an approach to strategy and leadership that informs what all Marines do. Think of it as the Marine Corps Bible. And it is extremely well-written.

Flying home on the shuttle, I couldn’t put the book down. As I read, I realized that by changing just a few words in Warfighting l could create a conceptual framework to help civilian leaders develop a much richer and deeper understanding of effective public communication.

Warfighting

Then I had an idea. I was about to teach a new course on communication strategy in the M.S. in Public Relations and Corporate Communication program at New York University.

I decided to assign Warfighting, requiring students to read it before the first class.  When I sent the syllabus to the department it raised a few eyebrows.  But to his credit the academic director gave me the green light, and I posted the syllabus online.

In the first class, before discussing the book, I polled the students:

  • How many were confused when they saw that the first book in a communication strategy course was a Marine Corps book called Warfighting?
    Nearly every hand went up.
  • How many were concerned?
    Most hands stayed up.
  • How many were angry?
    About a third of the hands stayed up.
  • How many are still angry after reading the book?
    All hands came down.

I found the most counter-culture-seeming student who had just put her hand down, and asked, “Why were you angry when you saw the syllabus?” She looked me in the eye and said “I thought you were going to feed us propaganda, try to get us to like the military, to support the war in Iraq.” And now?  She smiled, and said, “I love this book. I have given copies to my parents and friends.  I want to know why we don’t know more about this book.” Some years after graduating, that student joined the NYU faculty, teaching the same course.

I used Warfighting for five years afterward, and not only in my NYU classroom. I used it in strategy boot camps for the public affairs department of a major insurance company, the communication staff of a large pharmaceutical company, and even with clergy and not-for-profit executives, sometimes to their initial discomfort.  I urged individual CEOs, CFOs, and other corporate leaders to read it to help them both to think strategically and to communicate effectively.

In all civilian contexts, my students and clients enthusiastically embraced Warfighting, and the comments tended to cluster into these two categories:

  1. This is one of the single most useful insights into how to be strategic in communication that I’ve ever read.
  2. I never knew the Marines were so thoughtful.

Warfighting Deserved A Broader Audience

The usefulness of the lessons of Warfighting goes well beyond fighting wars or public affairs, but to how to think strategically. It deserved a broader audience.

So I decided to take it a step further: I asked the Marines for the adaptation rights for Warfighting, to incorporate into a book I was planning for a civilian leadership audience. The copyright was held by the Secretary of the Navy. And I asked permission to use the Marine Corps emblem, the eagle, globe, and anchor, in the book.

The Marines secured the permissions, and The Power of Communication was published in 2012.

It was named to the Commandant’s Professional Reading List, as one of eight leadership titles, in 2013.

 

CMC reading list

Candid Self-Reflection

One thing I have always been impressed by is how the Marines welcome candid feedback on what works and what doesn’t. And they institutionalize it.

Every year the Marine Corps commissions an essay that challenges Marines to perform better in the future. Past MajGen Richard C. Schulz Memorial Essayists include Jim Webb, later U.S. Senator, and Gen. Bernard Trainor, later chief military correspondent for the New York Times.

I was honored to be invited to be the 2013 Schulze essayist.

My essay was an adaptation of The Power of Communication, and it challenged Marines to see their work as winning hearts and minds as well as battles. The essay looked back at the opening moments of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and argued that Marines got the story strategically wrong.

The essay  noted:

“The new battlefield is one where every action is potentially immediately public. In the battle to win the support of those who matter, both at home and in the theater of operations, Marines—from four- stars to privates fresh off of Parris Island—will have greater power than ever before, and they need to harness that power effectively. A corporal draping a flag on a statue, a handful of Marines urinating on the bodies of enemy dead, or U.S. servicemembers burning Qur’ans communicate far more loudly than any words, and they send exactly the wrong message.”

 

Flag Saddam

And it called on Marines up and down the chain of command to take communication as seriously as other elements of their profession.

“So the burden on commanders is high: They need to be excellent communicators in their own right, and they also need to create environments in which their Marines understand how everything they say and do—and everything they don’t say and don’t do—creates an impression that can affect the reputation of the Corps and the national security interests of the United States.”

It concluded:

“The next war is likely to be fought not on a field of battle, but on television, the Internet, and social media. The tip of the spear needs to be as competent in the modern arenas as in fields of fire.”

The Scope of Teaching and Consulting

 

Teaching at 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, US Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, NC

Teaching at 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, NC

I first taught Marines in the New York Public Affairs Symposia. But more significant than the teaching in these individual symposia was the teaching that resulted from them.

Individual officers who were either organizers of or students in the symposia reached out to me to counsel or teach other Marine or joint military commands.

Teaching at US Defense Logistics Agency

Teaching at U.S. Defense Logistics Agency

Over time I consulted with, taught, or otherwise was actively involved with a number of Marine Corps organizations, including:

  • U.S. Marine Corps East Coast Commanders Public Affairs Symposium, New York City: Since 1991 I have taught about 50 newly appointed commanders per year (mostly lieutenant colonels and colonels) who have assumed command East of the Mississippi river.
  • U.S. Marine Corps West Coast Commanders Public Affairs Symposium, Los Angeles: From 2004 to 2012 I taught about 50 newly appointed commanders per year (mostly lieutenant colonels and colonels) who have assumed command West of the Mississippi river.
  • U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Quantico, VA: I taught guest lectures on effective leadership communication and moderated media panels from 2005 to 2010.
  • U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General Select Orientation Course, Washington, DC:  From 2005 to the present I have taught in the orientation course for colonels who have been selected for promotion to general.
  • U.S. Marine Corps Officer Candidate School, Quantico, VA: I taught a guest lecture for instructors on how to teach effectively.
  • U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico: I helped design and participated in training for first responders during a terrorism incident simulation.
  • U.S. Marine Corps Public Affairs: I consulted with a number of leaders of the public affairs function over time, both on readiness of public affairs professionals and for dealing with individual crises or issues.
  • II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, NC: In 2016 I taught as part of a Professional Military Education program for 250 of the senior-most leaders of II MEF, constituting about a third of all fighting Marines.
  • Marine Aircraft Station Cherry Point, NC: In 2016 I taught about 200 senior leaders of the 2nd Marine Air Wing.
  • U.S. Marine Corps Combat Service Support Schools, Camp Johnson, NC: In 2016 I taught about 300 students and faculty of the various combat support schools associated with Camp Johnson.
Teaching at US Defense Information School

Teaching at U.S. Defense Information School

Marine Corps referrals also led to work advising or teaching in a number of joint commands and non-U.S. institutions, including:

  • Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Center for Security Studies, Masters In Advanced Studies in Security Policy and Crisis Management, Zurich: From 2007 until 2015 I served on the leadership faculty of this program, essentially the outsourced instruction for the Swiss General Staff College. All but six of the students were senior officers in the Swiss, German, Austrian, or other European military or intelligence services. This appointment came as the result of a Swiss officer who had attended the Marines’ Command and Staff College recommending me to his commanding officer.

    Teaching at ETH Zurich

    Teaching at ETH Zurich

  • Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, Quantico, VA:  From 2004 to 2009 I and my firm served as advisors to and instructors for this joint command focusing on the development and deployment of weapons that serve as the middle ground between a bullhorn and a bullet, intended to deter but not kill an adversary.
  • U.S. Defense Information School, Fort George Meade, MD: Since 2012 I have been a contract teacher at this school for military public affairs officers and communicators.  I teach about eight times per year, the first day in the Joint Senior Public Affairs Officer Course, mostly for lieutenant colonels, colonels, and their equivalents, and the Joint Intermediate Public Affairs Officer Course, mostly for captains and majors and their equivalents.
  • U.S. Defense Logistics Agency: In 2015 I taught several hundred of their logisticians.

A Family Legacy

When the Marines called and asked me to teach, the decision to answer Yes was easy.  It seemed to be part of the family business.

For the 25 years before he died in 1984 my Dad was a professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was recruited to leave his native Brazil to come to West Point, his young family in tow.

I grew up at West Point, during the Vietnam War, surrounded by people in uniform.

My Dad was an inspired and inspiring teacher.  And all of the times I saw him teach he was teaching people wearing a uniform.

Dr. Frederick C.H. Garcia, 1928-1984

Dr. Frederick C.H. Garcia, 1928-1984

So teaching people in uniform seemed like a natural continuation of his work.

And now I’ve spent 25 years teaching Marines and others in the armed forces. Between the two of us, my Dad and I have 50 years of teaching people in uniform.

As immigrants to the United States, we are both honored and delighted to give back and to help build the capacities of those who defend our adopted nation.

Earlier this year I taught the senior-most Marines I have ever taught, 150+ senior leaders of II Marine Expeditionary Force, on the fifth day of their week-long Warfighting Series of Professional Military Education. The opening minutes, where I explain the adaptation of Warfighting to leadership communication, are in the video below.

Among the students were two major generals, a brigadier general, and lots of colonels and sergeants major.

At the end, the Commanding General of II MEF presented me with the commander’s coin for excellence.

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I dedicate that coin to the memory of my Dad, Dr. Frederick C.H. Garcia, my first and best teacher, and to how between us we’ve taught people who wear the uniform of the United States for 50 years.

And to how we’ve been taught by them.

Officers eat last.

Oorah!

Semper Fi!

By Helio Fred Garcia

Size of Penis Trump

This week the Donald Trump phenomenon seemed to reach a tipping point, with Republican leaders scrambling to prevent his continued wins in the primaries, and with debate discourse hitting new lows.  Not only did we see him feign ignorance of David Duke and the KKK, but we were even treated to debate commentary about the relative size of the candidate’s genitals.

Trump: Not a Cause But a Consequence

But the rise of Donald Trump as the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, and all the bipartisan angst it is creating, is not a cause but rather a consequence.

It is the predictable result of decades of degradation of political discourse, facilitated by a media more interested in grabbing an audience’s attention than in covering issues.  And the worst part is that we should have seen it coming.

In fact, we could have seen it coming if we had known what to look for.  And we should have known.

Even now as the frightening reality is finally being recognized, we seem to be grappling only with the symptom of the problem — what Trump says and how to prevent him from ever being in a position of authority  — without recognizing that there’s a greater challenge that will continue regardless of how we address the immediate problem.

We can solve the Trump problem but still be as vulnerable to another authoritarian figure who energizes the disenfranchised, the angry, and the scared to similar effect.

Orwell Called It

 

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Almost exactly seventy years ago George Orwell published Politics and the English Language.   That brief essay served as the nonfiction treatment for what two years later would become Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Most educated Americans are familiar with Nineteen Eighty-Four.  That popular novel is based in a dystopian future in a continuous state of war, where an intrusive and authoritarian government keeps people uninformed, and where political language is intentionally misleading. So the Ministry of Peace wages war. The Ministry of Truth controls all information, news, propaganda, and art. The Ministry of Plenty rations food. Our term “Orwellian” refers to the use of language to convey the opposite of reality.

1984first

But most educated Americans are not familiar with the essay that served as the novel’s basis.  Sadly, Politics and the English Language helps us understand the current state of the American body politic, and it isn’t pretty.

Says Orwell:

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

“Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties… –  is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

The problem arises when politicians use language in a disingenuous way, asserting things they don’t necessarily believe and making arguments that may sound compelling but that logically don’t make sense.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”

But however damaging individual instances of political language, of insincere speech, or of intentionally misleading statements may be, it’s the effect of these that causes harm.

The central idea in Politics and the English Language is this:

  • Political speech has the effect of reducing citizens’ critical reasoning skills….
  • …This creates a self-perpetuating cycle…
  • …where as people become less discerning they become more susceptible to political speech…
  • …which further diminishes their critical reasoning skills…
  • …and so on…
  • …and so on…
  • …until a fully uninformed public creates conditions for authoritarian government to thrive.

 

A Cause Can Become an Effect, And So On:

It’s The Cycle That Matters

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The key idea, though, is the relationship between cause and effect.

Orwell notes that an effect can become a cause, and a cause can become an effect.  It’s the cycle that matters.  And in the end the result is a citizenry that remains intentionally ignorant of the issues that matter, unaware of what is happening to them, and easily manipulated by politicians.

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation, even among people who should and do know better.”

“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

The predictable result of this cycle is a citizenry that is easily manipulated, that becomes immune to persuasion by evidence and reasoning, and that doesn’t notice the multiple contradictions all around.

Presentation2

Choosing Ignorance:

Identity-Protective Cognition Thesis

Three years ago Orwell’s argument that political language causes a decline in critical thinking was supported by research by professors at Yale, Cornell, Ohio State, and the University of Oregon.  Their study,  Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government, showed that math problems that seem to be about benign topics are easily solved by people with strongly held political views. But when the same math problems are framed in terms of polarized political issues — in this case, gun rights — both progressive-and-conservative-leaning participants have a very hard time getting the math right.

The authors conclude that

“Subjects [use] their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks.”

A 2011 essay in Mother Jones by Chris Mooney on the neuroscience of political reasoning helps us understand why this is so.  The piece begins with seminal research from the early fifties by famous Stanford psychologist Leon Festinger, who concluded:

“A man with conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.”

Mooney explains:

“Since Festinger’s day, an array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions.”

“This tendency toward so-called “motivated reasoning” helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, “death panels,” the birthplace and religion of the president, and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.”

Cover What Orwell Didn't Know

Ten years ago, on the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Politics and the English Language, the New York Public Library hosted a conference conceived by five journalism school deans and sponsored by the Open Society Institute. The conference proceedings later were published as a book of essays called What Orwell Didn’t Know: Propaganda and the Face of the New Politics.  Much of what was described ten years ago can be seen now.

For example, Susan Harding, a professor of anthropology at UC Santa Cruz, who has written extensively about the religious right, explained a process called “revoicing.”  She described revoicing as creating apparent structures of legitimacy and embedding within them positions, points of view, or ideologies that would not pass muster in actual legitimate institutions.  She says that this revoicing process leads to  controversial positions and institutions becoming mainstream by co-opting the symbols and vocabulary of the mainstream. She gives an example of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell:

“Falwell’s church ministries, media and political organizations, and educational institutions were, in effect, a hive of cultural workshops in which both fundamentalist and secular ideas, images, narratives, and practices were smelted, refashioned, melded, packaged, and distributed with spectacular success.

Falwell’s Lynchburg Baptist College morphed into a liberal arts college, Liberty Baptist College, and then into a university, Liberty University. The Museum of Earth and Life History on its campus occupied the cultural space of a museum of natural history, but recorded displays of man and beast with the assumptions of creation science rather than evolution. Liberty Godparent Homes converted a former home for unwed mothers into a staging ground for pro-life save-a-baby narratives that in turn revoiced feminist story lines in born-again Christian terms.

We can see this revoicing, this co-opting of mainstream symbols, vocabularies, and institutions, playing out over the last decade:

  • The Creation Museum, which has the look and feel of a science or natural history museum, but whose exhibits and educational material assert that the earth is only thousands of years old, that evolution is a fraud, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
  • The Intelligent Design Institute, which seems to be a think tank and educational organization is really a media and production group whose work is used to refute the scientific theory of evolution.
  • Fox News, ostensibly an objective news organization, but whose editorial focus in the promotion of conservative causes and candidates.  It even has an appropriately Orwellian slogan, “We report, you decide.”

This process provides cover for those who would ignore mathematics, science, and observation and insist that reality is consistent with a particular political, social, or religious viewpoint.  Take, for example, a fourth grade science quiz administered by a religiously-affiliated school in South Carolina.  The student received a perfect grade for answers that would have been marked as incorrect in a school, religious or otherwise, with a mainstream science curriculum; in fact, some of the quiz’ questions would have been unintelligible in a more traditional science curriculum.  But this approach is influencing millions of citizens and future voters.

Creationquiz1

Truthiness

At about the same time the revoicing discussion was taking place, the new late night comedy host Stephen Colbert coined the phrase Truthiness to describe political discourse.  Parodying Fox News, he defined truthiness as preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true. As  Colbert put it, “I don’t trust books. They’re all fact, no heart.”

 

In 2005 the American Dialect Society named Truthiness the Word of the Year.

Sadly, what Colbert intended as a comedic take on misdirection has proven to be a defining element of much modern political debate.  Candidates argue not the truth they know but the truth they wish, as if it were known.

Why All Heart Matters

Colbert differentiated between thinking with the brain and knowing with the heart.  He actually hit on something profound about how humans make judgments, and why it’s so easy for political language to have the Orwellian effect.

As described by Chris Mooney in Mother Jones:

“The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience: Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call “affect”). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we’re aware of it.”

“That shouldn’t be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It’s a “basic human survival skill,” explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.”

“We’re not driven only by emotions, of course—we also reason, deliberate. But reasoning comes later, works slower—and even then, it doesn’t take place in an emotional vacuum. Rather, our quick-fire emotions can set us on a course of thinking that’s highly biased, especially on topics we care a great deal about.”

“We have seen this trend for several decades, where for political expediency citizens have been conditioned to not trust any source of news that includes conclusions contrary to those consistent with a political point of view.”

We Apply Fight-or-Flight Reflexes

Not Only to Predators, But to Data Itself

 Such citizens, who reflexively flee from the facts, are unlikely to be aware of, or even care about, contradictions among any candidate’s positions.  Simultaneously holding two contrary positions, the very definition of absurdity, would ordinarily dismiss someone as not to be taken seriously.  But in the political world such contradictions seem not to matter.

In such an environment citizens literally are unable to notice absurdities. But the same part of the brain, the Amygdala, that causes the flight response also causes the fight response.  So any intruder is seen to be worthy of a fight.  And violence tends to ensue.

And as the French philosopher Voltaire once warned, “those who can make us believe absurdities can make us commit atrocities.”

Presentation3

So within a week of Trump calling for a ban of all Muslims entering the country, we saw a rash of attacks on mosques and on people perceived to be Muslim or Arab.  We have seen people removed from his rallies while being taunted by Trump from the podium, calling for his supporters to punch the person being removed in the face; to have the crowd strip people of their coats before sending them into the freezing weather.  This week, after his flirtation with the KKK and white supremacists, we saw peaceful non-protesting black students ejected from his rallies, and at least one white supremacist leader assault a black woman as she was being removed from the rally.

So what characterizes the Trump voters?

According to Derek Thompson in The Atlantic, the first common element is lack of higher education:

“The single best predictor of Trump support in the GOP primary is the absence of a college degree. ”

“Diplomas are what Ron Brownstein calls the “new Republican fault line.” In 2012, Mitt Romney struggled for months to consolidate support because, even as he had clear support among college-educated Republicans, he fared worse among non-college voters.”

So there’s more than a passing coincidence in Trump’s cheering “I love the poorly educated!” after the Las Vegas caucuses.

The second characteristic is feeling voiceless.  A survey from RAND Corporation, found:

“Voters who agreed with the statement “people like me don’t have any say about what the government does” were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Trump. This feeling of powerlessness and voicelessness was a much better predictor of Trump support than age, race, college attainment, income, attitudes towards Muslims, illegal immigrants, or Hispanic identity.”

This helps explain voters’ reports that they support Trump because he speaks what they feel.

There is also a fear of the other:

“Trump has clearly played on fears of non-white outsiders, by likening Mexican immigrants to rapists, promising to deport illegal immigrants and to build a wall between the U.S. and its neighbors, pledging to keep Muslims out of the country during the Syrian diaspora, and playing coy with his relationship with the KKK.”

“But he has also told a simple three-part narrative to attract the despondent demographic: America is losing; Donald Trump is a winner; and if Trump becomes president, America will become a winner, too. This Great Man Theory of political change, however, strikes others as potentially dangerous…”

Fourth, Trump voters want to wage war against outsiders, both those within and those beyond our borders.  According to Matthew MacWilliams of University of Massachusetts, Amherst,

“The classic definition of authoritarianism implies a tradeoff — more security for less liberty — but MacWilliams says it’s also about identifying threatening outsiders and granting individuals special powers to pursue aggressive policies to destroy them. The best predictor of Trump support… [is] “authoritarianism … [and] a personal fear of terrorism” that best predicted Trump’s support across the state.”

“Trump’s foreign policy, like his policy for anything, is a muddle. He’s cautious toward the Israel-Palestine conflict, yet he told Fox News he would kill the families of ISIS members to stop their advance, something awfully close to a public pledge to commit war-crimes.”

“But it’s his domestic security policies that have been astonishingly hawkish. He’s promised to shut down mosques, keep a database of Muslims, and round up the children of illegal immigrants. Indeed, when you put it together, Trump’s hysterical promises to protect his white in-group from non-white outsiders looks like race-baiting…”
His support seems to be strongest in places with history of racial animosity:
“According to the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, who used data from Civis Analytics, Trump’s support is strongest from the Gulf Coast, through the Appalachian Mountains, to New York, among marginally attached Republicans (possibly former Democrats). It is a familiar map for some demographers, since it’s similar to a heat map of Google searches for racial slurs and jokes. “That Mr. Trump’s support is strong in similar areas does not prove that most or even many of his supporters are motivated by racial animus,” Cohn writes. “But it is consistent with the possibility that at least some are.”
And what to Trump voters care about?  According to a Public Policy Polling survey of Trump voters in South Carolina,
  • 70% think the Confederate flag should still be flying over the State Capital; only 20% who agree with it being taken down.
  • 38% of Trump voters say they wish the South had won the Civil War; only 24% are glad the North won and 38% aren’t sure.
  • 36% of Republican primary voters in the state are glad the North emerged victorious; 30% are for the South, but Trump’s the only one whose supporters actually wish the South had won.
  • By an 80/9 spread, Trump voters support his proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States.
  • 31% would support a ban on homosexuals entering the United States as well, something no more than 17% of anyone else’s voters think is a good idea.
  • There’s also 62/23 support among Trump voters for creating a national database of Muslims and 40/36 support for shutting down all the mosques in the United States, something no one else’s voters back.
  • Only 44% of Trump voters think the practice of Islam should even be legal at all in the United States;  33%  think it should be illegal.  To put all the views toward Muslims in context, though, 32% of Trump voters continue to believe the policy of Japanese internment during World War II was a good one, compared to only 33% who oppose it and 35% who have no opinion one way or another.

 

Fixing The Body Politic

So what can the nation do to halt the decline and to make things better?

The first thing to note is that things will surely get worse before they get better.

The second is to recognize that there is no easy fix.

Again, Trump is not the problem.  He’s the current symptom of the problem.  South Carolina voters do not hold their positions BECAUSE of Trump.  Trump is merely the person who happens to appeal to their views now.

Rather, the problem is that authoritarian government depends on uninformed, scared, and angry voters, who can channel their negative emotions toward others, and who see in their candidate some relief from their anxieties.

Orwell told us that.  And we have seen it play out over the last few decades.

The problem is a body politic that is comfortable being uninformed and suspicious of facts, data and people with whom they don’t agree or connect.

But the problem arose because of the convergence of social, technological, political, economic, and demographic trends over decades.  The solution is also decades-long.  Regardless of who happens be be the next president.

The central question of our republic is this: Do we continue down the path where authoritarian government becomes both inevitable and seemingly natural, or do we recommit to actual democracy?

There is much we would need to do.

But over the long term, the only sustainable solution will be a restoration of a core founding value of education.  Of elevating the ability of voters to think clearly and to discern carefully.

Indeed, founding father Thomas Jefferson called for education as the key to democracy.

Jefferson becomes the antidote to Orwell.

Jefferson: An Educated Citizenry

is Necessary for a Thriving Democracy

Jeffereson

Throughout his life, including before and after serving as president, Jefferson noted that education is the key to accepting others and to exercising effective citizenship.  (Indeed, on his tombstone, he lists only three accomplishments: author of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom; author of the Declaration of Independence; and founder of the University of Virginia.  His term as president didn’t make the cut.)

Among his views on the relation between education and democracy:

  • “I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
  • “The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”

And, as if in direct rebuke to Donald Trump:

  • “No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity.”
  • “[I have] a conviction that science is important to the preservation of our republican government, and that it is also essential to its protection against foreign power.”

A Decent Respect for the Opinions of Mankind

But of all the Jeffersonian notions, the one that most directly speaks to remedying the challenges Orwell describes is a little-remembered but central idea from Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence.  In the opening paragraph, Jefferson describes why the Declaration was needed in the first place.  He declared:

“…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

That decent respect for the opinions of mankind goes in many directions:

  • A decent respect by politicians for the opinions of citizens.
  • A decent respect by citizens of this nation for the opinions of those in other nations.
  • A decent respect by governments for the people.

 

But decent respect has been sorely missing in American politics for some time.  Orwell called it…

Fred

Please note: Helio Fred Garcia is executive director of Logos Institute for Crisis Management and Executive Leadership; board chair of the Interfaith Alliance Foundation; and an adjunct associate professor of management and communication at New York University School of Professional Studies, MS in Public Relations and Corporate Communication, where he teaches, among other things, communication ethics.  But the views expressed here are solely his own and not necessarily reflective of any other entity.

Introduction by Helio Fred Garcia:

This is my fourth in a series of guest blogs featuring my recently-graduated capstone (thesis) advisees in New York University’s Master’s in Public Relations and Corporate Communication.

Wall-Street-Reputation-NYU-Flag-2014-Sep (1)

(See my earlier posts, On Wall Street, Reputation, and Recovery: Guest Blog by Julia Sahin here; On Changing Narratives in Oil Conflict Regions: Guest Blog by Claudia Espinel here; and A 10-C Model for Apologies: Guest Blog by Iris Wenting Xue here.)

In this blog, Jocelyn Jaixin Cao applies a foundational principle of effective persuasion – start with Why – to the core identity of companies. She notes that the most successful companies are those which make the Why a central part of their work, both in their statement of values, vision, and mission, and in the day-to-day decision criteria they use.

Quite presciently, among the many companies she studied, she contrasts Google, which has a very strong Why identity, and which just overtook Apple as the largest company in the world, with Yahoo, which has always been a What company focused on features and benefits but without clear purpose, and which is now struggling to survive, never mind remain relevant.

You can see the complete capstone here.

……………………………………………..

DEVELOPING THE “WHY” FRAME IN BUSINESS DECISION-MAKING AND COMMUNICATION:

GUEST BLOG BY JOCELYN JIAXIN CAO

 

Jocelyn Jaixin Cao

Jocelyn Jaixin Cao

To stand out from competitors and to survive in a rapidly changing business environment, most companies spend the majority of their time in differentiating their products or services. However, studies show that differentiation is not enough to establish trust and loyalty. Companies need to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating their core values and beliefs clearly and consistently to their audience. Creating a “why” frame that includes these values and beliefs within the corporation becomes vital.

Companies influential on a global scale, such as Google, Facebook, and Uber, follow a similar communication strategy. They tell us first why they exist before talking about what they are selling. They know that to successfully connect with their audience, they need to first address what the audience cares about, not what is important only tothemselves. The origin of the “why” comes from the genesis story and the core values embraced by the company. It is not simply a slogan for the purpose of grabbing attention, but something the corporation truly believes in and is willing to fight for: it is the foundation of a corporation’s mission and vision.

  1. The Importance of “Why” in Business Decision-making and Communication

Google, Facebook, and Uber all have a clear “why” of their existence in the first place. The origin of their “why” is not for themselves, but for better serving the society. Google was created because Larry Page and Sergei Brin wanted to improve people’s search experience at that time; Facebook was brought into being because of the desperate need by Harvard students for a comprehensive online social network based on real identity; Uber was built to tackle the common issue of frustrating taxi services in major cities around the world. They are all originated from finding solutions for problems experienced by people at that time, and this is valued more than making money.

In addition, they all place their “why” at the center of decision-making, whether for big business decisions or day-to-day management. When Google’s engineers were developing a new project, they were encouraged to ask the question “Is it best for our users? Is it evil?” When hiring new employees, Google ensured that the person not only had the skills needed, but also fit into its “smart creative” culture – a culture that is “willing to question the status quo and attack things differently.”

Don't be evil

Facebook rejected advertisers whose businesses were not relevant to a college social culture even though they were companies like Goldman Sachs that could bring large amounts of money to them at their early stage. Later, it also turned down several deals with big investors such as Viacom and Yahoo because Mark Zuckerberg did not think those companies understood Facebook’s vision. When Uber was facing the huge backlash from the taxi industry and government officials, they did not fight back immediately, but focused on presenting their “why” to their customers and local governments through face-to-face conversations. It did not work out in every city, but it provoked a worldwide discussion on this issue, which to some extent increased Uber’s brand awareness.

Smart Creatives

Moreover, they all never stop enlarging and enriching their original “why” frames, which shows their constant thinking about the “why.” Google interpreted its “why” clearly to the public through the “Ten Things We Know To Be True”. Facebook revised its mission statement several times since its first establishment in 2004. Uber positioned itself as a lifestyle and logistics company, rather than a car service company, with its new trials such as Uber Ice Cream and UberCARGO.

In contrast, many of the competitors in the history of Google, Facebook and Uber failed to create their “why” or prioritize their “why” in communications. Therefore, they either lost the competitive advantage quickly or simply could not compete at all.

(1) Facebook vs. MySpace: MySpace existed and was widely welcomed before the inauguration of Facebook. It targeted the same audience – college students, received a lot of early press, and generated huge valuation among its investors. However, Facebook quickly overtook its market share. One crucial reason is that after being purchased by the News Corporation, MySpace’s original “why” no longer fit into its new reality. News Corp tried to guide MySpace by using the “professional management” approach. Leaders from News Corp sat down describing where the business would head, where they would invest and how they would earn a positive ROI by carefully calculating what would work. Those professional leaders at News Corp had no idea about the nature of social network among college students and they ran MySpace like a professional business. Contrarily, Zuckerberg allowed Facebook to go wherever the market wanted it. His team looked into the comments of their users and understood their audience well.

(2) Google vs. Bing: On May 28, 2009, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, publically demonstrated Bing for the first time at the All Things Digital Tech Conference in San Diego, California. In the live interview at the conference, when asked the reason Microsoft decided to rebrand the name of Live Search as Bing, Ballmer said the search engine industry was a large growing market and Microsoft should be in that market. To make their presence more obvious, they needed a short and crispy name that could “verb it up.” Reports also showed that Microsoft was planning to spend $100 million for the marketing campaign of Bing. Compared to Google, Bing indeed differentiated itself in many aspects to demonstrate its specialty. However, after six years, statistics shows that Google is still the dominant search engine with 66% market share around the world while Bing only accounts for 12% even after its partnership with Yahoo. When companies lose their “why” at the beginning, it is usually hard to catch up later. Microsoft did not know clearly why they rebranded their search engine. Therefore, even though they successfully differentiated the product from competitors’ via marketing campaigns, loyalty did not follow.

(3) Uber vs. Lyft: On May 22, 2012, John Zimmer and Logan Green launched Lyft to “give Uber some low-priced private driver/taxi competition.” Lyft differentiated itself from Uber by adding two more pillars to its business: ride sharing for long-distance car rides, and a University program where Lyft charges colleges for specific campus car-sharing programs. Now three years after its launch, Lyft has indeed received positive reviews from its community and is growing steadily in the U.S. However, compared to the sensation Uber has created around the world, Lyft looks more like a different version of Uber, rather than having its unique corporate identity. When a company’s “why” is mainly based on business competition, rather than the solution to the problems cared by its users, it may see a sound short-term gain by differentiating the services, but will soon be replaced by new companies with better products. Zimride, Lyft’s predecessor, is a failed example.

Uber Ice Cream

  1. Developing the “Why” frame

The process of creating the “why” frame can be divided into two parts:

The first part is the formation of the original “why.” Usually, a company’s genesis story is at the core of its original “why.” Page and Brin created Google in Stanford dorm as part of their PhD research, and their academic backgrounds and personal beliefs later influenced many aspects of Google’s growth. Zuckerberg’s dramatic founding story distinguished Facebook from other startups at that time, and was later brought live on the big screen by Hollywood in 2010. Uber’s original “why” emerged in a raining night in Paris when Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick were annoyed by the taxi services there. At that moment, they decided to crack the problem. These stories were not just stories, but later became core elements of their corporate cultures.

The second part is the enlargement of the “why.” To successfully fulfill the mission of the original “why,” leaders need people who share their vision to make it real together. At this time, corporate culture becomes significant for a company to convey and to represent its “why” to the outside world. Both Google and Facebook establish their unique cultures at very early stage. Both of them adopt the bottom-up management style and the flat corporate structure as they believe in openness and transparency, but despise bureaucracy. Both of them use the working environment to demonstrate and communicate the values to their employees. They build up their offices based on those values so that employees can be constantly reminded and inspired.

  1. Implementing the “Why” Frame in Daily Communications

The implementation of the “why” begins first internally among employees. Google and Facebook start very early on establishing an effective communication mechanism within the corporation. Whether it is Google’s weekly all-hands (TGIF) meetings, the quarterly OKR (Objective and Key Results) reports, or Facebook’s Q&A session every Friday with Zuckerberg, the regular Hackerathon competition, leaders at Google and Facebook know clearly the importance of internal communication to a corporation’s long-term success. Employees are, after all, a company’s best and most valuable brand ambassadors. An inside-out approach to engagement empowers employees in this process by allowing them to personify the company’s values externally. Therefore, companies should first think to develop an efficient and sustainable system for internal communication – to create a culture of “why” within the company.

After having a solid “why” internally, companies will have more confidence in external

communication. One key principle in external communication is to meet audience where they are. This requires companies to shift their focus of communication from brand itself to its audience because the audience, or the market, is always the “why” brands exist in the first place. By first addressing what the audience are concerning about, companies create a frame of communication that provides meaningful context for introducing the facts and features of their brands. It is also a process to activate and connect with the frames already existed in the audience’s minds. Companies should always ask themselves why the audience should care about what they are saying.

startwithwhy

Start with Why

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” This is the core argument Simon Sinek articulated in his TED Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” and his book Start With Why. Sinek says there are only two ways to influence human behavior – manipulation or inspiration. Business decision-makers can easily grasp and reproduce manipulative strategies such as reducing prices or increasing marketing campaigns to grab attention, while generating inspiration usually requires richer thoughts and deeper motivation. Developing the “why” frame starts the company on a journey of self-exploration and lays the foundation for a steady flow of inspiration.

The Golden Circle

 

…………

Jocelyn Jaixin Cao received her BA in English Language and Literature from Southern Yangtze University School of Foreign Studies and Honors School in Wuxi, China. She studied linguistics in the Global Studies program at University of California, Davis. She received her MS in Public Relations and Corporate Communication from New York University in December, 2015. She is a certified interpreter in the New York City mayor’s office.

Jocelyn Jaixin Cao with her professor and Capstone advisor Helio Fred Garcia.

Jocelyn Jaixin Cao with her professor and Capstone advisor Helio Fred Garcia.

 

Helio Fred GarciaHelio Fred Garcia | Bio | Posts
29 Aug 2015

Ten years ago today Hurricane Katrina made landfall.  The rest, as they say, is history.

I won’t recount that history day-by-day here. There are plenty of special reports on TV and in the newspapers this weekend that help us see the horror as it unfolded.  For a day-by-day timeline of the federal response, see Chapter 3 of The Power of Communication, or see Failure of Initiative, the final report of the U.S. House of Representatives Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane Katrina.  That congressional report concluded:

“The Select Committee identified failures at all levels of government that significantly undermined and detracted from the heroic efforts of first responders, private individuals and organizations, faith-based groups, and others.”

But on the tenth anniversary of the flood, we have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of that bungled response and to re-commit to the discipline of effective crisis response.  I will hit the high points (or low points) of Katrina response as teachable moments.

I monitored the hurricane and flood and then deployed to New Orleans in the second week as part of a corporate response to the disaster.  I saw first hand the consequence of the government’s ineffective handling of the crisis.

The author documenting Katrina damage.

The author documenting Katrina damage.

The federal government’s response to Katrina was bumbling, disorganized, and dishonest. It cost hundreds of lives. Many of the nearly 1,500 deaths in New Orleans happened in the days following the flood.  Many of those were preventable.

And the bungled response cost President George W. Bush his reputation. Until Katrina, President Bush had enjoyed a job approval rating above 50 percent. He had won re-election in a tough campaign just 10 months earlier. But after Katrina his job approval fell below 50 percent and never recovered. It fell first to 42 percent and a month later to 38 percent, and was below 30 percent the following year. President Bush finished his presidency with the lowest approval ratings of any president.

Bush approval

That loss of trust and reputation was preventable.  Because most of the bungled response was preventable.

Effective Crisis Management is a Leadership Discipline

Crisis management is the management of choices – the management of decisions that leaders make when things have the potential to go very wrong.

Effective crisis management helps leaders and organizations make critical business decisions that can prevent, mitigate, or recover from an event that threatens trust, reputation, assets, operations, and competitive position.

There is a rigor to effective crisis management that is equivalent to the rigor found in other business processes. But that rigor is often unknown, ignored, or misapplied by many leaders, to their own and their organizations’ misfortune.

That rigor includes a systematic way to think in a crisis.

Many leaders who otherwise are gifted managers – managing finance, or engineering, or marketing, or any other professional discipline, or even a whole company or government – throw rigor to the wind when a crisis emerges. Then they either make up a response on the fly or try to cobble together bits of knowledge from other parts of their experience. Or they ignore the crisis until it is too late. Or they think that their problem is one of public relations that can be rationalized away.

All of these things happened in Katrina. Indeed, from the President to the Secretary of Homeland Security to the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, there was lack of situational awareness, ineffective and dishonest assurances of an imminent response, and then denial of their own mis-steps.  They focused more on saying what sounded good, but were singularly unable to deliver on the assurances they made.

Washington, DC, August 31, 2005 -- Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, at a press conference at Homeland Security Headquarters, The press conference was also attended by Stephen Johnson from the Environmental Protection Agency, Secretary Michael Leavitt of the Department of Health and Human Services, Secretary Samuel Bodman of the Department of Energy, Secretary Norman Mineta, Department of Transportation, Rear Admiral Joel Whitehead, US Coast Guard, Acting Deputy Director Patrick Rhode of FEMA and Assisstant Secretary for Homeland Defense Paul McHale from the Department of Defense. Photo by Ed Edahl/FEMA

August 31, 2005 — Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, addresses the media.  Photo by Ed Edahl/FEMA

 Every Crisis is a Business Problem Before it is a Communication Problem

Crisis management is far more than skillful public relations. Seeing PR as the solution to a crisis is a recipe for failure.

Every crisis is a business problem before it is a communication problem, and you cannot communicate your way out of a business problem.

The government set the bar very high early in the Katrina crisis.

The day before the hurricane made landfall President Bush went on television to reassure the citizens of New Orleans and the surrounding areas. He said,

“We will do everything in our power to help the people and the communities affected by the storm.”

FEMA Director Michael Brown also reassured the public:

“FEMA is not going to hesitate at all in this storm. We’re going to move fast, we’re going to move quick, we’re going to do whatever it takes to help disaster victims.”

FEMA chief Michael Brown alongside Governor Kathleen Blanco and Senator Mary Landrieu

FEMA chief Michael Brown alongside Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, center, and U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, left.

These were the right things to say.

But simply saying them was not enough.

Regrettably, both FEMA and the larger US government, having set those expectations, spent the next week dramatically under-delivering on them. As the horror that New Orleans experienced unfolded over the next few days, the government’s lack of effective action, and the disconnect between the rhetoric and the work, defined the president and his administration.

Crises play out in an environment of emotional resonance: fear, anxiety, anger, shame, embarrassment and other, often confused, emotions. Effective crisis communication, combined with effective management of other elements of a crisis, can address and even neutralize these emotional reactions.

New Orleans flooded on August 29, 2005

New Orleans flooded on August 29, 2005

Crisis Response =
Effective Action + Effective Communication

Effective crisis response consists of a carefully managed process that calibrates smart actions with smart communication.

The key to making smart choices is to use the right decision criteria – the proper basis for choice. And that means asking the right questions.

Indeed, in my experience working on and studying thousands of crises over more than 35 years, the most effectively handled crises were the ones where leaders asked the right question.  Ask the right question, and the solution can become clear within a matter of minutes. But asking the right question requires mental readiness; a readiness to shift perspective and to think differently.

The Leadership Discipline of Mental Readiness

Most counter-productive crisis responses begin with leaders asking some version of What should we do? Or What should we say? The challenge with this kind of question is that it focuses on the we – on the entity or leader in crisis. This results in the consideration of options that may make the people in midst of crisis feel good. But it is unlikely to lead to what is necessary to maintain trust, confidence, and support of those people whose trust, confidence, and support are critical to the organization.

What is needed is a different kind of thinking that begins not with the I/me/we/us but rather with the they/them – with the stakeholders who matter to the organization. The leadership discipline of mental readiness – the readiness to shift frames of reference from the first person — I/me/we/us — to the third person — they/them — makes all the difference.

And that’s because of the way trust works.

Maintaining Trust: Meet Expectations

A common goal for most organizations and leaders in crises is to maintain the trust and confidence of those who matter – shareholders, employees, customers, regulators, residents, citizens, voters, etc.

Trust arises when stakeholders’ legitimate expectations are met. Trust falls when expectations are unmet.

Asking What should we do? runs the serious risk of failing even to consider stakeholders’ expectations. Worse, it further risks the leader becoming stuck in his or her own perspective, in I/me/we/us. Hence, such crisis whoppers as BP CEO Tony Hayward’s “I’d like my life back,” or even President Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”

Most crisis response failures can be traced back to the ultimate decision-makers focusing on their own frame of reference rather than on their stakeholders.  This was the case in Katrina.

The right question to ask when determining the appropriate course of action in a crisis is not What should we do. Rather, it is this: What would reasonable people appropriately expect a responsible organization or leader to do when facing this kind of situation?

Framing decisions in light of stakeholder expectations leads to smarter choices faster, and maintains stakeholders’ trust.

For any stakeholder group we can answer the question, What would reasonable members of this stakeholder group appropriately expect a responsible organization or leader to do? to a very granular level. And at the very least, one way to determine stakeholder expectations is to reflect on the expectations we ourselves have set.  So, in Katrina, President Bush set the expectation that the the federal government would do everything in its power to help the people affected by the storm.  FEMA chief Michael Brown said that FEMA would not hesitate at all, but would move fast and do whatever it takes to help disaster victims.

But when FEMA was seen to be slow and to create obstacles to rapid response, and when the U.S. government was not seen to be responding or even acknowledging the gravity of the situation, trust began to fall simply because the expectations the government itself had set were not being fulfilled.

 

Photo by the author.

We can inventory expectations to a very granular level for each stakeholder group, and we can then work to fulfill those particular expectations.

But regardless the particular expectations of any given stakeholder group, there is a common expectation that applies to all stakeholder groups all the time:  In a crisis, all stakeholders expect a responsible organization or leader to care.  To care that something has happened; to care that people need help; to care that something needs to be done.

One of the common patterns in crisis is this: The single biggest predictor of loss of trust and confidence, of loss of reputation, and of financial and operational harm, is the perception that the organization or leader do not care.

So effective crisis response, at a minimum, begins with a timely demonstration of caring. And it continues with a persistent demonstration that the organization and leader continue to care, for as long as the expectation of caring exists.

This is what was sorely lacking in the government’s response to Katrina.  Officials said they cared; but the tangible demonstration of caring didn’t match the rhetoric.

New Orleans flooded on a Monday.  Throughout that day and Tuesday, the government kept assuring the news media that FEMA and other agencies were on the ground and helping the victims.  But news coverage showed little federal presence except for U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescues.  But no staging areas for victims; no shelters; but hundreds of people, mostly African-American, struggling against the rising waters and without help.  On Tuesday the news media persistently questioned why there was little evidence of federal help for the city, noting even that dead bodies continued to float by.

On that Wednesday the media not only covered the lack of a FEMA presence on the ground, but also how FEMA prevented or stalled potential aid from other sources.  For example, a fourteen-car caravan arranged by the sheriff of Loudoun County, Virginia, carrying supplies of water and food, was not allowed into the city. FEMA stopped tractor trailers carrying water to the supply staging area in Alexandria, Louisiana because they did not have the necessary paperwork. CNN also reported that during the weekend before the flood Mayor Nagin had made a call for firefighters to help with rescue operations. But as firefighters from across the country arrived to help victims, they were first sent by FEMA to Atlanta for a day long training program in community relations and sexual harassment. When they arrived in New Orleans, the volunteer firefighters were permitted only to give out flyers with FEMA number, but were forbidden from engaging in rescue operations. The media reported not only the resentment felt by the first responders, but also how FEMA’s policies hurt those people who were begging for aid in New Orleans.

That day Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff held a press conference in which he said,

“We are extremely pleased with every element of the federal government, all of our federal partners, have made to this terrible tragedy.”

That day Mayor Ray Nagin went on the radio and blasted the federal government for its failure to respond quickly:

“I don’t want to see anyone do any more g*d-dammed press conferences. Put a moratorium on press conferences. Don’t tell me forty thousand people are coming here. They’re not here!”

On Thursday, the news media reported that hundreds of people who had been sheltering at the New Orleans Convention Center without food, water, blankets, or any other help.  FEMA Director Michael Brown went on four network news programs and admitted that FEMA had been unaware of the people at the convention center until the news media reported it.

That day commentators and late-night comedians began to question Mr. Brown’s fitness to serve.

On Friday President Bush visited the area, and famously praised Mr. Brown, addressing him by his nickname:

“Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

President George W. Bush addressing FEMA Director Michael Brown: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

That caught people’s attention (and became a defining quote of the President Bush’s tenure as president).  Media analysts wondered why the President would say that: Did he not know how incompetent Brown seemed to many people?  Did he know and not care?  Or did he actually want the ineffective response?  It showed a president out of touch, or worse.  This meme began to make its way across the television networks.

That night, Friday, on a live televised concert to raise funds for Katrina victims, entertainer Kanye West gave voice to the pent up frustrations of many:

“George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Kanye West gave voice to pent-up frustrations when he declared on live TV: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

 

This changed the dynamic completely.  The next morning, six days after the flood, the President spoke to the media in front of the White House. Flanked by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Meyers, and Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff, the president acknowledged shortfalls in the federal response and committed to direct a more effective response. He said,

“Many of our citizens are simply not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable.”

After six days of seeming out of touch, the acknowledgement of the inadequate response seemed a heartening development. That day a larger federal presence was seen in New Orleans and President Bush ordered over 7,000 troops and an additional 10,000 National Guardsmen to the disaster area.

On the weekend talk shows, the focus shifted from why the response was inadequate to who was to blame for it.

Meet The Press host Tim Russert with Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff

Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press and was questioned by host Tim Russert.  Russert asked whether Chertoff or anyone who reported to him would resign given the poor response.  He quoted the Republican senator from Louisiana, David Vitter, who gave Secretary Chertoff a grade of F.  He noted that Mitt Romney, Republican governor of Massachusetts, said that the U.S. is now an embarrassment to the world.  He then challenged Secretary Chertoff:

“Your website says that your department assumes primary responsibility for a natural disaster.  If you knew that a Hurricane Three storm was coming, why weren’t buses, trains, planes, cruise ships, trucks provided on Friday, Saturday, Sunday to evacuate people before the storm?”

Secretary Chertoff gave a response that was, at best, disingenuous. He said,

“Tim, the way that emergency operations act under the law is – the responsibility, the power, the authority to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials.”

Even if the statement were true, it was a sharp contrast from President Bush’s and FEMA Director Brown’s assurances that the federal government would do everything it could to help those affected by the storm. But as a PBS Frontline special pointed out, evacuation is a shared responsibility. The law establishing FEMA spells out:

“The functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency include…conducting emergency operations to save lives and property through positioning emergency equipment and supplies, through evacuating potential victims, through providing food, water, shelter, and medical care to those in need, and through restoring critical public services.”

By the following Friday, 13 days after the flood, Secretary Chertoff announced that operational responsibility for the Katrina response was shifting from FEMA to the Coast Guard, and that Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen would take charge.  FEMA Director Brown resigned the following Monday.

9 Lessons for Leaders and Communicators

The Katrina anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on foundational principles of effective crisis management.  These include:

  1. Leaders are judged based on how they deal with their most difficult challenges.  Crises can literally make or break reputations.
  2. Crisis management is the management of choices – the management of decisions that leaders make when things have the potential to go very wrong.
  3. There is a rigor to effective crisis management that is equivalent to the rigor found in other business processes. But that rigor is often unknown, ignored, or misapplied by many leaders, to their own and their organizations’ misfortune.  That rigor includes a systematic way to think in a crisis.
  4. Every crisis is a business problem before it is a communication problem, and you cannot communicate your way out of a business problem. Crisis management is far more than skillful public relations. Effective crisis response consists of a carefully managed process that calibrates smart actions with smart communication: Crisis Response = Effective Action + Effective Communication.
  5. The key to making smart choices is to use the right decision criteria – the proper basis for choice. And that means asking the right question: What would reasonable people appropriately expect a responsible organization to do in this situation?
  6. Trust arises when stakeholders’ legitimate expectations are met. Trust falls when expectations are unmet.
  7. Framing decisions in light of stakeholder expectations leads to smarter choices faster, and maintains stakeholders’ trust.
  8. In a crisis, all stakeholders expect a responsible organization or leader to care.  To care that something has happened; to care that people need help; to care that something needs to be done.
  9. The single biggest predictor of loss of trust and confidence, of loss of reputation, and of financial and operational harm, is the perception that the organization or leader do not care. Effective crisis response, at a minimum, begins with a timely demonstration of caring. And it continues with a persistent demonstration that the organization and leader continue to care, for as long as the expectation of caring exists.

by Iris Wenting Xue

Last month, my mentor and boss, Helio Fred Garcia, and I visited more than 20 organizations, including top universities and prestigious corporations, in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Tianjin.

During our visit, we have experienced different learning approaches and different cultural styles of lecture attendants. We had international students from joint-venture universities; Chinese students at top Chinese universities majoring in business (both MBA and Executive MBA), communication, and other liberal arts and sciences; senior PR managers from multinational groups; mid-career bankers from a national banking commission; and officials from local governments.

This post is the second in a series of posts on how to understand and overcome sociocultural obstacles. I learned three lessons about sociocultural and linguistic gaps during the Logos The Power of Communication China trip. In my last post I described the first gap: different languages. We can easily bridge the language gap by translation.

Today I will describe lessons about two other gaps that are harder to solve, although we constantly talk about them.

Lesson 2: Different Learning Approaches

In order to demonstrate how hard it is for audiences to pay attention, we showed many of our audiences the video Invisible Gorilla. You can click on it and watch before you keep reading. You will be surprised about your counting skills.

Gorilla screen shot

I first watched this video during my strategic communication course at New York University in the Public Relations and Corporate Communication Graduate Program.

In this 30-second video, six people – three in white shirts and three in black shirts – pass basketballs around. The task for the audience is to count the number of passes made by the people in white shirts, and spot a gorilla that strolls into the middle of the action, thumps its chest and then leaves.

At that time I had a robust discussion with my classmates about 1) why was it so hard to accurately count how many times the players passed the basketball and also to spot a gorilla among human beings, 2) how to understand cognitive tunneling, which is what makes the tasks so hard, and 3) what we could learn and apply to our work from that exercise.

This time in China, I discovered some interesting learning approaches beyond these three takeaways – each specific to different groups of people.

1) PhDs

When we showed this video to a group of, let’s say, 50 people, there were always 15 who counted accurately, 10-ish who came close but got the number wrong, 10-ish who got close but chose a different number, 7-ish of some less-close number and two or three people who counted very wrong.

So one of our conclusions was “Counting numbers under 20 is not as easy as we thought it’d be.”

However, when we showed the video to a group of people including Ph.Ds in China, one of their conclusions was: “The answers could be plotted as a curve.”

This was the first time we discussed The Invisible Gorilla with PhDs.   And this was the first time we received a response with the word “curve.” So, we responded with their language, “Gaussian distribution,” to acknowledge their worldview, to motivate them, to deepen the conversation.

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2) Bankers

After the count, we typically asked: “While you were counting how many times the players passed the basketball, did you see a gorilla?” People either saw it or did not see it, so when they watched the video again they either were proud of their observation skills or disappointed that they had missed the gorilla.

We played the same video to a group of mid-career bankers. When we rewound the video, they denied that they had missed the gorilla:” We saw it, but we didn’t think it was a real gorilla. Instead, it was a human with a gorilla costume.”

This was the first time we had showed bankers The Invisible Gorilla. This was also the first time the audience challenged the content of the video. We respected the different habits, so we reframed the “gorilla” as “a human in a gorilla costume” based on their descriptions, to keep the conversation going.

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3) Heads of Communications

Our routine at the end of the discussion was – “Any other thoughts and comments?”

Typically audiences will respond with their opinions about their counting skills or the missing gorilla.

But when we showed the same video to a group of PR directors, heads of public affairs and senior PR managers  —  from Standard Chartered, General Motors, Estée Lauder Companies, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical Company and some other multinational enterprises — some of their final thoughts went far beyond the counting and the gorilla. Some of them knitted their brows and raised questions like “Are you manipulating us?”

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They provided an interesting reason why the curve occurred, and why the gorilla, or the human with a gorilla costume, was overlooked. They insisted that the designer of the experiment manipulated the audience through putting a black gorilla among black-and-white-shirted players. They argued that since they concentrated on counting the passing of the white-shirt team, they could not pay attention to the black team and the black gorilla. If it had been a light brown gorilla, they would easily have dentified it.

How would you respond to this tricky question?

Lesson learned: “Understand your audience” appears in the slides we show to our clients.  But we have to walk the talk and meet our audience by observing their approach and adopting their language.

 

Lesson 3: Different Cultural Styles

Before we landed in China, we thought we would face one group of audience – Chinese audience. To our surprise, our audience differed in certain ways: Some of them were shy but smart; some of them were as open like those in the States; some of them stayed in their own world, and it took us a long time to understand their thoughts.

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I use the word “cultural style” to emphasize their subtle differences beyond imagination. To my surprise, I found in my research that Professor Dan Kahan of Yale Law School blogged this conception based on his study with his collaborators on Joseph Gusfield:

 “The term “cultural style” is, for me, a way to describe these affinities. I have adapted it from Gusfield. I & collaborators use the concept and say more about it and how it relates to Gusfield in various places.…

Examples of these are cultural generations, such as the traditional and the modern; characterological types, such as ‘inner-directed and other-directed’; and reference orientations, such as ‘cosmopolitans and locals.’”

I agree with Kahan about how people differ from each other due to the difference of location or character and share the affinities with each other due to time or education background.

Below are the four main cultural styles during our trip:

1) Top Local University Style

We visited four of the top ten universities in China. Not to our surprise, the institutions are powerful. Here are some recent updates of some of them:

Tsinghua University celebrated its 104 anniversary this past Sunday and posted some old pictures of its famous alumni, including current President Xi (graduated from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences Department and later got an LLD degree), former President Hu (graduated from the Water Conservancy Engineering Department); the governor of the People’s Bank of China Xiaochuan Zhou (got a Ph.D. degree in Automation and System Engineering), and the controversial Chinese-born American Nobel Physics Prize winner Chen-Ning Franklin Yang (received a Master’s Degree and later became an honored director).

Xi Jinping, as a student at Tsinghua University, and now as President of China

Xi Jinping, as a student at Tsinghua University, and now as President of China

Shanghai Jiaotong University, through its School of Media and Design (at which we spoke) and the University of Southern California jointly established The Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry (ICCI). Ernest J. Wilson III, Dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, visited the same campus we visited one month after our visit.

USC&SJTU1

To our surprise, some of their current students were not as vocal as we expected. Lectures we held in the top local universities were much more silent than those we held in joint-venture universities, although we discovered later that they had brilliant thoughts. In general, they are proud about being “blue blood”, and they tend to appear modest but think aggressively. They were reluctant to share their personal opinions about some topics until we pushed them several times.

2) Joint-Venture University Style

Elite universities in China and other countries are already on the path of exploring partnerships with universities from other countries. For example:

  • In 2004, The University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) was set up by the University of Nottingham (UK) with the cooperation of Zhejiang’s Wanli Education Group in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province.
  • In 2006, the Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) was jointly established by University of Liverpool and Xi’an Jiao Tong University in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.
  • In 2012, Duke Kunshan University was organized as a collaboration between Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, with Wuhan University, and the city of Kunshan, Jiangsu Province.

Among joint-venture universities we visited in China this time, we were impressed with New York University Shanghai, Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, and Sino-British College.

NYU Shanghai is NYU’s third degree-granting campus. Its enrollment started in Fall 2013, and now there are only Freshmen and Sophomores. Students are not only from China, or other Asian countries like Singapore, South Korea and the Philippines, but also from the States, Canada, France, Dubai and many other countries.

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The Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies is a joint educational venture between the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University. It has been operating in Nanjing since 1986.

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Sino-British College is an international university college in Shanghai, China, jointly established by the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST), and nine British universities (The University of Bradford, The University of Huddersfield, The University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University, Liverpool John Moores University, Manchester Metropolitan University, The University of Salford, The University of Sheffield, and Sheffield Hallam University).

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These three joint venture universities have built global classrooms with a global view, where students are open and comfortable hearing other opinions and sharing opinions themselves. The diversity of student and faculty kindled the diverse discussion we typically associate with academia.

3) Business Style (Communicators and Non-Communicators)

Business audiences tended to be more worldly and more serious. For example, when we talked about crisis management in a Corporate Social Responsibility Forum in Shanghai and showed a picture of an oil platform explosion to the communicators, participants immediately identified it as “BP”. It was self-evident. They were aware of what was happening in the crisis management field, even though they live in a country where people tend to whitewash scandals. Also, some of them asked tricky questions like “Is it a smart crisis strategy to find another crisis that will shift the focus and will thus save our company from the spotlight?”

Coast Guard Attempts Burning Off Oil Leaking From Sunken Rig

Here is another sign of how seriously the business community takes professional development. When the largest residential real estate company in China (which has an office in New York) invited my boss, Helio Fred Garcia, to hold a speech about The Power of Communication, they not only offered a huge auditorium of 200 people, but also live broadcasted it to 40 other national offices. Each office was equipped with live broadcasted lecture and real-time slides. Each office had at least 20 attendants. And even though it was a Friday evening lecture, the company told us that they had an attendance rate of over 90 percent and that nobody left in the middle of the speech.

Executives at a Vanke regional office spending a Friday evening watching Prof. Garcia's workshop via remote technology

Executives at a Vanke regional office spending a Friday evening watching Prof. Garcia’s workshop via remote technology

 

4) Local Government Style

We coached 90 officials from Nanyang, a “small” city of 10 million residents in Henan Province.

They were being trained in crisis management because they were working on a huge national project “South–North Water Diversion”.  (Think of the drought in California, and imagine diverting a major river 800 miles to California.) Due to this project, a huge amount of Nanyang residents had to relocate. So government officials were eager to be trained for if (or when) a crisis might happen.

Route of the Water Diversion Project to bring water from the South to the greater Beijing area

Route of the Water Diversion Project to bring water from the South to the greater Beijing area

I did the simultaneous translation for the lecture. My observations are as follow:

  • The officials were focused on the lecture, even though the majority of them cannot understand English beyond “Hello” and “Thank you”.
  • They were the only group of people that were uniformly unfamiliar with Professor Garcia’s references to Greek tragedies. Every other group understood immediately when he referred Greek tragedies as the example that people remember bad things rather than good things. They were the only group of people that could not get our point of “Greek tragedies are all about choices — Do I kill my father and marry my mother?” Every other group, including students from universities and even engineers from big companies, laughed at the reference. The officials remained silent.
  • They were eager to share a Confucius quote, and insisted that I translate it simultaneously for Professor Garcia. They also expected his response and feedback to the Confucius quote. In other words, they were the group who seemed to ignore others culture, but emphasize their own culture.

 

Zeus hurling thunderbolts; Confucius

Zeus hurling thunderbolts; Confucius

 

Lesson Learned: When social patterns and cultural differences are involved, we have to be very careful about what is happening to people who do not share the same learning approach and same cultural style as ours.

The two lessons we learned today are much harder than the first lesson. Accordingly, there is no single solution for each of these gaps.  But one large takeaway from the trip is that we need to take seriously not only differences in language but also differences in learning approach and cultural style.

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by Iris Wenting Xue

Earlier this year I organized last month’s four-week China book tour for my mentor and boss, Helio Fred Garcia.   The Chinese edition of his book, The Power of Communication: Skills to Build Trust, Inspire Loyalty, and Lead Effectively, and Logos Institute’s approach to leadership, communication, and crisis management, were well received and highly appreciated by Chinese readers and audiences.

PoC English Chinese

We visited 15 prestigious universities and had many public events in four Chinese cities.  Our audiences were from such disparate organizations as:

  • Top Chinese universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Communication University of China, Nankai University, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Shanghai International Studies University;

Chinese University Logos

  • Joint-venture universities such as New York University Shanghai, Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, and Sino-British College;

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  • 3) Large corporations like Vanke, the largest residential real estate developer in China, and

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  • 4) Renowned media organizations like Shanghai Daily.

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We dealt with varied groups of people, from 20-something college students to 70-something millionaires; from public relations majors to MBAs, and EMBAs;  from journalists to government officials; from crisis managers to bankers and engineers…

As a result of this exchange, Logos Institute is now in discussion with several top universities for longer-term academic collaboration, but that is not the most valuable result of the trip.

Right of Prof. Garcia, in green, Dr. Xiaojun Qian, Professor and Assistant Dean, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua university; Left of Prof. Garcia, the publisher, Wendy Yang of Publishing House of Electronics Industry

Right of Prof. Garcia, in green, Dr. Xiaojun Qian, Professor and Assistant Dean, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua university; Left of Prof. Garcia, the publisher, Wendy Yang of Publishing House of Electronics Industry

We have built relationships with several institutions and companies for future cooperation, but again that is not the most valuable result.

Lessons Learned

As a communication practitioner, a tour observer and a translator, I discovered three lessons to be the most valuable outcome of the trip; lessons that can help us all to better understand, respect, and bridge the communication gap between different audiences.

We should understand, respect and bridge the gaps caused by:

  1. Different languages
  2. Different learning approaches
  3. Different cultural styles

These three lessons are universal and universally applicable.

Below I elaborate on the first lesson, different languages. In a subsequent post I will elaborate on each of the remaining two lessons.

Lesson 1: Different Languages

One obvious gap between the American author, Helio Fred Garcia, and the Chinese audience is language.  We can easily overcome this obstacle by translation; translating both the slide content for visual reinforcement, and simultaneous or consecutive translation of the spoken word.

Some universities and organizations in Shanghai, and Johns Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, did not require simultaneous or consecutive translation because most lecture attendants spoke fluent English.

But on most other occasions I translated the lecture, the Q&A session and even the meeting with deans, professors, or other leaders.

These two scenarios were easy to handle compared to the third scenario – The audience or the leader had the illusion that they were fluent in English, and then the misunderstanding came as expected.

This illusion of fluency has consequences, sometimes tragic, sometimes comical, but often just frustrating.

Throughout the trip, I discovered many of the challenges associated with the illusion of fluency.  I offer just two representative examples:

1) “Publicity” or “Propaganda”?

Chinese is one of the three hardest-to-master languages in the world (The other two are Arabic and German).

One difficulty is its brevity. One Chinese character could easily have five or six meanings, so there could be various explanations for one Chinese word.

For instance, the Chinese word 宣传  (“Xuan Chuan”) can be accurately translated in English as both “propaganda” and “publicity.”  In English the word “propaganda” is derogatory.  But “publicity” is benign, if not commendatory.   Because of this linguistic phenomenon, many Chinese cannot understand the subtle difference between publicity and propaganda. They interchangeably use them, just as Americans in a big city might interchangeably use “subway” and ”metro.”

To add to the confusion, there is a Chinese Central Government Department called the “Xuan Chuan Department.”  Technically, it should be translated as “Department of Publicity.”  However, because many Chinese conflate publicity and propaganda, they simply translate that department as “Department of Propaganda.”   Many even prefer the word “propaganda” because, as one person confessed to me, it “looks premium and shows the translator’s profound English vocabulary.”  This can create a deep sense of suspicion among native English speakers that “this Chinese Central Government Department does nothing else but propaganda.”  Fortunately, the official name of this department is now “The Publicity Department.”

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2) God uses [a] VPN (virtual private network)?

It is commonly acknowledged that many Chinese popular foods are hard to translate. CNN and HuffingtonPost featured some humorous accounts of this.

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For example, “Fo Tiao Qiang” is a southern China dish or soup originating in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912).  It contains shark fin, quail eggs, bamboo shoots, scallops, sea cucumber, abalone, chicken, Jinhua ham, pork tendon, ginseng, mushrooms, and taro.  The literal meaning of the name is “Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.”  It is meant to suggest that the dish is so enticing that even Buddha would be unable to resist its lure, and would jump over the wall of his temple to be able to taste the soup.

But last month we saw the soup translated as “God uses VPN.”  Some context:  In China much of the internet is blocked behind a firewall.  But Chinese people know how to access some of the forbidden parts  — Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.– simply by using a virtual private network (VPN) to get past the firewall. The same Chinese words lead to dramatically different English translations.

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So, the delicious dish traditionally translated as “Buddha Jumps Over the Wall” on at least one menu is now rendered “God uses VPN.”  How can we understand it without the context?

In my next post I’ll address the two remaining questions:

How to understand, respect and bridge the gaps caused by

  • Different learning approaches
  • Different cultural styles.

 

 

 

By Kristin Johnson

I am in the company of millions when I admit that my amusement and interest was piqued by the “gold and white” – er, blue and black dress debate of 2015. Since then, there has been tremendous discussion on illusion and the relationship between perception and reality, and neurology and ophthalmology.

What we subjectively see often influences – consciously or unconsciously – what we believe to be objectively true. The question on everyone’s mind is, “What is real?”

Michael Abrash, chief scientist for Facebook’s Oculus, quoted “The Matrix” character Morpheus when he posed this question during his virtual reality keynote at the F8 Developer Conference this week. He declared that real “is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”

As human beings, our brains have a sophisticated architecture that is continuously drawing on patterns and relationships from past experience to build conclusions. As Mr. Abrash explained, “we are inference machines.” I’s prbly wy yu cn ead ths rght nw; yur rain flls n te blnks for ou.

The world is ambiguous. We construct reality with our minds. Optical illusions are everywhere – from OK Go’s gravity-defying new video to the black and white Teletubbies video that has transformed colorful friends of children into terrifying creatures of doom, all by playing with your senses.

There are lessons in illusions for those of us in business communication. Challenging ourselves to see something in an unexpected or unconventional way is a significant part of the creative process and connecting with stakeholders.

As professional communicators, it’s valuable to acknowledge that every person’s brain has evolved to see the world through individual experience. Often, failing to see the metaphoric “gold and white” or “blue and black” can lead to confusion, disruption and an escalation of issues. As George Bernard Shaw stated so well, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

For clarity, we can turn problems inside out and upside down. Helio Fred Garcia, author of The Power of Communication, also a mentor and my boss, refers to this as strategy. He defines it as “ordered thinking.” Too often in business, the first question teams jump to – for any problem – is, “What should we say or do?” This is ineffective, however, because the answer is based on any number of assumptions – or illusions – that vary from individual to individual.

Instead, according to Garcia, an effective leader needs to ask a sequence of strategic questions to make sense of the situation, establish goals, and identify audiences and attitudes. Only after that discovery process will there be the clarity to prescribe a course of action, or the “what should we say or do.”

Neuroscientist and artist Beau Lotto contends that, “context is everything.” Indeed, ordered thinking works to reveal the context and framing that is meaningful to individual audiences. With this understanding, companies have greater opportunity to effectively trade illusion for clarity and shape messages that will be consequential to their stakeholders. The outcome? Stakeholders who are inspired to think, feel, know or do something in service of a goal…as they uniquely see it.