Transparency And Collaboration Are Keys To Building Trust After Operational Blunders

Innovation Transparency And Collaboration Are Keys To Building Trust After Operational Blunders Hunter Madeley Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Oct 13, 2022, 06:45am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Hunter Madeley, CEO Vena .

getty Epictetus, the Greek philosopher, is credited with saying, “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. ” No matter how strong your organization or leadership team is, a day will come when you face a crisis. Crises come in all sorts—whether it’s an external force (e.

g. , global pandemic, war or economic downturn) or an internal failing (e. g.

, service outages, employee misconduct or product flaws). Although each situation is unique, how leadership and the organization as a whole address the situation reflects their values and commitment to customers and employees. More than the event itself, your response will determine how you recover.

The cardinal rule for mitigating the fallout from any material operational challenge or misstep is to communicate with those affected once you’re aware of the relevant facts and impact—and to consistently do so during and after the crisis. In physics, it’s said that nature abhors a vacuum. This applies to communications too.

Every empty space or void, whether it’s with your employees, customers, the media, social platforms or the rumor mill, will fill itself with speculation in the absence of authentic, transparent communication. Crises are fluid situations that quickly shift and develop. How and when your leadership teams communicate can have as much, if not more, impact on building trust and restoring stakeholder confidence as the steps it takes to resolve the situation.

Communicate swiftly, clearly and often. Your stakeholders are a part of the process and need to be included. Missteps—such as a delay in acknowledging the issue, incomplete or misleading statements and silence—can be costly, whether the impact is in lost sales, a drop in share price, an employee exodus or loss of customer trust.

Here are some steps to keep in mind should you find yourself addressing a crisis. 1. Acknowledge the situation.

MORE FOR YOU Juan Soto Contract Rejection Could Make Orioles A Better Buy Than Nationals Netflix Viewing Figures To Be Independently Verified For The First Time The CTO As A Storyteller: Making Technology Understandable And Relatable The first step in handling any operational failure is to promptly acknowledge the situation with those affected. Most likely, you won’t have all the answers or a clear picture at this time, and it’s appropriate to say that facts are still unfolding. It’s now that you must lean into collaboration and transparency and focus on fixing the issue and its root cause.

Understanding the issue and acknowledging its impact on your customers is paramount to rebuilding trust. 2. Assess the damage.

Many things need to happen in parallel as you address and work to repair a crisis situation. Ideally, the organization has assembled a core group of employees from the executive team, legal counsel and communications team who have prepared a plan should a crisis arise. The first steps, as that team is assessing the damage, are: • Determine what happened and the root cause.

• Assess who was affected and how. • Assess the extent of the impact—is it widespread or isolated? • Outline what’s already been done to resolve the issue and what remains to be done. • Communicate early and frequently, even if you don’t have all the answers.

Your core crisis team should build a communications plan that tailors statements to what each audience cares about, which may be different for employees, customers, partners and the media. These audiences will have different needs. For employees, information should include guidance on how to address questions from customers, partners or friends and family.

For customers, it should include reassurances that the issue is being taken seriously and addressed appropriately. Once it’s clear which details will be communicated publicly, it’s imperative for all public communications to come from a single individual. That person could be the CEO, another executive, a business unit leader or a corporate spokesperson.

This ensures consistency in your message and presents a single source of truth for the issue. All other employees should be instructed to direct any questions they receive from the media to the crisis team. 3.

Prioritize communication. Earlier this year, customers of Rogers Communications, a top provider of telephone, internet and mobile services in Canada, experienced a significant outage . Rogers’ services unexpectedly went down for its roughly 11 million subscribers in the wee hours of the morning—and stayed down for roughly 20 hours.

And although having no phone, mobile or internet access was an inconvenience for most, the outage also brought down the emergency 911 system in some areas, which had dire implications. For hours, Rogers, no doubt working behind the scenes to get the network up and running, was silent. The lack of communication led to outrage from subscribers and government regulators too.

The company eventually acknowledged that it was working to repair the issue, but it was too little too late. Because of its lack of transparency, Rogers now faces a loss of customer trust, the financial implications of refunds to subscribers and renewed scrutiny of its business. Contrast that with how messaging app Slack responded when its service crashed in late February 2022.

Shortly after realizing that thousands of users were unable to load the app as the East Coast logged on, Slack quickly shared a simple statement , “Sorry we can’t be more specific—this is one of those cases where we don’t know what’s gone wrong either. ” This bought the company time and goodwill among its users, as did the regular updates it posted twice an hour to the Slack status page. Once the issue was resolved, Slack acknowledged it on Twitter with a bit of humor: “Things we’ve learned on 2-22-22: Tuesdays can go two ways, two deep breaths can make a situation more manageable, two heads are better than one, and we’re twice as grateful for your patience during today’s disruption—no two ways about it.

” You can’t plan for every type of crisis, but it’s important to have a framework to refer to when one occurs. Prioritizing timely and transparent communications to stakeholders is paramount, whether the audience is customers, employees, investors or others. Ensuring that you’re doing all you can to mitigate the impact of the incident, if not making things right, can limit the damage to revenue, employee morale and brand reputation.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? Follow me on LinkedIn . Check out my website .

Hunter Madeley Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.