Do you think the editor kept his job?

Blame game

The sinking of the Costa Concordia in Tuscan waters remains an international news story and has seen the humiliation of the ship’s captain. Jim Preen comments on the crisis communications strategy of the ship’s owners.

Captain Schettino, Master of the Costa Concordia, has been denounced as the most hated man in Italy, dubbed Captain Coward and is said to have ‘cried like a baby for 15 minutes’ after abandoning his ship. The world’s media has unleashed its size 10 Doc Martin boots and given him an almighty kicking from which he is unlikely to recover, at least in career terms.

If Schettino is the villain of the piece then the hero is the coastguard, Captain Gregorio De Falco who ordered Schettino back on to his vessel, an order that was never obeyed.

In the aftermath of such a tragedy the media are always on the lookout for heroes and villains and Schettino became the perfect scapegoat.

So what’s been the response of the vessel’s operators (Costa Crociere) and owners (Carnival Corporation) to the sinking of their ship and the vilification of their captain?

Initially they did what any crisis communications professional would tell them: they expressed sympathy for the victims and stressed the need to preserve the environment.

Thereafter their sole crisis communications strategy seems to have been distancing themselves from their beleaguered captain and effectively fuelling the media feeding frenzy.

Here’s a short extract from an initial press release: “preliminary indications are that there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s Master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences.”

In the informal court of international public opinion the evidence is stacked against Schettino, but from a crisis management point of view should his employers have placed the blame so firmly on his shoulders?

Schettino is nothing if not one of their senior employees, but by publicly agreeing that he is almost solely responsible for the disaster isn’t at least part of that blame reflected back on the company? They employed him; so Costa must have thought he was up to the job. To put it another way, if Schettino was so incompetent what does that say about Costa’s employment procedures? Presumably you are not made ship’s captain of such a massive vessel on a whim.

It has also emerged that various vessels, including the Costa Concordia, had previously sailed close to the Island of Giglio. If this was an absurdly dangerous manoeuvre, as now seems to be the received wisdom, why had the owners not issued orders preventing it? And if Costa didn’t know this had happened before, why didn’t they know?

In immediately pillorying their captain, Costa also cast themselves in an unflattering light. They sent a clear message that when the going gets tough the company is quite prepared to toss any unfortunate employee to the wolves, or in this case, the international media.

Presumably their thinking was that the captain’s actions were so indefensible that an early, quick, dissociation from him was their best option. But, laying the blame in such a startlingly early manner can come back to bite you when the full story emerges.

History is littered with examples. For example, initially, News International claimed that phone hacking at The News of The World was the responsibility of one ‘rogue reporter’, we now know that was very far from the case.

The Costa strategy may well be proved right, but playing the blame game early on can give the impression of a company jumping to conclusions rather than appearing calm, collected and in control of a crisis even if, like a swan, their feet are paddling frantically just below the surface.

World Continuity Congress 2012

The Lizard may be attending and possibly speaking at this conference in Singapore in March.

Anybody else dropping by?
http://bit.ly/yFatDh

Calling the shots

Jim's article printed below can now be found at Continuity Central click here.

IT calls the shots

Does business continuity now play second fiddle to IT recovery?

Jim Preen

Once again the big tech companies set the pace in 2011 and despite the passing of Steve Jobs, which apparently most people learnt about on one of his devices, Apple seemed to go from strength to strength - this year it became the world’s most valuable corporation.

Google, Amazon and Facebook also bucked the recessionary trend, but it wasn’t all been good news for technology companies. Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm that manufactures Blackberry smart phones provided a gift for headline writers when their handsets failed to work for days on end.

As the Blackberry crumbled their customers vented their frustration on Twitter: ‘You realise that sending a letter in a bottle and putting it in the Thames is more reliable than a BlackBerry’ tweeted one irate user and almost inevitably: ‘What did one BlackBerry user say to the other BlackBerry user? Nothing.’

The blackout couldn’t have come at a worse time for RIM, which has lost market share to other smart phone rivals. Their response seemed slow and lacklustre and led to the company's stock dropping 20% (£1.9billion) in value.

At about the same time this was happening, research released showed that the vast majority of business continuity plan invocations occurred because of IT problems. It was claimed that hardware failure or infrastructure loss was fifteen times more likely to prompt invocation than more eye catching or news worthy events such as fire or flood.

So is the world of business continuity now dominated by IT recovery? Has technology become so central to our lives that business continuity has become just a footnote to getting computers up and running and staff back on-line?

Clearly IT recovery for a company such as RIM is of paramount importance without their IT functioning correctly they literally have nothing to offer their customers. No IT, no company.

But for other organisations that use IT but don’t offer it as part of their services, the slavish pursuit of IT and data recovery at the expense of other elements of business continuity can be misplaced.

It can be argued we’ve become too focused on continuity and recovery and forgotten about the most important preceding word: business. In any business continuity plan, the core business of a company must be central to its production, maintenance, and testing. While IT may be one of the key components in any recovery, those components must be business driven.

Ken Schroeder a US BC professional says: “Many businesses opened their door following Katrina with no IT support at all. Old fashioned slips of paper recorded transactions until the IT infrastructure was recovered, but the businesses supported their customers, maybe not at 100% immediately, but they didn't sit back and wait for everything to be in place before opening their doors”.

Those in IT sometimes tend to have an over-inflated idea of their importance coupled with the (often justifiable) knowledge that those outside IT simply don’t understand the technology involved. Their natural inclination is to ring-fence their area of expertise. This is something many departments may be guilty of, but it puts IT in a strong position because we all need what they do, we just don’t understand how they do it!

IT departments naturally want to protect themselves from being unjustly blamed when things do go wrong. These days if we can’t get on line or access data at the stroke of a key we are immediately on to IT demanding answers.

The other factor that comes into play with the Business versus IT issue is the cost of recovery. It’s easy for a department to demand a particular IT function right away, but we often have little idea as to what is required to accomplish that demand and how much it’s going to cost.

There really shouldn't be a conflict between IT and business continuity. IT recovery should be part of the overall business recovery strategy. A BCP is the entire recovery of a business. IT recovery is a component, albeit a very important component, of the over-arching plan.

Because business often doesn’t understand IT and vice versa there is a temptation for both to work in a vacuum. Suits and nerds need to talk constantly and disclose costs and concerns and in the spirit of the New Year learn to love each other a little more!

Winners and Losers of 2011

When it comes to the business winners and losers of 2011 the runners and riders are dominated by tech companies. So who did back flips and ran round the park with their shirt pulled over their head and who got the wooden spoon?

Winner: Apple

Despite the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple seems to go from strength to strength. In 1985 the company was close to collapse, but at one stage last year it became the world’s most valuable corporation. It’s smartphones took just under half of the market share but way more of the sector’s profits. Where most tech companies adopt the pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap ethic, Apple products sell at premium prices and they reap the rewards. And let’s not forget the iPad, a device that nobody was sure the public wanted or needed, nearly 50 million have now been welcomed into homes and offices.

Loser: Blackberry

Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm that manufactures Blackberry smartphones provided a gift for headline writers when their handsets failed to work for days on end.

As the Blackberry crumbled or entered a black hole their customers vented their frustration on Twitter: ‘You realise that sending a letter in a bottle and putting it in the Thames is more reliable than a BlackBerry’ tweeted one irate user and almost inevitably: ‘What did one BlackBerry user say to the other BlackBerry user? Nothing.’

The blackout couldn’t have come at a worse time for RIM, which has lost market share to other smart phone rivals, particularly the iPhone and the various Android handsets. Their response seemed slow and lacklustre and led to the company's stock dropping 20% (£1.9bn) in value.

Winner: Amazon

Many people don’t want to do battle with high street crowds and are more than happy to shop on-line with Amazon, the retailer of choice. Prices are often cheaper when there’s less brick and mortar to support. One of their prime products is their Kindle e-reader. The company said ‘gifting’ of Kindle books between November 25 and Christmas Day rose 175% compared to the same time last year with Christmas Day the biggest day ever for Kindle book downloads. Amazon is fast becoming the Wal-Mart of cyberspace, selling anything from clothes to guitars, and there’s no doubt the high street is suffering.

Loser: Nokia

Nokia once dominated the mobile phone market. Their products were easy to use, stylish and often the phone of choice. When Apple launched the iPhone it was assumed that it would be a niche item appealing to nerds and techies and have little impact on the giant Nokia. How wrong that proved to be and this year Microsoft snaffled them up. How the mighty are fallen. Nokia still continues to sell many phones but at the cheap end of the market where profits are scarce. Smartphones are where the growth and money lie and Nokia can’t seem to come up with the right gadgets to crack that market.

Winner: Facebook

Facebook started 2011 with 500 million users and ends it with more than 750 million. One in thirteen people on the planet are now signed up. It’s thought that if the company was floated on the stock market it could be worth upwards of $100bn, not bad for a skinny kid from Harvard.

Loser: Hewlett-Packard

Like Nokia, H-P was once a blue chip company that could do no wrong - then came the Tablet wars. Their TouchPad tablet was one of this year's most anticipated gadgets, a possible iPad killer. Instead, the upstart tablet was one of 2011's biggest tech disasters. It was on the market for just seven weeks before being pulled due to abysmal sales. In August they confirmed plans to stop making PCs and phones, to concentrate on software.

Business Continuity Awards 2011

Crisis Solutions are once again sponsoring a category at next years prestigious Business Continuity Awards.

The category: Crisis Strategy of the Year.

The Business Continuity Awards recognise those business continuity, security, resilience and risk professionals whose innovative strategies and industry savvy make them stand out above the rest.

Judged by an independent panel of experts for exceptional performance, service and results in this dynamic industry, the winners in this year’s 20 categories will be honored and awarded at a gala dinner and ceremony on Wednesday 30th May 2012 – an evening that brings together industry leaders for a night of networking and celebration.