The Crisis Lounge

World Continuity Congress 2012

2012-01-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-26T18:22:00.000-08:00

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

IT calls the shots

2012-01-15T18:23:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-09T21:36:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-15T18:15:00.000-08:00

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.

Christmas greetings

2011-12-14T18:41:00.000-08:00

The Lizard would like to extend warm Christmas greetings to all Crisis Lounge regulars. Have a great holiday and a great new year.

Near misses and direct hits

2011-12-01T22:16:00.000-08:00

The Lizard's alter ego Jim Preen has just had an article published on Continuity Central. Here's a taster:

The argument goes like this. Business continuity is not about the little disturbances and the day-to-day interruptions. That’s incident management; and not to be confused with a major incident that knocks out all your IT or leaves your HQ a smouldering wreck. Incident management is a different beast from business continuity management and requires different processes and resources.

Sure, you can argue about where the line is drawn between incident management and business continuity, but they are different disciplines and not to be confused.

But is this a correct or, even, a useful distinction?

Let’s look at IT for a moment. Systems are often brought down by a series of small disasters that can create more frequent downtime than a really big catastrophe. If you have a number of small-scale outages you may irritate staff and clients as much as if you’d undergone a full-scale incident.

Smaller disasters are often handled ad hoc and if the problem is easily overcome people assume that planning isn’t necessary. Conversely if the issue isn’t quickly resolved the blame game starts and staff complain that plans and training are inadequate.

But there’s more to it than that.

Read more here.

Singapore Sling

2011-11-12T01:48:00.000-08:00

Crisis Solutions staff are packing their cases for a trip to Singapore this coming week. The team is delivering crisis management training to a whole host of people at a world-renowned bank, but who knows they may find time for a Gin Sling or two at the Raffles Hotel.

Asia seems to be beckoning quite frequently these days. Watch this space for pictures and updates.

'Unthinkable'

2011-11-12T01:38:00.001-08:00

The Lizard is currently reading the fascinating book ‘Unthinkable’ by Amanda Ripley. For a book that takes a cold hard look at crises and disaster it’s surprisingly readable and a real page-turner.

She uses an abundance of interlinked case studies that look at how people respond in a crisis and has some practical advise on how to live to tell the tale. The one big takeaway is that people who have had some form of crisis training have a far greater chance of survival.

There are also some extraordinary stories of heroism that make this a far from depressing book, but it is perhaps the totally counterintuitive ways in which people respond to a catastrophe that linger in the mind. The Lizard gives it 5 stars.

My Blackberry’s on the blink

2011-10-13T04:07:00.000-07:00

Tim Flynn feels your pain

Communications
It’s been a torrid few days for Blackberry and their customers who rightly expect their gadgets to get information (SMS, BBM) from their handset to the recipient on time, every time. As with any advances in technology, once you show people what can be achieved that’s the standard they come to expect.

Blackberry have been very poor in communicating with customers which suggest that they just don’t get the importance their products play in people's lives. They haven’t grasped the information needs of their key stakeholders.

In doing so Research in Motion, the company behind Blackberry, have created a very effective information gap down which they have plummeted. All of which creates the very real prospect of corporate customers not renewing contracts and going shopping elsewhere. Scary for any company especially when there are a myriad of similar devices on the market.

Operational Response

As far as their operational response goes it all seems too little too late. My suspicion is that their operation is so complex and the list of potential faults so huge that is it has not been easy for them to diagnose the extent of their problems or how long it would take to fix them.

Complexity

The complexity of their operation is certainly a factor here. If you look at any number of recent crises such as the current debt crisis or the banking crisis of 2007/8, a great deal of it was built on people's inability to understand the big picture. Complexity seems like a good idea during the good times but makes fixing the bad times pretty tricky.

Tim Flynn is a senior consultant at Crisis Solutions

Is bird flu making a comeback?

2011-09-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you need to be careful what you wish for. The Lizard’s alter ego Jim Preen wrote an article recently on what makes for a convincing scenario during a crisis simulation.

He had this to say:

So what is my favourite scenario? As with all things scenarios seem to be at the whim of fashion or at least what’s been in the news recently. How long before we start devising an exercise based on widespread rioting and looting?

Some years it’s terror attacks, then the smart money is on damage to data centres, but for me, I miss the ‘good old days’ of pandemic flu. That often seemed the perfect scenario because it was and is potentially catastrophic (how we love a good catastrophe!), could affect any organization, but also allowed for planning, being a rising tide event.

It involves human beings rather than technology, which can be a turn-off to those not technically minded and given the medical evidence also highly credible. No doubt it will stage a comeback in a year or two.

Well bird flu seems to be making a comeback rather sooner than expected. Time is currently running an article headlined:

It’s back: Bird flu returns and this time it’s mutated

During the last couple of flu seasons, we were all worried about H1N1, a new and virulent strain of influenza, but this winter we may have to contend with a much deadlier foe: H5N1 or bird flu. Some Asian countries are reporting this week the first cases of a mutant strain of the virus spreading in poultry.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported on Monday that the H5N1 virus has mutated, something that public health officials had feared would happen and that could possibly make the virus more dangerous to people.

In its original form, H5N1 primarily infects wild birds and poultry, including geese, chickens, ducks and turkeys, but only rarely jumps into people. Still, the fact that some people have become infected with H5N1 by eating improperly prepared and contaminated poultry — the virus has killed 331 people and infected 565 since it first appeared in 2003 — led experts to warn that it was only a matter of time before it altered into a form that made it easier to spread to humans.

Read more here

Who's Sari now?

2011-09-26T06:30:00.000-07:00

More pictures from the Crisis Solutions Indian Adventure

Do I eat it or smoke it?

2011-09-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

Here's Crisis Solutions' CFO, Richard Whitby, on a recent business trip to India.
He is seen taking possession of the first of our new fleet of company cars.

Can you profile the perfect crisis manager?

2011-09-16T01:11:00.000-07:00

What qualities are required in a disaster and is it possible to profile individuals who might be effective crisis managers? Jim Preen writes in Continuity Central.

The recent anniversary of 9/11 reminded us what good looked like in a crisis – it looked like New York City firefighters and of course Rudolf Giuliani, the mayor of New York in 2001.

Prior to the catastrophe Giuliani had been a divisive figure and by no means universally popular, but cometh the hour cometh the man. He seemed up to the job in both word and deed. When asked how many people he thought had died in the tragedy his immediate response was “more than any of us can bear.” Perfectly capturing the public mood at the time of overwhelming crisis.

So what qualities are required in a disaster and is it possible to profile individuals who might be effective crisis managers?

Perfect profile

2011-09-12T21:42:00.000-07:00

The police use profiling to target potential criminal offenders.

The Lizard asks: Can you profile the perfect crisis manager?

There might be an article coming on…

A pilot’s guide to crisis management

2011-09-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

Richard Whitby, CFO at Crisis Solutions, has a highly entertaining article in the new edition of Risk UK. Click here to see the article and the rest of the magazine.

Here’s a taste:

A pilot's guide to crisis management

“Final check, then apply full power,” says the instructor. I’m hunched over the controls of the Cessna light aircraft, my palms sweating and my head full of figures. The pilot of a 747 couldn’t be concentrating any harder.

Final Check means a quick glance over the myriad dials in front of me to ensure that ‘temperatures and pressures’ are normal. Then it’s the Big White Numbers check which means making sure the runway number given by air traffic control matches the huge numbers painted on the runway in front of me - thereby ensuring I’m on the correct runway and not about to meander in front of a 737 on its way to Majorca.

Flying is all about logical planning, together with the training and flexibility to deal with any eventuality, which strikes me as the same set of skills you need for crisis management.

Social media policy

2011-09-05T20:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of posts back I highlighted an article about social media. I’ve had a couple of comments along the lines of: ‘Well that’s very interesting, but what are we meant to do about it?’

The answer is your company should have a social media policy – so as a public service and to get you started here’s a checklist to get you underway:

• Employee Facebook policy
• Employee personal blog policy
• Employee Twitter policy
• Employee Linkedin policy
• Corporate blogging policy and approval process
• Corporate blog commenting policy
• Corporate YouTube policy

Developing scenarios

2011-09-01T18:31:00.001-07:00

Jim Preen provides some advice on how to set up convincing business continuity exercise scenarios.

Terror blasts, white powder attacks, pandemic flu, cyber crime, the list goes on. At the sharp end of business continuity it really is one damn thing after another.

We seem to spend our lives frightening the life out of crisis management teams by dreaming up the best possible scenarios to test their response and the company’s business continuity plan. So what makes for the top scenario - one that really tests the plan and the players?

Read the full story here.

The anatomy of a social media crisis

2011-09-01T18:24:00.000-07:00

Good article by Erica Swallow at Mashable on the Altimeter report on soc media crises.
Definitely worth a look. Here's a taste.

Social media crises are on the rise, but 76% of those that occurred since 2001 could have been diminished or averted with the proper social media investments, according to a report by Altimeter Group released on Wednesday.

For the report, entitled “Social Business Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare Internally,” Altimeter Group analyzed 50 social media crises that have occurred since 2001 and found that those reaching mainstream media have risen steadily through the past decade, with just 1-2 incidents per year in the first five years and a total of 10 social media crises last year alone. The report also sheds light on exactly how social media crises arise and how companies can avoid them.

Click here to read more.

Is this a crisis or are we just having a bad day?

2011-08-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

When the Lizard’s alter ego - Jim Preen - wrote the international best selling page-turner ‘Communication Strategies’ (Write your incident communication plan now) for the British Standards Institution the publisher said that nowhere in the book could the word crisis be used. Now given that our company is called Crisis Solutions that got me thinking.

Is there now no such thing as a crisis? Or if you think there is, then are the two words interchangeable? I have a suspicion they are not.

Would it be fair to say that a crisis is one step up from an incident? Or perhaps you could say that an incident is someone else’s problem and a crisis is something you have to fix yourself. So my crisis is your incident!

Definitions will vary from company to company depending on the business they are involved in, but one colleague suggested that an incident becomes a crisis when it cannot be solved following standard operating procedures. Or perhaps an incident becomes a crisis when it’s not managed correctly.

All of which reminds me of the old joke about the difference between Brits and Americans in a crisis.

To Americans ‘the situation is serious but not hopeless’.

To Brits the ‘situation is hopeless, but not serious!’

If at first you don’t succeed: fail, fail and fail again...

2011-06-07T20:05:00.000-07:00

Jim Preen of Crisis Solutions wonders if the best way to avoid failure is to fail constantly.

AT&T’s findings in their annual business continuity survey make for interesting reading and while the report is inevitably US based, it will ring bells with a European audience.
One area of the survey that jumps out at the reader and could stand a second glance is cloud computing.

Read the rest of the article here.

The Crisis Solutions Summer Conference

2011-05-31T18:06:00.000-07:00

It takes place on Thursday, 30^thJune 2011, onboard HMS President, Victoria Embankment, London.

Here’s the line up of excellent speakers:

Mike Methley, Group Chief Operations Officer, Jardine Lloyd Thompson:

'Assuring global client services during natural disasters and incidents.'

Alice Reeves, Assistant Director for Telecoms Resilience, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills:

'The challenges in setting cyber resilience policy.'

Colonel Ru Watkins, Chief of Staff, Selly Oak Military Hospital:

'Delivering rapid organisational change in response to unexpectedly urgent operational requirements.'

Andrew Davidson, Operations Manager, Currency Division, De La Rue:

'Executive leadership and management during an extended corporate crisis.'

Dr Brad Mackay, Director MBA Programme, Edinburgh Business School:

'The application of scenario analysis in strategic resilience planning.'

Jim Preen, Head of Media Services, Crisis Solutions:

'Social networks and their place in supporting crisis response and recovery.'

Cyber-attacks and Black Swans

2011-05-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

by Jim Preen

Cyber-crime is rarely out of the news these days. Sony says that hackers may have stolen personal data belonging to as many as 77 million PlayStation gamers. The company admitted that credit card information, used to purchase games, films and music, may be part of the haul.

Just prior to that story breaking, computer security firm McAfee released a report called ‘In the dark: Crucial Industries Confront Cyberattacks’ which casts a beady eye at the impacts of cyber-attacks on power grids, oil, gas, water and the like.

The survey of 200 IT security executives working for utility companies finds that 40 percent believe their industry’s vulnerability has increased. Around 3 out of 10 believe their company is not prepared for a cyberattack and nearly half expect a major cyber-attack within the next year.

Denial of service attack
Buried deeper in the report; 80 percent of respondents say they have faced a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS), and a quarter report daily or weekly DDoS attacks.

These types of attacks have the potential to compromise websites and email traffic, but researchers say they are unlikely to disrupt energy supplies.

However, one of the report’s authors, Stewart Baker a former US national security advisor, warned power companies not to be complacent. “We asked what the likelihood was of a major attack that causes significant outage. That is one that causes severe loss of services for at least 24 hours, loss of life or personal injury or failure of a company. Three quarters thought it would happen within the next two years," he said.

By now cynics will be muttering that this is no more than a marketing exercise on the part of McAfee, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation and one of the world's largest security technology companies. To put it crudely: McAfee has come up with a worrying report that should frighten us into buying their products. But are the cynics right?

Read the rest of the article here.

The Crisis Solutions Summer Conference

2011-04-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

Our summer conference takes place in central London on 30^th June. You are very welcome to attend.

We have a distinguished panel of speakers, all of whom will provide thought-provoking insights into the management of real-world crises and the challenges of emerging threats.

• Learn from the COO of a major global insurance broker about how they sustained operations when faced with civil unrest, floods and earthquakes.

• Hear from the COO of an international manufacturing group what it’s like to face sustained attacks on a brand.

• Learn from a distinguished academic about the dangers posed by the growing threat of sophisticated cyber crime.

• Learn about the challenges facing government in designing an effective cyber resilience strategy.

• Hear how the British Army embeds a rapid 'lessons learned' approach to operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

• Learn how social networks have been leveraged in the aftermath of major disasters.

Watch this space for further details about the conference.

Is PR undermining the work of BC professionals?

2011-04-05T23:16:00.000-07:00

Crisis Solutions' staffer Jim Preen has just had a comment piece on bank stress testing published on Continuity Central. Take a look at it here.

How to use a website during a crisis

2011-03-29T20:11:00.000-07:00

Websites are now a critical interface between firms and customers. Thousands of pounds are spent building on-line relationships between a company and its clients.

Unfortunately in a crisis, websites are often forgotten.

Take a look at the on-line presence of some of Japan’s biggest companies in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami.

Toyota’s global home page has a message from the president, who offers his prayers ‘towards the realization of recovery’ but this is now more than two weeks old. Nintendo has a brief message on its Japan homepage but makes no mention of the disaster on any of its other sites. Nissan’s global page has nothing and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial also have other things on their mind.

It seems that Japanese companies still don’t see websites as mainstream communication tools.

In a crisis, a website is a vital resource that should provide essential information to a wide range of stakeholders – staff, customers, suppliers and journalists.

All inappropriate content, including advertising, must be pulled and companies need to have a mechanism for doing that day or night.

Many firms have a dark website that is set up ahead of time, which can be activated in a crisis. If you need help with this or any other aspect of crisis readiness then please go to our website: www.crisis-solutions.com

Scary questions

2011-03-21T20:54:00.000-07:00

It can be hard to interest senior management in business continuity. Here’s the general perception:

· It’s dull

· It’s expensive

· And we don’t want to think about crises right now!

So with that in mind here are a series of questions you can drop into conversation with your bosses, which might just persuade them of the importance of crisis readiness.

· How long would it take to get hold of senior management if crisis strikes out of office hours?

· How do we contact employees so they hear about the crisis from us rather than the media?

· Can we update our website out of office hours?

· When was our crisis plan last revised and has it ever been tested?

· Who is our spokesperson in a crisis and who will deputise?

· What companies similar to ours have endured a crisis recently? How would we have coped?

· What would we say in a crisis? Who decides what information to give out and what is the sign off procedure?

Of course, if you have better, scarier questions that promote the cause, then we want to hear from you!

What are the worst corporate decisions of all time?

2011-02-20T19:45:00.000-08:00

At Crisis Solutions we've been talking about catastrophic corporate decisions, but what are the worst?

This is what we came up with:

· Decca Records signing The Tremeloes rather than some hairy bunch from Liverpool called The Beatles?

· Coca-Cola changing its magic formula and rebranding itself as New Coke?

· IBM allowing Bill Gates to retain the rights to that unimportant aspect of computers – their software?

All are worthy of being inducted into the Corporate Catastrophe Hall of Fame, but what do you think? Any better ideas?

Crisis Solutions gets coverage on Continuity Central

2011-02-15T18:43:00.000-08:00

Trends in business continuity plan testing and exercising

Jim Preen of Crisis Solutions takes a look at some emerging trends in the area of business continuity plan testing.

The most notable change in the crisis management environment is the revolution in instant multi-media communications channels and the resultant need for firms to be able to demonstrate that they are both on top of the problem and can communicate effectively in a way that takes account of the public and stakeholder ‘mood’. As a result, savvy organizations are looking at new ways and methods to scrutinize, test and validate their business continuity plans.

Click here to read on.

Assange as Bond villain

2011-02-06T17:36:00.000-08:00

There's an excellent piece on the impact of WikiLeaks in The Guardian, where the writer, Clay Shirky, describes Assange as only a monocle and a Persian cat away from a Bond villain! But he has serious points to make on the balance that has to be struck between government secrets and a citizen's right to know what is being done in our name.

He also makes the point that whether or not the establishment, (in the UK, the US or Sweden) gets Assange and destroys WikiLeaks the genie is now out of the bottle. If WikiLeaks were put out of business, then another conduit would soon be found.

Assange has claimed, when the history of statecraft of the era is written, that it will be divided into pre- and post-WikiLeaks periods. Who dares say he is wrong?
Read the article here.

The perils of social media

2011-01-27T18:15:00.001-08:00

The Lizard was amused by the story of the Oxford Street gunman, Twitter and the tricky nature of the English language.

Twitter users sparked a major security alert when false reports of a gunman in Oxford Street were posted on the site. Thousands feared a shoot-out was taking place after information from a police training email was leaked.

But all was not what it seemed. Go here for the full story.

A new role for Crisis Solutions' staffer

2011-01-25T22:33:00.000-08:00

In this super, soaraway blog post we can exclusively reveal that Peter Brown, a long-time consultant at Crisis Solutions, (on the left in our stunning picture) has been wowing the audience at the South Brent Village panto. Oh yes he has!

The South Brent Amateur Dramatic Society stages a village panto every two years and this year’s show ‘Dick Wittington’ was written by local author John Palmer and first performed by the society 20 years ago.

Unfortunately the panto, which ran to rave reviews, came to the end of its run on January 22^nd, so you’ll just have to curb your enthusiasm until next time.

The ACID test

2011-01-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

For once the recent news coming out of Northern Ireland had nothing to do with ‘the troubles’ or any kind of sectarian violence. Elsewhere, WikiLeaks was making the headlines, but in The Province it was WaterLeaks that was the big story. Large sections of the population were without mains supply and Northern Ireland Water, the company responsible, was caught up in a full-scale operational crisis.

At Crisis Solutions we give organisations the tools to create a structured crisis response. One such tool is the ACID test. During a crisis, such as that faced by NI Water, the crisis team could have used this checklist to cover the following critical areas:

Activation
Communication
Information Management
Decision-making

In this 'top tips' we look at Activation and Communication. Activation means getting the right people and resources quickly in place to deal with the crisis. For example, if someone on the crisis team is on holiday, how do we get their deputy briefed, in place and ready?

Have we considered how we maintain our capability during a crisis that lasts several days, or weeks?

Having a clear activation process, ensuring the right skills and resources are available at the right time defines the best organisations.

The need to Communicate effectively cannot be over emphasised. Identify key messages and communicate promptly with staff, the media, customers and suppliers.

Don’t allow an information gap to open up, become a trusted source for all information concerning the incident and make sure your messages keep in touch with the public mood.

Are we using appropriate media channels for each audience? Have we got the right skills available - not just people who are skilled at good news stories?

Next time we’ll look at Information Management and Decision-Making.

Crisis Solutions gets coverage in PR Week

2011-01-13T01:50:00.000-08:00

WikiLeaks - a Crisis Solutions take

2011-01-12T18:29:00.000-08:00

Jim Preen has been sounding off about WikiLeaks in PR Moment.

Read his thoughts here.

Happy New Year

2011-01-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

The Lizard would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

There’s an interesting article in the Economist about the PR industry (The rise of the image men) where it comes from and where it’s going. You can find it here: http://www.economist.com/node/17722733

One of the points the writer makes is that the mainstream media, the traditional gatekeepers of news, are becoming less important. So is the worth of the advertising slots they sell, and therefore so are the sort of paid-for, hard-sell campaigns that the (m)ad men and marketers deal in.

Meanwhile social networking, with its cacophony of bloggers, Facebookers and tweeters, is becoming more influential. For the public this can be confusing as they are often deafened by a barrage of conflicting views. The slick operators of the dark arts of PR see this as a new opportunity as only they (according to them) and not sales and marketing understand and can manipulate the brave new world of social media.

Near miss in the North Sea

2010-12-12T19:12:00.000-08:00

Is it time for more transparency at oil and gas?

Richard Whitby, Crisis Solutions

Drilling company Transocean had an incident on one of its North Sea rigs similar to that which caused the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Transocean was the operator at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig when it suffered a blow-out killing 11 workers and causing one of the worst oil spill in history.

An internal company report shows that four months before the US disaster the Sedco 711 rig in the North Sea, which is leased by Shell and operated by Transocean, experienced similar problems.

In this case, however, all safety measures worked effectively, preventing a catastrophe.

In a statement, Transocean said: ‘Any (safety-) related events that occur on a rig anywhere in the world, including the one on 23rd December 2009, are immediately reported to management, fully investigated and the valuable information gleaned from that investigation is used to improve existing safety systems across the fleet.’

That said, Transocean's reassurance that lessons are learnt and spread quickly doesn't cut much ice given that almost exactly the same incident occurred and disaster ensued four months later in Gulf of Mexico.

Questions also arise as to how much transparency there is in the industry. It would no doubt be very useful to make information about incidents such as this available to the whole industry as quickly as possible if safety is seen as the overriding objective. However, crises like this are commercially sensitive, and companies may be unwilling to alert competitors.

This is in stark contrast to the airline industry. Qantas grounded their whole fleet of A380 super jumbos after just one engine failure and when there had been no casualties.

If the general public visited oil rigs on a regular basis no doubt health and safety would be far more transparent and tightly regulated.

Perhaps it’s time for governments to look more closely at how rigs are operated and to force companies to make information an industry wide commodity. It’s what the airlines do.

Communication crises of 2010

2010-12-07T20:21:00.000-08:00

What can business learn?

Jim Preen, Crisis Solutions

This past year has not been easy for some organisations. Just ask Eurostar, Toyota and BP.

Almost a year ago Eurostar was struggling to rescue passengers stuck on trains in the channel Tunnel, Toyota was forced into perhaps the biggest product recall in history and BP now has its name linked to the worst environmental catastrophe on record following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

And as if to prove that ‘crisis’ doesn’t take time off just because it’s Christmas, we have WikiLeaks.

These crises make for uncomfortable reading, but what can we draw from them - particularly from a communication’s perspective?

Eurostar – communication breakdown

Late on Friday 18th and early Saturday 19th December 2009, five northbound Eurostar trains broke down within a few hours of each other – all inside the channel tunnel. Over 2000 passengers were trapped, some for up to 15 hours and many without food or water.

As a consequence all Eurostar services were cancelled and did not resume until Tuesday 22nd December. Estimates vary but at least 100,000 passengers were affected.

During the crisis, communications between Eurostar and their passengers were terrible.

Here is one example from an exasperated passenger: ‘I'm stuck here in Brussels and the information flow is appalling. The front line staff are not being told anything at all and are just telling people to contact customer services. The Belgian one is closed and the British one at Ashford is overwhelmed. People are getting information phoned through from the UK by people watching the BBC!’

Crisis Lesson 1 - Are you social media savvy?

People on the stranded trains were using Twitter the moment they left the tunnel as were other passengers trapped at stations. The anger and hatred poured on to the Twittersphere and Facebook, which soon featured a ‘We hate Eurostar’ group.

Prior to the crisis the only Twitter handles in use by Eurostar were: @little_break and @creamoflondon.

Any alarm bells going off? Yes that’s right, these were not normal communication tools - let alone crisis communication tools - this was marketing. @little_break referred to Eurostar’s marketing campaign - Little Break – Big Difference and was run by social networking agency ‘We are social’ that had been working with Eurostar sales.

Suddenly ‘We are social’ was catapulted into a full-blown catastrophe, as Eurostar had no other means of getting their messages out to the new media. They made valiant efforts to communicate, but were way behind the curve.

Social Media is an unrivalled conduit for getting information out fast to huge numbers of people, but organisations need to have plans and protocols in place to enable them to do this before crisis hits.

You can be sure that social media in all its forms will take charge of a crisis – as it did with Eurostar – if the company doesn’t.

BP and the Deepwater Horizon disaster

Unlike Eurostar, BP made good use of its communication toolkit. Their website was excellent. It was well designed, full of well produced content, and stocked with helpful resources. At the time, anyone accessing www.BP.com was automatically redirected to the Oil Spill response page. There were also links to their offerings on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube – including a whole YouTube page showing their videos.

Crisis Lesson 2 - Do you have the right person in charge?

Of course, all the social media in the world wasn’t going to do much good when millions of gallons of oil were washing ashore, crippling the fishing industry in Louisiana and Mississippi and destroying the white-sand beaches of Alabama and Florida.

The enormity of this crisis meant it couldn’t be spun, even by an army of PR professionals slick in the art of both old and new media. What this crisis called for was a tough and straight talking CEO who tackled the emergency head-on. Unfortunately, the former geologist and keen sailor, Tony Hayward was not up to the task.

He did untold damage to BP's reputation with his celebrated gaffes about how he ‘wanted his life back’ not thinking how this would play with the relatives of those who had actually lost their lives on the rig and those who had lost their livelihoods in the fishing and tourism industries.

It is one thing to be a CEO in normal times, quite another during a crisis. Hayward appeared weak and defensive without the gravitas to handle the situation and was ultimately brushed aside.

Choosing the right person to become the public face of an organisation is no easy task. It must be somebody who is not only comfortable speaking to stockholders at the AGM, but also able to face the media in full cry along with angry members of the public and an openly hostile government.

Toyota and the biggest recalls in history

One of the more troubling aspects of Toyota’s recalls were the company’s differing accounts of the sources of the problem. One recall, covering over 4 million cars, involved sticky accelerator pedals. Later on Toyota also recalled 5.4 million cars whose pedals could get stuck on floor mats. Then Toyota said these were software problems.

Crisis Lesson 3 - Get the facts quickly and mange the risks effectively

From a PR perspective this meant that Toyota was constantly playing catch-up. Members of the press and often the wider public seemed to set the news agenda.

Toyota never took control of the story – they seemed unable to set out the facts and be straight with their customers. The crisis always seemed to control Toyota rather than Toyota controlling the crisis.

They needed to be seen to be going the extra mile and not doing the bare minimum. In situations like this the public must never be allowed to think that a company is putting profits ahead of customer safety.

WikiLeaks – now governments feel the heat

Earlier in 2010, Hillary Clinton made a landmark speech about internet freedom, which many interpreted as a rebuke to China for its alleged cyber attack on Google. ‘Information has never been so free,’ she said. ‘Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.’

Now she calls WikiLeaks disclosures ‘not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests, but an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.’

It seems that in the ‘Land of the Free’ freedom of information is not always welcome.

A few years ago when we typically wrote on paper, the amount of information contained in the recent WikiLeaks disclosures would have been physically huge and almost impossible to smuggle. Now that information can be digitized and an email containing millions of words can be transmitted in the blink of an eye. So what can business learn from these events?

Crisis Lesson 4 - Digital communication is not secure

It may seem screamingly obvious but email and indeed most other modern forms of modern communication are often far from secure. Remember how easy it was for The News Of the World newspaper to hack into celebrity voicemails.

If your colleagues or clients request confidential information, be security conscious. Are your cleared to provide this information to others and are they cleared to receive it?

If they are, make sure they are happy to receive the information by email. If there are concerns, and with sensitive information there should be, encrypt the documents on a thumbdrive or a CD and have it delivered personally by a courier or deliver it yourself.

Speed is not always of the essence

WikiLeaks has shown us that the great and the good behave in remarkably similar ways to us lesser mortals. They fire off irritated and irritating emails just like us - it is so easy to do.

When you had to write a letter it took time and was a more considered form of communication. Now an angry or indeed libellous response to an email can be shot back at your adversary at warp speed – not always to their or subsequently your delight. What was said in haste becomes a document of record so pause, count to ten, have a cup of tea and then communicate. Speed is not always of the essence.

The new media

There are many other lessons to be learnt from these four incidents and indeed from other crises that happened during 2010, but if I had to choose only one going forward into the New Year it is the importance of being conversant with the new social media platforms.

Companies must scoop up all the Twitter handles that pertain to them and have Facebook and YouTube pages. These are some of the most effective and far-reaching forms of communication the world has ever seen, but an emergency is not the time to become familiar with them. Use them in normal times and they could just save you in a crisis.

Crisis Solutions - on tour throughout Europe

2010-11-29T18:34:00.000-08:00

Crisis Solutions is currently on a tour of European financial capitals, running incident management workshops and exercises.

This week CEO Dennis Flynn was in Milan delivering a workshop at a major investment bank. Here is a comment from the client’s Deputy Chief Operating Officer:

Thank you very much for your guidance (during the) exercise for the Milan crisis community. I have only received very positive feedback from all attendees including (my boss) who was initially sceptical of the benefits. I understand they would appreciate a second round any time.

Next stop: Frankfurt and then Zurich

A failure of the imagination

2010-11-24T19:30:00.000-08:00

The Irish banking crisis – a crisis management perspective

The final 9/11 report on why the US was so ill prepared for the attack on the Twin Towers said: ‘We do not believe leaders understood the gravity of the threat’ and that the most important failure was ‘one of imagination.’

In July of this year all Irish banks passed the so-called stress tests and were given a clean bill of health. We now know the banks are utterly broken and have brought Ireland to its knees.

The stress tests were worthless with the wrong questions being asked, but why? Was it simply so benign answers, the world wanted to hear, would be forthcoming?

Dennis Flynn, Crisis Solutions CEO, says, ‘The difference between business continuity and crisis management is that the former prepares for the expected while the latter focuses on the unexpected. One is mechanistic and quantitative, the other freewheeling and qualitative.

He believes that effective crisis handling only occurs when the two work in lock step, ‘Those involved in business continuity must take risk assessment seriously, be brutally honest about potential crises and not pose questions that provide comfort blanket answers.’

Reflecting on the stress tests and the Irish banking crisis Flynn says, ‘Yes again, poor crisis readiness is shown to be a failure of the imagination’.

Irish economic meltdown - a crisis communications perspective

2010-11-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

Until recently the Irish economy was known as the Celtic Tiger – these days it looks more like a white or perhaps green elephant.

Everyone knew that Ireland was going to have a bailout foisted upon it, whether from the EU, the IMF, the ECB or all three. Irish banks, now known as zombie banks, are in tatters and the government in a state of collapse but still two days before the inevitable rescue package the Irish government continued to play down the level of crisis.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen said, ‘The strategy being pursued by Government has addressed the difficulties facing the banking system, is bringing sustainability to the public finances and is resulting in ongoing improvements in competitiveness.’

He went on to say that his government was not looking for immediate outside assistance. It seems two days is a long time in politics because yesterday he said, ‘The European authorities have agreed to our request’ and a bailout accepted.

So what happened in two days? Why was everything under control and a bailout not required and then 48 hours later the PM had to don the hair shirt and proffer the begging bowl?

Well of course nothing changed in two days - what we are looking at are two different views of the same narrative.

International financiers and EU policy makers feared that if Ireland wasn’t shored up, the contagion would spread to Portugal, Spain and beyond (it still could), while the Irish government were dead set on saving their skin and didn’t want to accept the inevitable austerity measures that would be a condition of any bailout.

Now the greens seem to have triggered an election that the government say will be held in January - that’s if it can hold on that long. So a bailout is being put in place and it looks likely the government will be booted out of office in short order.

The best crisis communications in the world couldn’t save the Irish government or the Irish economy but surely accepting the reality of the situation and not engaging in wilful obfuscation would have been a better way to go instead of saying ‘we have the situation under control’ to then hitting the brakes and executing a spectacular u-turn.

So perhaps it’s not that the Irish economy is a white elephant, it’s the elephant in the room that the government was unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

The social media revolution

2010-11-16T19:44:00.000-08:00

Are you ready for this?

Qantas crisis

2010-11-08T16:59:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to note that Qantas are keeping the name of the engine manufacturer, Rolls-Royce, firmly in the frame.

Similarly a press release on the Airbus website states, ‘With aviation safety being of paramount importance to Airbus and following the engine failure of Qantas A380 flight QF32 on 4th November 2010 Airbus has issued an All Operators Telex asking A380 operators with Rolls-Royce engines for power plant inspections to ensure continuous safe operations of the fleet. The document supports the requirements issued previously by engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce. Operators with Engine Alliance engines are not concerned.’

This contrasts with BP’s handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill where at least initially they took full responsibility for the accident. Latterly they tried, largely unsuccessfully, to bring Halliburton and others into the picture.

Crisis Solutions in Marketing Week

2010-11-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

Crisis Solutions has coverage in the opinion section of Marketing Week. Go here.

Marketingweek.co.uk has 218,766 monthly unique users and provides news and information for marketing, advertising and media professionals.

Brand and reputation

2010-11-03T19:08:00.000-07:00

The Lizard has been reading an interesting article in The Marketer magazine on brand and reputation. It can be found here.

The article attempts, with some degree of success, to conflate many different marketing and brand ideas. One, which I would dispute, is that the Internet has changed everything when it comes to the consumer’s relationship with a product.

When Perrier had a problem with their bottled water in the 80s (benzene was found in the drink and the recall was handled very poorly) the consumer knew all about it and when Perrier brought their water back on sale, the bottles were smaller and the price higher. The customer appeared to be paying for Perrier’s mistakes and they weren’t happy. As a result Perrier was soon gulped down by Nestle. What’s different now, and it is largely a product of the Internet, is just the speed with which consumers can gather information and voice their opinion.

The other issue the article raises is M&A. Particularly when a corporate giant buys a boutique brand well liked by the public. It’s a tricky move for all sides to pull off as Green and Black and Innocent have found. As Ben and Jerry’s point out, when a small brand is gobbled up it must protect its own identity.

One example would be Pret a Manger. It’s an expensive but generally well-liked lunchtime grab and gobble food store that makes much of its green image. This is on the front page of it’s website: ‘Pret creates handmade, natural food avoiding the obscure chemicals, additives and preservatives common to so much of the 'prepared' and 'fast' food on the market today.’

In 2001 it was snapped up by McDonald’s the very antithesis of all that is ‘Pret’ and in 2008 it was bought by private equity house Bridgepoint – capitalists red in tooth and claw and very far from a small boutique brand. However because Pret have managed to keep clear blue water between their owners and their brand they haven’t suffered. A lesson for any corporate giant that wants to swallow a small but much loved minnow.

Maldives PR nightmare

2010-11-01T20:33:00.000-07:00

I suppose couples who have just returned from getting married at the Vilu Reef Beach & Spa Resort on the Maldives must be wondering what was actually said at their ceremony.

Thousands have now watched the shaky YouTube video of the Swiss couple renewing their wedding vows at the resort where the celebrant calls them ‘swine’ and ‘infidels’ and much worse.

Opinion on the Internet seems to be equally split between those condemning the locals appalling rudeness and the foolish westerners wanting to attach some sort of faux spirituality to their marriage.

I suppose it’s the equivalent of a chef spitting in the soup at a posh restaurant, something we’ve all thought about but don’t want to dwell on.

Locals working for tourists the world over come to resent the incomers, but of course if the tourists don’t come the locals have no work.

This is particularly true of the Maldives, which contains many very poor people who as a matter of course rub shoulders with the super rich. These disparities have produced an ugly response.

The Maldives government is now engaged in damage limitation and the two local people seen on the video have been arrested. On the official Maldives’ website a government spokesperson says, ‘No stone will be left unturned to ensure that an incident like this never happens again.’

Well, they had better make sure it doesn’t because the Maldives have no natural resources outside of fish and banks of sand and no other industry except tourism. If the tourists stop coming then they really have nothing.

My bet is that the rich and those on a once in a lifetime trip wont be put off, but in future many will want their wedding vows in English or a language they can understand.

Big oil face off

2010-10-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

It seems we have the oil and gas giants positioning themselves post BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. First we had Shell boss Peter Voser attacking BP over oil well safety saying, ‘Shell would have drilled this well in a different way and would have had more options to prevent the accident.’

Now we have Chevron hedging their bets and taking a more cautious approach. Richard Cohagan, managing director of Chevron UK, admitted their new deepwater drilling campaign off the Shetland Islands could cause an oil spill of greater magnitude than BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster. He went on, ‘Deepwater Horizon has given us a new perspective on how bad things could be.’

If you watch Chevron’s advertisements they tend to be very caring and sharing and this line from their UK Chief would seem to fit with this approach. Whether it amounts to anything more than spin over substance is another matter.

Facebook and Twitter in times of crisis

2010-10-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

How can Facebook and Twitter best be used to overcome a crisis?

Twitter
The use of Twitter by newspapers and broadcasters is extraordinary, given that it’s all done in 140 character chunks. Your company must monitor Twitter mentions of your brands, products and services.

Have a Twitter account set up ahead of a crisis and use it – get conversant with what it can do, use it for marketing so that if a crisis does strike you’ll be ahead of the game and can get information out quickly.

Storm warning
You can’t defend a brand and its reputation if you’re not listening for signs of an impending problem. One under reported aspect of the BP fiasco was that they didn’t think to scoop up relevant BP ‘identities’ on Twitter.

@BPglobalPR sounds like a legitimate arm of BP’s PR machine, but it wasn’t. BP was ‘brandjacked’ on Twitter with tweets appearing such as:

‘Please do not take or clean any oil you find on the beach. That is property of BP and we WILL sue you.’

What does this say about the effectiveness of BP’s PR team in time of crisis? How did an enterprising joker on Twitter manage to fly under the radar using BP’s own name and logo?

Facebook
Facebook is a great tool for talking directly to all your stakeholders. Create a corporate site in “normal” times and get to know its uses and abuses. In a major crisis you may need a corporate response page where you can post comments and pictures that refer entirely to the on-going incident.

Social media crisis management must dovetail with any existing crisis management plans you have in place. In many ways traditional best practice in crisis management is reflected in the brave new world of social media - it’s just that it now all happens at the speed of light.

Communication Strategies: a new book from Jim Preen

2010-10-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

To survive an incident, organizations need more than a successful communication strategy – they need an incident communication plan. This book helps organizations to take control and start planning their response immediately.

An incident is often provoked and inflamed by the media, and inept incident communications will only make things worse. Packed with case studies, this practical guide shows how it is possible to overcome and actually prosper in the full glare of the media.

Communication Strategies demonstrates how to implement and deploy a thorough incident media strategy. Based on BS 25999-1, the British Standard for business continuity management, this invaluable book covers diverse elements including:

* The importance of call cascades
* How to run successful press conferences
* How to set up and run an incident press room

This book would help communications teams in medium/large companies; risk managers; business continuity managers; and PR professionals.

Contents of Communication Strategies include:

* Introduction
* Types of incidents
* Determining the contents of your plan
* Press gang
* Strategy layout
* How the strategy migrates to a plan
* Press conferences
* Holding statements, press releases and templates
* Coping with the press pack
* Media monitoring
* Call takers
* Information, fact sheets and general know-how
* Post-incident evaluation
* Testing the plan
* Communication plan checklist
* References

Voted 'Book of the Month' by Quality World, the magazine of the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI)
"...provides a wealth of practical guidance to help prevent a stressful situation unravelling through poor information management in an unguarded moment."

Buy the book here

It’s good to talk when things go wrong, says CEO of Crisis Solutions Dennis Flynn

2010-10-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

One of the most common problems in crisis management is poor communication. It’s not just communication to the outside world that catches people out; it’s often an internal communication breakdown that can turn a run-of-the-mill problem into a full-blown crisis.

If the operational staff that are solving the problem aren’t talking to the senior team tasked with updating customers and the general public, then everyone ends up with mixed messages and the crisis spins out of control. Just ask outgoing BP chief Tony Hayward. Practising the art of communication through proper integration of operational and communications teams before there’s a problem can help avoid this scenario, and minimise the consequences of the crisis.

It is not uncommon in companies to see board level members becoming isolated and out of touch with what is going on at operational level. When the appropriate communication channels are not put in place, responsibilities and expectations on all levels can become blurred, which can raise a state of panic when a crisis occurs.

It is very difficult for the head of comms at an organisation to be in two places at once and provide accurate information to the board while dealing with things at operational level. It’s important that employees on all levels train and practice communicating regularly to each other and that board level members proactively converse with operational staff.

Undertaking exercises that allow everyone to have a voice means that the senior team can become more in tune with the organisation’s operations, which can be vital in reacting to a crisis situation.

In order to create an effective link between the operational level and senior team, the logistics of an organisation’s communications channel needs to be considered. For example, using runners to gather news from each level of an organisation and provide updates to the senior level can be an effective way to improve the reactions of decision makers.

The role of a communications team can be vital in the event of a crisis, as messages need to be relayed to stakeholders as to the state of the business. However, a comms team can only be effective if it is in the crisis comms ‘zone‘. Communications teams are often accomplished at issuing good news about the business, but in order to cover bad news that can affect the company, they need to be aware of the nature of the industry they are working in and how to spot a crisis emerging. A fully proficient comms team can then have an advisory role in proceedings rather than simply delivering responses from senior management.

In order to minimise the effects of a crisis, it’s imperative that operational staff have a voice to influence senior level members. This can be achieved by putting the appropriate communications channel in place and making sure that the executives work with operational staff to train and practise communicating process issues.

Being able to spot a crisis is obviously important for both operational and comms staff. Having a comms team that is knowledgeable of the company and potential industry issues can ensure that accurate and timely information is given to senior management so that the correct decisions can be made when a crisis occurs.

Dennis Flynn is CEO at crisis management specialists Crisis Solutions

Shell boss attacks BP

2010-10-17T21:23:00.000-07:00

You will no doubt have noticed that the boss of Shell has launched a blistering attack on beleaguered rival BP over the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Peter Voser said his company would never have made the mistakes that led to the death of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig and the biggest environmental disaster in US history.

'Shell clearly would have drilled this well in a different way and would have had more options to prevent the accident from happening,' he said.

There has never been much love lost between Shell and BP. Old hostilities have renewed now the worst of the BP Deepwater Horizon fiasco is largely over.

Peter Voser’s comments have to be seen in light of the fact that before the oil spill Shell had seen BP overtake it as Europe’s biggest energy producer in terms of market value. While the disaster was ongoing it would have looked unseemly for Shell to attack BP – now the gloves are off.

There must be a lot of Shell workers and executives out there wondering whether it was wise of Voser to make these remarks which would come back to haunt him if Shell were to suffer a similar disaster.

It’s probably no more than a PR thrust at BP but of course if BP needs money to pay for the clean up then Shell would want to be in place to pick up any assets that came on the market at the right price. Perhaps a little canny positioning is going on.

Don’t forget Shell’s own past is far from spotless. In 2004 they massively over estimated their oil reserves and were forced to pay out £200 million in fines and compensation.

Two big oil and gas beasts are at each other’s throats again.

The return of the Lizard

2010-10-17T21:18:00.000-07:00

The Lizard has been away - I think you will have noticed - but he's back, stronger and more powerful than ever. Watch this space!

Russian about

2008-11-12T01:39:00.000-08:00

At Crisis Solutions we offer media training. When taking part in an interview it is important to be relaxed and not to be distracted.

Crisis Lounge regulars enjoyed the clip you are about to watch and although it's in Russian it's full impact is evident.

It is a timely reminder that a colleague - who on this occasion looks to be a little over refreshed - can undermine all your good work.

Disaster recovery - a new approach

2008-10-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

In these straightened times, are you having trouble getting a budget for your business continuity plan?

Dilbert feels your pain

Breaking news

2008-10-17T02:29:00.000-07:00

News comes to The Crisis Lounge that the UK Tripartite Authorities have decided to reschedule the Market Wide Exercise 2008, which was due to take place between 18th and 26th November. According to the FSA, the decision “has been taken in light of global market conditions and feedback from the industry”.

The exercise is now expected to take place in early 2009, but a definite date will be published ‘in due course’.

The original plan for the Market Wide Exercise scenario was to cover a scenario of severe weather, including flooding, and to revisit “some of the more challenging issues raised during the pandemic exercise of 2006”. This is expected to remain as the focus for the exercise, with the FSA website stating: "Exercise preparations will continue in line with the original schedule, so that the exercise will be substantially ready for implementation as and when financial market conditions are judged to be conducive."

Master of Disaster

2008-10-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

The Crisis Lounge's very own Master of Disaster, Yasir, has put together a new Incident Database.

Date: 09/10/08
Location: Leicester, UK
Type: Report
Category: Pandemic Flu
Description: A vaccine is currently being tested which doctors believe could be vital to saving lives in the event of a flu pandemic.

A jab against one strain of avian flu, given years earlier, may "prime" the immune system to fight a wide range of bird flu strains.

Researchers believe that when a pandemic arrives, "pre-vaccinated" people could then be given a booster shot, and be protected far quicker.

Comment: Pandemic flu was called the ’gravest threat’ to the UK in a recent government study. If bird flu mutates allowing for rapid human-to-human transmission there are fears the virus could spread around the world in a matter of weeks.
Click here for more

Date: 10/10/08
Location: London, UK
Type: Incident
Category: Data Loss / Reputation
Description: The MoD confirmed reports from its main IT provider, EDS that it has lost a 1TB portable hard drive from its secure site at Hook in Surrey.

The drive is said to contain information on the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of about 100,000 people.

This accounts for approximately half of the armed forces. According to protocols EDS Managing Director Sir Robert Fry, stated that as the device was in a secure site it is not required to be encrypted.

Knowledge of its loss became apparent during an inventory. EDS were unable to confirm when the device went missing.

Comment: This is a further example of the need to protect data. Protocols must state that devices will be encrypted even at secure sites.
Click here for more

Date: 10/10/08
Location: London, UK
Type: Incident
Category: Data Loss / Reputation
Description: The theft of a Deloitte laptop last month contained the details of up to 100,000 pension scheme members.

The accountancy firm confirmed that the incident had taken place, when a thief stole a laptop from an employee’s bag.

The data includes names, National Insurance numbers and salaries of scheme members from companies such as BSkyB, Network Rail and British Transport Police.

Deloitte assured clients that the loss represents a "very low risk" of the details being accessed, due to their security measures, which include a start up password, operating system user ID/password authentication and encryption.

Comment: Thefts occur, but in this case the information seems to have been safeguarded. Although a reputational issue remains, the key aspect is the data was protected.
Click here for more

Plug and play

2008-10-01T23:19:00.001-07:00

At the Crisis Lounge, data loss, whether it be government computer discs or carelessly mislaid laptops, is one of the hot topics.

The Lizard was interested to see a new twist to the tale.

Andrew Mason from security firm Random Storm bought some network hardware from auction site eBay for 99p.

When he switched it on and plugged it in, the device automatically connected to the internal network of Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire.

Kirklees council called the discovery "concerning" (the Lizard can only imagine what was actually said in private) but said its data had not been compromised.

For under a pound Mason bought what is known as a virtual private network (VPN) server made by the firm Cisco Systems that automates all the steps needed to get remote access to a network.

Mason expected he’d have to input network settings to make the devise work. Not a bit of it – it connected up straight away.

Subsequent investigation found that the internet address to which it connected was owned by Cap Gemini – government outsource provider.

"It is like having a long ethernet cable (directly into) the Council office,” said Mason.

A connection such as this allows privileged access to networks. In the wrong hands, such as criminally minded hackers, it would allow them to conduct reconnaissance and find out if the network had any vulnerabilities worth exploiting.

Internal network access permitted credit card detail theft from retailers TK Maxx last year and Cotton Traders in June.

A spokesman for consulting firm Cap Gemini said it managed Kirklees Council's network from 2000 to the end of May 2005. At that point, he said, control was handed back to the council, which had decided to manage the network itself.

Just shows you can get anything on eBay!

Cybersquatters

2008-09-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

There's nothing Crisis Lounge regulars like better than a new take on the financial meltdown...

So called cybersquatters are registering domain names for many of the merging banks.

Lloydstsbhbos.com has been snapped up, and the domain bankofmerril.com is already attracting £1,000 on eBay.

Domain names are big money - at a recent auction huge sums were paid for the new .mobi extension. For example flowers.mobi sold for €200,000 while fun.mobi fetched €100,000.

But as far as making money out of domain names goes, the champion must be Chris Clark who sold the name pizza.com for over $2.6 million in April having bought it fourteen years ago for only $20.

Blue light special

2008-09-29T00:38:00.000-07:00

Over the years the Lizard has done quite bit of work with the Emergency Services – particularly the fire service. The Lizard thoroughly enjoys his trips up to the Fire Service College just outside Chopping Norton where he is assured of a warm reception and a delicious lunch. Well, one of those statements is true.

All of which is a long winded intro to tell you that the Emergency Services Show is held this year at Stoneleigh Park Coventry between the 19th and 20th November.

Turn on the blue light and hurry along.

Click here for more

Credit crunch

2008-09-25T01:39:00.000-07:00

The Credit Crunch – why does it keep reminding me of breakfast cereal?

Over time we’ve done quite a bit of work for one of the banks that’s just been caught up in the financial tsunami – in fact they engaged up to deliver several major crisis simulations.

At Crisis Solutions we pride ourselves on the reality of our scenarios, in fact some of our consultants like to joke that if they dream them up they usually happen.

At this particular bank we tested them with pandemic flu and then on another occasion with terror attacks – bombs and anthrax as I recall.

Frankly to start with they struggled, but over time they honed their crisis skills.

We might not have known about sub-prime loans when we conducted their training, but a crisis is a crisis and their ability to withstand this financial turmoil has been impressive.

Crises come in many guises and some may be impossible to predict, but if the right plans are in place and those plans have been tested then the organisation involved has a much greater chance of thriving and surviving.

Actress demands screen test

2008-09-08T20:27:00.000-07:00

The Lizard remembers a time when computers took up a whole room and were operated by strange geeky men in white coats. Now we can’t do without them. If the Lizard’s broadband connection goes down for five minutes then wailing and gnashing of teeth is heard throughout the land and if you listen carefully you can hear the Lizard’s wife telling him to put a sock in it.

All of which is a pre-cursor to this story, sent in by a Crisis Lounge regular. Thank you Richard.

A Canadian actress and playwright has been charged with holding a computer expert hostage after losing her internet connection.

Carol Sinclair lost her connection with ISP Aliant and, by her own account, spent days trying to fix it.

She said, “I was polite the first 20 times I talked to them. But each one gave me the same routine, 'Is the modem connected? Are the lights blipping?' And then they would tell me it must be a fault with my computer.”

Finally Sinclair said she resorted to impersonating a man's voice and got a repairman sent out the next day, a "huge, strapping young man", 21 year-old David Scott.

Sinclair said that when he couldn't fix the problem she asked him to stay until a second technician was sent.

However, local police disagree with the woman's version of the events.
"She told the technician, in a tirade, that he was not leaving until her internet was working and she told him she was keeping him hostage," said Constable Jeff Carr. "She implied that she had a gun, although he didn't see one."

The technician claimed he could fix the problem, but needed to retrieve a disc from his van. When he got to the van he jumped in and drove off.

Sinclair denies the charges, and says she was shocked at her arrest by five officers. "I'm a Buddhist," she said. I'm a wimp. I'm a pacifist."

She has been charged and banned from speaking to Aliant or any of its employees.

Hi-tech Incident Database

2008-09-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

Yasir, our indefatigable searcher after crises, has come up with another Incident Database and as you can see from the title we are in the realm of the nerds and geeks. Yes it's cyber-crime time.

Date: 25.08.08
Location: USA / Europe
Type: Incident
Category: Crime / Reputational
Description: The Best Western Hotel chain has had to refute claims made by the Glasgow Sunday Herald, that an Indian hacker accessed personal data of over 8 million customers staying at their 1,312 European hotels. Best Western hit back saying the story was ‘grossly unsubstantiated’ but conceded that data was accessed by an unauthorized person but claimed only one hotel was affected. The hacker is thought to have obtained the details by accessing the online booking system through a key stroking program.

Comment: This incident demonstrates the ever-increasing threat businesses encounter from hackers, which can anger customers and tarnish the reputation of the company involved.
Click here to read more

Date: 28.08.08
Location: UK
Type: Incident
Category: Crime / Technology
Description: Self-checkout tills in UK supermarkets are being targeted by hi-tech criminals, using stolen US credit cards. Magnetic strips are removed and attached to fake credit cards. Fraudsters use the self-checkout service to avoid contact with staff. The scam only works on swipe and sign transactions, which are still common in the US. Security experts say this type of credit card fraud, where stolen cards are used in another country, is becoming increasingly common.

Comment: The international nature of credit card fraud makes it difficult to combat and indicates the need for the US to adopt pin numbers on a countrywide basis.
Click here to read more

Date: 26.08.08
Location: U.K.
Type: Incident
Category: Crime / Technology / Reputation
Description: A computer, containing approximately one million customer bank details, has been sold on EBay for £35. American Express, RBS and NatWest, confirmed that some of their customers were affected. The computer had belonged to Graphic Data, which stores financial information for organisations. RBS viewed the incident as a serious breach and are working closely with Graphic Data to minimise and resolve the situation. American Express said it was working 'as a matter of priority' to establish which of its cardholders could have been affected.

Comment: This highlights the need for firms that hold client sensitive information to have rigorous security protocols in place. The FSA can fine financial institutions for loss of information. The Nationwide were hit with a £980,000 fine for the loss of a laptop that contained client information.
Click here to read more

Cabin fever

2008-09-03T00:37:00.000-07:00

The Lizard is a frequent flyer, so when the Ryanair depressurisation incident hit the news-stands it gave the Lizard pause for thought.

We’ve all sat through the pre-flight chat from the cabin staff about how if deprerssurisation occurs masks will drop down, to then hold them over ones face and breathe normally. Well we now know from passengers on the flight that normal was nowhere in sight.

The Lizard decided to find out more.

Passenger planes fly at altitudes of over 30,000ft. Up in the stratosphere there is so little oxygen that humans only have about twelve seconds before they start to become disoriented, pass out and eventually die. Presumably in a plane the time frame is a little longer – but not by much.

When cabin pressure fails the pilot executes a well-rehearsed procedure.

He needs to get the plane down from the normal cruising altitude to around 8,000ft feet where passengers can breathe normally. The only problem is he doesn’t have long as the emergency oxygen supply only last for about twelve minutes. As a result, the plane is put into a five minute, white-knuckle dive.

During the Ryanair incident passengers complained that nobody told them what was going on. Given the emergency and the fact that both the crew and the cabin staff were wearing face masks this was hardly surprising.

The Lizard listened to one of the passengers on Radio 4’s Today programme. Pen Hadow, an arctic explorer, said that there was no warning and that most passengers thought they were going to die, but he also claimed that the oxygen supply from the face masks didn’t work.

Ryanair claim there was oxygen but that the flow is very light and not easy to detect.

Because of the steep descent many of the passengers suffered damage to their ears – whether this is long term or just temporary is unclear.

In any one year about six of these events take place.

So perhaps next time you fly you’ll pay a little more attention to that tedious pre-flight announcement.

The Lizard makes no claim to be an expert on this matter - if you know more get in touch.

Raffles 2 is up and running

2008-08-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Lizard get’s word from out East that the Industry Wide Exercise (codenamed Raffles 2) in Singapore is underway.

It’s co-sponsors are The Association of Banks in Singapore (“ABS”) and The Monetary Authority of Singapore (“MAS”). As we reported in an earlier blog, the scenario is based on an outbreak of pandemic flu.

An exercise communication (click here to see it) indicates that a practical drill will take place on 5th September.

Those of a nervous disposition are warned they may see bankers donning specialist protective clothing (after all those large lunches, XXXL versions are apparently in short supply) and customers visiting financial institutions may be forced to have their temperature taken. You have been warned.

Pandemic risk

2008-08-08T03:49:00.000-07:00

The Lizard is interested to see that the National Risk Register has just published a report that puts a flu pandemic at the top of the charts, riding high above terrorism and flooding as potential risks that might afflict the UK. They warn 750,000 people could lose their lives.

Number 10 commissioned the study following the launch of the Register in March.

Fear of a pandemic has rather dropped out of the news of late so it’s interesting that the powers that be continue to see it as the major threat.

In recent years Crisis Solutions have done a huge amount of work with Banks and Supermarkets in an effort to help them prepare for a pandemic.

If this is a concern for your organisation and evidently it should be then go to our website and take advantage of our free FluPlanner. Click here

Welsh karaoke

2008-08-07T22:11:00.000-07:00

In response to the last blog on political gaffes, Red Dragon – he may be Welsh – says if you really want the good stuff look no further than John Redwood’s famous attempt to sing the Welsh national anthem when Secretary of State for Wales. Go here to see it and have a go at singing along yourself.

"No Comment, but don't quote me" Dan Quayle

2008-08-06T00:45:00.000-07:00

The holiday season is upon us, the politicians are away and the country can settle back calm in the knowledge that no one is in charge.

That being the case let’s turn the spotlight on our political masters – particularly on some of the things they say.

Let’s start with the political put down. The master was Winston Churchill who described Clement Atlee as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing,” and “a modest man with so much to be modest about.”

He said of Stafford Cripps the humourless Labour Chancellor, “there but for the grace of God goes God.”

He also had his brushes with women. Lady Astor said to him "Winston, if you were my husband I would flavour your coffee with poison." To which he replied, "Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it."

But of course what we really love is the gaffe, the moment when the foot becomes firmly lodged in the mouth.

Sadly John Prescott is no longer deputy PM, but he had his moments.
“The green belt is a Labour achievement and we mean to build on it.”

And his boss, Tony Blair, famously said, “I never make predictions. I never have and I never will.”

Let us not forget John Major, Mr Blair’s predecessor, who knew how to confront his detractors. “When your back’s against the wall, all you can do is turn around and fight.”

As Anne Robinson discovered, being rude to the Welsh is a risky business, but sometimes you have to live dangerously, “They’re all the same. They’re short. They’re fat and they are fundamentally corrupt.” Rod Richards, Welsh Office Minister, on Welsh Labour councillors.

But no list such as this would be complete without a couple of Bushisms. Where does one begin? Perhaps, “If we don’t succeed we run the risk of failure.”

Or, "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

But let’s leave the last word to Richard Nixon to sum up what must ultimately be most politicians view of the electorate,

“The voters have spoken – the bastards.”

If you’ve got a favourite political quote – drop the Lizard a line.

A word from our mixologist

2008-08-05T02:19:00.000-07:00

The head barman at The Crisis Lounge has come up with a snappy line to promote the bar.

“The Crisis Lounge continues to be great value - providing optimum added-value quick wins in an upcoming going forward way.”

Where does he get these expressions from?

Nick’s Dad

2008-07-31T21:23:00.000-07:00

The various blogs on workplace jargon have spawned quite a debate. Nick, one of the regulars in The Crisis Lounge, told his dad about it and dad has responded in magnificent style.

Not only has he itemised some real screamers, but he has done us all a favour by suggesting alternative usage. He works in a press office and when any of the offending words or phrases in the left hand column are used, a fine of 50p is enforced.

• Beacon - leading light
• Sustainable - long term
• Cross-cutting - working together
• Fast-track - move rapidly
• Output – results
• Step change - go up a gear
• Single point of contact - one person to help
• Facilitate - make possible / help / aid / assist
• Evidence based - proof / research shows
• Vision - idea / plan / report
• Scoping - researching / investigating / studying
• Early win - will rapidly benefit / help
• Quick win - will rapidly benefit / help
• Quick hit - will rapidly benefit / help
• Level playing field - give everyone an equal opportunity
• Capacity - ability / size
• Incentivising - spur / encouragement
• Scaled-back - shrink / reduce / cut
• Menu of options - choice
• Tested for soundness - ideas that work
• Income / funding streams - cash
• Revenue streams - cash
• Transparency - clarity
• Welcome - necessary and needed
• Multi-disciplinary - many groups working together
• Meaningful consultation / dialogue - discussing with people
• Empowerment - give people the chance
• Signpost - pointers
• Community engagement - talking to local people
• Improvement levers - ways to change people's lives for the better
• Streamlined - modernise / update
• Risk-based - carefully judged
• Slippage - delays
• Guidelines - plans
• Value-added - giving better value / more for your money

Don’t think of an elephant

2008-07-29T21:02:00.000-07:00

The Lizard’s had his nose in a book recently called “Don’t think of an elephant” by George Lakoff. George is an academic and political writer and the title of the book is an exercise he gives his students.

The exercise is: ‘whatever you do don’t think of an elephant!’ Not surprisingly he says it’s impossible to do. When someone says elephant it immediately evoke a frame, a picture. Elephants are large, have floppy ears, big trunks and tusks. Even if you try to negate a frame you still evoke it.

So for example during the Watergate scandal when President Nixon addressed America and said, “I’m not a crook” everybody immediately thought about him in terms of being a crook.

So during a crisis when you are talking to customers, suppliers, the media or any other stakeholders don’t use their frames.

If a supplier calls up and says Acme Industries are clearly run by a bunch of incompetents don’t use the word incompetent and evoke the critical frame. Simply say, “That’s not true – we understand very clearly what we have to do.”

Exercising for Excellence

2008-07-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

Interesting article on Continuity Central.

Three surveys published recently show that plan testing is not what it might be.

* A survey of 200 companies with between 250 and 999 employees by Vanson Bourne found that, of the 81 percent of respondents stating that they had a business continuity plan, 50 percent had only partially tested plans and 18 percent had not tested any aspect of their plans.

* A PricewaterhouseCoopers survey found that almost half of disaster recovery plans have not been tested in the last year.

* According to the Chartered Management Institute’s 2008 business continuity survey, 33 percent of organizations with a business continuity plan still do not undertake any form of exercise to test their plan.

The article then goes on to pose various questions to BC professionals as to why this is the case. The answers are interesting and illuminating and you should check them out. Many say it’s too daunting / costly / or just plain difficult to stage a plan test. Read the full article here

The Lizard can immediately come to the rescue with the following advice. Go on to the British Standards website and buy ‘Exercising for Excellence’.

If you have responsibility for planning and delivering exercises to test your organisation's incident management capability, then this book is for you.

Written by Crisis Solutions and published alongside the new BSI standard, BS 25999, Exercising for Excellence is available to buy here: British Standards Bookshop

Low-hanging fruit

2008-07-20T23:19:00.000-07:00

First of all the Lizard would like to apologise for the lack of fresh blogs over the last week. He was on his holidays – at his timeshare on the Isle of Wight.

Now safely back at the bar in The Crisis Lounge – and taking a lead from the previous blog - the Lizard has been conducting an in depth and rigorously researched analysis of jargon in the workplace.

Using a tightly controlled group of no less than three of the regulars at the bar the Lizard can report the findings of this important study.

The survey suggests that management gobbledygook and work place jargon are baffling people and getting in the way of clear understanding – the Lizard would go so far to say that phrases such as ‘brain dump’ (how ugly is that?) and ‘blue-sky thinking’ are giving people the ‘right old hump’.

About a third of those questioned – all right his name’s Gerald - said they felt inadequate when they didn’t have a clue what old so-and-so was on about.

So as a public service to all Crisis Lounge personnel here’s the Lizard’s handy, but in no way complete, guide.

Yer what? A guide to workplace jargon
• Blue-sky thinking: Idealistic or visionary ideas
• Get our ducks in a row: Have arrangements efficiently ordered
• Brain dump: To tell everything you know about a particular topic
• Let's circle back: A follow up meeting or ‘I’ll get back to you’
• Escalate: Tell somebody important that something bad is going to happen
• Painpoint: A challenge
• Goat rodeo: A complete disaster
• A herd of cats: Another complete disaster
• Lipstick on a pig: Reworking of ‘Silk purse from a sow’s ear’
• Drilling down: Getting more detail about a particular issue
• The helicopter view: An overview
• Low-hanging fruit: The easiest targets

And in a complete conversation

Bill: "What are you doing, Jack?"

Jack: "I'm ramping up for the Acme Project. After I download this info, I am going to reach out to London and get some intel on the lay of the land. My fear is that London has no real energy for this, so we may need to all get on the same page and get our ducks in a row. Circle back with me after you've determined if we can really add value to this deliverable. If not it could be a complete and utter goat rodeo."

Send your pet hates to lizard@crisis-solutions.com

Word Up

2008-07-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

Whenever I drive past a pub with a big plastic tree house in the garden I’m reminded of a line from Alec Guinness’s autobiography - “We stopped at one of those awful pubs for lunch; where every meal on the menu was preceded by the word “jumbo” or “sizzling”.”

Ever noticed how some words really grate? Here’s the Lizard’s top three at the moment:

A lady was doing a reasonable job trying to sell advertising space when she said, “In which sectors do you get the most traction?” Now, when a friend of mine rode a quad bike during a team-building event in Colorado he needed traction to get through the mud. When the bike toppled over and tried to rip his leg off he also needed traction not to mention painkillers and bandages.

The second word cropped up in the same conversation. In the old days you wrote articles and you placed adverts. Maybe you even provided content or copy. Not any more. I was asked to write an infomercial. As it’s a cross between an article and an advert it doesn’t have to be reasoned, unbiased or objective. I can just dress my advert up as an article, and the magazine or website doesn’t have to provide any content of its own. Everyone’s a winner.

But straight in at number one, right at the top of the Lizard’s list is coworkers. Years ago we had colleagues. I understood colleagues. Now in trendy business articles we get coworkers. As it’s obviously uncool to use hyphens these days my brain separates it into two words – cow orkers. It sounds like some terrible agricultural disease.

The Lizard also has some thoughts on jargon in the work place. What’s the most irritating word or phrase? Perhaps we need to take a helicopter view, think out of the box and really drill down to find out what it is.

Communication breakdown

2008-06-25T20:44:00.000-07:00

The Lizard is a bit old school when it comes to spelling and grammar. He is of the opinion that the language of Shakespeare should be treated with respect.

At Crisis Solutions some of the Lizard’s colleagues say he’s a bit of a pedant on the subject and argue that, as long as communication flows, a hanging apostrophe is nothing to get upset about.

So it was with undisguised joy that some less than caring members of Crisis Solutions were able to hoist the Lizard on his own petard. Here’s the story.

The Lizard produces videos to enhance our crisis simulation exercises. Recently we were employed to run such a simulation on behalf of a government department.

The scenario revolved around the topical issue of lost documents, a leak of information and the subsequent loss of confidence in the department.

Unfortunately on a video caption the Lizard saw fit to spell Leak – Leek. So in effect a large Welsh vegetable was undermining one of the great departments of state. Something it may take the Lizard a while to live down.

Bugs life

2008-06-22T23:17:00.000-07:00

Here at Crisis Solutions fuel distribution, the lack of fuel, the cost of fuel and indeed all things fuel related seem to be occupying our time.

Come to think of it the last time you filled up your car your credit card probably thought it was undergoing some form of crisis or trauma.

Well step forward Andy, the technical supremo at Crisis Solutions, who spotted an article in The Times last week that might just solve our problems.

Now before I go any further I should point out that we are nowhere near 1st April nor are we yet in what my newspaper chums call the silly season, but blimey this is an odd one.

Apparently, and this is The Times talking, scientists in California are genetically modifying bugs, (that’s as technical as the Lizard gets – don’t forget he just eats them) then feeding them agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw and then they do something (and I apologise for the revolting image this conjures up) – they poo petrol. Whether it’s four star, diesel or two stroke the article doesn’t say.

But is does point out that to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need quite a few of these bugs – actually as many as you could jam into a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.

Well as the old saying (nearly) goes, where there’s bugs there’s brass and there are clearly a lot of people trying to make money out of this, trying to up their bottom line I suppose.

But there is something about this that’s really bugging me, when you buy your sleek new BMW or SUV are you really going to be happy filling it full of bug poo?

If you still need to know more about this, and if you do then you probably need help, you can read The Times article here.

Crisis comms

2008-06-10T00:16:00.000-07:00

At Crisis Solutions we like to think we operate at the cutting edge of crisis management. To that end the Lizard would like to introduce you to the latest thinking in crisis communications…POETRY!

Here’s Wendy Cope on:

How to deal with the press
She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.
Be careful, courteous and cool.
Never trust a journalist.

‘We’re off the record’, she’ll insist.
If you believe her, you’re a fool.
She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.

Should you tell her who you’ve kissed,
You’ll see it all in print, and you’ll
Never trust a journalist

Again. The words are hers to twist,
And yours the risk of ridicule.
She’ll urge you to confide. Resist.

‘But X is nice,’ the publicist
Will tell you. ‘We were friends at school.’
Never trust a journalist,

Hostile, friendly, sober, pissed,
Male or female - that’s the rule.
When tempted to confide, resist.
Never trust a journalist.

Sun lounger

2008-05-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

This may not seem the timeliest of publications, given the UK’s recent weather, but the Chief Medical Officer has just published The Heatwave Plan for England. We may not need it now, but we live in hope. Now where’s that holiday brochure…
Read the plan here

Pumping up discontent

2008-05-27T20:47:00.000-07:00

The Lizard is a compassionate soul and would never kick a man when he’s down, which means that when it comes to Premier Brown he is rather out of step with the rest of the electorate – not to mention many Labour MPs. All of whom seem intent on doing just that.

We had the ‘election that never was’, we had the 10 pence tax u-turn, the electorate delivered the kicking that was the Crewe and Nantwich by-election and now the truckers are getting in on the act.

The fuel protests of 2000 were Tony Blair’s first real test, but back then he was still an overwhelmingly popular PM – not something you could say about Gordon – and he effectively saw them off.

The mantra coming out of the government now is that they are listening – so will they listen to the fuel protests? The lorry drivers are demanding an ‘essential users’ reduction on the price of diesel of anything between 20 and 25 pence a litre. Will they get it?

The Lizard is not a betting reptile but he wouldn’t bank on it. Don’t all drivers feel they are essential users? From the mum living in the countryside who has to get to Tesco to the chief executive who has to get to the airport. It might be fun to support the truckers now, but if they won, wouldn’t we all want a piece of the action?

The other problem the government has is the cost of such a reduction - they just don’t have the money to play with anymore. The 10p tax fiasco is said to have cost around £2.7bn and bought them not a single vote at the recent by-election. The government will almost certainly hesitate before dipping into their depleted coffers.

On the horizon we have the 2p tax increase on fuel scheduled for April but deferred till October. Given the huge increases on a barrel of oil and the subsequent price hikes at the pumps, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that this will be quietly buried.

Then there are the VED (Vehicle Excise Duty) increases on older gas guzzling cars. Drivers will start paying more when they renew their tax discs next year.

The changes are likely to affect nearly 70 per cent of Britain's 26 million motorists, who could find themselves paying up to £245 a year more for their tax disc.

There are also plans to hit drivers with a £950 ‘showroom tax’ when they buy a new car.
One Labour MP had a nice line on all this, he called it a ‘poll tax on wheels’.

So will Gordon execute another hasty u-turn and grant the truckers their wishes or will the lorries just roll right over the government?

Canada's foreign minister resigns

2008-05-26T21:11:00.000-07:00

Canada's embattled foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, has resigned after leaving classified documents at a private residence. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called it "a serious error."

But what exactly was the serious error? Well, having a girlfriend - Julie Couillard - linked to Hells Angels motorcycle gangs, having a girlfriend who likes to dress in a provocative manner (my picture shows the pair at the minister’s swearing in ceremony), having a girlfriend who is not publicity shy, having a girlfriend who is pretty upset over the minister’s efforts to terminate the relationship and above all having a girlfriend who is about to go on television to spill the beans might have something to do with it.

Now the Lizard has nothing against colourful characters or indeed attractive women. Carla Bruni could hardly be said to be a typical politician’s wife and certainly her past is colourful but she has done nothing but enhance the diminutive Gallic whirlwind that is M. Sarkosi.

Now, we don’t know what documents the minister left lying around and whether Hells Angels are busily poring over foreign office briefings.

But that is hardly the point - newspapers and the public love kiss and tell stories and it’s not Julie’s fault if she’s a little too hot to handle – the minister should have been more careful with classified material and should have had more control over his private life.

Of course, just hours before Bernier resigned the prime minister was saying, "I have no intention to comment on a minister's former girlfriend," Harper went on, "I don't take this subject seriously."

But with Julie about to go on the box the PM was forced to take it all very seriously indeed.

So in the end it seems it was the old story of there being no fury like a woman scorned and the woman in question too much for what is after all a Conservative government.

Bird flu, pandemic flu, tamiflu

2008-05-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

A Lounger just recently returned from propping up the bar at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore comes bearing news of Singapore’s financial sector industry-wide exercise (IWE) which will run from Thursday, Aug 28 to Friday, Sep 11, 2008.

It will be run in three sessions and the scenario is an old favourite - pandemic flu.

If you want to know more here are slides used at a recent briefing and a link to the exercise portal:

www.calamityprevention.com/blog/BCM_Briefing_Session_IWE_08.pdf
www.iwe08.com.sg/c/portal/login

Tamiflu cocktails are now on sale at The Crisis Lounge.

Monkey Business

2008-05-14T22:09:00.000-07:00

Every week one of the Lizard’s colleagues (his name is Yasir – by the way) collates an Incident Database so we can all keep tabs on the fresh crises and calamities that are besetting the world and keeping us in business.

Now Yasir is a military type and doesn’t use two words when one will do. This is what he had to say:

50 Greenpeace protesters accessed two Unilever plants in London, in protest at the company’s use of Palm Oil, which is claimed to damage the Indonesian Rainforest. The protesters left the site after 9 hours of talks with site managers.

Clear, concise and to the point – the only thing Yasir didn’t mention was that all the protestors were dressed as Orangutans.

They swung into action and made a monkey out of Unilever.

The protests were videoed by Greenpeace who were only too delighted to hand over the footage to the press. So that evening we were treated to a lot of monkey business on the news.

Crises come in many shapes and forms, but if one of the big environmental pressure groups come after you, then you really are in trouble.

The Lizard ran a media course last year. Delegates came form right across Europe from many different companies and organisations.

One of them is the head of press for WWF (no, not the World Wrestling Federation).

During proceedings the Lizard was banging on about how important it is to control press conferences and not let anyone in who might disrupt proceedings.

One way of doing this is to check the journalists’ press credentials. At which point the gentleman from the World Wildlife Fund said well I used to be a journo and I like to keep an up to date press card and here it is.

Another of their tactics is to buy a few shares in a company they want to target thus allowing them to wreak havoc during the AGM.

It’s enough to make you go ape.

Competition Time

2008-05-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

The Lizard and his wife were out hobnobbing with the good and the great at the British Embassy ball last night.

All was going well until her Ladyship decided to get stuck into the charity auction - suffice it to say, it’s the Lizard’s bank account that could do with a charity donation right now.

However that’s by the by because it’s competition time and there’s a bottle of champagne on offer to the first Lounger to come up with the right answer to this question.

What country was this British Embassy ball held in? The only clue is that our man is the splendidly named Quinton Quayle.

Answers to information@crisis-solutions.com

Lounging in front of the TV

2008-05-08T23:36:00.000-07:00

The Lizard isn’t usually given to watching daytime television, but the opportunity to see our PM cosying up to Fern Britton on ITV’s This Morning was too good to miss. And what a different Gordon we saw – there he was talking about his kids even touching on the fact his son Fraser has cystic fibrosis.

Now for such a private man this seemed unusual, but given the drubbing he’s recently been given by the electorate it seemed his spin-doctors felt a new, touchy-feely Gordon was required.

Well apparently not a bit of it. Nick Robinson, the Beeb’s political editor, has broken the story on his blog (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson) that this was not how the interview was meant to go at all.

Over to Nick: Far from wanting to discuss his family, in particular his son Fraser's cystic fibrosis, Gordon Brown thought that there was an agreement that he would not be asked such questions. Indeed, reports reach me of furious members of Team Brown complaining that the pre-interview agreement had been broken.

Now at Crisis Solutions, we offer media training and this is an interesting case in point. What could be better than for the PM to go on a fairly light and fluffy TV show to start the uphill struggle of connecting with the public?

His media people would have set up and agreed the areas he wanted to address only to have the presenter ask all the questions he didn’t want to answer.

So how do you handle a situation like that when you are on live TV? The Crisis Solutions media team has some answers.

Actually this reminds the Lizard of a story regarding the former Defence Secretary Sir John Nott, who at the time of the Falkland crisis was interviewed by Robin Day who called him a ‘here today, gone tomorrow politician’.

Sir John took offence, tugged the microphone from his lapel and stormed out. Not something our media team would suggest.

But the story had a happy ending as rather bizarrely when he came to write his memoirs Nott called them ‘Here today gone tomorrow’.

Crisis? What crisis?

2008-05-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

The Lounge Lizard, on behalf of Crisis Solutions, has been keeping himself busy lately, putting together a book that will be published shortly by the British Standards Institute.

It’s called Exercising for Excellence and tells you everything you need to know about running successful crisis simulations.

Well that’s what I thought it was about until the BSI said oh! no! you can’t use the word CRISIS – there is no such thing as a crisis anymore there are just INCIDENTS. Spooky huh?

So when The Lizard’s wife rams her ladyship’s car into a controversially located wall, is that an incident or a crisis?

Personally I like the word crisis, the dictionary on my computer describes it like this: a situation or period in which things are very uncertain, difficult, or painful, especially a time when action must be taken to avoid complete disaster or breakdown.

It describes an incident as: something that happens, especially a single event.

Now The Lounge Lizard and his cohorts at Crisis Solutions work in business continuity and crisis readiness and I know which definition describes what we get involved in.

Plus we are called Crisis Solutions so we like the word crisis – Incident Solutions seems a little flaccid. And where are you now, if not in The Crisis Lounge?

But of course we didn’t want to irritate our friends at the BSI as they are kindly publishing our book so in an attempt at not allowing an incident to turn into a crisis we immediately climbed down and removed all trace of the word crisis.

Actually we got away with one - a direct quote from Dr Henry Kissinger who memorably said, “Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full.”

Anybody got any thoughts on this? Perhaps we need to get our definitions sorted out. What is a crisis? What is an incident and how do they differ?

The Lounge Lizard – cyber investigator

2008-05-07T05:56:00.000-07:00

The Lounge Lizard was interested to see that personal bank account details are apparently for sale over the Internet for as little as £5.

So says Symantec, the Internet security firm, who also report that UK bank account details were the most advertised items on black-market forums used to trade stolen information.

Now, The Lizard is neither a criminal nor is he tremendously adept with the laptop but he decided to do a little investigative reporting and tried looking for these elusive bank details on the net – to see how easy they are to find. He didn’t get very far.

At one point things were looking up as someone was offering all the child benefit details the government had lost, and The Lizard thought he could perform a public service - retrieve the information and hand it back to a tearful and grateful government.

He then considered that awkward questions might be asked as to what he was doing with the stuff in the first place at which point The Lounge Lizard’s career as a razor sharp investigative hack came to an abrupt end.

Of course it’s much easier if you just publish your bank account details in your weekly column as the petrol head funster Jeremy Clarkson decided to do.

The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of the above mentioned child benefit disks.

Unwisely, he wanted to prove it was all a fuss about nothing.

Next thing he knew he had unexpectedly donated £500 to charity.

“I was wrong and I have been punished” was his unusually mild response.