After a long presidential election in America - especially this last one - it is perhaps understandable that many of us have become spectators or, at best, bit players in the work of democracy. The lead actors are groomed for years, and funded handsomely to ensure that their visibility rises to the point that can put together enough votes from the masses to win election in our vast, diverse and noisy landscape. They become true celebrities and are treated thus. Even the critical online machine , comprising millions of supporters, that helped Obama become #44 is more of a stage device than actual people/characters...and so we conclude that democracy is mostly about a few really important people and the rest of us, in the wings or in the chorus, in the audience (or on the couch).
When things go wrong then- or as in current circumstances - REALLY wrong, is it any wonder that we want to throw tomatoes at the stage, or maybe walk out on the performance? We could try asking for our money back, but we don't really believe that's going to happen, right?
A few of us want to storm the stage, without really thinking about the consequences of that: we trample the lead actors for their performance to date...and then what? Are we ready to step into their roles? Maybe some of us, but not most of us. We have become very comfortable in the bit parts if not in the audience, making smart remarks from the cheap seats.
Democracy is, of course, not the stage, and there is no script that's been agreed upon. It is a messy, dynamic, never-ending process of becoming - and if you live here, you are part of it. As I watch, listen and try to understand the ANGER that seems to define the present moment, I find myself mostly hoping that we all come to the realization that we have no one to blame but ourselves.
If democracy IS theater, then we need to understand it as improvisational theater - and everyone in the house has to be prepared, and even demand, to be drawn into the production.
Instead we've allowed a not-always talented troupe of players hog the stage - and our democracy has become a parody of what might have been.
We sit back and watch (and empower) the same sad actors; we use laugh tracks, use cue cards to tell us when to cheer, when to boo...and we can become a very tough crowd when/if a new actor comes on stage and tries to make us really concentrate on the dialogue. American Idol is always playing in the theater next door, after all, so we might just go sit in the dark over there.
What I hope is that the kinds of technology that are transforming so many other aspects of our lives can transform democracy, as well. Democracy 2.0 could make understanding the issues easier...could make voting and participating more accessible...could make listening on a grand scale possible...could make the picture of our shared fate so much more compelling.
Of course like everything else, technology can be used for good, or for naught. I vote we take back the stage and commit to playing our parts. I may not ever get a lead part (and I may not want one)...but I'd take a speaking part if I seemed best suited to the role. Or if I decide to stay in the audience, I'll at least commit to writing and posting a thoughtful review once in a while - and I'll bring my family and friends to the show. C'mon...break a leg!
See you there.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
RIP, Bill Holm
The news of the death of Minneota's own Bill Holm hit me hard. In 1991 my company published an excerpt from his brilliant "Coming Home Crazy" as a holiday gift for our clients and friends -- and a passage from that book is one I still return to many times each year: "Gifts are your teachers, not your obligation or the fulfillment of a bargain. They are supposed to disconnect you from your own life for a few minutes, so you can see it more clearly. A good gift delivers a brisk shock. A good gift cannot be reciprocated without damage to the soul. You must take it and live." What a gift was Bill Holm. RIP.
Published 3/2/09, StarTribune
Published 3/2/09, StarTribune
To Avoid PR & legal disaster, better to face truth sooner than later
As a result of peanut butter tainted with salmonella many people got very sick and some died. Sadly, many more people are likely to get sick just following the story.
It was in September of 2008 that the first few cases of the latest salmonella food poisoning episode were being reported by clinics and hospitals. News of the outbreak started slowly but quickly exploded across the country. By late December there were over 400 reported cases in 43 states and at least four related deaths.
In early January, thanks to the Minnesota Department of Health, it was determined that the source of the salmonella was peanut butter.
On January 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confirmed that the salmonella outbreak was indeed caused by contaminated peanut butter paste manufactured in a Georgia plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).
On January 13, Peanut Corporation of America’s public relations people went into action. A press release expressed the company’s “…deep regret that this has happened.” And further, that “out of an abundance of caution, we are voluntarily withdrawing this product and contacting our customers.” To be sure, the Peanut Corporation was “taking these actions with the safety of our consumers as our first priority.”
On their January 28 evening newscast, WSB TV in Atlanta first reported that FDA documents the TV station had obtained indicated that PCA officials knew their peanut butter contained salmonella bacteria and shipped it anyway. The PCA had no comment.
By the last week in January, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of cases had gone to 600 and at least nine people were dead as a result of the salmonella bacteria contained products using PCA’s peanut paste.
The following week, a congressional committee released documents that appeared to confirm reports that PCA officials knew of at least 12 findings of salmonella bacteria found in their peanut butter in 2007 and 2008, but still urged employees to move the product out to its customers.
Today, the list of recalled products at risk of containing the salmonella infected peanut butter is over 2000 items and the cost to corporations and retailers of recall expense and future lost sales is likely to reach billions. Given the impact of this crisis, businesses are expected to spend hundreds of millions to rebuild trust and reassure customers of the safety of peanut based products.
Anticipating a huge decline in demand for peanut butter products, peanut farmers are distressed and already planning to cut back the number of acres they will plant this spring.
As public relations professionals with combined experience of over 75 years, we understand that a lot went wrong here. As a result, Congress will demand more frequent FDA inspections and seek tighter controls, and as Senator Amy Klobuchar recently suggested, prosecutors are likely to bring criminal charges against responsible individuals.
But beyond regulatory and legal aspects, one wonders how a company could ever get to a point where their entire enterprise was put at such risk. For sure, accidents can happen, but more than anything, like steroids in baseball and the chaos on Wall Street, this is a case of a complete lack of corporate governance and responsibility.
When it comes to managing against loss of reputation and legal liability in a crisis, the best and most effective measure is the truth. But the timing and totality of the truth matters most. Quality companies know that the value of public relations is both before and after a crisis. A company that works with professionals to build internal corporate values and a strong culture of moral responsibility will not only know the right time to nip a crisis in the bud, but will also have a well-built platform from which to communicate its message.
Unfortunately for the Peanut Company of America, their timing was two years off and their platform shaky.
[Kathy Tunheim is president and CEO of the Bloomington-based public relations firm Tunheim Partners and is a contributing author of Crisis Communication/practical PR strategies for reputation management and company survival. John Wodele is a St. Paul based communications consultant who has a professional association with Tunhiem Partners.]
Published 2/23/09, StarTribune
It was in September of 2008 that the first few cases of the latest salmonella food poisoning episode were being reported by clinics and hospitals. News of the outbreak started slowly but quickly exploded across the country. By late December there were over 400 reported cases in 43 states and at least four related deaths.
In early January, thanks to the Minnesota Department of Health, it was determined that the source of the salmonella was peanut butter.
On January 12, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) confirmed that the salmonella outbreak was indeed caused by contaminated peanut butter paste manufactured in a Georgia plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA).
On January 13, Peanut Corporation of America’s public relations people went into action. A press release expressed the company’s “…deep regret that this has happened.” And further, that “out of an abundance of caution, we are voluntarily withdrawing this product and contacting our customers.” To be sure, the Peanut Corporation was “taking these actions with the safety of our consumers as our first priority.”
On their January 28 evening newscast, WSB TV in Atlanta first reported that FDA documents the TV station had obtained indicated that PCA officials knew their peanut butter contained salmonella bacteria and shipped it anyway. The PCA had no comment.
By the last week in January, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of cases had gone to 600 and at least nine people were dead as a result of the salmonella bacteria contained products using PCA’s peanut paste.
The following week, a congressional committee released documents that appeared to confirm reports that PCA officials knew of at least 12 findings of salmonella bacteria found in their peanut butter in 2007 and 2008, but still urged employees to move the product out to its customers.
Today, the list of recalled products at risk of containing the salmonella infected peanut butter is over 2000 items and the cost to corporations and retailers of recall expense and future lost sales is likely to reach billions. Given the impact of this crisis, businesses are expected to spend hundreds of millions to rebuild trust and reassure customers of the safety of peanut based products.
Anticipating a huge decline in demand for peanut butter products, peanut farmers are distressed and already planning to cut back the number of acres they will plant this spring.
As public relations professionals with combined experience of over 75 years, we understand that a lot went wrong here. As a result, Congress will demand more frequent FDA inspections and seek tighter controls, and as Senator Amy Klobuchar recently suggested, prosecutors are likely to bring criminal charges against responsible individuals.
But beyond regulatory and legal aspects, one wonders how a company could ever get to a point where their entire enterprise was put at such risk. For sure, accidents can happen, but more than anything, like steroids in baseball and the chaos on Wall Street, this is a case of a complete lack of corporate governance and responsibility.
When it comes to managing against loss of reputation and legal liability in a crisis, the best and most effective measure is the truth. But the timing and totality of the truth matters most. Quality companies know that the value of public relations is both before and after a crisis. A company that works with professionals to build internal corporate values and a strong culture of moral responsibility will not only know the right time to nip a crisis in the bud, but will also have a well-built platform from which to communicate its message.
Unfortunately for the Peanut Company of America, their timing was two years off and their platform shaky.
[Kathy Tunheim is president and CEO of the Bloomington-based public relations firm Tunheim Partners and is a contributing author of Crisis Communication/practical PR strategies for reputation management and company survival. John Wodele is a St. Paul based communications consultant who has a professional association with Tunhiem Partners.]
Published 2/23/09, StarTribune
That feeling you have? It's Synchronicity
Synchronicity is a word I first saw years ago in a book of daily meditations. That it comes back to me relatively frequently – as a word, but also as a feeling and a conscious notion – seems to be evidence that I have bought into the concept. Simply put, I take it to refer to a profound sort of coincidence or serendipity. Or, a sophisticated way to acknowledge fate: things happen for a reason, there are dots to connect, and we are meant to see much of what happens as a call to heed the signals going off around us and make choices accordingly – not instead of having a sense of purpose, but as a means to staying on a chosen course.
Last month, as I headed to Washington, D.C., to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama — knowing already that the real and the symbolic signals of transformation would be everywhere — I was struck by synchronicity. Side-by-side on the editorial page of this newspaper, I read a conservative-leaning columnist’s analysis about how the current financial chaos has turned classical economics on its head (goodbye to the concept of rational incentives, he said, and hello to ‘‘context is everything’’ decision-making) and I reflected on a clever cartoon inspired by an Edith Wharton quote. “In spite of illness, in spite of the archenemy — sorrow — one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things and happy in small ways.”
What a potent mixture to feed an entrepreneur! In my mind, I paraphrased: the old ways of organizing and financing business are not working; the societal context around our work is transforming, and so perhaps is the value of the work itself. Further, the best way to avoid ‘‘disintegration’’ is to be unafraid, to let our curiosity run, to think big and yet take pleasure in small things. And if I needed more evidence of synchronicity: the mood, the scenes, the news angles of the Obama inaugural week provided it.
So what’s the synchronicity in my own work? Well, I’m managing a nimble, well-established professional services firm, employing a very talented group of people; we have the trust and confidence of a great list of clients; the marketplace for customers is increasingly global and dynamic; yet, the pressures on our clients (and so on us) are as onerous as I can recall in 30 years — access to capital; balancing stakeholder obligations; increasingly fractured competitiveness. And so the pressure mounts to find new, compelling ways to create value, to be successful in the marketplace of the future.
The signals are clear: take Edith Wharton’s advice! Be unafraid to really change; to think big about how to create value; and be happy if the payoff comes over time and in perhaps ‘‘small ways.’’
Stating it frankly: the realization must be coming to each of us that not only do we need to pitch in to solve the challenges facing our communities, our nation and the planet; we need to change the way we think about success, and reset our calculus for risk/reward.
For some in our midst, it likely feels like “back to the future;” returning to by-gone notions of personal and corporate citizenship and values. But for many others, this will truly be a New World Order.
A current prediction that it may take the United States a dozen years to fully replace the market value lost over the past year is a mind-blowing notion to contemplate in a culture that has come to demand instant consumer gratification — and where corporate incentives can pay out based on 12 months (or less) of barely-decent performance. How do we create motivation to innovate, to risk, to really change, in an environment that may take 12 years to get back to scratch?
I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll argue that the recipe will certainly need to include:
• leadership that sets good examples of longer term thinking
• fierce enforcement of fairness: rules really do need to apply to everyone. (Obama’s restrictions on executive pay for banking companies taking federal bailout money comes to mind, as does the fate of Tom Daschle’s nomination.)
• celebrating the ‘small stuff,’ and the journey along the way
Our new president has convincingly made the case for change – and his case was affirmed by the size of his electoral victory. Now we each need to take ownership of what it means for us.
Synchronicity might help you. My only other advice is to get to work, and maybe read some Edith Wharton.
Published, StarTribune, 2/16/09
Last month, as I headed to Washington, D.C., to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama — knowing already that the real and the symbolic signals of transformation would be everywhere — I was struck by synchronicity. Side-by-side on the editorial page of this newspaper, I read a conservative-leaning columnist’s analysis about how the current financial chaos has turned classical economics on its head (goodbye to the concept of rational incentives, he said, and hello to ‘‘context is everything’’ decision-making) and I reflected on a clever cartoon inspired by an Edith Wharton quote. “In spite of illness, in spite of the archenemy — sorrow — one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things and happy in small ways.”
What a potent mixture to feed an entrepreneur! In my mind, I paraphrased: the old ways of organizing and financing business are not working; the societal context around our work is transforming, and so perhaps is the value of the work itself. Further, the best way to avoid ‘‘disintegration’’ is to be unafraid, to let our curiosity run, to think big and yet take pleasure in small things. And if I needed more evidence of synchronicity: the mood, the scenes, the news angles of the Obama inaugural week provided it.
So what’s the synchronicity in my own work? Well, I’m managing a nimble, well-established professional services firm, employing a very talented group of people; we have the trust and confidence of a great list of clients; the marketplace for customers is increasingly global and dynamic; yet, the pressures on our clients (and so on us) are as onerous as I can recall in 30 years — access to capital; balancing stakeholder obligations; increasingly fractured competitiveness. And so the pressure mounts to find new, compelling ways to create value, to be successful in the marketplace of the future.
The signals are clear: take Edith Wharton’s advice! Be unafraid to really change; to think big about how to create value; and be happy if the payoff comes over time and in perhaps ‘‘small ways.’’
Stating it frankly: the realization must be coming to each of us that not only do we need to pitch in to solve the challenges facing our communities, our nation and the planet; we need to change the way we think about success, and reset our calculus for risk/reward.
For some in our midst, it likely feels like “back to the future;” returning to by-gone notions of personal and corporate citizenship and values. But for many others, this will truly be a New World Order.
A current prediction that it may take the United States a dozen years to fully replace the market value lost over the past year is a mind-blowing notion to contemplate in a culture that has come to demand instant consumer gratification — and where corporate incentives can pay out based on 12 months (or less) of barely-decent performance. How do we create motivation to innovate, to risk, to really change, in an environment that may take 12 years to get back to scratch?
I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll argue that the recipe will certainly need to include:
• leadership that sets good examples of longer term thinking
• fierce enforcement of fairness: rules really do need to apply to everyone. (Obama’s restrictions on executive pay for banking companies taking federal bailout money comes to mind, as does the fate of Tom Daschle’s nomination.)
• celebrating the ‘small stuff,’ and the journey along the way
Our new president has convincingly made the case for change – and his case was affirmed by the size of his electoral victory. Now we each need to take ownership of what it means for us.
Synchronicity might help you. My only other advice is to get to work, and maybe read some Edith Wharton.
Published, StarTribune, 2/16/09
Ok, I'm a blogger
After months of debating with myself: "does the world really need/want another blogger?" I find myself taking the step of joining in. It has never been a question of whether I had opinions or not...
So I'll start with recent articles published elsewhere - please let me know what you think!
So I'll start with recent articles published elsewhere - please let me know what you think!
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