Flying the checklist - Government's comms problem Part II #nlpoli

The Liberals under Dwight Ball have had a steady run of problems with managing issues, policies, and positions.  The current mess they face with the 2016 budget is really nothing more than a very big version of the problems they have had continuously for the past 18 months.

Last year, some Liberals thought they had solved the problems by changing around some people who had the word "communication" in their job title. Nothing changed. That confirms that the problem isn't at the level of the people they changed around. The problem is higher up the decision-making chain and has much more to do with how the Liberals look at the world than it is with how a particular staffer does a job.

That was the point in Tuesday's post.  Today, we are going to look at another aspect of the Liberal problem, namely the organisation they have taken over in government.

The Johnny Cab Minister (repost from The Persuasion Business)

This post originally appeared February 27, 2008 at The Persuasion Business:

Johnny Cab is a clever character in the 1990 movie Total Recall.  It's an automated taxi, voiced by veteran character actor Robert Picardo. You may recall him as the doctor on Star Trek: Voyager or as the witch Meg Mucklebones in the cult-hit Legend.

Taxis in the movie are entirely controlled by on-board computers.  To give them some semblance of normalcy, Johnny Cabs have robot drivers consisting of just a head and torso.  The computer is programmed with stock taxi driver lines like "Please state your destination" or "Helluva day."  If you don't ask a question to answer one that fits into the programming, the Johnny Cab will fall back on one of its stock lines.

You hear the same sort of thing with some people being interviewed by news media. Either they've had no media training, bad media training or the good training they had never took. No matter what the question, they refer back to their talking points or scripted lines. That's all the say.

Talking points are a standard feature of interview preparation.  A media relations officer will give three or four major points or ideas for the person being interviewed to make.  There should be some background or detail to expand on the point.  no set of talking points will ever be complete but good preparation means that someone being interviewed can make the points they want and nothing should be asked that comes as a surprise.

If the media person is doing his or her job, they already know the subject inside and out.  He can anticipate questions and provide sensible answers that convey meaningful information. The person being interviewed should also have more information;  he or she should be knowledgeable about the subject. If they aren't the interview will be incredible and the whole idea is to present credible, believable information from someone who knows what he or she is talking about.

After all, a media interview is a stock part of the persuasion business.  You want to gain support - not from the interviewer but from the audience -  and the way to do that is to present information in a way that people can relate to and understand.

A couple of times over the past week or so, provincial environment minister Charlene Johnson has wound up sounding like a Johnny Cab Minister.

In an interview with CBC's Ted Blades, Johnson was asked repeatedly over the course of a seven minute interview why her department didn't conduct regular structural inspections of 125 bridges over which thousands of people on the island pass ever week. She really never answered the question.  She fell back on her talking points, referring to a single bridge closure in 2006, or referring to her department's reliance on public complaints to know when a bridge needed some expert attention.

Now it's not like Blades was asking a bizarre or overly aggressive question.  Johnson herself said that public safety was paramount, that a human life was very important.  Blades' question gave Johnson a chance to give a concrete example or a convincing statement of how her department would put that sentiment into action.  After all, actions speak louder than words in the persuasion business.

Johnson could have easily said that the report from Transport Canada had caused her to re-examine the policy.  She and her officials would now work with the public works department and incorporate her hundred odd bridges into the others inspected annually by another department.

Her talking point  - her aide memoire - would have been something like this:  "Public safety is extremely important. It's so important that even though we had thought our policy was working, it isn't.  Now we'll be doing regular inspections."

And if hit with the question again or asked how they might have thought no inspections was a good idea, her response would be:  "You know, we all make decisions that make sense at the time but experience shows something else. So now we are inspecting these bridges and we'll do regular inspections by civil engineers to make sure the bridges are safe.  Public safety is that important."

But that's not what she had and, even though she is a cabinet minister responsible for running a department, she couldn't stray from the confines of her programming.  As a result,she sounded incredible, insincere, or at the very least laughable.

She did much the same thing in an interview on Wednesday with Chris O'Neill-Yates on the collapse of a paper recycling program in St. John's for want of $100,000 a year in operating cash.  A request to the provincial recycling agency was turned down even though, as CBC had earlier reported, the Multi-materials Stewardship Board had a surplus of $2.0 million last year.

Johnson couldn't commit to reconsidering the policy of not funding operating grants, even though she is the environment minister and recycling is a key part of government's waste diversion policy.  Nope.  better to send it to the dump, supposedly, as Johnson had earlier said when confronted with the issue.
And when asked about possibly reviewing the mandate of the decade-old recycling organization, Johnson talked about the board's "wonderful" work and the need to give news media a briefing on what "wonderful" work they were doing.

Yes.

Wonderful work.

Even though, as a result of an old policy, a recycling project has collapsed and tons of recyclables are now going to the dump instead of to the recycler where they are supposed to go as part of the government's waste diversion, management and reduction policy.

It doesn't make sense.

But it was in the talking points.

And when you are a Johnny Cab Minister, the programmed talking points are all you've got.

-srbp-

A teapot for the probos...probisc...nose

A truly creative pitch for a truly creative product.

Pet rocks are child's play compared to persuading grown men and women to shove porcelain up their nostrils in a bid for better proboscal health.

-srbp-

The Darwin Awards of Crisis Communications

Health minister Ross Wiseman and how not to handle a crisis, a detailed commentary at Persuasion Business.

-srbp-

More on Tilley departure

cbc.ca/nl has an updated story on the sudden resignation yesterday of Eastern Health region's George Tilley.

Meanwhile at Persuasion Business, there's a piece on credibility titled "The Gorge of Eternal Peril" that discusses the Tilley announcement yesterday and another government interview for some of the public relations implications. The reasons behind the difference in performance are not important for the purpose of the commentary. Rather, the key idea is how different approaches affect or may affect key relationships for the organizations involved. The CBC piece gives some of the vacuous answers Eastern Health and provincial government representatives used yesterday.

There'll be more as the story unfolds.

-srbp-

Cameron inquiry to review health care PR

There's a brief post at Persuasion Business discussing two of the terms of reference for Madam Justice Margaret Cameron's inquiry into hormone receptor testing.

The first two posts on Persuasion Business include references to the hormone testing case and there'll be more to follow as the inquiry proceeds.

You can now keep track of the recent headlines at PB using the headline animator at the right. Just click on the animator to get the posts. You can also receive them by e-mail, for free, using the Feedburner subscription service. If you just like to click on your own, then you'll find a link in the Top O' The Pile section on the right hand menu of Sir Robert Bond Papers.

-srbp-

Persuasion Business Update

A discussion of reputation, titled "Actions speak louder than words", the latest post at Persuasion Business.

-srbp-

The Persuasion Business: Actions speak louder than words

If public relations is fundamentally about relationships, there are two words that are crucial to any relationship: reputation and credibility.

The two are linked, but let's take a look at reputation.

Reputation is an attitude held by an individual about another individual or an organization. An attitudes is set of beliefs, a sets of feelings. It will have positive and negative qualities: good versus bad, for example.

Attitudes are important because at some point they will drive or influence behaviour.

Behaviour is important because, at some point, the behaviour contained in our definitions of public relations is support.

If that sounds like your last undergraduate course in psychology or in political science, then don't be surprised. We are talking about human interactions - relationships between and among human groups.

While we all can have and likely have had short-term relationships, for most of us relationships tend to last over a long time. Some are constantly important, like say a relationship within a family. Others are intermittent, becoming important at some points in life while being in the background during other times. Inherently though, relationships tend to last in one form or another over a long time.

Relationships - like attitudes - are therefore likely to be dynamic. That is, they are likely to change over time based on any of a number of factors.

In another post, we'll discuss attitudes and behaviour in greater depth, but at this point let's stick with the catch-all term reputation and the connection to behaviour.

Attitudes are linked to behaviour in competitive situations, like the choice between one bottle of soft drink or another. Most of us are so familiar with these ideas that they seem obvious. But what about in a monopoly, like health care?

In the example used in the first post, we discussed at some length a current problem facing a health authority involving problems with important medical testing and public disclosure of information. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the health authority is a monopoly or part of a larger monopoly. If someone gets sick in eastern Newfoundland, and, like most of us, lacks the money to jet off to some other part of North America for care, it's not exactly like he or she can go to another health care provider to show displeasure in the way the testing issue was handled.

Absolutely correct.

But...

This is a democracy and health care is provided from public funds controlled by politicians who periodically have to go to the polls. Those politicians need votes and those votes are held by people who will need health care at some point. If you doubt the connection, consider the 1997 federal election results in Newfoundland and Labrador. As much as anything else they were driven by public concerns over access to health care.

Now health care is entirely a provincial responsibility in Canada, but that didn't stop voters from making health care a major issue. The election results, translated into provincial votes by the nervous political operatives sent a disconcerting message to the provincial government. A provincial health minister was replaced. New funding turned up. Government organized a forum to discuss the issue and propose solutions. It was all very public and very obvious.

The problem didn't go away, although there was a decline in the very vocal criticisms of the health care system. Flip ahead to January 1999. Brian Tobin went to the polls looking for a second majority and his campaign launched on the heady promise of economic prosperity from offshore oil and the Lower Churchill. Everyone else was talking health care. Major shift in campaign communications including the hasty production of new television commercials highlighting social programs, especially health care.

Fast forward to 2007, another election year. Questions about breast cancer screening led to the appointment of a public inquiry headed by no less an authority than the most senior justice of the Court of Appeal (in terms of years on the bench) , the highest court in the province. In an unrelated matter that cropped up at the same time, health officials were given a mere two weeks to re-evaluate almost 6,000 radiology reports when concerns were raised about the competence of a radiologist at a rural hospital.

To forestall unwelcome voter behaviour - i.e. voting for the Other Guys - the governing party took swift action.

Action.

Implicitly, the politicians involved knew that attitudes wouldn't be adjusted merely by words. It wasn't good enough to say that things were fixed. Well, they tried that initially, along with some actions that likely dealt with the entire matter as far as the health care authority was concerned.

The problem was that the important attitudes aren't those of the senior managers of the authority. They like themselves anyway. Ask any of them how they do their jobs and they will tell you what a marvellous job they do, working long hours for little pay.

The problem lay in the simple fact that the attitudes that were important were patient attitudes. Those attitudes shifted, as we noted before, once it appeared that the health authorities had held back important information. More action - very obvious action - was needed.

Actions speak louder than mere words, especially when it comes to influencing behaviour.

Next time we'll look at credibility and what happens in the gap between what you say and what you do.

- srbp -

The Persuasion Business: What the heck is public relations?

In 1999, I headed up the public affairs section of the Department of National Defence task force in Newfoundland and Labrador that would co-ordinate any military assistance to the provincial government in the event of problems caused by the supposed Y2K flaw in some computer programs.

We planned and trained nationally, regionally and finally at the provincial level. The provincial exercise took place on a weekend in the fall of 1999. All key staff members spent the weekend running an operations centre exactly as we would if needed.

The daily routine began with the commander's daily briefing, usually at seven o'clock in the morning. All department heads gave a summary of the previous day's activities, forecast what was coming and highlighted any issues that might need the commander's personal attention.

After each such briefing, known informally as morning prayers, the department heads usually grabbed a quick breakfast before beginning their shift. That first morning, a couple of my colleagues separately took me to one side to ask a simple question: "Is that what you do?"

"Yes", I replied, at first not quite sure what was coming next. I had given the commander an overview of attitudes in the key audiences we would be dealing with: the federal and provincial governments, views of key politicians at both levels of government, the news media and specific reporters, the public in affected areas, and internally among soldiers. Only after ensuring The Boss was thoroughly familiar with the situation did I give him what literally amounted to a 30 second discussion of my section's planned activities.

He didn't need more. In all the years I had worked for this individual, he had only wanted to focus on issues that might require his attention; he trusted the staff he had picked to run the show. The Boss wanted the lay of the land and any key ideas he'd need to put across. He wanted to have a good feel for specific people he would be dealing with. Everything else was ours to handle as department heads in co-operation with each other and with decision makers inside and outside our organization.

My whole briefing had taken only about 10 minutes.

As I looked at my colleagues, I slowly started to understand their question and their expressions of discovery. One of them, a professional with considerable experience throughout the Canadian Forces and the department including tours overseas on major operations, said he had never seen a briefing like it before from a public affairs officer.

He was used to public affairs (public relations) being all about dealing with news media. There were a certain number of media calls. We handled this many interviews. There is a news conference at such and such a time. The other stuff - the analysis - was a revelation to him.

His revelation was less a revelation to me as a reminder.

Most people don't understand what public relations is all about.

They think it is just about dealing with news media. They think of it as publicity. They think it is part of marketing.

It is all of that, on some level, but it is really so much more.

Public relations is the management function that plans, co-ordinates and executes communications efforts with people who are interested in what an organization is doing, in order to gain and maintain their support for the organization.

That's a definition I work with but there are others.

The Canadian Public Relations Society defines public relations as "the management function which evaluates public attitudes, identifies the policies and procedures of an individual or organization with the public interest, and plans and executes a program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance."

A lengthier definition holds that public relations "is the distinctive management function which:

• helps establish and maintain mutual lines of communication understanding, acceptance and co-operation between an organization and its publics;
• involves the management of problems and issues;
• defines and emphasizes the responsibility of management to serve the public interest;
• helps management to keep abreast of and to serve the public interest effectively, serving as an early warning system to help anticipate trends; and,
• uses research and sound, ethical communications as its practical tools."

Take either definition and you have a good idea of what a public relations professional does.

One of the most important common features of each of those definition is the word "management".

With only a small amount of preparation, anybody can handle media telephone inquiries. In many organizations, including public relations departments in any company or government office, the business of talking a telephone call, arranging an interview, sending out information or even issuing a news release or holding a press conference can be handled by the literally thousands of competent administrative people. Heck, software programs these days come with template "press" releases and there's even a for dummies book on public relations.

The real challenging in public relations is managing. It is about planning, co-ordinating, leading, organizing and budgeting. It is about deciding and making the right decision inevitably takes training coupled with experience and judgement. Not everyone can do that.

One could say that a public relations practitioner helps decide who says what to whom, where, when, why and how.

If you take a closer look at those definitions a few simple ideas leap out.

First, communication is a two-way street. It involves sending a message and receiving one. The sending bit is perhaps the easiest of all. Most people figure that part out just by the action involved in sending out a news release.

But receiving? There is always feedback from people interested in what an organization is doing. Sometimes that feedback is a clue to something elsewhere in the organization that needs fixing. Sometimes that feedback isn't what the senior managers don't want to hear, but it is very important that they do. That's where public relations comes in.

Second - and related to that feedback thing - public relations often involves change in some way. Sometimes an organization has to communicate about change, like closing a business. Sometimes, the change comes as feedback from disgruntled employees or voters.

Third, public relations connects an organization with the public interest. That isn't just the interest of the public as a politician or public servant might look at it. Sometimes it is public interest in the sense of the greater good, but public interest may mean the benefit of a particular group.

Think about a health care administration. Its core business is providing health care needed by the people within its geographical area. Their interest - as a public - is getting the care they need when they need it. Seems obvious, right? Well, what happens when that care isn't what they want or need or, in some instances, what can actually be delivered within the budget provided by a public system?

Interests may clash, but the effective management of communication is supposed to help resolve those sorts of conflicts. Public relations involves establishing and maintaining "mutual lines of communication, understanding, acceptance and co-operation." That health administration needs to give people realistic information about its programs. its needs to know if its services are being received and when there might be a budget issue, people may need to understand why some programs are expanding while others, like say their local clinic, is having its hours cut or is being closed.

In a more concrete example, look at the recent controversy involving one health authority and breast cancer screening. Aside from the problem with faulty testing - bad enough as it is - cancer patients and their families were likely most concerned to know how big the problem was. Did it involve me or my wife or mother? The next most important thing to know was what was being done about it. How is the health authority dealing with the problem and doing what it is supposed to do: deliver the best possible care?

take it from a slightly different angle and you can see this idea of public relations as well. Those patients are ultimately responsible for their own care and they can't make proper decisions if they don't have all the information. They depend on the relationship they have not just with the health professionals but with the entire organization to help them deal with their illness. Holding back vital information erodes the relationship between the care givers and the people needing care.

On a wider level, though, what seemed like a small decision to deal with a handful of patients, ultimately affected a bunch of others. People who would never even think about breast cancer screening personally had to wonder what other tests for other diseases might be buggered up. Then comes the real acid for the relationship: what else haven't they been told.

Once the story hit news media, the problem became not just in the relationship between the health authority and its patients (and their lawyers), it became a gigantic problem in the relationship between those patients, as voters, and the politicians who run the whole government. Patients discovered that three successive health ministers had been briefed on the whole thing - including withholding some information the non-disclosure apparently - and did...nothing.

In the whole business of dealing with the damage, another entirely separate issue was dragged in. At a news conference to announce an inquiry into the entire breast cancer business, someone decided to do two things. First he or she decided to delay the news conference. Reporters coming together at lunch hour for one announcement were left cooling their heels for no obvious reason.

Second, that same person decided to stick the head of the local health authority in front of a microphone to announce that a radiologist had been suspended because of possible problems with his diagnostic ability. Remember the bit about other tests? Initial reports noted that radiology involves mammograms. As anyone over the age of 18 likely knows, are tests to screen for, you guessed it, breast cancer. Imagine the reaction.

Even though this radiologist had not performed mammograms - information correctly reported in subsequent days - the decision to announce this separate issue in the way it was announced linked one crisis directly to another issue and thereby magnified the whole thing to another level.

Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow, indeed. Sometimes they fall on your head. Sometimes people wind up standing under a gigantic tree as it crashes from cuts they made to it.

Lots of information was handed out in this case, both initially and subsequently, but some crucial information - crucial as the patients saw it - was held back. The decision to hold that information back was taken by the senior-most levels of health care management and may have been done for what they took to be good corporate reasons. The communications people may well have advised a wider disclosure but as subsequent reports said, the information was held back based on legal advice.

Now in due course, we'll talk about the lawyer-public relations challenge, but think about that whole issue from a pure public relations perspective and you'll see the importance of effective public relations management. If you want people to support you, they have to know what you are doing. If you don't tell them, they can't know and, almost inevitably, they won't be overly supportive of what you are trying to do.

Get caught holding back or being thought of as holding back and support crumbles. Confidence erodes and, as the case turned out, the bosses of the bosses who held decided to hold back the information get more than a little annoyed or - when they join in the bad decisions - get caught up in a maelstrom of public concern.

No one likes unhappy people - disgruntled publics - especially politicians. As the case of breast cancer screening shows, badly handled public relations decisions - not necessarily made with the advice of public relations practitioners, by the way - can make a bad situation much worse. in fact, take a look at what happened compared to say the CPRS definition of public relations. How many of those key ideas got trashed?

When you get right down to it, public relations is essentially about relationships. So, against that background, next time we'll look at some simple ideas that underpin effective relationships, I mean, effective public relations:

Reputation and credibility.

- srbp -