I continue to be mystified by people who fail to understand the role image plays in our culture, and particularly where public figures and politics are involved. The unfortunate truth is that much of the time the truth is less important than the impression given by images or sound bites. It would be comforting to dismiss these facts as nothing more than a by-product of our media-saturated age, but even a casual review of American history will confirm that this has pretty much always been the case, at least where public figures are involved. Which makes the current flap in Gary, Indiana that much more baffling…
Regular readers of this space will recall a post from last summer where I commented on the cost savings available to the Chicago Police Department if they were to adopt hybrids or crossover vehicles instead of full-size SUV units. No one is likely to dispute the advantages of 4 wheel drive vehicles when traveling off-road or in deep snow, but the police SUVs were intended for ordinary urban patrol duties, and the primary argument in their favor was visibility (the SUV units are both easier to see in traffic and easier to see out of for the officers operating one). However the situation in Gary does not involve a city vehicle at all…
A story being reported in the South Bend Tribune tells the story of Gary Mayor Rudy Clay and his spirited defense of the city’s purchase of a new Hummer H3 for his personal use. The mayor has come under criticism for this purchase from both local and state sources given that the city is currently operating under a $36 million deficit and the Hummer is perceived as both expensive and wasteful to operate. As a political choice it is particularly obtuse, especially if (as several local sources have claimed) the Hummer replaces a similar vehicle purchased just two years ago…
Now, speaking as a native of Los Angeles, where city and county budgets are frequently larger than the budget of entire states (Los Angeles County, for example, has roughly the same population as the entire state of Michigan), I have to say that neither the deficit or the $30,000 price tag of the H3 look all that impressive. I can clearly remember the scandal that hit Los Angeles a few years ago when it was revealed that the President of the school district was spending $200,000 per year on his chauffer’s salary, and another $50,000 or so on his personal vehicle, in a time when that would have paid the salaries of 8 or 9 full-time teachers and the teacher’s union had just been asked to take a 5% pay cut in order to deal with a budget crisis…
Things are different in Gary, however. Unaccustomed to the idea of million-dollar perks for politicians (and $30 million movie contracts), the good people of Gary appear to be a bit concerned by their mayor spending funds the city does not have on his personal transportation, and the defensive comments (that it was $20,000 cheaper than a new Expedition would have been, and that the mayor saved $5,000 on the Hummer) do not appear to have helped. The question, at least from where I’m sitting, is why any of this would come as a surprise. The country is in the grips of the worst recession in a generation, the city of Gary is in dire financial straits, people are facing the loss of their jobs, their homes, and their hopes, and the mayor is telling them that he is entitled to a nice new car…
Under the circumstances, I can only hope that Mayor Clay has a backup career choice in mind, because if this is his idea of deft political maneuvering, I have to question how long he can survive in his current occupation…
Showing posts with label Image. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Image. Show all posts
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Sometimes You’re the Windshield…
It’s worth pointing out that sometimes, there’s just not much you can do about the problems your business is going to encounter. Sometimes, there’s just going to be a stoned screech owl nesting in your Christmas tree, or some state law that hasn’t been enforced since 1793 that outlaws your new business operation from accepting any money for your services, or some evil genius who has just inserted a “wizard” subroutine into some Microsoft product that will render your entire industry obsolete. And sometimes, it’s going to be turkey vultures…
A story being reported this week in the a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tells the story of the Orthopedic Hospital of Wisconsin, which has had the unusual experience of having at least three nesting pairs of turkey vultures take up residence on the ledges and windowsills of the building. It’s bad enough to drive up to a hospital in which you are going to receive treatment and see a flock of vultures circling overhead, but apparently some of the patients have been complaining about waking up in the morning (or worse yet, after surgery) and finding a vulture perched on their windowsill…
Now, it’s important to realize that vultures are not known to pose any threat to human life whatsoever; they only eat things that are already dead, and have never been known to even approach a live human. Turkey vultures don’t even carry any forms of disease that could be transferred to a human host; despite their rather demonic appearance (red, wrinkled bald heads, black feathers, impressive beaks and talons, and beady red eyes) these birds could not possibly harm anyone at the hospital. It’s also worth noting that it’s an orthopedic hospital; most of the people there are going to be receiving treatments that have an almost zero chance of a fatal outcome. Still and all, there are probably going to be those people who will panic and run home upon seeing one of these birds. Or at least take their business somewhere else…
In the study of Institutional Failure, which is a specialty under the discipline of Strategic Management, all negative events that can impact your business are considered to have a greater or lesser degree of predictability; that is, some things (like a competitor inventing an alternative product or just reverse-engineering yours) are fairly predictable, while others (like a scientific breakthrough that eliminates your entire industry) are rather less so. Exactly how one goes about determining how likely a specific event is to happen makes up a large part of the studies I am starting on, and I won’t weary the reader with the details here. I’ll just note that a major factor in the survival of any business is how well you can anticipate the threats to your business – and which ones you develop plans to deal with…
Some events are so unlikely as to be not worth bothering about; events planned for Los Angeles in August are not going to be snowed out, for example, nor is your new aircraft design likely to be endangered by an unprecedented marine sponge migration. There have been any number of “Winter Festival” events that have been spoiled by unusually warm (or, at least, snow-free) winters over the years, however, and the second B-1 bomber prototype was destroyed by a flock of snow geese making a completely unprecedented migratory flight in the middle of the summer, to take only the obvious example. There is also the case of a well-know lawnmower company that almost went under because they attempted to introduce a line of snow blowers during a run of unusually warm winters...
In my working life as a manager and a management consultant I have done a lot of strategic planning, and I am always amazed by how many people spend their time and effort worrying about the trivial, the bizarre, and the completely unlikely, while losing track of things that can actually do them in. If your hospital provides the best care available for orthopedic patients, people are going to come there no matter what is perching on the windowsills, and if it is possible for bird strikes to disable your airplane, you must take into account that sooner or later, someone is going to fly it into a flock of birds. But sitting around and whining about things is not going to help much with either problem. Just keep in mind that in business, as in any other aspect of life, some days you’re the windshield, and some days, you’re the bug…
A story being reported this week in the a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel tells the story of the Orthopedic Hospital of Wisconsin, which has had the unusual experience of having at least three nesting pairs of turkey vultures take up residence on the ledges and windowsills of the building. It’s bad enough to drive up to a hospital in which you are going to receive treatment and see a flock of vultures circling overhead, but apparently some of the patients have been complaining about waking up in the morning (or worse yet, after surgery) and finding a vulture perched on their windowsill…
Now, it’s important to realize that vultures are not known to pose any threat to human life whatsoever; they only eat things that are already dead, and have never been known to even approach a live human. Turkey vultures don’t even carry any forms of disease that could be transferred to a human host; despite their rather demonic appearance (red, wrinkled bald heads, black feathers, impressive beaks and talons, and beady red eyes) these birds could not possibly harm anyone at the hospital. It’s also worth noting that it’s an orthopedic hospital; most of the people there are going to be receiving treatments that have an almost zero chance of a fatal outcome. Still and all, there are probably going to be those people who will panic and run home upon seeing one of these birds. Or at least take their business somewhere else…
In the study of Institutional Failure, which is a specialty under the discipline of Strategic Management, all negative events that can impact your business are considered to have a greater or lesser degree of predictability; that is, some things (like a competitor inventing an alternative product or just reverse-engineering yours) are fairly predictable, while others (like a scientific breakthrough that eliminates your entire industry) are rather less so. Exactly how one goes about determining how likely a specific event is to happen makes up a large part of the studies I am starting on, and I won’t weary the reader with the details here. I’ll just note that a major factor in the survival of any business is how well you can anticipate the threats to your business – and which ones you develop plans to deal with…
Some events are so unlikely as to be not worth bothering about; events planned for Los Angeles in August are not going to be snowed out, for example, nor is your new aircraft design likely to be endangered by an unprecedented marine sponge migration. There have been any number of “Winter Festival” events that have been spoiled by unusually warm (or, at least, snow-free) winters over the years, however, and the second B-1 bomber prototype was destroyed by a flock of snow geese making a completely unprecedented migratory flight in the middle of the summer, to take only the obvious example. There is also the case of a well-know lawnmower company that almost went under because they attempted to introduce a line of snow blowers during a run of unusually warm winters...
In my working life as a manager and a management consultant I have done a lot of strategic planning, and I am always amazed by how many people spend their time and effort worrying about the trivial, the bizarre, and the completely unlikely, while losing track of things that can actually do them in. If your hospital provides the best care available for orthopedic patients, people are going to come there no matter what is perching on the windowsills, and if it is possible for bird strikes to disable your airplane, you must take into account that sooner or later, someone is going to fly it into a flock of birds. But sitting around and whining about things is not going to help much with either problem. Just keep in mind that in business, as in any other aspect of life, some days you’re the windshield, and some days, you’re the bug…
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Image
Two different news stories hit the business section today that I think illustrate just how hard it is to maintain corporate image today, especially when you live in a country in which just about everyone seems to be offended by just about everything. I thought they made a nice contrast, in that they’re completely different problems that lead to similar headaches for management.
The first one regards the ongoing controversy over crime on cruise ships. There are hearings going on this week before Congress (here’s the USA Today story about them) concerning the growing problem of crime on cruise ships. People who have been victims of various crimes are demanding that our government pass laws that will force the cruise companies to prevent these crimes, a process complicated by the fact that most cruise ships operating from the United States are flagged under other countries’ flags in order to avoid various obscure US laws that would prevent them from operating. More to the point, most (if not all) of the crimes under discussion occurred when the ships were in International waters, where US law does not apply in the first place.
Now, I don’t want to understate the seriousness of these offenses, or downplay the rights of customers to enjoy safe vacation travel. Certainly, if you were robbed or assaulted on an airplane or a train you would demand that the government do something about it, no matter where the conveyance happened to be at the time of the incident. The point I am driving at here is that even if every one of the claims made by the victims’ rights groups are valid, there is still an instance of less than 0.01% over the whole of cruise ship passengers (as reported by the Los Angeles Times this date). Fewer than one passenger in 10,000 is reporting any crime. Not a very high instance, compared to the crime statistics from any major city, for example.
Yet there are hearings before Congress, headlines in the paper, stories on the Internet and on television news programs, web sites, advocate groups, and a lot more, all going on as if your chances of being robbed, raped or murdered onboard a cruise ship were extremely high – or at least better than 1 in 10,000, anyway. It emphasizes just how hard it is to maintain your image (or even your industry’s image) in a world where ANY event will be over the Internet in seconds, and before Congress a few days later. The fact that so few people trust corporate leadership any longer – that most readers and viewers will expect the cruise companies to downplay and underreport these incidents – just makes it that much worse.
Also in today’s paper is another article about the fallout from CKE’s latest television commercials, advertising the patty melt sandwich available at Carl’s Jr. and Hardees locations around the country. The commercials featured two young men performing a rap song about ”flat buns” in a high school classroom, while their teacher (a young woman) performed a suggestive and not entirely unobscene dance on top of her desk. These commercials were, of course, immediately flamed by teachers’ unions and parent groups all over the country, and eventually had to be edited to remove the “teacher” from them.
Keep in mind that there is nothing about this commercial that violates any state or Federal anti-obscenity laws; there’s nothing going on that can’t be shown on television, or that viewers of all ages can’t see somewhere else on TV. Keep in mind also that the primary target demographic for these ads is Males, 18-36, for whom the idea of an attractive young woman doing something suggestive is certainly not inappropriate, or at least, not unusual. The rap song itself bears a passing similarity to a song that received heavy rotation on rock and rap radio stations just a few years ago, and it should be noted that there was no outcry over the original whatsoever.
In this writer’s opinion you’d almost have to be a humorless idiot to take offense at a hamburger commercial in the first place, let alone one as harmless as this one. It’s quite obvious that the company did not intend to insult, demean or denigrate anyone, only to sell a few specialty sandwiches. No one could possibly consider this a policy statement by the company or a political or social statement intended to influence the viewers. Yet all over the country, people are reacting as if they are doing something criminal.
Of course, CKE brought this on themselves, while the various cruise companies are simply being plagued by opportunistic crimes, a problem that affects nearly all companies that deal with the public. Still, it does illustrate how difficult it is to build a good corporate image – and how little it takes to destroy one…
The first one regards the ongoing controversy over crime on cruise ships. There are hearings going on this week before Congress (here’s the USA Today story about them) concerning the growing problem of crime on cruise ships. People who have been victims of various crimes are demanding that our government pass laws that will force the cruise companies to prevent these crimes, a process complicated by the fact that most cruise ships operating from the United States are flagged under other countries’ flags in order to avoid various obscure US laws that would prevent them from operating. More to the point, most (if not all) of the crimes under discussion occurred when the ships were in International waters, where US law does not apply in the first place.
Now, I don’t want to understate the seriousness of these offenses, or downplay the rights of customers to enjoy safe vacation travel. Certainly, if you were robbed or assaulted on an airplane or a train you would demand that the government do something about it, no matter where the conveyance happened to be at the time of the incident. The point I am driving at here is that even if every one of the claims made by the victims’ rights groups are valid, there is still an instance of less than 0.01% over the whole of cruise ship passengers (as reported by the Los Angeles Times this date). Fewer than one passenger in 10,000 is reporting any crime. Not a very high instance, compared to the crime statistics from any major city, for example.
Yet there are hearings before Congress, headlines in the paper, stories on the Internet and on television news programs, web sites, advocate groups, and a lot more, all going on as if your chances of being robbed, raped or murdered onboard a cruise ship were extremely high – or at least better than 1 in 10,000, anyway. It emphasizes just how hard it is to maintain your image (or even your industry’s image) in a world where ANY event will be over the Internet in seconds, and before Congress a few days later. The fact that so few people trust corporate leadership any longer – that most readers and viewers will expect the cruise companies to downplay and underreport these incidents – just makes it that much worse.
Also in today’s paper is another article about the fallout from CKE’s latest television commercials, advertising the patty melt sandwich available at Carl’s Jr. and Hardees locations around the country. The commercials featured two young men performing a rap song about ”flat buns” in a high school classroom, while their teacher (a young woman) performed a suggestive and not entirely unobscene dance on top of her desk. These commercials were, of course, immediately flamed by teachers’ unions and parent groups all over the country, and eventually had to be edited to remove the “teacher” from them.
Keep in mind that there is nothing about this commercial that violates any state or Federal anti-obscenity laws; there’s nothing going on that can’t be shown on television, or that viewers of all ages can’t see somewhere else on TV. Keep in mind also that the primary target demographic for these ads is Males, 18-36, for whom the idea of an attractive young woman doing something suggestive is certainly not inappropriate, or at least, not unusual. The rap song itself bears a passing similarity to a song that received heavy rotation on rock and rap radio stations just a few years ago, and it should be noted that there was no outcry over the original whatsoever.
In this writer’s opinion you’d almost have to be a humorless idiot to take offense at a hamburger commercial in the first place, let alone one as harmless as this one. It’s quite obvious that the company did not intend to insult, demean or denigrate anyone, only to sell a few specialty sandwiches. No one could possibly consider this a policy statement by the company or a political or social statement intended to influence the viewers. Yet all over the country, people are reacting as if they are doing something criminal.
Of course, CKE brought this on themselves, while the various cruise companies are simply being plagued by opportunistic crimes, a problem that affects nearly all companies that deal with the public. Still, it does illustrate how difficult it is to build a good corporate image – and how little it takes to destroy one…
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