Business, Politics & the Do's & Dont's of Crisis Management

This is a business blog so while there frequently seems to be something interesting happening in politics, as a general rule, I try to stay away because one's views are personal or subjective in nature & rightly so with two exceptions. For me, those exceptions are when something in the political sphere will have profound implications for the business world & how we navigate it or when something happens that is significantly instructive because while not often thought of in that context, politics is, after all,  a business. While there are areas of commonality for certain, there are also areas that simply intersect...& then there are examples of both. One such example can be found in the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings for [now] Justice Kavanaugh. His were not your typical confirmation hearings in a lot of ways & I am not about to itemize them. However, now that the dust has settled & the temperature has cooled down, it is easy to see that in them, these hearings also reflected a lot of issues commonly found in the business world. One of them is an essential skill for both business & politics: crisis management. Success in this arena or lack thereof can have long-ranging & profound consequences so giving it due respect is essential.

It's a well-known fact that in order to resolve any problem, it first has to be recognized & identified which is a good start when reviewing the 4 essential rules for any kind of successful crisis management Actually, net result aside, overlooking these four rules can perhaps explain why the hearings were such a disaster.

The 4 rules:

1. Identify-Recognize the crisis is a crisis

2.  Inform-Get out as much information as possible as soon as you can, particularly negative information

3. Candor & Transparency-Avoid saying anything that has to be withdrawn

4.  Do Not Hide/Avoid doing anything that looks like a cover-up 

Somehow, someway the Senators who ran these hearings managed to do their level best to touch on all four by doing precisely EVERYTHING you should not do when faced with a crisis! "Crisis, crisis...what crisis," they said. Down went rule #1. Information about Kavanaugh AND Ford...Mmmm "is that important; what people don't know won't hurt us...right?" Down went rule #2.  As for rules #3  & #4, itemizing how they messed up would be like beating a dead horse so I will just provide one example for each. Among the many things, the GOP both on the committee & off that had to be withdrawn was asserting that Ford couldn't be telling the truth because she was the only one with such accusations; surely if there was any truth to them there would be other women complaining...THEN came the other women. Then there seemed to be a sudden case of party amnesia because no one could remember saying anything like that. Jewish grandmothers all over the world have a word to summarize this occurrence: "Oy!" Suddenly, rule #3-broken  Finally, not only was a lot of this information known by others on the committee but it was an open secret that they were hiding other information and the inquiry into the matter was openly, consciously & severely crippled. There went rule#4. These hearing could have been written up with the title how to MISHANDLE a crisis. 

Now it is completely unknowable to think that if Kavanaugh had more control over the situation, things would have been handled better. Certainly, there were more mistakes to be made. To my mind, not only was the whole saga a study in what NOT to do, when faced with a business crisis, but the net effect will almost certainly follow him throughout his time on the court. Every one of his decisions is now destined to have an invisible asterisk 0f one sort or another attached to them which will fairly or unfairly, reflect an ongoing stain on his work and will enable every party in his court to legitimately question whether or not they have been treated fairly, something injurious to all. Ironically, it's an outcome with no justice.