Categories
Communication Crisis Communication LinkedIn

An Elementary Primer for Your Crisis Communication Efforts

The article was first published on LinkedIn here.

If you accept on the day prior to embarking on your entrepreneurial journey that you will be facing  a range of crisis along the journey, tiding over which would lead you to success, you would be creating a healthy foundation for an effective response to any future crisis.

The acceptance happens at the subconscious level. But it still is a communication – with your own self. Believe it or not, that is the first crisis communication exercise that you undertake.

That, luckily, is also the first lesson in crisis communication: ANTICIPATION of crisis and being proactive about it is the absolute key towards executing a successful – read ‘easy to understand and effective’ – crisis communication.

The real advantage lies not only in the fact that you would be better prepared to address the crisis situation but also in the possibility that you – by means of pre-empting it – might even be able to prevent the crisis from raising its head in the first place. That would be a magnificent example of crisis management by means of having an early crisis communication within the core team of any organisation.

That core team may or may not have communication experts. If not, then it is imperative to make sure that the designated communication team members – or at least the communication leadership – is made a part of all the (anticipatory) crisis management team meetings.

A complete involvement in and UNDERSTANDING of the issue and the approach towards managing the crisis – whether anticipated or existing  – would allow the communication team to be better equipped while DEVISING the crisis communication message, while also TRAINING better the eventual external or public/partners facing spokespersons.

From there on, it is a matter of ESTABLISHING systems for notifying the message (‘communication’) to the desired stakeholders – and for MONITORING the effectiveness of the notifications. The monitoring would involve gauging responses to the communication and, after interpreting the responses, making adjustments to both the message and the delivery methods and modes for greater efficacy of crisis communication.

Sometimes, the crisis does not blow up into something massive. It is always beneficial to, therefore, study the nature of the crisis carefully, as it unfolds. That period, when things are in a flux, is generally called ‘The Critical Hour’. The ‘hour’ demands that the crisis communication team does not go overboard with their messages – but develop and release, what is called, ‘holding statements’.

The beautiful thing about holding statements is that they can be devised right at the first (‘anticipation’) stage itself. Further, they are also common sense statements. Here are a couple of examples:

“The situation is evolving, and we will keep everyone updated via our website and social media networks as we receive more information.”

“We are both investigating the incident and cooperating with the authorities.”

Not too difficult, eh? And yet, so many – just so many – organizations don’t do even this bit.

Talking of simple things, well, it goes without saying that holding statements have a life. A minute longer than the ideal (decided, unfortunately, entirely by the recipients) can open up another battlefront for the team – that of public ire about the team’s ‘professionalism’ etc.

Unlike the holding statements, actual crisis communication cannot be developed in advance. No one can ever predict completely what turn a crisis might take the next hour. Therefore it is mandatory for the entire crisis management team to be at the top of the awareness about the developing crisis situation and keep monitoring, enhancing crisis communication efforts.

Unless absolutely impossible (undesirable), transparency and continuous notifications is the key. There haven’t been too many instances in the history of the human race of people complaining of too much communication about a developing crisis.

Finally, all of the above would be futile if the team doesn’t learn from the crisis – and its management. POST-CRISIS ANALYSIS would reveal that there is no such thing as ‘it won’t happen to me’ or ‘I’ve got everything covered’. No, you can’t have everything covered at all times, and yes, it could happen to you.

The key takeaways of the analysis should be the performance of the crisis communication strategy both from the concept and execution aspect, and the performance of the crisis management team. A good appraisal should be good for an immediate reward for the personnel. A bad one should work as a good lesson in crisis communication management.

Categories
Huffington Post (UK) Journalism World Diary

Post Brexit, India Can Be UK’s America To The East

As in personal life, the need for an all-weather friend in the global polity can never be overstated in the scenario of one having to restart a journey away from the comfort zone – irrespective of the reasons behind the loss of the cosy corner.

The United Kingdom has always had the United States for every such possibility. But in the ever-changing global order, and amid diminishing global power, the UK – especially the post-Brexit UK – could do well to more such friends. Luckily, there is one significant one in the east – India, the jewel in the crown of the erstwhile British Raj.

As per a report released by UK’s Department for International Trade on August 30, the US remained the biggest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the 2015/16 financial year with 570 projects; followed by China with 156 projects.

India, significantly, retained its position as the third largest investor in Britain with 140 projects – out of a total of 2,213 projects in investments by a record 79 countries.

Simultaneously, UK is the largest G20 investor into India, contributing around 8% of India’s FDI.

Mr. Liam Fox, UK’s International Trade Secretary, on his visit to New Delhi and Mumbai, India’s political and financial capitals, on August 30 said that Bilateral relationship between the UK and India has the potential to become a stronger partnership, particularly in trade and investment.

Speaking during his first visit to India since taking up his role, Mr. Fox said:

I wanted to come here early in my time as Secretary of State for International Trade to show how important the new government views our trade partnership with India. This partnership lies at the very heart of the strategic relationship between our two nations, a relationship that has never been more important than it is today.

Mr. Fox, apart from meeting leaders of India’s leading industry bodies like the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), also attended the soft launch of the India-UK TECH Summit. The UK is the country partner for the TECH Summit which showcases British expertise in innovation, technology, and skills to Indian businesses.

Importantly, the visit also served as a preparation for his visit to India later this year to attend the Joint Economic and Trade Committee (JETCO). Addressing the CII, he further said:

“The India-UK Tech Summit in November will be a further celebration of this partnership, where sector experts ranging from smart cities, healthcare, agri-tech and others will come together to boost trade, R&D as well as academic ties between the UK and India.”

With his visit, where he also met India’s Minister for Finance, Mr. Arun Jaitley, there is a renewed enthusiasm about the proposal for an India-U.K. Free Trade Agreement (FTA).

The UK currently has High Commission offices in New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and trade Offices in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. The Department for International Development (DfID) works with the state governments of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

Aiding the trade bodies is the British Council, which has offices and libraries in eleven cities stretching from Thiruvananthapuram in the south of India to Chandigarh in the north and Ahmedabad in the west to Kolkata in the east.

The thrust on India is not misplaced. India is currently the third largest economy in the world (based on purchasing power parity) and is expected to become the second largest by 2050 when the economy would be 30 times the current size.

A British Council report late in 2015 says, “As its economy is transformed, its political, military and cultural power is also likely to increase, elevating India to a 21st Century superpower”.

Former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and current Conservative government minister Mr. Jim O’Neill, the British economist who had coined the acronym BRICS, has often said that “India will soon be ‘one of the biggest influences on the world’. It is looking for new partners in the global race. This represents a great opportunity for the UK“.

The opportunity would, however, need to be actively tapped by the UK (and indeed by India). The British Council report advises the UK to “continue to up its game if it is to take advantage of India’s rise”.

Currently, Indians account for more than half of UK’s total 93,935 skilled work visas granted, much ahead of the US, which accounted for around 11 percent.

As per a BBC report on the ‘India UK Links’, Indian companies are playing an increasingly important role in the UK economy. “Tata Group, for example, is one of the UK’s largest manufacturing employers, with some 65,000 employees in the UK.”

Nearly 1.5 million citizens of Indian origin make up the UK population, making it the largest ethnic minority group in the UK and the seventh greatest Indian diaspora in the world.

Half a million Indians tourists visit the UK every year, while nearly the same (400,000) Britons visit India.

Age-old overlap of culture, history, and language with India already give the UK a reliable foundation upon which future relations between the two nations can be permanently deepened. India’s burgeoning English-speaking middles class offers the most friendly opening for the UK to become India’s partner of choice for diplomatic, trade, cultural, and education relations. Before the Indian story is courted by other nations, those factors can add to the opportunity for the UK to make inroads into India’s civil society, research, education, and the creative sector.

Most importantly, quite like the US, the Indo-UK partnership can rest assured on the very concrete edifice of both being thriving, liberal, and multi-cultural democracies. That means that the relationship cannot be marred by the whims and fancies of a closed system like, for example, that of China.

The need is for an open heart and active feet.

Categories
Notepad Writing

Ahmedabad’s Missing Pixels

The city falls short on offering the principal elements that help make the image of a city.

Most outstation professionals who make aapnu Amdavad their temporary home inevitably end up remarking about our city’s decent larger physical infrastructure and the resulting reasonable quality of life. But do they carry back with them any everlasting postcard image of the city?

Alas, the respondents to the query would struggle to veer their answer towards the affirmative.

The reason behind the rather surprising contradiction between the experience and the memory could best be found in the acclaimed 1960 book called Image of the City by Kevin Andrew Lynch (1918-1984), an American urban planner and author.

Following a five-year-long study in three American cities (Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles), Kevin proposed that there are five basic elements which people use to construct their impression – or ‘mental map’, as he put it – of a city:

Pathways (streets, footpaths, service lanes etc); Edges (boundaries to travel – such as shorelines, riverfronts, buildings etc); Districts (really large and separately identified sections of a city – for example, CG Road); Nodes (intersections, focal points, entry and exit points); and Landmarks.

Does Ahmedabad score over other metro cities of India – never mind the global destinations – in any of the above?

Edges:

Well, the good news is that the rapidly evolving Sabarmati Riverfront does provide our beloved city a distinct edge over most urban centers. It does promise to become one of the postcard identities of Ahmedabad, especially if the proposed 150m tall Charkha Wheel, a giant observation wheel thrice the size of the London Eye, is erected at the Riverfront site. At $268 million, it would be the costliest of the five observation wheels of the world.

But most part of it is for the future. In the current form, it does not quite spell magic on travel and tourism sites and brochures – and not many outside Ahmedabad (or Gujarat, perhaps) know about it. Maybe because in its present state, it is still not quite, for instance, Mumbai’s Queen Necklace (Marine Drive), which offers everything from the mesmerizing night lights, a soothing early morning feel of a beachside, to everything in between.

There’s, of course, Kankaria Lakefront, an old favourite of visiting families, especially with young children. But it is not too different or better than, say, a Hussain Sagar lake of Hyderabad, the Bada Taalab of Bhopal.

Landmarks:

There are no landmarks that can really adorn a high-quality tourism brochure. Even the very significant and venerable Gandhi Ashram is about faith, not really impactful optics. There are no India Gates or Gateways of India, No Buddha statue in Hussain Sagar lake, No Vidhan Soudha (building) or the Bangalore Palace. The Ahmedabad canvas just doesn’t have any remarkable background picture.

Nodes:

The void extends to other spheres too. Ours is a city with almost no instantly identifiable and likeable nodes. We don’t have Mumbai’s CST and Churchgate Stations or anything like the many popular metro stations of New Delhi for daily commuters.

All the city crossroads (chaar-rastas) are a mess of bad urban planning and even worse traffic (and human) sense. For instance, the immensely vital Thaltej Crossroad (above the underbridge) in its current form is not only uninspiring to look at but also a prime invitation for daily mishaps.

And to think of it, nodes are meant to work booth as an easily identifiable place to plan or navigate the further your journey – while also giving you time to take a breath and let the image in. Can you think of any such place in Ahmedabad?

Pathways:

Ahmedabad – in general – does have slightly better and wider main roads than most Indian cities. But do they really stand out for a memorable experience? Especially when the experience is more about the traffic. Where is the eye-popping splendour of a Rajpath in New Delhi, the spectacle of Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli Sea Link, the global glitz and youthful energy of a Brigade Road of a Bengaluru, to name just a couple? CG Road, though a national pioneer of sorts for planning in its initial days and still a bright spot of the city, has seen better days, while SG Road continues to struggle to have a definite character.

Districts:

Corporate Road at Prahlad Nagar promised to be the business card of the new Ahmedabad. Alas, it has not developed into a district, like, for instance, a Connaught Place or a Nehru Place of New Delhi, Mumbai’s Nariman Point, the Central Business District of Bengaluru, or HITEC City of Hyderabad. Everything in Ahmedabad is still a tiny sprinkle of the new-age amidst the largely small town setting.

There’s nothing exceptional and exclusive for the raw professional MNC energy and slick facilities of a new world business district.

In other words, we can’t really blame a non-Amdavadi if he or she doesn’t have a great mental image of our city, can we?

The idea is not to put down the city that we love so much. The idea is to prod – or perhaps even provoke – the city fathers and the citizens alike to go for that next leap. Ahmedabad is wonderful canvas, with an encouraging initial picture. Let’s join hands to add the missing pixels to it – towards creating a really memorable image of the city.

Categories
Change Communication Communication LinkedIn

How Good are You at Communicating Change?

The article was first published here.

In another reflection of changing times in India, a lawmaker of the current Indian government has put emphasis on something that is generally discussed at progressive corporate organisations – change communication.

Speaking at the valedictory function of Mid Career Training Programme for Senior Indian Information Service officers (IIS) at Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, India’s Minister of Information & Broadcasting, Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Shri M Venkaiah Naidu said that the Narendra Modi government places ‘communication as a critical cog in the wheel of change‘.

He said three very interesting things at the function:

“To bring about a change always creates a dissonance in the governance process.”

“The (current federal) government in the past two years has embarked on a program of communication innovation-adopting methods, seeking spaces to ensure last mile connectivity to the people.”

“The objective is to plug the gaps in the government’s communication approach in areas of content design, social marketing, branding, impact assessment and weaving technologies in the digital age.”

This is a refreshingly different approach from a government in India, after decades of top-down monologue-oriented official communiqués. Those, of course, work(ed) brilliantly in a bureaucracy led system that cherishes status quo. But rarely, if ever, in heralding a change.

How well the current administration is able to walk the talk of a comprehensive communication roadmap remains to be seen. But going by – probably the best in the world – responses on Twitter by, for example, India’s Minister for External Affairs, Smt. Sushma Swaraj, and Minister for Railways, Shri Suresh Prabhu, the start has been good.

It would take another couple of terms of successive governments for the system to finally institutionalize good communication – especially that related to change – in Indian polity.

But it should take a much smaller period for you to implement the ‘Change Communication Good Practises‘, so to speak, in your corporate organisation.

Here, we are talking about ‘change’ in general – from the perspective of general communication requirements of internal, corporate, and marketing communication, among all other.

The principal facilitator of good change communication is the ability of the team behind it to understand how people (employees, partners, clients, consumers) perceive and respond to change. Our collective experiences over the years tell us that most people are reluctant for change because they see change as a force that disrupts their cosy corner of the world.

Hence, it is imperative for the change communication team to have the intellectual and emotional proficiency to appreciate and segregate the resistance to change, its sources, and silos – and devise communication answers (read ‘strategy’) for the response and/or resistance to change or the anticipation of change.

The first step towards achieving that is understanding the roles and responsibilities of the leaders, communicators, and people-facing personnel during the execution of change – whether in an intra-organisation sphere or those related to the markets.

Though it sounds elementary, it takes some effort and practice to ensure that the entire team consistently remains on the same page with regards tactics, channels, and techniques that are to be used for communicating change.

At the same time, and this is extremely crucial, the team has to realise that no can have a complete handle over the entire curve of the impending change.

This realisation has to be compassionately passed on to the recipients – while making sure that the team itself realises that it is communicating amid an open-ended, unpredictable change, which would require them to be ever flexible about the nature and frequency of their communication.

Some changes, for many, unfortunately, are not open-ended and unpredictable – and are precisely the kind of changes that makes people fear change in general. In other words, sometimes, change indeed stands for a bad news that has to be communicated.

Like most things in life, there is no one correct way of communicating bad news. But personally, I believe that we could learn from the fraternity that lives with the prospect of delivering bad news on any given day – the doctors.

As someone who belongs to a ‘cancer family’ and has interacted with doctors exhaustively in the context of my late father’s cancer diagnosis and treatment (in vain, the second time), I believe there is no communication as nerve-wracking as that between a terminally ill patient – or his/her caregiver – and the doctor in charge.

Identifying the significance of the subject, the American Medical Association (AMA) first included principles related to the delivery of bad news in its code of conduct almost 150 years ago.

American doctors Michael W. Rabow and Stephen J. McPhee developed a model in 1999 about ‘Techniques for Delivery Bad News Well’ that is represented by a simple mnemonic ABCDE.

ABCDE stands for  ‘Advance Preparation‘, ‘Building a Therapeutic Relationship‘, ‘Communicating Well‘, ‘Dealing with Patient and Family Reactions‘, and ‘Encouraging/Validating Emotions‘.

It is obvious what ‘bad news’ the medical fraternity refers to.

In our case, we can define bad news as any news that either proposes to bring about or is perceived as bringing about far-reaching and/or negative change in the current circumstances of the recipient of the news. In other words, the universe might be different, but the underlining principles of ABCDE work just as well in public policy and corporate governance communications.

Eventually, what really matters is your attitude and approach towards the recipients of your communication (if not actually being that, you should at least come across as being compassionate towards the people who stand to be affected by an impending change), the clarity of your communication, the safeguarding of privacy (related to issues like internal appraisal reports, if not the non-disclosure in public of the ‘pink slip’ itself), and the freedom for the recipient of change communication to question you, and get answers to his/her questions.

It’s not hard really but really needs heart.

How good are you at communicating change?

Categories
Communication Health Communication

Public Health Communication has to be ‘Mainstream’

ayurvedic-accumass-weight-gainer-in-india
Advertisement of an Ayurvedic Weight Gaining Product

A cursory study of health communication would reveal that when it comes to catching eyeballs, the catchy promotions of, for example, private label herbal supplements beat hollow the rather ritualistic promotions of healthcare initiatives by our government. While the difference in the target audience indeed contributes to the difference, the key, I’m afraid, remains the incentive for the campaigns.

It is very easy in our current world to get very passionate about a project that offers instant riches as a ready incentive. Given the demands of the modern life, there’s absolutely nothing acutely immoral in that, I guess.

fssai
A Food Safety in India Advertisement by FSSAI

Given the background, however, how does one attract the best talent for the production of public health communication campaigns – irrespective of the media platform?

Isn’t that an urgent issue in a country like India, where healthcare continues to be one of the biggest ‘enemies of the state’?

It wouldn’t be anyone’s argument that the mighty government bodies do not have funds to be able to afford an accomplished ‘mainstream’ talent. The operative word being ‘mainstream’, denoting not someone who caters to the lowest common denominator but a maker of communication campaigns that work with the widest possible range of the target audience.

For example, many might dislike a popular Hindi film actor but would still not only be exposed to his ‘messages’ – mostly commercial advertisements but also public policy or program endorsement – across mass media platforms.

And we do have a stirring example of that: Endorsement of the Government of India’s Pulse Polio program by Amitabh Bachchan, who, I believe, is the biggest star-actor in the history of Hindi cinema. During the run of the campaign, India reported an exhilarating decrease in the number of polio cases – from 741 cases in 2008, to 42 in 2010 and just one case of polio in 2011. The program was such a superlative success that it was acknowledged by UNICEF.

Another good current example of ‘mainstreaming’ of public health message is the ‘Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan’ – a Government of India program about national sanitation. The campaign makes great use of a widely recognisable Hindi film actress Vidya Balan to stress home the urgent need to have toilets at home. In fact, it manages to be provocative enough to pass on the message – aimed largely at semi-urban and rural households – of sanitation being more important than socio-cultural rituals like women covering their face in front of elderly male in-laws of the family.

This is a great example of public health communication that pushes the envelope while, ostensibly, talking only of a single issue in an easy to understand language.

If you were to do a popular pole of public health communication campaigns that most people are aware of the Vidya Balan ‘build toilets’ campaign would feature well in a list that is still bound to be headed by Bachchan’s pulse polio program.

Simply because both the communications bring the campaign right to the dining table – via people who most would love to invite home for dinner.

But these are just two of the handful of successful public health communication by government agencies. The rest are either not produced well or not delivered well. In most cases, it is the combination of the two. Money, of course, is spent on them anyway.

As with any war, the idea of the government of the day should be to ‘choose the battles wisely’ and go all out with making the message as much part of the daily life of society as much possible, using as much recognisable messengers (not just film actors, of course) as possible, in as much understandable and repeatable manner as possible.

Neither being too clever (by being too ‘cutting edge’) nor being too arrogant (by ‘obliging’ the masses with stale messages) is going to work.

Categories
Huffington Post (UK) Journalism Sport

The Two Things England Need to Do at Old Trafford

This sports journalism piece was first published on Huffington Post (UK) here.

The second Test between England and Pakistan beginning tomorrow (July 22) at Old Trafford has acquired a strange tension, which is vastly more intense and different from the buzz surrounding the crowd reaction to Mohammed Amir’s return to the stage where he had let the cricketing world down.

The ill feeling, amazingly, has nothing to do with what happened on the pitch for a fluctuating four days, at the end of which Pakistan won by 75 tension runs. What got England’s goat was the visitors’ showmanship after the fall of the last English wicket, in front of thousands of English supporters. The reaction to the act from the host gallery was swift – especially from pacer Tim Bresnan and captain Alastair Cook, who said it would work as a motivation for his team.

But giving the post-match box-office fireworks a miss, one of the reasons why Alastair Cook & Co. lost was because they never believed they were going to lose the test – neither at the beginning of the match nor when they were given a target of 283 to chase in the fourth innings.

And there was a good reason for the confidence. They had just routed Sri Lanka in an easy series win. Add to it their impressive home record in tests this decade.

But they lost – to their own “naive batting”, as Cook put it, and Yasir Shah, in that order. Unless they make a few changes, the result could be repeated.

Play Yasir Positively; Play Seamers Aggressively

There is a difference between ‘going after’ a spinner and playing a spinner with the ‘best foot’. So, the case of Moeen Ali’s horrendous dart at Yasir and Gary Ballance jumping on the sides and getting bowled behind the legs are both prime examples of how not to play a spinner. Jonny Bairstow going to the back foot and getting bowled to a flipper by Yasir is also a form of going after the bowler – because the underlying assumption is that the batsman has got the bowler on the mat and that he can cut the bowler any time.

And yet, the idea is not the opposite – to try to block Yasir away. That was the other extreme that was tried by the English batsmen during the course of the match. Unfortunately for them, they found out that it can’t work for a period spread over 40 overs in an innings.

The best way to play a spinner, as any batting coach would tell you, is to rotate the strike. Yes, with many men around the bat, it isn’t always the easiest of things to do. But that’s when footwork comes into play – something that you ought to possess in a decent amount if you are deemed good enough by your country to face wrist or finger spinners from the Indian subcontinent. A decent footwork allows a batsman to move about the crease while, importantly, covering the stumps in such a way that LBW is taken out of the equation.

Pace bowlers need rhythm to succeed; spinners need that, and a lot of space.

Yasir aside, there is no need to give undue respect to the seam bowlers. If England has to succeed, the batsmen would have to tackle Pakistani pacers aggressively. It should not be impossible for a team that is more used to the mix of pace and swing than most Test-playing nations.

In other words, play Yasir positively and the Pakistani seamers even more so.

Unlock the Resources

James Anderson, who was the world’s number one Test bowler before Yasir Shah overtook him with his exploits at Lords, and Ben Stokes are expected to walk straight into the side after their time out due to injury – replacing Jacob Ball and Steven Finn respectively.

But England needs to bring Adil Rashid in for Moeen Ali – and not just for the ‘that’ shot by the latter in the second innings. Pakistan is filled with right-handers and therefore leggie Rashid offers a much better option than Moeen. Also, Rashid has the confidence of rattling the Pakistani batting line-up once, barely six months ago in Dubai. And he can bat a bit too.

On the other hand, with the pitch at Old Trafford traditionally being receptive to spin bowling, there is a case for playing both of them – at the expense of, perhaps, James Vince. In all honesty, it is a toss-up between Vince and Gary Ballance. But left-handed Ballance should be a better counter to the leg spin of Yasir. Also, he has a better record of the two.

But the most vital part of managing the above resources is the need to unlock – or unclutter – the resources.

Alex Hales, in all fairness, is not going to play for four sessions of a test match in this series. Give him the freedom to express himself without self-doubts about his role as an opener.

The same for Joe Root. He got so bogged down under the pressure of expectations after the departure of Cook in the second innings that it ultimately led to his dismissal. It’s time to remind him that he alone is not expected to win it for England.

On top of that, England will have to fight fire with fire when it comes to expressing it on the field. Get into the Ashes mindset and give it back to the opponent. Most English players would be able to do more push-ups than their Pakistani counterparts. Let it show in the middle.