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Can IASB Learn from Tylenol, Toyota and Tiger?

by John on 22/03/10 at 1:34 pm

Quite an imbroglio has emerged in Iowa regarding the inner workings of the Iowa Association of School Boards, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to equip school boards and superintendents with knowledge and skills to better serve the learning needs of students.

The precise details of the mess are too numerous and intertwined to rehash here, what with the coverage the story has already received.  Suffice to say it’s a public relations mess.

What saddens me about the entire situation is that the narrative regarding IASB’s trajectory through this scandal, and its path out of it, has yet to involve IASB itself as an author.  The organization is absent from its own story.

I’m not a public relations expert, but when you have a state senator shouting in public meetings that he hopes staff from your organization “…all wind up in prison…for 100 years,” I’m thinking that this is an issue you’d want to get in front of.

The hard part is that advocacy groups, educational entities, and nonprofits are not schooled in crisis management.  However, I think there are are lessons that IASB could glean from the past: one from over a quarter century ago, one from this year, and one from just yesterday.

Tylenol, 1982

In 1982, Tylenol was the most successful over the counter drug in America. Then seven people died after taking capsules of Extra Strength Tylenol laced with cyanide.

Maybe you’re thinking, “What could IASB learn from the Tylenol murders?” A great deal, actually, because what Johnson and Johnson (Tylenol’s owner) did in the aftermath became the textbook case for managing a corporate crisis.  Gene Grabowski, who recently appeared on NPR’s weekly radio program, On The Media, outlined the template that has become the gold standard for public relation messes (even those caused by homicidal maniacs):

• Identify what the problem is.
• Apologize.
• Very quickly describe what is you’re going to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
• Then do it. Follow through on your promise.

Toyota, 2010

In January of this year Toyota announced a recall of a staggering 2.3 million vehicles to fix a sticky accelerator pedal.  By Febrary 12, according to National Public Radio, “more than 27 percent of those who were considering a Toyota prior to the recall now say they no longer are, and the Toyota brand has dropped to third place, behind Ford and Chevrolet.”

Ouch.

What did Toyota do?

The president of Toyota, Akio Toyada (yeah, that’s his name on every car), did some things that were revolutionary in the context of corporate Japan. He dusted off Johnson and Johnson’s playbook and started contributing to the narrative:

• He sent an Op-Ed to The Washington Post on how he had pulled the andon cord.
• He spoke with United States Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood.
• He apologized directly to American consumers and said what he’d do next to fix the problem (video below).

Tiger Woods, Yesterday

Why care about Tiger Woods? Well, actually I don’t. But, in an era where the cult of personality carries the day, it can be instructive to look at how a star athlete like Woods attempts to get in front of an embarrassing story.

Last night Tiger woods gave his first public interview since his marital and moral transgressions became public last November.  He allowed ESPN five minutes to ask whatever they wanted.  We could debate whether or not five minutes was fair, but to Wood’s credit there was no vetting of questions, no topics off limits. ESPN’s Tom Rinaldi went for it. Here’s a sample:

• Why did you lose control of the car?
• How would you, in your own words, describe the depth of your infidelity?
• How do you reconcile your behavior with your view of marriage?
• What was your wife’s reaction when you sat down and had that first conversation?
• When you look at it now … why did you get married?

What did Tiger do?  He was composed in the face the difficult questions and OWNED UP.  When you own up you say things like this (quoting Woods):

• I saw a person that I never thought I would ever become.
• Well I didn’t know I was that bad, I didn’t know I was that bad.
• I was living a life of a lie, I really was. And I was doing a lot of things, like I said, that hurt a lot of people.
• [I’m] living a life in amends, and that’s just working at it each and every day.

What’s Keeping IASB From Getting In Front of This?

It’s hard to say why IASB isn’t better in front of their story.

Two issues come to mind:

First, there’s no one technically at the helm. The executive director, who is involved in the dustup, is on leave. But surely a board member could step up.

Second, it may not be in the DNA of the organization to get in front of the story. This is not uncommon, as Gene Grabowski noted in his OTM interview: “[T]he corporate courage to [get in front of a story] has always been in short supply. When a crisis hits, typically what happens is corporate executives at the top huddle together and worry about the stock price, worry about their image, worry about production, worry about profits and losses.”

In sum, the same as IASB seems to be doing: Worrying about everything and thus saying nothing.

Let’s go, IASB. Your good work with school boards and on student achievement has been lost in the discussion. Hopefully you can take a page from other groups who have weathered difficult public relations crises and begin to own a bigger portion of the unfolding narrative.

[Akio Toyoda AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye]