【中英双语】危机公关：高管不可不知的几件事

设想一下，你刚刚被任命为一家顶级公司的CEO，这肯定是你人生中最激动人心的一刻。不过几周后，你就发现了一个掩藏10多年的秘密：一件产品有致命缺陷，但公司一直对此秘而不宣。现在产品的缺陷造成了13人死亡，而你不得不召回上百万件产品。通用汽车的首席执行官玛丽·巴拉（Mary Barra）不必设想如此戏剧性的一幕，因为这已经真实发生在她身上。大多数最后当上高管的人都没有经过任何危机公关的训练，也没有在公众面前处理危机的经历。因此，编写一本危机公关指南或许对企业领导者有所帮助，每一个人都应该准备一本，以防不时之需。

Imagine that you were just named to a CEO position at a top corporation. This has to be one of the most thrilling adventures of your life.  But after only a few weeks on the job, you learn that the company has been hiding information for over a decade about a product defect that cost the lives of 13 people, and you will need to recall millions of units from consumers.  Mary Barra, CEO of GM, doesn’t have to imagine the situation; she is living it.  Most of the people who end up in top jobs have never had any training for or experience in dealing with communicating in a crisis on the big stage. I thought it might be useful to put together a playbook that every leader should have ready for when it hits the fan.

首先，你要知道尽管发现和解决问题至关重要，但处理危机的方法更加重要。约翰·肯尼迪1959年发表了一篇重要的讲话，他在其中提到“Crisis”在中文中是“危机”两字，“危”指“危险”，“机”指“机遇”。虽然专家认为从语言学角度这样分析并不完全正确，不过危机中暗含机遇的想法倒是正确的。巴拉女士似乎深谙此道，她在3月4日给员工的信中写道：“我们公司的声誉会不会受损不是由召回事件所决定，而是取决于我们如何处理此次事件。”

First, you need to realize that defining and solving the problem is critical, but equally important is how you handle the situation.  John F. Kennedy famously stated in a 1959 speech that the word crisis in Chinese is comprised of two brush strokes.  One represents the word “danger” the other “opportunity.” While experts have since noted that the linguistic point isn’t quite right, the bigger idea is still valid. Ms. Barra seems to understand this because in her letter to employees on March 4th, she stated: “Our company’s reputation won’t be determined by the recall itself, but how we address the problem going forward.”

截至目前为止，她似乎并没有采纳自己的建议。虽然新闻报道说她责令致歉，却不清楚让谁致歉。危机公关指南第一条就是企业领导者应公开承认错误。虽然这会让你的律师相当恼火，却能给公众留下极好的印象。

So far, however, she doesn’t seem to be heeding her own advice.  While news reports say she ordered an apology, it’s not clear whom she was ordering to apologize.  The first rule of crisis communication is to admit your mistakes publicly.  While this may drive your lawyers crazy, it will build tremendous goodwill in the court of public opinion.

此外，巴拉一直保持沉默，拒绝接受任何采访。危机公关指南第二条要求企业尽早并尽可能多跟外界进行沟通：尽快公布所有的情况。至少在接下来的几周，巴拉不得不接受政府官员的质询。在她发信后的第二天，美国国家公路交通安全局(NHTSA) 针对引发召回的事件提出了100多个问题，要求通用公司做出回应。根据我对危机公关的研究，我发现企业领导的声音是制定危机公关战略最重要的元素之一。

In addition, she has remained silent and refused to do any interviews. My second rule is to communicate early and often: tell it all and tell it fast. At the very least, in the weeks ahead, she will have to answer questions from government officials.  The day after her letter to employees, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ordered the company to answer over a 100 questions about events leading up to the recall. In my own research on crisis communication I have found that the leader’s voice is one of the most critical components in developing a strategy for communicating during a crisis.

除了听企业领导的叙述外，媒体更想讲一个包含受害者和反派的戏剧化故事来吸引眼球。尽管巴拉不希望信息外流，可《纽约时报》仍能从企业内部拿到消息，写出商业版的头条。我想告诉学生和客户的是，信息传播就像传染性疾病。因此，我的第三条忠告是：企业高管需要通过媒体或其他渠道，尽可能有效得体地从自己的立场叙述整件事情。

Besides hearing from the leader, however, the media wants to tell a good story with victims, villains, and visuals. Despite Ms. Barra’s wishes to keep information private, the New York Times was able to write a front page business section article using its inside sources. I like to tell my students and clients that communication is like a communicable disease.  As a result, my third rule is that you need to be able to tell your side of the story most efficiently and most eloquently through the media or someone else will do it for you.

企业要尽早并尽可能多地跟外界沟通，这件事说起来容易做起来难。企业领导者通常要在了解危机的全部细节和具体情况之前，把类似关心顾客安全这样的企业价值告诉公众，表现出补偿受损者的决心。巴拉的确在信中提到了这点：“首先，我们所做的每一件事情都应遵循一条不可动摇的原则：为客户提供最好的产品和服务。客户的安全和满意是我们每一个决定的核心出发点。”

Communicating early and often, however, is easier said than done.  Usually you have to communicate before all of the facts are in.  As a result, companies need to communicate values, such as concern for their customers’ safety, and to show a commitment to coming to the aid of people affected by the crisis, even if you do not have all of the details yet. Barra did address this in her letter to employees when she said: “First and foremost, everything we are doing is guided by one unwavering principle: do what is best for our customer. Customer safety and satisfaction are at the heart of every decision we make.”

不过，公司在应对危机时最大的问题是，事实往往和它们宣扬的理念不符。如果通用公司真的奉行顾客至上的话，为什么早在10年前就已浮出水面的问题，像巴拉一样的高管们竟然不知道？是不是管理层太无能，以至于10年来没有一个高管听说过产品有缺陷？这就引出危机公关第四条——企业领导需要解释公司在将来会做出怎样的改变。人们想知道的是，巴拉将怎样帮助通用公司修正此次召回的160万辆汽车的缺陷，更重要的是怎样改变这样一种把问题瞒而不报长达十余年的管理体制。

The problem companies face in a crisis, however, is that often the evidence doesn’t seem to back up the rhetoric.  Why didn’t senior executives like Ms. Barra know about the problem given that it had surfaced over a decade ago if the customer comes first at GM? And is the bureaucracy so debilitating that no senior executive in the company heard anything about the defect in question for over a decade?  This leads to my fourth rule, which is that you need to explain why things will be different in the future.  What everyone will want to know is how she is going to help GM fix the actual defect on the 1.6 million cars, but more importantly, how she is going to change a bureaucracy that can hide that problem for over a decade.

最后，虽然我很欣赏巴拉自己处理危机的决心，但这和我的第五条以及最后一条忠告相悖。我认为，深陷危机的高管不能一门心思只关注解决危机，还需要保证企业日常业务正常运行。我们知道，通用公司在未来的几周内将面临诸多的挑战：死者家属聘请的律师会纠缠不休；议员们会为了在下一次选举中拉票而死咬住这家曾经的国有企业不放；媒体会对巴拉的沉默失去耐心；雇员会猜测企业能否度过下一场风波。我们通过媒体获悉，巴拉任命了几名高管专门负责此次召回事件。可是谁来负责公司仍能继续发展，不至于完全陷入危机呢？几年前跟我合作过的一家企业就曾明确指派首席执行官负责处理危机，首席运营官和董事则负责让企业在度过危机后更加成功。

Finally, while I admire Ms. Barra’s commitment to handling the problem herself, this may prevent her from following my fifth and final rule for executives who find themselves in this predicament, which is that you need to keep the business running.  We can expect weeks of challenges from lawyers representing those who died as a result of GM’s negligence, from congressmen hoping to score points in an election year by beating up on the company the US government once owned, from the media which will lose patience with her silence, and from employees, who must be wondering if the company can weather yet another storm. What we have heard from sources the media has spoken with is that Barra named several key executives to oversee the recall.  Who is going to make sure that the company remains vibrant and doesn’t get sucked into the crisis full time? At one company I worked with a few years ago, the CEO focused on managing the crisis while the COO and president focused how to make the business more successful after the storm had passed.

假设巴拉和通用公司安然度过了这场风波，他们最好还是记住尼克松总统说过的一句话。虽然尼克松在1960年大选中落败于肯尼迪，但他在1952年著名的“跳棋”演讲中一句话便点出了危机公关的实质。他说：“在一场危机中，最轻松的时刻是处理危机本身，最艰难的是决定到底应该迎战还是放弃。而最危险的时候则出现在危机过后。这时你一定要万分小心，因为你已经耗尽了所有的资源，同时也解除了防备。”

Assuming Ms. Barra and GM do weather the storm, they would do well to remember the words of president Kennedy’s rival in the 1960 election, president Nixon.  In his famous Checkers speech of 1952, Nixon said, “The easiest period in a crisis situation is actually the battle itself. The most difficult is the period of indecision—whether to fight or run away. And the most dangerous period is the aftermath.  It is then, with all his resources spent and his guard down, that an individual must watch out.”

(柴茁/译 安健/编校)

保罗·阿尔真蒂（Paul Argenti）是达特茅斯大学塔克商学院企业传播学专业的教授。