Crisis management puts huge strains on CEOs

[pokerfan]

Oh noes! Teh poor dears!

"Executives aren't military commanders," Sapriel told Reuters from the Brussels headquarters of her crisis management consultancy CS&A. "They're not trained for crisis management. The whole style of management these days is often do things by consensus. That simply doesn't work in a crisis. It's much more about command and control. The strains are enormous."

"The first thing you often find is that... not a single senior member of a company is willing to talk directly to the media for fear of being the one to take the fall for the crisis," sad U.S.-based crisis consultant Eric Dezenhall.

With BP in the Gulf of Mexico, Sapriel said too much pressure was put on CEO Tony Hayward who also became the media point man and something of a hate figure in the U.S.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/30/uk-business-crisis-management-idUSLNE72T03420110330

And if you've never seen it before, here's BP CEO Tony Hayward receiving the South Park treatment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWaP58rzn6w

[MichiganVote]

1. screw em'

[Dawson Leery]

2. Then what are they being paid for?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. screwing the public out of billions is easy.

Facing up to the questions about your fuck ups is hard.

Which would you rather choose?

[pokerfan]

8. Ummmmm....

their good looks?

[AndyTiedye]

4. Tony Hayward Deserved All of it and More

He seemed rather more like the Monty Python parody of an upperclass twit than anyone that would be put in charge of something.

He clearly didn't give a flying feep about all the damage BP had done, only half a feep about what he was doing to the image of his company,
and that he only regretted the inconvenience of having the press bother him about it.

There are at least some signs of remorse from the TEPCO CEO, not a speck of it from Tony Hayward.
He obviously felt that to even pretend to care was beneath him.

[CanonRay]

5. Sympathy is between shit and syphillis in the dictionary

Fuck 'em

[JHB]

6. Here's an idea: Don't create crises through neglect and malfeasance!

Takes a load off, but I guess it's out of the question because it would mean you don't line your pockets quite as fast.

[Urban Prairie]

7. "Not a single senior member of a company is willing to talk directly to the media"

Hmm...Most of the time, if not all, it seems to me that they all use a "spokeswoman" that no one has ever heard of, whenever a corporation has to publicly announce or respond to "bad news", such as layoffs, charges of corruption/price fixing, price increases, off-shoring, ect...

[Marie Marie]

9. Um, but I thought the whole point of these outrageous salaries

was to get the BEST talent. The only thing most of these a-holes know how to do is pad their own pockets. They are nothing but high paid incompetents.

[Angry Dragon]

10. No tears for them

if they can not handle the job too bad